In recent years, measures have been introduced in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Texas, Illinois and, most recently, California to apply special taxes to strip clubs -- specifically to fund sexual assault services. Now, even if you aren't inclined to view erotic entertainment as the source of all evil, this might seem an appropriate aim -- who wants to argue against additional support for rape survivors? It would seem even more so when you consider politicians' and activists' repeated claims of solid scientific evidence showing a link between strip clubs -- specifically those that sell alcohol -- and sexual violence.

That is, until you look at the alleged proof.

The key study advocates point to is one commissioned by the Texas Legislature in 2009. But that very report states, "no study has authoritatively linked alcohol, sexually oriented business, and the perpetration of sexual violence." What's more, when I talked to Bruce Kellison, director of the Bureau of Business Research at the University of Texas at Austin, and one of the authors of the report, about the alleged link between strip clubs and sexual assault, he said, "That's not really what our study was trying to do."

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“It’s more like ‘Daddy Day Care,’” I usually quip. And while that's meant to be a joke, there’s also some truth to it. I spend a good amount of my work time offering support and advice to men in their 30s and 40s who are just coming out of the closet. Surprised? I was too, at first. But then I thought, where else are these guys going to catch up on two decades of sexual and social experience? Until someone comes out with “Gay for Dummies,” the next best thing is a trained professional.

A few years ago, for example, a charming man from Vancouver hired me every night for a week while he was in Las Vegas for a conference. By the time he went home we'd checked off every item on his wish list, and he was finally comfortable lying naked with another man. It was strangely gratifying to help a guy learn the ropes.

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The landmark decision taken Monday, decided that the dangerous work of prostitution could be made more safe if it occurred under one roof with security staff, reported the Globe and Mail.

The Appeals Court of Ontario said that some of the country's anti-prostitution laws were unconstitutional as they restricted the prostitute's ability to protect themselves -- a ruling already made by a lower court in 2010 but appealed by the provincial and federal governments.

The court also said that it would re-model the law against pimps, which prohibits living off the work of others by adding "in circumstances of exploitation," reported PostMedia News.

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I was a Craigslist call girl. James was my first. I had gotten the idea from a friend. “There are ads,” she said, “placed by men, looking for” -- she raised an eyebrow -- “company.”

That night I got online. It was just as she’d described: SWM seeks non pro, GFE, a little fun. FS. DATY. BBBJ. A lady that speaks GREEK, possibly, a road of possibilities, a chance encounter, no strings attached. For 200 roses, 300 reasons, a generous donation, a happy ending. You can start any day that you like.

On the now-shuttered adult services section of Craigslist -- to the left and below where you’d rent an apartment or sell a couch -- you could find ads, written in their own coded language, from men and women and everything in between, all of them after one thing: the simple exchange of money for sex.

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I was in ninth grade when I first started having sexual relationships. I was lying, sneaking out of the house, drinking several times a week. I did well in school and went to classes but I was in search of something -- an empty feeling I tried to fill up with alcohol and drugs and parties. It wasn't just about my father leaving. I'd been sexually molested when I was 6. I lost the closest boy I knew in high school when he accidentally shot himself at 17. By college I was picking up men in bars, going home with them in a blackout. I'd been used so many times I started to be like: I don't care. These guys are the ones who are being used.

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OK, so it isn’t the sexiest case ever made for the legalization of prostitution, but it is one of the more intelligent, measured and comprehensive looks at alternatives to criminalizing the trade. Instead of the usual polarizing rhetoric about how sex work is inherently empowering or debasing, the George Washington University sociology professor takes the more practical approach of investigating how to best reduce harm within the industry, specifically within the U.S. His research takes him everywhere from Las Vegas to Frankfurt in search of the best and most realistic policy aims. Ultimately, he recommends a two-track approach stateside, where street prostitution, which he dubs a "social problem," is treated dramatically differently from indoor prostitution involving consenting adults.

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"In the dead of night, alone at home, the loneliness sometimes becomes unbearable," writes one man. "There aren't many places to go in the middle of the night, and most of those choices don't necessarily ensure any kind of reasonable human interaction." Another man explains, "Nobody talks to me, nobody cares what I say. I'm a 24-year-old drone who wastes his days sitting at a computer reviewing spreadsheets that don't really matter," he says. "I just want to talk to someone who cares, and $1 every 3 minutes is a lot less than $250 an hour for a therapist."

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She's a mom herself, actually – to 8-month-old Emma – as well as a performance artist in the tradition of "post-porn modernist" Annie Sprinkle. That is why we're sitting across from each other on an airbed in the middle of an art gallery in San Francisco's Mission District. This peculiar scene of public domesticity -- with a reporter, no less -- is how she chose to close her recent group exhibit, "Building Our Own White Picket Fences," which explored family dynamics relating to queerness and sex work. Among Young's contributions to the show: An image of the red-haired BDSM star next to a blindfold and cutouts of combat boots – it's titled, "Pin the Combat Boots on the Queer Mommy." Another photo shows the award-winning BDSM star topless with a shot of a television covering one breast and an image of a milk carton covering the other, with a spinning arrow in-between. By the window, a wood swing is strung from the ceiling -- on the seat, upside-down pushpins spell out "family."

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But there are a few rules of thumb. In their self-proclaimed "holy war" to carve out the world's newest Muslim state on the Thai-Malaysia border, jihadis consider soldiers, cops, Buddhist monks, government teachers and their Muslim collaborators as fair game. Backpackers partying just a short distance up the coast are left alone.

But less mercy is offered to a different sort of tourist: Malaysian men, many fellow Muslims, border-hopping into insurgents' turf for paid sex. Now, after a bloody Sunday night bombing spree in their favored brothel town, Malaysia's government is warning its men to stay away.

