A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier. – H.L. Mencken
The Super Bowl will be held in Indianapolis this coming Sunday, and though the egg-covered faces of Dallas area “authorities” seems to have chastened some of their Indiana counterparts somewhat, there’s still plenty of hysteria to go around. As I explained in my column of one year ago today, there is absolutely zero evidence that prostitution or so-called “human trafficking” follows major sporting events, and in fact there are a number of studies (besides anecdotal evidence) which proves they don’t:
Here’s a detailed examination of the 2006 “World Cup sex trafficking” hysteria in Germany, which you will notice closely resembles our current Super Bowl hysteria…Luckily, prostitution is legal in Germany, so it was easy to research and publish an expose of the myth…And just for good measure, here’s a report by the Sex Industry Worker Safety Action Group which conclusively shows that there is absolutely no correlation between mega sports events and either sex trafficking or a dramatic increase in prostitution. Also, the Swedish government funded a separate study which also demonstrated the falsity of the World Cup sex trafficking claims. In 2006 the German authorities uncovered only five cases of “human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation” instead of the imaginary 40,000; in Tampa…there were NO arrests for prostitution during Super Bowl week, and according to this report from the Vancouver Sun:
After the last four [Olympic] Games (Turin 2006, Athens 2004, Salt Lake City 2002, and Sydney 2000), there were almost no confirmed reports on the numbers of sex workers, level of violence or other associated factors. Notably, almost all anecdotal reports suggested no obvious change in level of activity. During the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, where sex work is legal, only a marginal increase in prostitution was reported. In Salt Lake City, one confirmed report indicated that city licenses for escort services increased by only 12 per cent in the period leading up to the Winter Games.
In short, there is literally no evidence whatsoever for any measurable rise in prostitution during such events, much less thousands of trafficked sex slaves.
Regular readers may recall that after all the hype, the number of prostitution arrests in the Dallas area during last year’s Super Bowl week was typical of any other week, and the one single individual accused of “human trafficking” got the idea from the propaganda. Texas officials tried to blame this utter and complete failure of their predictions on unseasonable weather and a supposed deterrent effect of all their “precautions”, but I doubt anyone other than die-hard “true believers” was fooled; for example,
…Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Deputy Chief Michael Bates said he did not expect a lot of human trafficking at the Super Bowl. “In Dallas, they expected a big influx, but they saw a lot less than they thought they would,” said Bates, who went to Dallas and talked to police there. “They had only a few arrests.”
Bates of course went on to make stupid statements about “prostitution unrelated to human trafficking [being] expected to rise” and equating stripping with hooking, but he also seems to comprehend that most whores aren’t streetwalkers. Indiana attorney general Greg Zoeller is far more credulous and made the jaw-droppingly stupid statement that “There are limits to our hospitality, and certain activities are not welcome…Prostitution and human trafficking are way over the line” (presumably he believes that there are no resident hookers in Indiana), but even he seems to realize that not all whores are helpless victims. Still, Governor Mitch Daniels is “concerned that the approaching Super Bowl will bring women and girls sold into sexual slavery” and state Senator Randy Head wants the legislature to “target…human traffickers who flood Super Bowl sites with teen prostitutes” by increasing the penalty for statutory rape (sex with a minor) to equal that for aggravated rape. And apparently, there aren’t enough members of the Indiana legislature who don’t “believe the Super Bowl to be the biggest human trafficking event in the country, if not the world” to stop Head’s ill-conceived bill from sailing unanimously through the legislature just as nearly all sex-crime legislation does.
Perhaps the strangest aspect of this year’s Super Bowl hysteria is the concentration on meddling in the business affairs of hotels rather than indulging in the Texas-style “law and order” threats and swagger to which we were subjected so much last year. A group called Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution (whose founder’s horror stories strike me as very odd indeed) plans to use special bars of soap to fight “human traffickers” hiding in hotel lavatories, and a group of nuns (who unlike Sister Lynda Dearlove are unencumbered by any actual experience with real whores) has been annoying the managers of hundreds of hotels within an 80-km radius of Indianapolis with prying questions, and then further harassing those who give the “wrong” answers (or, presumably, tell them to mind their own business).
