Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. – George Santayana
One year ago today I published “Hidden Hordes of Hookers”, the column which arguably put me on the map; it was the first post which attracted the attention of journalists (especially in Dallas) and led to a number of interviews and a plethora of links. In that column I ridiculed the dire predictions of tens of thousands of itinerant prostitutes and/or “human trafficking victims” (the terms are used interchangeably and confusingly) made by so-called “law enforcement authorities” in the Dallas area to make themselves seem important. And though none of these claims materialized, the “authorities” credited the unseasonable weather and their own hysteria for “preventing” the nonexistent “crisis”, rather like a Vaudeville comedian crediting his finger-snapping for keeping the elephants away. Ever since the beginning of the “human trafficking” hysteria, anti-prostitute activists and their cop allies have predicted that vast hordes of homeless whores will descend upon every major sporting event, and though not a single one of these ominous prophecies has ever shown as much as a whisper of a hint of coming true, that never stops the fanatics from repeating the claim at the next sporting event, nor badge-licking journalists from reporting it as fact without a trace of skepticism.
Well, it’s that time again; the next Super Bowl will be held in Indianapolis, and already politicians and police alike are ramping up to “crack down” on a nonexistent “problem”, with a credulous press corps in tow. Back in July Greg Zoeller, the attorney general of Indiana, started beating the drum; reporters claimed that “big-time criminals [put] young girls up for sale” and “when the big game hit North Texas this year, lots of money changed hands. But there was something else on the market too, sold, quietly, underground: young girls working as underage prostitutes for high paying clients. Some were simply sold as ‘sex slaves’.” This is, of course, a total lie without the faintest shred of evidence, as is the statement that “law enforcement personnel [in Texas] eventually made 133 separate human trafficking related arrests” (they were in fact normal prostitution arrests, a typical number for the time period involved, with only one accused of “human trafficking”) and the related claim that “tens of thousands of people – most of them young girls – [were] sold into the sex trade during Miami’s Super Bowl in 2010” (actually, it was one single proven incident, with unsubstantiated claims of 23 more from the Florida Department of Children & Families).
Then on September 30th, Zoeller held a press conference at which he stated (as though it were a proven fact) that “there will be an increase in demand for the illegal commercial sex trade in connection with the Super Bowl”. Interestingly, though Zoeller has obviously bought the “sex trafficking” propaganda for the most part, he seems to recognize that not all whores are helpless victims:
A major problem, he says, is differentiating commercial sex crimes that involve human trafficking from more standard prostitution. “I think the deficiencies are really that we look at prostitution where the prostitute is the criminal,” Zoeller said. “In this instance, where you recognize human trafficking, where the prostitute is a victim herself…We don’t have a specific statute that recognizes that bringing someone against their will into this trade is a specific crime,” he said.
While we can’t be sure what’s really going on in Zoeller’s head (he may simply be reserving his right to persecute working girls if no man can be railroaded as a “pimp”), it’s still good to see somebody in power saying this. Also, at least one Indiana journalist understands the principle of critical thinking; Maureen Hayden of the Kokomo Tribune wrote:
When I first heard Indiana Deputy Attorney General David Miller talk about the need to fast-track legislation that would add child trafficking to the state’s sex offenses, I was baffled…I didn’t understand the urgency in Miller’s argument: that the bill needed to be passed and signed into law before early February, when tens of thousands of sports fans will descend upon the state’s capital city for the 2012 Super Bowl. Miller told me…that before the 2011 Super Bowl weekend in Dallas, it was the Texas attorney general who described the party-filled spectacle…as “one of the biggest human trafficking events in the United States.” The Texas AG’s fears mirrored the worries of Miami law enforcement before the Super Bowl was played in its city in 2010: an influx of underage prostitutes brought into the city to service an increased demand for commercial sex from tourists in town for the game. Sounds incredibly sordid, doesn’t it? Almost like the story line for a fictional TV cop show. But Miller’s boss, Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller, is taking the scenario seriously…
She goes on to talk about Zoeller’s participation in the toothless and wrongheaded campaign against Backpage by the attorneys general association, but since I see a large portion of healthy skepticism in Hayden’s column I plan to send her a courtesy copy of this essay.
Unfortunately, there is no rational thought whatsoever in the various crusades by moralists, such as this petition which demands that “the State of Indiana not allow human trafficking at the 2012 superbowl [sic]” (presumably the petitioner imagines adolescent girls hawked like hot dogs in the stadium), or the bizarre and incredibly patronizing SOAP (Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution) program, which purports “To bring awareness to domestic minor sex trafficking in the US and rescue underage girls from being victimized” by spying on and interfering in the business operations of cheap motels:
S.O.A.P is a unique outreach program that educated motel owners and staff about the problem of missing children and brings awareness to Demand centered events that transport girls and women into an area for these events. It also provides a phone number to call so victims can be rescued…Teams of people will…be sent out to low end motels around the Stadium, downtown, and in high risk areas such as strip clubs. Volunteers will talk to motel owners and staff about human trafficking and the increase of girls being brought into the area for the event. They will also be offered free soap for their hotel during the duration of the event.
