"Michael Peacock's acquittal is a victory for sexual freedom: The not-guilty verdict delivered on a man charged with distributing gay pornography is a step forward in legal maturity"

" Today is a great day for English sexual liberties. In the case of R v Peacock, in which defendant Michael Peacock was charged with six counts of obscene publication – gay-porn DVDS which featured acts all legal to perform but not legal to depict – the jury found him unanimously not guilty on all counts. Why is that so important? For one, Peacock is the only person to have pleaded not guilty to a charge under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 (OPA 1959) for the kind of gay BDSM pornography he published and won. He is the first person to have challenged the notion of obscenity in law, a law that was last updated in 1964, and has stood since. A law that is expressly designed to tell us what is "deprave and corrupt" – defined by Justice Byrne in 1960 as "to render morally unsound or rotten, to destroy the moral purity or chastity; to pervert or ruin a good quality." Hence the OPA 1959 is nothing to do with prosecuting the potential or actual sexual or violent harm caused to others by the material in question, nor about preventing children or vulnerable adults being subjected to inappropriately explicit material. It simply and absolutely passes moral judgment. Thank god the jury had sense to see that in 2012, telling others what is depraved – and prosecuting them for "debasing" your mind if they publish material featuring it and you are privy to it, is as absurd as it is anachronistic. When the jury were first shown the material, they were, in some cases, visibly alarmed. A day spent viewing back-to-back evidence tapes of full-hand gay fisting, urination, staged kidnapping and rape, whipping, and smacking of saline-injected scrotums would probably tire most of us, whatever our sexual predilections (believe me – I used to work for a sex magazine, and when you've been editing hardcore porn all day, all you want is a cup of tea in front of Frozen Planet). But even if the jury did think the acts were wrong, they correctly understood what prosecuting for obscenity required them to do, and that was to decide whether knowledgeable customers with particular sexual peccadilloes, who had then sought out, ordered and paid for DVDs featuring a specific niche of porn would be corrupted by it. Of course, like every good English discussion about sex, there was plenty of tittering, normally when the well-spoken, middle-aged male and uprightly English recorder asked for clarification on kinky sex terms. Hence, a butt-plug was defined as "an ear plug, but for the butt", and an "experienced bottom" as one who likes to receive certain sexual acts. I do wonder how many BDSM novices will adopt "toaster" as their safe word on their first travail into sexual kinkdom. But for those incredulous that there could still exist in a law a discrepancy between what you are allowed to do and what you are allowed to publish yourself doing, the laughter was necessarily cathartic. Throughout the trial, the court had carefully warned the jury against sentencing out of any impulse of homophobic disgust. So it was disturbing to hear the prosecution lawyer invoke towards the end of his address the following example of the likely audience for the "obscene" material: "a man, in his 40s, married, with a wife who doesn't know of his secret sexual tastes", especially considering the defendant's testimony that his customers were mostly gay men. How ironic that the defence had begun his closing by trying to distance this case from the R v Penguin Books (1961) trial (commonly known as the Chatterley trial), which the recorder had already referenced to as precedent. That trial, in which the infamous test of the book's obscenity was whether you would let your wife or servants read it, exposed everything that was wrong about the way those who held power and privileged pronounced on the sexual tastes and liberties of the population. Here was that same example of the white middle-class, privileged patriarch, no longer guarding against the sullying of his goods and chattel, wife and servants, but fearing for his own depravity. Thankfully, the jury did not fall for it as a tenable argument. For gay rights campaigners and for everyone of us that believes in social and sexual liberty, it's a day to make a five-digit victory sign. • This article was amended on 10 January 2012 to clarify that Peacock is the only person to have pleaded not guilty to a charge under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 (OPA 1959) for the kind of gay BDSM pornography he published and won." Source: Guardian, 6 January 2012

UKNSWP 2010 Conference: call for Workshop Leaders and Conference Presenters

"Preparations are underway once again for the UK Network of Sex Work Projects’ annual conference. Although we have yet to confirm the venue, we can confirm that this year our conference will be held on the 19th and 20th October in Manchester. Details will be released to members as soon as they are available.