Of course, a lot of this moral panic is supported by the media, who repeat the bogus “trafficking” statistics and claims of marauding hordes of nomadic strumpets without so much as a qualifying statement, despite the fact that the studies disproving those claims can easily be found online in minutes. Ah, well; sooner or later a few of the mainstream journalists will begin to wake up, and once that happens it’s all over but the shouting. I wonder how many more annual invasions from the demimonde have to fail to appear before the American Fourth Estate comes out of its collective mental hibernation?
I’m actually a bit surprised that prostitution doesn’t increase at big events like this. I really don’t think it would be an evil thing if it did. If the demand goes up – you would think supply would rush in to fill it. This is what happened overseas. My nuke sub pulled into Chinhae, South Korea – and, I think the only brothel in town was called “Donna’s Green House”. One of our Fire Control Techs ran out there immediately after we moored so he could “secure” the place for us. When the “Mamasan” asked him what kind of ship we were – he responded we were an “aircraft carrier”.
Nuke Sub = 120 Sailors
Aircraft Carrier = 5,000 Sailors
This caused Mamasan to jump into high gear but quick – and she got on the phone to Pusan ASAP to get more girls into the brothel. It was awesome – there were like four girls for every guy there that night – and Mamasan figured out really quick that we weren’t an “aircraft carrier”!!
I think the whole “trafficking” meme sprang up because most of the sheeple were growing tired of the “prostitution is morally wrong and should be outlawed” meme. I think most people were saying … “Meh, what do I care what two consenting adults do.” At that point – the argument was lost – gotta get a new one – even “invent” one out of whole cloth. So “viola!” … “hey look here – little sex slave girls forced into servicing fat old men!” Something in that for the sheeple to latch on to.
The problem is – is it’s bullshit and it will be exposed. Glad you mentioned Germany … because I have a friend out there in the Army who likes to visit the FKK’s. Yeah – prostitution is LEGAL in Germany – and the Germans are on “high alert” and always looking for traffickers. My buddy told me that “raids” aren’t uncommon. Cops come in – and check all the girls paperwork … they get interviewed … and then the cops leave – because they’ve found NO trafficked women. He told me it absolutely SUCKED over the Christmas holidays because all of his “regular” Romanian and Czech women left Frankfurt to go home for the holidays.
Who knew that sex slaves got vacation time to spend with the family?
If the demand really went up that might be true, but it doesn’t. Middle-aged guys going to mega sporting events bring their families, and thus have no time to spend with whores; young guys don’t have the money because they’ve spent it all on ridiculously expensive tickets, transportation and overpriced accommodations and food. You know what that means? Nearly every call one gets during such events is a drunk frat boy with no money and they’re staying ten to a room. You know what many experienced escorts really do for mega sporting events? Leave town so they don’t have to put up with bullshit. They go on tour or take vacations.
Well these football fans ain’t doing it right then.
I’m STILL proud of this story, and I was on one of the named ships when it happened. 🙂
I think the brothel owner is exagerrating a bit … but, I don’t care – I LOVE THE HEADLINE! 😛
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/05/02/1019441406441.html
Sad thing is … I had no part in “wearing out” the sex workers there – but I did have to do damage control with all the wives back in the states that read this story!
A lot of the athletes at the Olympics have sex with each other; it’s like being a rock star AND a groupie. So they aren’t hiring anybody.
The spectators? It’s like the Superbowl, only more so. It ain’t cheap, and entire families go.
The only hookers you’ll find at the Olympics are those who took time off to attend as spectators… or an athlete who found that hooking pays well while giving her enough time off work to train.
A family friend competed in the Beijing Olympics; no one famous and she didn’t make it past quarter finals. She said that the night of the closing ceremonies was pretty much one big orgy. But it is apparently that way at every international, mixed gender sporting event. The relief of the months-long stress of preparation for and then the actual competition finally gets to melt away…or fucked away as it were.
“A family friend competed in the Beijing Olympics;”
That is awesomely cool. I realize that’s a redundant statement, and I don’t care.
“no one famous and she didn’t make it past quarter finals.”
The saying is ‘it’s an honor just to be able to compete,’ and it is. She got to run* with giants, and that’s cool in and of itself.
.
* Or swim, or fence, or whatever.