In a particularly absurd touch, the “free soap” is labeled with the phone number of the National Human Trafficking Hotline, undoubtedly so that motel guests can call from their waterproof cell phones if “human traffickers” pass through their bathrooms while they’re showering.
If history repeats itself (and it will), this is going to get a lot worse by Super Bowl week, then once the strumpet invasion fails to materialize the local “authorities” will parade anyone they can conceivably accuse of “pimping” before the TV cameras and credit their “preparations” for scaring the bogeymen and invisible harlots away. Please, journalists of Indiana, make yourselves part of the solution instead of part of the problem; contact me for an interview and/or do your own research. Help to free your readers from the lies of “authorities” and anti-human rights crusaders rather than contributing to the climate of fear and persecution which evil people use to facilitate their campaign of social control.
Maggie, sometimes you write a post that make me willing to charge the gates of hell with a water pistol – and this is one of them!
People using phony facts and outright lies to manipulate the public is just as bad as stealing from the public.
I hate to risk Godwin’s Law, but we all know who the masters of propaganda were. 🙁
I’ve sent a link to today’s column to all the journalists who have impressed me as rational and skeptical on this issue; perhaps some of them may be able to make use of it.
But the law-weenies are right! Every Superbowl IS attended by a cadre of whores……whoring politicians and LEOs prostituting their office for publicity. And it qualifies as whoring because the people footing the bill – the public – are certainly getting screwed.
Wow … you just gave me an idea …
It would be cool if Gallup would put “hookers” into this poll each year …
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1654/Honesty-Ethics-Professions.aspx
I wonder where they would fall in it? I see Congressmen fall at the very bottom – slightly better rated than Car Salesmen. Nurses at the top … but I wonder if Hookers would beat out Clergy and the Police?
Speaking for me – one of my favorite lines I tell people all the time is … “I’d be more proud of a sister working at the Mustang Ranch than a brother who was a Congressman!”
That would be hugely revealing, especially if Gallup could put in a qualifier that only those who had ACTUALLY employed a prostitute’s services were qualified to vote on that vocation. Already have uninformed opinions up the wazoo. Don’t need more messing with the data. (Bad enough it will probably be misquoted later. :P)
Of course, I suspect the counter-argument from Gallup to veto a Prostitute category would be that the Oldest Profession is not technically a legal profession, and so exclude it from the list.
Shame that. I would like to see those numbers, AND have them fitted to this list.
Maggie, am not a sex worker so I dont claim to write from an inside perspective and so do acknowledge the ‘gap’ in perception, but I am open and researching into sex work with particular respect to Nigeria. Your column today really set me re-thinking. In Nigeria, big events pull in a lot of hookers for instance the Miss World event and the FIFA championship held previously in Nigeria. Was there human trafficking involved? Or was it like you said just normal prostitution? The high volume of prostitution at play during such times – professional and clandestine, makes such claim as you deride plausible to one without the benefit of personal research. I guess it opens one up to the importance of reading whatever is written ‘with a pinch of salt’. Now that applies to everyone…including you maggie [lol]
Be that as it may, Ithink you should take human trafficking rhetorics a bit more seriously, at least in certain respects. Again I use the Nigerian situation and I do know that it is a big scourge, I do know though that it ties in to wider issues of inequality, immigration policies. It really is more complicated that is usually reported I guess. My question though is why do the young women repatriated mostly want to go back., that kind of throws aback the ‘victim’ image.
That’s one of the things Laura Agustin often writes about. The anti-whore crusaders like to point to less-than-perfect conditions as evidence of “abuse”, but I don’t see them campaigning to “rescue” workers from Wal-Mart and McDonald’s. I wrote a column about the false “trafficked”-“not trafficked”dichotomy a while back; I think you might find it thought-provoking.
My butter pies are finished baking. My lemonade pies were finished hours ago. The Endless Summer came in today, and I won’t get to watch it until Friday or even Monday, but hey, it’s a holiday.
I wonder how the British, with their legalized prostitution (and trafficking paranoia) will deal with the approximately nine hundred thousand underaged sex slaves who will descend on the Olympic Games in July of next year? Surely the Nomadic Pimps can’t resist the biggest sporting event of all!
And I wonder if some musical group has already snagged the name “The Nomadic Pimps?”