We are aiming to hold the UKNSWP AGM and workshops on the first day of the conference with presentations from members and invited guests the following day.

This year the conference will provide a forum for members to engage in critical discussion regarding how we can best promote and secure social inclusion for sex workers.

We have a working title:

Sex Workers and Social Inclusion: Promoting Social Inclusion for Sex Workers within the Community, Legal Framework & Economic Climate.

Workshops and presentations will focus on the following issues:

Workshop (A): MIGRANT WORKERS AND ECONOMIC CLIMATE

This workshop focuses specifically on migrant sex workers who are working in the UK within the current socio-economic climate. The workshop will provide a forum for discussion on how we can best ensure that migrant workers have adequate support and access to services. We would welcome papers from projects which can share experience and good practice.

Workshop (B) SAFETY OF SEX WORKERS

The safety of sex workers is fundamental to their social inclusion. This workshop aims to discuss the ways in which projects can best ensure the safety of all sex workers in partnership with the police and other agencies. We welcome papers from projects to share their ideas and experiences and successes in this respect.

Workshop (C): INNOVATIVE OUTREACH

This workshop focuses on developing outreach skills and knowledge. We are particularly interested in applications from member projects which can share their experience with regard to ‘netreach’.

Workshop (D) PROMOTING SOCIAL INCLUSION FOR SEX WORKERS WITHIN THE COMMUNITY

This workshop has two aims. First, to discuss the ways in which criminal justice agencies such as Local Police Authorities can work towards ensuring social inclusion for sex workers. Secondly, to share ideas/good practice on how projects can bring about social inclusion for sex workers within the community. It is with regard to this latter aim that we invite members to present on their innovative community project work (for example arts initiatives) that promotes social inclusion of sex workers.

If you are interested in delivering a workshop presentation we would need an abstract submitted by 4th June. Please email your abstract to Tracey Sagar at her email: T.Sagar@swansea.ac.uk

Applications should include:

1) The name of the member(s) or project making the application

2) The title of the workshop/presentation

3) The workshop which you wish to take part in: Workshop (A), (B), (C) or (D)

4) A content summary/abstract of up to 300 words.

The UKNSWP is not in a position to provide a fee for this but, workshop leaders and presenters will be given a free place at the conference"

Go to UKNSWP website

Sex and the Law - Criminalisation? Protection? Rights? 23rd September 2010, Sheffield

A one-day conference exploring issues surrounding sex and the law, providing information and a forum for debate.

The day will be chaired by Professor Roger Ingham from the Centre for Sexual Health Research, University of Southampton and keynote speakers include Peter Tatchell, prominent human rights campaigner and Yusef Azad from the National Aids Trust.

Workshops will include:
* Trafficking/Sex Workers/International Law
* Pornography issues
* SRE
* Female Genital Mutilation
* Refugees and Asylum Seekers
* Fertilisation/Embryology and implications for lesbians
* Street sex workers/prostitution and the law

Cost: £150 (Early Bird - book by 28.05.10) or £190

Contact: Ashley Beaumont-Thomas, Training Administrator,
Centre for HIV & Sexual Health, Tel: 0114 226 1902
Email: admin@chiv.nhs.uk
Go to webpage

UK NSWP Policy Group Meeting 19th February 2010

The next meeting of the UKNSWP Policy Group will be held on Friday 19th February 2010. The meeting will be hosted Manchester Action on Street Health MASH in Manchester. Coffee will be at 10.30, meeting commencement at 11 and end at 3.30. Watch the UKNSWP website and further member alerts for the venue details.

The Policy Group is open to all UKNSWP members. If you will be attending or wish to send apologies please email Rosie at rosiecamp1@aol.com. Lunch will be provided so we do need to know if you are attending for catering purposes. If you have any items for the agenda please email them to Rosie by Wednesday 10th February.