No, I think awesomely cool is acceptable grammar. 🙂 It is definitely an honor. I just stated that she wasn’t anyone famous so that no one gets the idea that I knew a recognizable name. 😉
She retired due to injuries, but she is a personal trainer now. Very awesome lady, drop-dead gorgeous. I went to the gym with her one time (I suck at running) and actually saw a man walk into a (very thick) pillar staring at her.
I was sure you knew being there was an honor. I think I wanted to make sure that you knew I knew.
I can understand walking into stuff. It’s embarrassing, but most of us have done it.
The funniest thing like that which ever happened to me was when a supermarket stock boy ran into a pile of cans while staring at me, knocking them all over. 😀
I’ve never had a guy react that way though I have had several speechless encounters. I also get stared at a lot…though I’m not quite sure how to take those stares at times.
This is something few men experience. Sure, we may attract the female eye sometimes, but women seldom walk into walls or anything over us (and they’re very subtle with that gaze). But it reminds me of something that happened to me. Something out of the Twilight Zone.
It happened to me twenty-two or -four or so years ago, and it made me feel both very studly and very nervous. I have no idea why it happened at all, or why it quit happening.
I was twenty-less-than-five (don’t remember exactly), and suddenly black teenage girls were looking at me that way. Every time I went out in public, it seemed, some pretty young thing was giving me the eye. And it was always that specific demographic: black teenage girls. Not white teenage girls, not black twenty-somethings, not Chippewa octogenarians, not men. Nope; black teenage girls. None ever actually walked into anything, but one did stumble over herself at the grocery store. One or two of them I actually smiled back at. Her eyes would go wide and she’d turn away.
I tell you, I felt like a movie star. I actually started being careful to match my clothes and check my hair before I went out. It was also rather frustrating, of course: here seemed to be pussy for the asking, and they’re all jailbait! Some of them seemed young enough I’d’ve been hesitant to do anything even if I thought I could get away with it (which I wouldn’t have).
This went on for about two weeks, and then it stopped. Just stopped. I have no more idea why it stopped than why it started. I’m not an ugly man, and was probably better looking then than I am now (I was thinner and didn’t have any grey hair). But I’ve never, at any age, been the sort of man women stumble over themselves looking at. Except those two weeks, and that very narrow demographic.
What the hell?
My mistake; I meant, I never had a guy walk into something looking at me. Although, your experience sounds cute! I bet you blushed too, didn’t ya? Maybe you looked similar to a star that was popular at that time among black teenage girls? Now, I’m curious!
That said, I have, once, walked into a lightpole looking at this gorgeous, gorgeous man. The fact that he looked like Alexander Skarsgaard in a bespoke, pinstriped suit helped a lot.
The guy I looked like must have gone from a nobody to a sex symbol overnight, and then killed his career two weeks later. Maybe he went on a talk show and stated, “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s black teenage girls!”
Jerk.
Allow me to be the first to say: we should take advice in chastity from Randy Head?!?
Ha ha!
That does sound like a name from a James Bond movie, doesn’t it?
You beat me to the comment about a Senator named “Randy Head”.
And sorry, but I call bullshit on the story from the woman who runs the SOAP organization.
When I was working, it wasn’t sports events that brought the business, but several big trade shows.
I’m glad somebody else feels the way I do about that SOAP woman’s story; it just doesn’t smell right. At the risk of sounding overly analytic, it sounds a lot more like a schizophrenic delusion (with strong Jungian elements) than it does something that really happened in consensual reality. In other words, I don’t get the sense that she’s consciously making it up, but rather that it’s in her head.
And 100% agreement about trade shows; that’s what I tell every reporter who interviews me on this subject. Businessmen alone at an event where most of their expenses are either paid or deductible vs. men of all types at a super-expensive family event: it should be obvious to anyone who thought about the economics for all of three seconds.
Well, I think the reason that idiots like me don’t really “get” the supply and demand thing is that – even with all the explanations … it would still seem that demand would increase during a sporting event.
I’ll take your word it doesn’t though – as you know more about this than I ever could. However, an increase in demand of “1” is still an increase in demand. Lots of people coming into the city – none leaving. And sure – I realize the economics going on here but I also see a lot of celebrities going to the Superbowl and they have money and the film crews and roadies are flooding into the place and they usually get compensated for going …
No, what you see is a lot of people who already have things to do and people to do it with taking up every available hotel room, and lots of competition for their entertainment $.