Shortly after sunset on Sept. 18, in the gritty Thai border town of Su-Ngai Golok, a series of explosions erupted on a busy lane lined with hotels, food stalls and karaoke joints.

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Just weeks after adult actress Madison Young gave birth, she launched an art exhibit titled "Becoming MILF." The idea was that she would explore how she now embodies a contradiction, the dichotomy to end all dichotomies -- that of the Madonna and the whore. At the show's opening, she served up self-made breast milkshakes and displayed a baby quilt made of burp cloths and "porn star panties." Surely it goes without saying that this sort of art doesn't appeal to everyone, or most, but it's brought about criticism from the unlikeliest of sources: a fellow pornographer.

I'm less interested in the sex worker Twitter war that has ensued than in how the controversy taps into culture-wide mommy issues, but the details are like so: Sex worker activist Furry Girl (presumably a stage name) took to Twitter to criticize Young for publicly breast-feeding -- in a recent photograph, video blog and at a live event. She tweeted that only "creeps & pedophiles" are interested in seeing a porn star breast-feed and insinuated that exposing her child to such an audience was abusive: "It's funny to see how many feminist kinksters don't think consent matters when it comes to creating erotic art w/ a baby." She called Young "a revolting person" and dubbed her defenders "baby fetishists" and "pedos."

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This is his first session of sex therapy -- and it was all recorded for posterity back in 1983 in the award-winning Kirby Dick documentary "Private Practices: The Story of a Sex Surrogate." While browsing streaming Netflix movies recently, I stumbled across the movie, which was re-released on DVD last year. The controversial topic and the sexy, modernized DVD cover, which belies the film's early-'80s aesthetic, were irresistible. Little did I know that it would be so compelling I would be driven to track down Maureen and Kipper nearly three decades after it was filmed. (I also contacted a second client featured in the movie, but got no response.) What I found about how their lives have changed since then makes the documentary seem tame in comparison.

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Which countries were found to be most dangerous? Afghanistan was ranked the most dangerous, followed by the Congo, then Pakistan, then India, then Somalia.

Why? In Afghanistan, "violence, poor health care and brutal poverty," notes Al-Jazeera, afflicts women, "while in Congo there are horrific levels of rape" (reportedly some 420,000 women are raped a year). Other practices and circumstances found in countries considered the most dangerous include domestic abuse, genital mutilation, acid attacks and economic discrimination.

The NATO airstrikes in Afghanistan, one women's rights advocate told Al-Jazeera, are among the dangers threatening women in the country.

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"Meet Melissa Petro," the story began," the teacher who gives a new twist to sex ed." The piece describes me as a "tattooed former hooker and stripper" who was "shockingly upfront about her past." Indeed, earlier that month, I'd written an Op-Ed on the Huffington Post that criticized the recent censoring of the adult services section of Craigslist and came clean about my own sex-worker past. Because I was arguing that sex workers shouldn't be ashamed to speak for themselves, I signed my name to it. The New York Post wasn't interested in my politics, however; its interest seemed only in cooking up shock that an elementary school teacher would dare admit such a shady history.

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That is the sharp line of reasoning found in Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore's new star-studded "Real Men Don't Buy Girls" ads. Instead of making a rational argument against buying underage girls for sex, they went for "that offbeat feel of Funny or Die," as Kutcher put it, and ironically challenged viewers' masculinity. Basically, they turned an Old Spice commercial into an anti-sex-trafficking PSA. In fact, Isaiah Mustafa himself is in one of the spots -- shirtless, per the usual. There are also appearances from Bradley Cooper, Drake, Jamie Foxx, Jason Mraz, Sean Penn and Justin Timberlake. As though the campaign didn't already scream "desperate to go viral," if you "like" the campaign's Facebook page, it will generate a custom spot featuring your profile photo and Moore purring your first name (assuming your parents didn't give you a weird one).

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Despite the hype, the new reality TV show "Gigolos," premiering tonight on Showtime, apparently does not show women paying to have sex with men. According to Garren James, agent to three of the men on the show through his escort service Cowboys 4 Angels,  not only did the female clients on the series not pay for their appointments, they were actually compensated for their participation in the show.

That would mean "Gigolos'" stars were paid for their performances -- which included having sex with one another -- for entertainment. And that, of course, sounds a lot like porn.

As a creative consultant, James was charged with recruiting women for the show and they were compensated in return. When I asked James how difficult it was to find the female clients, he replied with a deep laugh. His task "wasn't easy," he says, but eventually he was able to find 12 women who were game.

"They were compensated," he said. "They definitely got compensated."

When I asked Showtime's publicist Nicole Elice for "Gigolos" to confirm this, she said, "We don't know. Nobody can say for sure." That's because the show wasn't produced by Showtime but rather Long Pond Media.

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The psychological community hasn't exactly rushed to embrace her nudity -- but the media sure has. Today she was in the New York Daily News and the Daily Mail; yesterday it was the Wall Street Journal. (Tomorrow, the New Yorker?) What's amusing to me about all the hubbub is just how similar what she's doing is to what we traditionally label as sex work. From cam girls to strippers to prostitutes, sex workers will tell you that much of their work involves simply talking to men.

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For proof, Reid cited a conversation with an unnamed business owner who expressed discomfort over the fact "that one of the biggest businesses in the county he was considering for his new home is legal prostitution." A local brothel owner responded today by claiming that the business in question is planning to move to the state, regardless. Other than this mystery case, though, there is little evidence that Nevada's bordellos -- which are legal in certain far-flung rural counties -- are keeping businesses out of the state.

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