Don’t let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter. – Oliver Goldsmith
You know, sometimes you almost have to feel sorry for the trafficking fanatics (emphasis on “almost”): They want so badly for there to be a vast international conspiracy of slavers shuttling helpless, wide-eyed ingénues around the world to feed the demand of millions of perverts who just can’t get enough sex with terrified, crying thirteen-year-old girls, that they’re willing to invest huge sums of money and effort and even stake their public reputations on their filthy, lurid fantasies. Then when reality turns out to be much more mundane, and that (thank Aphrodite) teenage sex slaves are actually scarcer than hen’s teeth, they’re so disappointed one can almost hear them pouting. Some “authorities”, however, are so obsessed with forcing the world to conform to their warped delusions that they refuse to accept the evidence when it’s in front of them and instead demand that their lackeys somehow manufacture hundreds of pimps, “traffickers” and victims from thin air. Here’s a recent example from the UK:
An elite Metropolitan police squad has come under fire in a highly critical report commissioned by the London mayor, Boris Johnson…The report [called “Silence on Violence”] accuses officers of a “heavy handed” approach to brothel raids and of failing to find victims of trafficking…It criticises the police performance and estimates that they have a success rate of less than 1% in finding trafficking victims during brothel raids. Police had predicted an increase in sex trafficking in the runup to the Olympics, but they have admitted that they have failed to find any evidence of a rise in the five Olympics host boroughs…despite a cash injection of £500,000 from the Government Office for London to specifically target the crime…
You know, they could’ve given me £5000 and a round-trip ticket to London and I could’ve saved them a lot of trouble; I would’ve simply shown them Dr. Nick Mai’s study demonstrating there really aren’t that many coerced prostitutes in London, and a whole host of studies that conclusively prove mega sporting events attract neither prostitutes nor “trafficking”, including this recent one specifically commissioned for the London Olympics. In short, they were doing pretty well to find “trafficking victims” in 1% of their raids, because that’s probably just about all there were to find.
…Of particular concern is the failure of police to find girls and women trafficked from west Africa, thought to be the largest group of victims…The Poppy Project…said that women from west Africa are the largest group they work with. Of 197 Nigerian women they have worked with since 2003 just nine were referred to them by the police. “These women are not coming forward to the police so the police need to be more creative about how they find them,” said Abigail Stepnitz Poppy’s national co-ordinator…
Only a person whose head is irretrievably buried in the nether regions of her own alimentary canal could possibly consider encouraging the police to “be creative about finding victims” to be a good idea; for example, Korean police charged with “creatively” producing enough “trafficking victims” to placate the US State Department decided to “create” them out of Korean prostitutes, with horrible results. Most of the people interviewed by report author Andrew Boff were better informed, hence the criticism of typical police terror tactics; he even stated, “By going in, in this way they are driving some of these women further into the shadows. There is evidence of increasing fear of the police amongst sex workers which has resulted in a reluctance to report crime,” and the article states he “called on the police to rethink the way they investigate sex trafficking and to build better relations with sex workers.” Those recommendations may actually result in the report’s being a good thing, but in the long run the necessity of coming up with some arbitrary quota of “victims” to satisfy a politically-motivated narrative is bound to cause serious problems, almost certainly at sex workers’ expense.
But the response of London authorities is positively rational compared with that or their counterparts in Honolulu:
Honolulu…has a federally funded task force to investigate human trafficking. But [an] analysis of every prostitution arrest made in the last year reveals not one sex trafficking victim. In other words, either Honolulu doesn’t have a sex trafficking problem — or local law enforcement isn’t doing enough to investigate it…The police “have had several allegations of human trafficking that they investigated and none of them turned out to be credible,” [city prosecutor Keith] Kaneshiro [said]…
The total absence of trafficking cases alarmed crime experts. “If you have no evidence year after year of any of your prostitution arrests being tied to trafficking, you’re not looking hard enough,” said Norm Stamper, former Seattle police chief. Stamper is a proponent of legalization…”I will confess that human trafficking as a law enforcement priority is a fairly new phenomenon…Rarely in the past did we think of prostitutes as victims.” A traditional vice squad strategy of arresting prostitutes can help disrupt the market. But if a trafficking victim’s first encounter with police is being arrested, it’s unlikely she’ll suddenly turn witness for the state, said [Amy] Farrell [of] Northeastern University. “Even if a woman has been a victim, she doesn’t trust them,” she said. “She’s worried about all kinds of retribution from her traffickers. There’s very little possibility in that situation that’s she’s going to provide information.”
