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DICK PICS 101: PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE THE DICK

DICK PICS 101: comment on Please Acknowledge the Dick’: Inside a catfishing factory written by Yağmur Uygarkızı

‘PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE THE DICK
*    -> if a customer shares a photo of it, pay it a compliment
*    -> if they mention their size in inches, say something positive
*    > if they bring it up, encourage them to show you it
The worst thing that you can do is ignore the dick pic
OUR BUSINESS IS PROVIDING ENTERTAINMENT AND FANTASIES’

A journalist went undercover in a sex-chat company. What did he find out? What feminists already knew.

For more than a $1 per message, men get to have sexual conversations with what they think are actual women. Operators, based anywhere in the world, from Zimbabwe to the Philippines, are paid ‘$0.06 per message’. A woman reported: “I had to work so much, like 10 hours a day, just to earn a decent amount. That’s why I stopped. It’s good part-time, but you can’t actually depend on it,”

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Press Conference: the Nigerian film Òlòturé to combat sex trafficking

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY UNITES TO SUPPORT EFFORTS TO COMBAT
SEX TRAFFICKING IN NIGERIA WITH THE SCREENING OF OLOTURE IN ABUJA AND BENIN CITY

WHAT: The Gloria Steinem Equality Fund to End Sex Trafficking and its local partner Associazione Iroko Onlus invite you to a press conference on sex trafficking prior to the screening of Nigerian film Òlòturé directed by Kenneth Gyang and produced by EbonyLife Films. The film will be followed by a high-level panel discussion on sex trafficking and a reception. This event has been jointly supported by the Embassies of Argentina, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United States as well as FIIAPP and UN Women.

Here you can find the full text.

Press review:

National Accord Newspaper

Press Conference video

Kapital FM Abuja on Twitter

Daily Asset

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Rachel Moran’s Book Recommendations

In her interview with Radical Girlsss to mark the EU’s Anti-Trafficking Day 2020, Rachel Moran, whose own book Paid for: My Journey through Prostitution we consider a must-read for everybody, was asked about what advice she would give young women today. She talked about the modern challenges posed by social media and the way young women are constantly bombarded with images and messages about sexuality, as well as the importance of arming ourselves with information, learning from the feminists who have gone before us.

“We, all of us – young women and middle-aged women like myself – we need to respect our elders, and that’s something that I don’t see us doing often enough. Because there are women who’ve come before us, who have written extremely important texts and, honestly, if I had read – I’m not sure when Sheila Jeffreys’ The Idea of Prostitution was actually published, I think it might have been during the ‘90s. But I can tell you had I read that book before I got into prostitution, I wouldn’t have gone near prostitution. You know, because it lays out so very clearly the dynamics of what prostitution involves

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Rosso Indelebile: Liliam Altuntas on Trafficking and Prostitution

For the second year in a row, Iroko was invited to participate in the event Rosso Indelebile (Indelible red), a series of artistic events, which took place in Turin and focused on the theme of gender-based violence. For two years Rosso Indelebile has brought art to various shared spaces around the city not usually designated as artistic locations. Similarly, the theme of gender-based violence is part of our everyday lives and “cannot be enclosed in an auditorium, but must be exposed and talked about by everyone”, by society, as highlighted by Isabella Bulgheroni, a member of the organisation Artemixia, one of the organisers of the event, in collaboration with the NGO MAIS. The aim of taking art onto the streets is to encourage people to ask themselves questions, and potentially find the answers, stimulating both the individual and the collective to try and see the world from different perspectives. 

Gender-based violence, specifically, is a pressing issue, with a “war being fought around the world”, as defined by Esohe Aghatise, the president of Iroko. On 29th September Iroko participated in the 2020 installment, attending an event dedicated to migration flows and trafficking – details of which are here (in Italian) – and bringing the testimony of a survivor of trafficking and prostitution, Liliam Altuntas, who has told her story through the book of which she is the protagonist, I girasoli di Liliam’ (currently only available in Italian).

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Ingeborg Kraus and Sandra Norak Video: The Failure of the German System of Prostitution

In 2020 IROKO partnered with Resistenza Femminista to host a series of webinars on the theme of prostitution and the abolitionist model. During the 5 webinars we had the pleasure to host various experts who gave us invaluable insights into the violence of prostitution and the particulars of the various laws that exists around the world. Among these were Dr. Ingeborg Kraus, activist and psychologist specialising in the trauma of prostitution, and Sandra Norak, a survivor activist. Ingeborg and Sandra created this video for us, which explains the failure of the system they have in Germany, where prostitution has been legal and regulated since 2002. 

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Liliam Altuntas: Activist, Survivor and protagonist of ‘Girasoli di Liliam’

In early 2020 we had the pleasure of meeting Liliam Altuntas, a Brazilian woman resident in Turin who is a survivor – or, as Liliam puts it, a warrior, a fighter – of trafficking and prostitution, an activist with Resistenza Femminista, and the protagonist of the book I Girasoli di Liliam, written by the psychologist, Teresa Giulia Canòne. Sadly, for the time being, the book is only available in Italian, but here Liliam tells part of her story – which we have translated from Italian – and what it means to her to have come out the other side, as an activist for herself and for other women. 

I know what it means to hide your past… a past full of mistakes.

Sometimes not even your family want to talk to you. Nobody wants to talk to someone who does drugs, who steals, who constantly tells lies, to hear about the person I was…

Today I can truly say who I am. I am a black woman, a foreigner, even though I don’t think the word ‘foreign’ makes sense, because we’re all made of the same stuff, we all have the same bodily functions. Being in prostitution has weighed heavily on me, being someone who went from one bed to another with different men, satisfying their fantasies… For a long time I was forced into it, and then I continued because I believed that I was destined to die alone, without knowing real love…

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