Terminology is often fused to a theoretical position so that adopting the term means adopting the political theory behind it. Oftentimes, activists strategically do this. “Sex work is work” is one of those terms. It’s not simply stating that sex work is work, but endorsing a specific theory and calling for an entire political program based off of that theory.

The question often frames the possibility of the answer. The question of whether sex work is work was framed to fuse the interests of the sex worker with the industry. The problem, of course, is that this fusion is entirely superficial because the prostitute’s interests are diametrically opposed to that of the pimp and the buyer. “Sex work is work” then becomes more about protecting the interests of the sex industry and less about protecting women forced and coerced into prostitution.

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Why is Pornhub allowed to flourish despite nonconsensual videos of adults and children?

One night in 2017, a fifteen-year-old girl named Rachel received a WhatsApp message from a number she didn’t recognize. Rachel lived with her mother, stepfather, and siblings in a midsize town in the United Kingdom. She had just returned home from a party and was in her bedroom. “I had a really unstable home life, and I didn’t have good support around me,” Rachel told me recently, while sitting on her bed in a fluffy white bathrobe. “I was a complete mess, I didn’t trust anyone, I was in complete self-destruct mode.”

The man who sent the text forwarded a nude photograph of her, the source of which she couldn’t figure out. Then he sent a link to her mother’s Facebook account and the names of other family members and school friends, threatening to forward the picture to them if she didn’t follow his instructions. Immediately, she recalled an episode from a few years earlier, when classmates passed around a photo of her in her underwear…

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Meta Platforms Inc. is now a leader in another social media trend — lawsuits claiming the company built algorithms in its platforms that lure young people into destructive addiction.

Eight complaints filed in courthouses across the US over the last week allege that excessive exposure to platforms including Facebook and Instagram has led to attempted or actual suicides, eating disorders and sleeplessness, among other issues

“These applications could have been designed to minimize potential harm, but instead, a decision was made to aggressively addict adolescents in the name of corporate profits,” attorney Andy Birchfield, a principal at Beasley Allen, the law firm that drafted the suits, said in a statement Wednesday.

The complaints add to a spurt of recent cases against Meta and Snap Inc., including some filed by parents whose children took their own lives. The litigation follows a former Facebook employee’s high-profile testimony in Congress that the company refused to take responsibility for harming the mental health of its youngest users.

Read More: Meta, Snap Sued Over Social Media ‘Addicted’ Girl’s

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A law recommending schools in New York State consider implementing a silent panic alarm system in their district is now awaiting Governor Hochul’s signature.

The New York State Assembly passed Alyssa’s Law on Saturday, named after 14-year-old Alyssa Alhadeff, one of the 17 victims of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Retired Miami-Dade Schools Police Chief, Ian Moffett, responded to the Parkland shooting in the days and weeks following the nation’s third deadliest school shooting.

He set out to try and make sure technology was in place to better streamline communication between school districts and law enforcement during critical situations.

He quickly learned about SaferWatch, a mobile app that allows users to report information from their smartphone to law enforcement.

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A group of women gymnasts, including four-time Olympic champion Simone Biles, are suing the FBI for more than $1 billion for its failure to stop U.S. women’s team doctor Larry Nassar from sexually abusing them.

A total of 90 gymnasts have joined in federal tort claims against the FBI, which has admitted that its agents knew about Nassar’s abuses as early as 2015, but failed to act, leaving him free to continue his crimes for another year before his arrest by local law enforcement. It was during that year-long period that most of those signed up to the FBI lawsuit say there were abused.

Nassar, who served as U.S. women’s team doctor for 18 years, was sentenced in 2018 to between 40 and 175 years in prison after admitting that he had molested some of the sport’s biggest names under the guise of providing “medical treatment.”

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