…Kathy Xian, one of the main voices behind the local anti-human trafficking movement, says the lack of trafficking victims is a reflection on law enforcement’s approach to the problem — not the problem itself. “The way this system treats the victims in prostitution arrests is not conducive to them admitting to law enforcement what is really going on — that they are being trafficked,” Xian said. “The whole paradigm has to change…If they want to take a bite out of sex trafficking, they cannot arrest the victims, it just does not work.”
…according to local FBI spokesman Tom Simon…”Because Hawaii is the most remote place on planet Earth, traveling here to set up a prostitution ring with coerced sex workers from afar is an expensive prospect…we do not believe that the interstate transportation of coerced sex workers into Hawaii is currently an epidemic,” he said. “The overhead costs for the pimps is simply too high to justify the mass trafficking of coerced prostitutes into Hawaii…Sadly, Hawaii’s prostitution problem appears to be largely homegrown.”
No, Mr. Simon, what’s sad is that people like you feel compelled to define prostitution as a “problem” and to impose your ridiculous, ego-shielding “pimps and hos” mythology on it instead of recognizing it for what it is: a natural way for women to earn a living while providing a vital social service. And though the other three “crime experts” in the story spoke against the standard American model of criminalization, don’t be fooled by them; Stamper is a proponent of legalization with heavy regulation (i.e. establishing the state as pimp), while Farrell and Xian are too obsessed with “exploitation” and seeing whores as “victims” to support decriminalization (I’d be prepared to wager they’re both Swedish Model proponents). And while every one of these so-called “experts” has his or her pet “theory” about why the cops can’t find any “sex traffickers” in Hawaii, nobody but Simon admits that it’s simply because there aren’t any…and even he subscribes to the ludicrous myth of an international pimp cartel whose cost-benefit analysis led them to “traffick” their vast cargoes of pathetic, imprisoned slave-whores on the mainland instead.
One Year Ago Today
“April Miscellanea (Part Two)” asks “Why are Girl Scouts are being taught to believe propaganda instead of thinking critically?”, “Is porn in which women beat up men still ‘violence against women’?”, “What would Orrin Hatch do?” and “What’s the legal definition of prostitution again?”
Today, I’m going dinosaur hunting. If I don’t catch any, it’s not because their aren’t any, it’s because a vast international conspiracy is hiding them from me.
I’m laughing, but you do realize that’s not far off from what creationists claim about fossils! 😀
It’s not because of any conspiracy, you just need to look harder!
When the folks in Room 101 get through with you, you’ll be able to see them for yourself. 😀
In any other form of supposed “organised crime”, the authorities would sic the Inland Revenue and the police Financial Crimes squads on them, because “following the money” is how to find and catch organisations as opposed to a street mugger or 50 Cent type pimp.
And yet, despite all this failure to find the trafficked women or the traffickers, no one suggests that they follow the money. This, just as much as anything, proves that the massive international problem simply doesn’t exist, and neither does the money flow.
There is indeed a vast international trafficking conspiracy, but it is the one devoted to keep all this nonsense going. It would be interesting to see a proper forensic accounting investigation of all the official and NGO anti-trafficking agencies.
Oh, and nice pic of the trafficked slaves. So that’s where they are – all out at sea!
Over 30 years at sea in every ocean in the world and I can assure you – THOSE WOMEN, aren’t on a ship!
Gotta be a photo-shop.
If it were true, I’d have “boarded” that damn ship many times! Last ship I boarded had four bare-footed MALE Indians with a broken rudder.