Minutes from previous meetings, including the last meeting in Cardiff December 2009 can be found on the Policy Group Forum area of the UKNSWP website.

Writings of Intimacy in the 20th & 21st Centuries, 10th – 12th September 2010

Held at the Department of English and Drama, Loughborough University, UK

Keynote speakers: Adam Phillips (UK), Leo Bersani (USA), Lauren Berlant (tbc) (USA).
A special performance of intimate poetry is also scheduled, including readings from Andrea Brady and Jonty Tiplady.

This conference seeks to explore the significance of intimacy in and for the writings of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Our most intimate relationships are those which can powerfully define and nurture us, hurt and grieve us. Yet intimacy is not necessarily confined to those we know well: it is possible between strangers and is not always conditional upon a personal relationship existing between the subjects involved. There are, indeed, intimate ways of behaving towards others which involve acts of violence, such as torture and rape.

Over the course of the twentieth century there was a marked rise in the explicitness with which intimacy was represented in literary texts. In part this was linked to challenges to, and the subsequent relaxation of, censorship laws. Literary writers have used intimacy in various ways to disrupt genre boundaries, to question the definitions of taste, and to experiment with literary forms and narrative voices, as well as to present their readers with a more visceral engagement with the body, its acts, and our desires. There are intimate forms of writing, such as love poetry, autobiography, eulogies and personal letters, which are an essential part of our literary heritage. Critical theory, too, has become increasingly interested in defining and discussing intimacy and its impact upon our lives, and this engagement is much indebted to the discourses of psychoanalysis.

Writings of Intimacy wishes to investigate the way in which intimacy has been written: its representation and theorisation. Topics for consideration may include, although do not have to be defined by:

Representations of intimacy, e.g. sex, love, death, violence, nursing
Intimate roles, e.g. lover, mother, analyst, carer
Intimate forms of writing, e.g. life writing, love poetry, works of mourning
The poetics of intimacy
The politics of intimacy
Intimate scenes and experimentalism
The intimate and the impersonal
Narrative voice and intimacy
Philosophies of intimacy
Psychoanalysis and intimacy
Intimacy and the avant-garde
Self-intimacy
The unconscious and dreams and intimacy
Intimacy and censorship
Intimacy and knowledge
Intimacy and space/location

Individual abstracts and proposals for panels are welcomed. Abstracts of 300 words should be sent to Jennifer Cooke at writingsofintimacy@lboro.ac.uk by 31st March 2010

Go to website here

Desiring Just Economies / Just Economies of Desire Location: Call for Papers Deadline: 2010-01-20

International Conference, 24-26 June 2010, at ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry
Confirmed Speakers: Lisa Duggan, Kevin Floyd, Josephine Ho, Ratna Kapur, Desiree Lewis, Anne McClintock, Donald Morton

The conference seeks to explore how desire not only sustains current economies, but also carries the potential for inciting new forms of understanding and doing economy. We propose to focus on the notion of desire as a tool to explore economy’s sexual dimension as much as the economic dimension of sexuality. Drawing on Queer Theory we understand desire as historically structured by heterosexual norms, while simultaneously functioning as a structuring force itself – thus inscribing reproductive heteronormativity to subjectivity and society. Presuming that desire can be envisioned beyond heteronormative restrictions and that this bears on the idea of justice, the question arises whether the pursuit of economic and sexual justice can be made to coincide when economy is queered by desire. Rather than a realisable universal norm, the term justice is employed as a contestable term, offering possibility for debate and political practice. The conference's twin interest lies in unpacking how sexuality is implicit in economic processes and in unfolding how economy is linked to sexuality. How do current global economic processes (including production, reproduction, consumption, circulation, speculation) constitute specific sexual identities and practices that collaborate in relations of exploitation, domination, and subjectivation? Conversely, how do ways of organizing sexuality influence economic processes?

