You can make prostitution illegal, but you can’t make it unpopular. – Martin Behrman
No, I’m not getting lazy, I promise! It’s just that as my network of contacts expands I keep finding other essays from brilliant, beautiful sex workers which say things so well that I couldn’t possibly improve on them. Case in point: today’s first article, cribbed from Brandy Devereaux; I’ve paraphrased the included news article because the current monotonous AP style with its endless repetition of words makes me crazy, but Brandy’s comments are verbatim.
Immoral Purposes
Is The Tyra Banks Show involved in child trafficking? Seems to me that this is what it boils down to. Wouldn’t this violate The Mann Act? The girl was transported across state lines for the purpose of exploitation (not an actual sex act but still…). From what I can find, here is the current Mann Act [as amended 22 years ago today – Maggie]:
“Whoever knowingly persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any woman or girl to go from one place to another in interstate or foreign commerce, or in the District of Columbia or in any Territory or Possession of the United States, for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose, or with the intent and purpose on the part of such person that such woman or girl shall engage in the practice of prostitution or debauchery, or any other immoral practice, whether with or without her consent, and thereby knowingly causes such woman or girl to go and to be carried or transported as a passenger upon the line or route of any common carrier or carriers in interstate or foreign commerce, or in the District of Columbia or in any Territory or Possession of the United States, shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”
A Georgia woman is suing Tyra Banks, Warner Brothers and the producers of The Tyra Banks Show for $3 million after her 15-year-old daughter appeared without her permission on a 2009 episode about teen “sex addicts”. In a lawsuit filed on October 8th in Atlanta, Beverly McClendon claims the show contacted the teen on her cell phone after she responded to a request on the show’s website seeking “sex addicts.” The girl was then picked up from her home in a limo and flown to New York, where she was lodged in a hotel, all without her mother’s knowledge.
(“Whoever knowingly persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any woman or girl to go from one place to another in interstate or foreign commerce, or in the District of Columbia or in any Territory or Possession of the United States…” – check)
McClendon filed a missing person report with local police when she realized her daughter was gone. McClendon says her daughter has never been diagnosed as a “sex addict” and suffered damages because the show “was undoubtedly watched by sexual deviants, perverts and pedophiles.”
(…for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose…)
The lawsuit seeks a jury trial and asks for $1 million in compensatory damages and $2 million in punitive damages, and also asks that the episode be barred from ever being aired again on television or online. Warner Brothers Television Group spokesman Scott Rowe said Sunday that the company had no comment, and Banks’ publicist, agent and lawyer did not immediately return calls. The suit also says that the show violated McClendon’s right to privacy by putting her underage daughter on television, and accuses the named parties of negligence because though the teen was paid for her appearance, the show failed to get either parental permission or permission from the labor commissioner to employ a minor to fly to New York, stay in a hotel alone and appear on the show.
(…in interstate or foreign commerce…)
Yes yes I know. But that’s DIFFERENT you say…she wasn’t man-handled by a bunch of sleazy men you say. Let’s look at this – she (a MINOR) was transported across state lines for the purpose of sexual exploitation. She didn’t go on the show to talk about Barbie dolls people, she went on there to discuss SEX. The show profited off of a minor who was transported across state lines. Now if the mom was right and there was a bunch of pedophiles and perverts jacking off at home to this little girl discussing sex, then doesn’t that equal debauchery? (Term “debauchery”…is not limited to being synonym for “seduce,” but includes also exposing of woman to such influences as will naturally and inevitably so corrupt her mind and character as to lead her to act of sexual immorality, or leading of already sexually corrupt woman to engage or continue more or less habitually in sexually immoral practices.) By this time, y’all are probably frustrated with my reasoning skills. That’s ok. You think it’s just not the same. Well guess what? Consenting adult sex work is NOT the same as human trafficking and exploitation either…
[Bravo, Brandy! Of course there’s no way Time-Warner will ever be prosecuted for violating the Mann Act; the government is too busy suppressing consensual acts by individuals in the name of fighting “child trafficking” to concern itself with ACTUAL child trafficking by a mega-corporation.]
