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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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Debunking ‘sex work’ #2 Language, Migration and Trafficking

Debunking ‘sex work’ #2 Language, Migration and Trafficking with Anna Zobnina and Marie Merklinger

We hope you all enjoyed the second instalment in our Debunking ‘sex work’ series, which saw Anna Zobnina, Policy Coordinator for the European Network of Migrant Women and member of the Executive committee of European Women’s Lobby, and Marie Merklinger, activist and member of SPACE International, in conversation with Olesia Sagaidak from Radical Girlsss.

If you missed it, you can watch it in full on our Facebook page!

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Debunking ‘Sex Work’: Conversations about Prostitution May/June 2021

We are so excited to have kicked off our series of online events entitled Debunking ‘Sex Work’: Conversations about Prostitution! Last week saw conversation #1 hosted by our very own Esohe Aghatise, who talked to Gail Dines, PornlandAuthor and Founder and President of Culture Reframed, on the theme of Pornogrpahy and Prostitution. You can watch the recording of the event here

Check out our event page on Facebook for updates on all of the exciting speakers that will join us from around the world each week.

This series continues every Thursday at 12 noon EDT / 5pm UK / 6pm CET until 1st July, so follow this link to sign up to watch on Zoom (with Italian translation available) or follow the event on Facebook Live!

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Introducing the COALESCE Project

We are very pleased to start a new project COALESCE, which began in January 2021, funded by the AMIF Fund and led by the Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies (MIGS), in partnership with Cyprus Refugee Council (Cyprus), CARITAS Cyprus, IROKO Onlus (Italy), Marta Centre (Latvia), European Network of Migrant Women, Immigrant Council Ireland, Solwodi (Germany), Klapeida (Lithuania).

Coalesce is a two-year transnational project involving five European countries: Cyprus, Latvia, Italy, Lithuania, Ireland, and Germany.

Read our press release to find out exactly what the project is all about!

 

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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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Radical Girlsss Interviewed Survivor Activist Rachel Moran

To Mark the EU Anti-Trafficking Day 2020, Adriana from Radical Girlsss (the youth wing of the European Network of Migrant Women) interviewed Rachel Moran, the survivor activist, author of Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution and founding member of the survivor group SPACE International. 

Can trafficking for sexual exploitation be separated from prostitution? We agree with Rachel that they are part of the same phenomenon: trafficking exists to feed the ever-growing market for women’s bodies. You can read our statement on why we must target demand for prostitution in order to tackle trafficking for sexual exploitation. 

 

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IROKO’s Statement on EU Anti-Trafficking day 2020

Associazione Iroko’s Statement on 18th October 2020, European Union Anti-Trafficking Day:
End Demand to End Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation

Human trafficking is, by its very nature, an extremely difficult phenomenon to measure, and the data on the number of identified victims inevitably gives an incomplete picture of the scale of the problem. Between 2017 and 2018, a total of 74,514 victims of trafficking were detected in over 110 countries. The US Department of State reports 105,7876 identified victims worldwide in 2019, showing a clear increase year on year. The estimated total number of victims is much higher, with the ILO putting it at more than 40 million in 2016. Trafficking disproportionately affects women and girls, who – according to UNODC data – represent 72% of detected victims of trafficking globally. Moreover, sexual exploitation is the predominant form of trafficking. 

Given the scale of this problem, we have written a statement to mark the day and outline what the data and what our experience have taught us about trafficking for sexual exploitation and how it can be combatted.

Read the full statement.

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Global support for Parliamentary efforts in Germany to adopt the Equality Model

The Gloria Steinem Equality Fund to End Sex Trafficking, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), SPACE International and The Sisterhood is Global Institute have written this letter to express the global support for Parliamentary efforts in Germany to adopt the Equality Model. Associazione IROKO has signed the letter and we give our full support to efforts in Germany and around the world to recognise that “prostitution is not work but rather a very harmful and dehumanising system, which fuels the sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of women and girls”. 

Liliam Altuntas, survivor of trafficking and prostitution, told IROKO “reading this letter has really made me happy, especially because Germany is a country that’s very close to my heart. Because when I was trafficked, I was sold and brought to Germany. Hearing that there are people who support and make way for this kind of legal change is really important to me. It would represent a real response to the suffering that we have endured, so I’m very happy to join this fight and I’m sure that we will win.”

We encourage our friends and supporters to read and sign the letter.

Click here to watch an interview with Dr. Ingeborg Kraus, conducted by ENoMW‘s Anna Zobnina, in May 2020 just after the publication of a letter signed by various German MPs calling for brothels to remain permanently closed after the coronavirus lockdown.

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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.