As the CSE Institute has previously addressed, when popular news and entertainment sources discuss the commercial sex industry, they tend to glamorize it rather than focus on its exploitative nature. The false portrayals perpetuate harmful stereotypes about prostituted persons, and are thus damaging to survivors and the public alike.
Beginning today, the CSE Institute will be featuring a mini-series written by the winners of our First Year Law Student Blog Competition, Paige Pihl Buckley, Anna Boyd, Molly Anne Krebs, and Ryan Kelly. These submissions explore criticisms of popular news depictions of the commercial sex industry. Each essay addresses a specific article and critiques the message that the article promotes. We are excited to publish this mini-series and to launch a discussion on the impact of mainstream news sources on the public’s perceptions of the commercial sex industry and its survivors.