Imagine my disappointment. 🙁
Not Photoshop, silly; it’s a movie scene! From a comedy named The Magic Christian, starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, with dozens of cameos. The script was written by a number of British comedy geniuses (including several future members of Monty Python), and the music was written by Paul McCartney and performed by Badfinger.
Holy shit! Looks like Raquel Welch was in that too! I’ll have to check my Apple TV tonight to see if it’s available for rental! 😀
Raquel’s part is a very small cameo, but worth it; she’s in that same galley-slave scene:
Paul McCartney was the producer and did write “Come and Get It” but Tom Evans and Pete Ham wrote “Rock of Ages” and “Carry on ’til Tomorrow” according to the credits on “The Best of Badfinger” and Ken Thorne wrote the incidental music for the movie.
Will you walk away from a fool and his money?
I just listened to some of the soundtrack on ITunes. I think McCartney did more than WRITE – I think I hear his Casino on a couple of tracks. Either that – or one of the BadFinger guys NAILED his quirky guitar style.
By the way – I HAVE a Casino but the only one I could get at a reasonable price was modeled after John Lennon’s. Well, I stripped her down and made it like Paul’s!
Not really.
The islands are small and local girls usually have big families and it’s virtually impossible for them to engage in sex work without their families finding out. Most of the hookers I knew there were haoles from stateside, usually California. One girl I saw for almost two years there was from Seattle, Wa. I was a “regular” at the Pearl City Health Spa and I got to know every women in there, though I was only interested in one. There was only ONE local girl working there and she was in her mid=30’s and divorced with kids (no other family around).
Hawaii has a special dynamic for women especially – women will come there for a vist, like it – and find a way to stay (at least for a few months). Hooking in the islands gave a lot of girls that opportunity and, there’s no way anyone from back home in “Bakersville” is gonna find out.
I found this true with nurses too because I hung out with a whole platoon of them when I lived at 2121 Ala Wai with a bunch of other Sailors. The nurses came from Boston, LA, Chicago – you name it. A few from Canada. They might live there for 6 months to a year and then leave. We used to have going away parties non-stop for them which featured strip poker, copious amounts of alcohol and the girl leaving got “shaved” in private by one of us guys. God, that was such a nasty and sinful time.
Hi Maggie, I have been following the Dutch sex industry for years. I also visit prostitutes. I have tried to find every bit of information I can find about the Dutch sex industry, especially regarding human trafficking. I have read a lot of books and reports about prostitution in the Netherlands. I am convinced that forced prostitution is really a big problem in the Netherlands. But the problem mustn’t be exaggerated. Often prostitutes are rather old in my opinion. Many prostitutes are older than 30, I believe approximately 50% of the prostitutes are older than 30. Forced prostitutes are often very young, around 20 years old. That’s why I believe the problem mustn’t be exaggerated. But there is really a problem of forced prostitution. Anti-human-trafficking Crusaders aren’t fighting windmills in my opinion. The problem is really there.
If you ask a prostitute if she is forced, she will almost always say that she works voluntarily in prostitution. This emerges from the research of the Dutch sexologist Ine Vanwesenbeeck who interviewed many hundreds of prostitutes. All prostitutes she interviewed told they worked voluntarily. However, there are some prostitutes who say that they have been forced by a third person at least in the past. This percentage varies between 8% and over 40%, depending on the sample. So this proves to me that forced prostitution is not a marginal phenomenon. This percentage seems to be dropping over the years by the way. At the end of the 80s, it was around 30 or 40%. At the end of the 90s, it was around 20%. Bureau Interval arrived at 8% in a research done in 2006. Ine Vanwesenbeeck also noticed that the more independent emancipated prostitutes were more willing to participate in her research. She had the impression that the forced prostitutes whom she approached didn’t want to participate.
Also many social workers in the red light districts of the Netherlands acknowledge that many prostitutes are forced into prostitution. Often Eastern European prostitutes are involved. You often read that most Eastern European prostitutes are in the power of pimps. Also many young Dutch prostitutes are forced into window prostitution. You hear from different sources that most Dutch window prostitutes were initially forced into prostitution, some start to work independently for themselves after a while. I have the impression by the way, that forced prostitution in the Netherlands often happens in window prostitution. Prior to 2004 it also happened often in sex clubs, relatively to window prostitution.