Good Advice
I don’t think much of any cable news network, most especially not “fair and balanced” Fox News. But if Fox newsreaders are going to start advocating that men hire hookers, I just might be persuaded to change my mind. The following is paraphrased (to put the emphasis where it belongs) from a story on Huffington Post:
On Friday (November 12th), Fox News anchor Chris Wallace (of Fox News Sunday) advised radio host Mike Gallagher to hire an escort if he was lonely. After Gallagher said he hoped to have Wallace’s wife as a guest on his radio show when her book was released in the coming year, he added “This woman is a saint for putting up with you…I gotta find out what the secret is.”
“Maybe the secret is I know how to satisfy a woman. Has that ever occurred to you?” Wallace replied. He then went on to say, “if I had my own pad and was a bachelor in New York, I wouldn’t be lonely. It’d be party night.” A few minutes later, Wallace asked Gallagher why he was so “lonely” in New York, and told him to call one of the “advertisements for, like, gentlemen’s clubs and escort services.”
“I’m not going to a gentleman’s club,” Gallagher said, “Are you crazy?”
“Because you’re not a man,” Wallace said.
Sounds like reasonable advice to me. On behalf of the escorts and strippers of New York, I say thank you Mr. Wallace!
10 Tips for Dealing With Cops
I saw this slideshow on Huffington Post, intended to advertise a new DVD by the same title. Though the tips are mostly intended to be of use in routine traffic stops, they are also good advice to escorts (especially the first four and #10). As I said in the comments for my column of November 14th I myself am terrible at #1, but I repeat #4 like a mantra to naïve whores who believe in magic formulae. The article and slideshow were written by Neill Franklin, technical advisor to the video and executive director of an organization called LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition), an activist group made up of cops who support legalization of drugs and an end to the destructive “War On Drugs”. It’s very heartening to see the good cop minority organizing itself to educate people about their rights and speak out against the insanity of at least one type of consensual crime. Obviously, advocating for drug legalization has become politically correct whereas advocating for the decriminalization of our trade is not yet, but perhaps sometime in the new decade LEAP or an organization like it will add prostitution to the list of activities it advocates against the prohibition of, and for many of the same reasons.
A law that defines women as being victims even if they do something voluntarily is a flagrant insult. We are now several decades into a sexual revolution where women have risen up and demanded equal rights and yet this law is remains on the books. What does it take to piss women off if not that?
Tomorrow’s column talks about exactly that. 🙁
It’s funny that you write today about Tyra Banks. I never watch her show, but yesterday, I did. I was flipping through channels and saw that she was going to interview a sixteen year old stripper (a glitch in Rhode Island law makes it legal). So I watched. The girl had it together and I thought Tyra was going to lose it. And of course they had an ex-stripper, ex-call girl on to tell the poor widdle girl how horrible, horrible the Sex Industry (they should have played a little Bach) is and how she needs to get out now before she is “sucked into it.” Didn’t look like the girl was buying it.
I’m sophisticated enough at forty-four to know that if there are ten thousand ex-strippers and nine thousand ex-call girls who think it was the best part of their lives, and only two who think it was utterly horrible (Bach), those two are going to be on the show and the other nineteen thousand won’t even be allowed to sit in the audience.
Seems Johanna, at sixteen, is sophisticated enough to know it too. Today’s kids are a bit harder to fool.
Yeah, fanatics are really good at finding that one disgruntled member of the group they’re trying to suppress and using him or her as a poster child. Even David Duke was able to find one black guy to endorse him for governor of Louisiana. 🙁
Just remember, girls who are above the age of consent but under 18 are victims if they sell sex. But it’s ok if they give it away.
Of course, on their 18th birthday, they’re immediately responsible enough to join the military where they can be shipped off to some foreign desert, vaporized by an IED, and declared a national hero.
As the song says: “What a difference a day makes….”
And they’re also victims if there’s a picture of them naked, and if they take or distribute that picture themselves they can be prosecuted as “sex offenders”; this accomplishes the amazing feat of making them simultaneously evil, malevolent adults who deserve to be punished for decades and poor little innocent children who are incompetent to make decisions for themselves…because of the same action!
Or vote for the idiots who make these laws, or legally prostitute themselves FOR LIFE and bring more human beings into the world. 🙁
I can heartily endorse, as I think I might have commented on another post today, FlexYourRights.org’s excellent video 10 Rules for Dealing with Police, and their other one, Busted, is even better. Standard watching in our house, as I have teenagers with driver’s licenses and I own firearms.