In addition to exploring the reciprocal relation between sexuality and economy, the conference inquires into how a queer reconceptualization of desire may emerge as a destabilizing and transformative force in economic relations. One of the aims of the conference is to fashion space for imagining “other” economies or imagining economy “otherwise”, as well as for the deployment of the concept of desire in ways that allow for a reworking of social relationships and economic practices. The presumption here is that global capitalism is not a monolith; rather, there exist diverse capitalisms and diverse economies. For instance, economic practices in the fields of migration and diasporas, subcultural economies, gift and barter economies and cooperative economies do not all conform to the capitalist logics.

“Desiring Just Economies / Just Economies of Desire” is an international, transdisciplinary conference that welcomes a wide range of presentations, from academic papers to experimental writing, lecture performances, and visual presentations. We invite scholars, activists and artists inspired by queer and postcolonial theory to submit abstracts that relate to the questions raised in the full CFP available at: http://www.desiring-just-economies.de

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 20 January 2010

Organizers: Nikita Dhawan (Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies [FRCPS], Excellence Cluster “Formation of Normative Orders” Goethe-University Frankfurt), Antke Engel (Institute for Queer Theory, Berlin/Hamburg), Christoph Holzhey (ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry), Volker Woltersdorff (SFB “Cultures of the Performative”, FU Berlin)

Christoph Holzhey
ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry
Christinenstr. 18/19
10119 Berlin
Germany
Email: cfp@desiring-just-economies.de
Visit the website here

Capita’s 5th National Targeting Prostitution Conference, Friday 27th November 2009, Central London

Aims and objectives
Capita’s 5th National Prostitution Conference brings together expert speakers from forward thinking organisations working together to address the complex range of issues surrounding prostitution in the UK.

It is an important time for local authorities, the police, health and outreach services and charities involved in the prostitution agenda. The new laws set out in the 2009 Policing and Crime Bill will radically impact upon multi-agency approaches to enforcement, engagement and support.

During this crucial period of change it is imperative stakeholders come together to share their views, identify successful strategies and share proven good practice. Only then will an effective and unified partnership approach be found to overcome key challenges.
This timely event will address core issues, including:

•Ways to transform the latest policy into effective practice within the framework of the new laws
•How to provide care, support and exits out of prostitution for sexually exploited children, young people and trafficked women
•Identifying local trends in prostitution so as to develop multi-agency responses to actively target related crime
•Approaches to ensuring ‘on’ and ‘off’ street sex workers receive sexual health and drug related support services
Take the opportunity to voice your opinion on the current legal and strategic picture and network with the wide range of stakeholders involved in tackling the central concerns resulting from prostitution in the UK.


Benefits of attending
•Gain an update on ACPO strategies for tackling prostitution and drug use
•Consider how the new laws set out in the Policing and Crime Bill 2009 will impact on prostitution
•Explore ways to enable children and young people to exit and recover from sexual exploitation and prostitution
•Hear from the Metropolitan Police on how the police, local authorities, PCTs and outreach services can target prostitution through effective partnership working
•Discover methods for providing a wide range of sexual health and drug support services to ‘on’ and ‘off’ street sex workers
•Take away strategy for providing accommodation, support and routes out for trafficked sex workers
•Learn successful practice for meeting the support needs of former sex workers in prisons

Speakers include:
Chair: Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon
Reader in Psychology and Social Policy, School of Psychology
Birkbeck College, University of London

Dr Tim Brain
Chief Constable
Gloucestershire Police and
ACPO Lead on Prostitution and Vice

Sian Kilcommons
Vice Chair
UKNSWP

Michelle Farley
Service Manager
SHOC Haringey

Jon Birch
Inspector, CO14 Clubs and Vice Unit
Metropolitan Police Service

Gunilla Ekberg
Policy and Legislative Advisor on Prostitution and Trafficking
Eaves

Julia Lowndes
Lead Policy Officer for Prostitution and

Sue Webb
Partnership Analyst
Safer Birmingham Partnership

More details can be found
here.