What you also read often is that many forced prostitutes initially chose to work in prostitution, but they ended up in a situation of exploitation anyway. You often read that it is impossible to work independently on De Wallen in Amsterdam. When pimps notice that prostitutes work independently on De Wallen, they try to extort these women. Only the transgender and the somewhat older Latin American prostitutes who work in this area are left alone by the pimps.
What also happens is that prostitutes often don’t have many clients at all. But they have to pay a high rent for the window brothel in which they work. They typically have to pay 150 Euro per day to the brothel owner. But they usually have only five clients a day, earning 50 Euro per client. Then they also have an intermediary/pimp/extorter who helped them come to the Netherlands, who also wants his or her share, often 50% of the earnings. Then the prostitutes also live in a room or house for which they have to pay an excessive rent, many times more than 1000 Euro per month. At the end they are left with nothing. I can’t call this voluntarily prostitution.
I believe you must be careful to draw conclusions when policemen raid brothels and don’t find a single prostitute who is forced. The same thing happened in the Netherlands. Such raids have been done recently in the Doubletstraat in Den Haag and the Baekelandplein in Eindhoven. None of the prostitutes said they were forced. I believe this because they are too loyal to their pimps/intermediaries, or they are just too afraid, or they are too deeply in love. You often read that pimps threaten to kill family members of the prostitutes to prevent the prostitutes from running away. What will these women say when policemen ask them if they are forced to work in prostitution?
I also have my doubts about the research done by Nick Mai. I wonder if his sample of prostitutes he interviewed are really representative for the whole population of prostitutes. Doesn’t his way of approaching prostitutes result in finding only the prostitutes who work independently or work in relatively good conditions? Do the women really dare to tell the real story during the first time they are interviewed? Social workers and policemen often say that you first have to win the trust of forced prostitutes, before they are willing to tell what’s really going on. This is also the experience of the vice inspector Henk Werson, who tracked down some forced prostitutes by eavesdropping on telephone conversations. These prostitutes were genuinely forced, but initially none of these women said they were forced, they told that they worked voluntarily in prostitution. It took a while before the women started to tell the real story.
As I said, I have visited prostitutes myself. I am ashamed about it, but the shame and feelings of guilt dropped over time when I abused more and more prostitutes. I believe I whitewashed the physical abuse I perpetrated upon prostitutes by abusing more and more of these women. At the end you feel empty. Some women seemed to be okay with their work. But most women show boredom or even annoyance when I had sex with them. Some women behaved like scared birds. I wonder if prostitution isn’t a tiny bit abusive. I wonder why I’m still going. I believe it’s madness. I’m totally crazy.
Kris, it seems to me that you’re suffering from moralism-induced guilt and you’re reading things that will serve to rationalize that guilt. The reports you’ve been reading are wildly exaggerated, as demonstrated in this recent analysis by Wendy Lyon. Instead of reading slanted studies from social workers and other government actors with an agenda, I suggest you contact The Red Thread, a prostitutes’ rights organization in Amsterdam; they’ll set you straight on the actual statistics.
Furthermore, you seem to be reading your own doubts and guilt into the girls you meet; just because a whore isn’t enthusiastic doesn’t mean she’s “forced” any more than economics “forces” everyone to do jobs, often jobs they dislike. It’s only in prostitution that people pretend that somehow makes it different. This “Thought Experiment” about sex work and coercion may help you to clear it up, and “A False Dichotomy” may help as well. Good luck in finding your center again!
Quick tip here … if you are abusing women and can’t stop yourself – then you either need to seek professional help from a shrink – or find some big guy to beat some sense into you.
You don’t need to be worrying about “fixing” the “trafficking problems” of the world when your own problems are SIGNIFICANT.
“Annoyed” … well the first hooker I visited was a bit “annoyed” with me when I stood there drooling instead of getting down to business. This is not “abuse” though.