Being Christian and Catholic, I imagine if Jesus Christ of Nazareth were to bring himself(his physical body, as spiritually He’s always here) down to Earth today, He might call these group of nuns who harrass hotel owners about prostitution, modern day Pharisees, Saducees, Scribes, Money Changers at the Temple, sanctimonius fools hypocrites and the children of Satan. The Catholic nun, Sister Lynda Dearlove, who serves among the lowest of the low status women in our society acts more like Christ in my opinion. Sister Lynda Dearlove serves the streetwalker prostitutes, and rightly would like to see the vice of prostitution decriminalized for harm reduction done to the prostitutes. Prostitution is a true vice, not a a true crime despite what the sanctimonious foolish lawheads say. True vice is the harm one does to oneself while true crime is the harm one does to another person.
Prostitutes are regarded as low status women in most if not all countries and societies. Street walker prostitutes are regarded as the lowest type of prostitute while brothel and escort prostitutes are ranked higher as prostitutes, Courtesans and mistresses(or concubines) although still often regarded as low status are regarded as the highest of prostitutes because especially as mistresses, they are almost like wives. Courtesans were always highly educated, socially graceful, and independent if not kept(wives and mistresses) women which made courtesans almost as highly regarded as mistresses, and many later became wives, mistresses and sadly fell into lower regarded ranks of prostitution.
I was born in 1968. A family friend, an ethnic Chinese Catholic priest who was born and raised in China as well as lived his early adult life in China, before fleeing in the late 1940’s to the USA told my father in front of me about 35 years ago the truth about most Christians, Catholics and their clergy. He said most laity and even more so clergy were not serious about their religion and faith. He said the clergy were worse than the laity about their seriousness to follow the Catholic faith despite their pretense to be otherwise. He stated it was appalling because the clergy knew better and had more opportunity to know and do better than the laity.most of the time. He said this was true of other Christian denominations and other religions where the clergy were hypocrites more often than the laity. He was arrested,tortured and threatened with losing his life by the Japanese soldiers, police and officials during World War 2 in China for being a Catholic priest. Chinese Communist mobs beat him and threatened to murder him after the war. My father was astounded, coudn’t believe it, and said he was among the most serious of any Christian, Catholic and clergy(priest) my father met. The Chinese Catholic priest told my father that he struggled enormously to be a good Christian, Catholic and clergyman. He then said if you really want to know who the best Christians, Catholics and clergy and even laity people are, then look to the martyrs the most, to a lesser extent those who survived greater torments and threats than he did, and even those who humbled themselves to poverty, torment and ridicule to live and work for the most despised for their faith, religion and Catholic beliefs. He said those who live too well and those who go too high up in the hierarchy are too often the least faithful of all. My father agreed with him finally. I do too. It seems that Sister Lynda Dearlove seems to be a better Christian, Catholic and clergywoman(nun) than these other women.
I wrote a similar article!! 🙂
http://sexworkadvocate.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/chicago-stings-and-johns-registry/
Here in Canberra, girls do come in from Melbourne and Sydney when parliament is in session. It’s not the actual MPs, it’s just that there are more people in town in general and many of them are away from home for a few days or weeks. Beats me if there is supposed to be anything sinister about people following seasonal work.
I put together a list of articles that thoroughly debunk this. Here it is:
http://t.co/ugZGGEPM
A couple of sources I hadn’t included at the time:
The Lancet “Fears of World Cup sex trafficking boom unfounded”: http://t.co/hLllhjbo
“Women’s bodies, moral panic and the world game: Sex trafficking, the 2006 Football World Cup and beyond”: http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/fapi/datastream/unsworks:3792/SOURCE01#page=227
“Moral panic, human trafficking and the 2010 Soccer World Cup”: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10130950.2010.9676321 (paywall, though may be accessible from academic sites)
GAATW “What’s the Cost of a Rumour? A Guide to Sorting Out the Myths and the Facts About Sporting Events and Trafficking”: http://www.scribd.com/doc/72120831/What-s-the-Cost-of-a-Rumour-A-Guide-to-Sorting-Out-the-Myths-and-the-Facts-About-Sporting-Events-and-Trafficking
There are a couple in your list I haven’t collected yet. If you take a look at my Resources page, there are several there you can link as well. 😉