Red Light Reader

Welcome to Red Light Reader, a monthly book club and podcast hosted at Bluestockings Bookstore in NYC. It was created as a platform to facilitate dialogue about sex worker rights and its intersections with technology, race, migration, labor, LGBTQ, and women's rights. We release new episodes each month featuring our interviews with authors, academics, and activists.

Episode 1: "Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work" by Melissa Gira Grant

Melissa, the first guest for our book club, reads from her still-very-relevant book, touching on the implications of banning sex workers from social media, police violence, and what it means to have sex work become an electoral issue.  Hosted at Bluestockings Bookstore in NYC Want to help incarcerated sex workers? Please donate to SWOP Behind Bars A special thank you to Matt Gajewski for our theme song. Check out his podcast

05-30
01:16:52

Introductions: Who is Red Light Reader?

Thank you for tuning into our first episode! Listen along as we share our individual histories and discuss how our favorite texts have shaped our perspectives. We touch on topics of the criminalization of sex workers and migrants, labor exploitation under capitalism, the relationships between US imperialism and the "rescue industry," and so many more! A special thank you to Matt Gajewski who wrote our theme song. Check out his podcast here. Want to share your ideas and personal narratives with us? Please email us or Tweet to @redlightreader

05-06
01:08:52

Maya discusses the story behind the Anti-trafficking Panel

Recently, two members of our book club - Maya Morena & Kate Zen (representing Red Canary) participated in a trafficking & migration panel (with Aya Tasaki Policy Director of WomanKind) speaking to the Peace & Social Action Committee (PSAC).  Originally this event was supposed to be a round-table discussion between various diverse groups with widely differing positions on labor rights, migration, sex work and trafficking. Unfortunately, upon the release of the full participants list, all of the "anti-trafficking" organizations refused to participate in a panel which included an undocumented immigrant and sex worker, claiming that they did not want to be "associated in any illegal activity." Maya Morena discusses the story behind why The Partnership for the Eradication of Human Trafficking, the Lifeway Network, and Mentari dropped out of the panel.  Watch our video of the anti-trafficking & migration panel here. Follow Maya via her site.

05-06
05:09

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