As I’ve tried to explain before, Sailor, the UK does NOT have anything we would regard here as ‘legalised prostitution.’ Find me some legislation that’s legalised it! We have areas of prostitution that have never been criminalised eg ‘escorts’ working alone from their own premises; and we have areas that have been criminalised (eg street soliciting, brothel management). Clients are legal so long as they don’t street solicit or turn out to unluckily pick a lass that’s been coerced, assuming everyone’s over 18, while landlords and a wide range of third parties can get it in the neck from a whole range of UK laws.
Hhhmmmnnn……
I have to admit that there is a difference between “legalized” and “never criminalized in the first place.”
In my post above, please substitute “legal” for “legalized.”
Gotta go; I’ve got an hour and nine minutes to shower, get everything together, dress, shave, etc.
I think this post could equally be titled, “Those who do remember the past are condemned to repair it”!
Paranoia over sex trafficking at major sports events has almost become part of the opening ceremony. A chance here to plug a new publication from the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women (the intelligent alternative to CATW) that I had a minor part in, available as ‘What’s the Cost of a Rumour?’ here
http://www.gaatw.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=107&Itemid=73
Happy Thanksgiving, Maggie!
Of course any major event, sporting or otherwise, that draws large numbers of men into a city will draw sex workers. Political conventions do the same. It’s simply good business to be where the business is. Best week I ever had was when a trade show was in town, that week was so busy I ended up doing laundry three times in one day!
The men are at the event for sport and fun. Hookers are a part of that.
I read some of this stuff and just despair. Really? Was there a huge difference in the trick I turned the day before my 18th birthday and the day after? Was I trafficked the day before and a criminal the day after? Where’s the logic there?
I think a large part of the opposition to the traveling whore show is financial. Every few hundred dollars a tourist spends on a girl who will then take it out of the area is money not put in the pockets of the locals. They assume (falsely, I think) that if the punters weren’t spending their money on whores, they’d spend it on local amusements, more food drink, whatever. So the local business men sic the cops on the traveling girls.
I’ve been on both sides, local and traveling. When local, I never noticed a decrease in business. While traveling, the overhead is higher, and you have to book enough business to cover that plus.
I can say this- I don’t think an influx of underage hookers would be a successful venture during a super bowl. Only a small percentage of men would knowingly hire them. Most men simply aren’t pedophiles. Many have young daughters, and are violently opposed to such. They might hire under aged women who pass for legal, unknowingly. They’ll happily hire a 30 year old who looks 22. But only a small percentage would hire a 13, or 15 year old. That seems to be mostly the fantasy in the minds of the prohibitionists.
Actually, Comixchik, from what I’ve read of major sports events (admittedly outside the US and only anecdotal), the local sex industry actually declines for the duration of events. I have accounts of this decline from the Sydney Olympics, the German soccer World Cup and South Africa. In Germany, I’ve read accounts from the inside of one of their brothels of big screens normally devoted to hardcore porn showing the matches instead and the clients being totally preoccupied with them rather than the sex workers, who, in the end, gave up and watched the games too.
Visitors to sports events are less monolithically male than prohibitionists present + often consist largely of families, and many visitors have largely spent up on travel and accommodation with little spare cash for commercial sex.
Yep. I worked in a city that for a while had a major winning sports team. It never did much for business.
But trade shows? Ahh, totally different. Especially trade shows with a majority male attendance. I’d work those silly. They always brought the best business.
Same here; I never saw any substantive change for sports except for major university football events, which brought endless calls from stupid, cheap university students packed 10 to a room (i.e. the change was for the worse). But big trade shows are awesome!
How are conventions of nerds? You know: Star Trek conventions, anime conventions, video game tournaments, etc.?
There was only one of these in a city I worked in, and another in a city within driving distance. I attended one of them, ComicCon.
I can’t say I ever got a lot of business out of those conventions. Shame, really, because I’m semi-nerdy myself, really. That’s not saying that those conventions didn’t generate any business, they might have, and it just wasn’t for me. I don’t know. Maybe the shy and nerdy types went for GFE providers.
The trade shows that did best for me were the auto industry shows, a medical researcher conference, a dental technology conference, and some financial industry gatherings.
Thanks. Well, I’ve heard that these things are supposed to be Nerds Gone Wild, so maybe enough are giving it away that it doesn’t generate extra business. After all, if you’ve already got a hotel full of hot women dressed like Wonder Woman and Sailor Mercury and Xena and Yohko the Devil Hunter…
Excuse me.
yes , i thought the same. when you look the folks at the sports events its male,Female, famlies. If it were just men attending this events well it might be a good place for business. Super bowl? I don`t think so
[…] the Indianapolis Super Bowl bandwagon rolling with the claim that the Texans had actually made “133 separate human trafficking related arrests,” a number obtained by dishonestly representing every vice arrest made in the Dallas-Fort Worth […]