“Scared birds” … that’s disturbing to me, personally. I wouldn’t touch a genuinely “scared” woman and I don’t think you should either. This has never happened to me and I wonder where you are finding these women? Here’s a tip – pick the woman in the lineup who’s face and smile says … “PICK ME!” – no matter what she looks like (well, within reason – if she’s a shaved Orangutan – forget her). But seriously those women who more enthusiastic stand out.
If you get a “scared bird” – then pay her cab fare and send her back home. If you’re overseas and it’s cheap – just pay her the whole fee and send her away.
Personally, I think – you get what you pay for and that is why I try to find escorts or “courtesans” who are expensive – but are sure about what they’re doing and the reasons they’re doing it.
And one final word here about the Netherland’s prostitutes and the poor “50 Euro” pay they get per customer.
I believe 50 Euro’s is for a 1/2 hour session and it includes “no extras”. When’s the last time anyone bought a car that didn’t have at least SOME “options” on it that cost more?
Now, I was in Frankfurt visiting a friend a year or so ago, and he wanted me to go to an FKK (I resisted that trip – but will damn sure probably go this year when I go back). Anyway – dude is such an addict of the FKK he even has some of these girls running in and out of his house. I met a few. I talked to one Romanian gal who worked at an FKK and she told me that they got 50 Euro’s for a 1/2 hour session. I said … “That’s not much” and she said … “That’s with no extras – if you have a lot of perversions – I make a LOT more!” Extend to an hour – it’s 100 Euros. CIM – 50 Euros. A-Level – 100 Euros.
Plus – if the client is an American she could coax at least a 50 Euro tip out of him just with her GFE skills. She claimed it was highly unusual to come out of a one-hour session for less than 200 Euro and – often 250 or more. She wouldn’t tell me how many “clients” she saw per day – she just smiled and said … “I see enough” – yeah – I think like 10 per day more like it.
The scared birds weren’t overtly scared. They didn’t duck into a corner. They talked very little, and their eyes were empty. They avoided direct eye contact. When I showed one prostitute that my hair started to become grey, I made a step forward, and she stepped back a little. When she gave me a blowjob she sat down beside me with her back towards me. She indicated that I was allowed to fuck her by grabbing a tube of lubricant, putting some on her vagina, lying down on her back, turning her head to the right and closing her eyes. When we were done she totally ignored me, and didn’t grant me a look into her eyes. She looked a bit angry, as if I had abused her. This prostitute was from Hungary. And the bad thing is that I knew all along that 90% of Eastern European prostitutes are forced to work in prostitution or are awfully exploited. I knew it beforehand, and I visited her anyway. Obviously, I should have left immediately when she showed signs of not liking her work (like most prostitutes don’t like their work by the way). But the point is, I shouldn’t have visited her in the first place. For years I haven’t visited prostitutes, and it seems that if a nightmare has come true. I started to visit these prostitutes who are most exploited: Eastern European window prostitutes. I could have visited a highly paid club prostitute who is somewhat older (which I also did by the way), but I chose a young Hungarian woman aged 22. You are right, I am totally crazy. I made myself believe that forced prostitution indeed wasn’t such a big deal, but the more prostitutes I visit, the more I move back to my old belief that forced prostitution must be a big problem indeed, and that prostitutes generally hate their work.
I actually did visit clubs and picked women from a lineup. With one exception, they all looked at me as if I was a freak. And I’m not ugly. I have met prostitutes in clubs who totally and visibly hated to have sex with me. I had some embarrassing experiences.
I say if you pick a prostitute who is older than 35, the probability that she is forced or heavily exploited is very small. They don’t like their work as well, that’s not the point. And they don’t earn as much as the younger prostitutes. That’s why you see that older prostitutes more often offer sex without a condom, kissing or anal sex than the younger prostitutes do. Problem is, I prefer young women. I notice that when I visit prostitutes, my conscience is switched off. I know that I should choose the older prostitutes, but I pick the younger prostitutes anyway. This is the scariest idea of all; that I know so much, but I do so little with it.
In window prostitution you typically pay 50 Euro for 15 minutes or 20 minutes of sex. Usually it is all-included: blowjob, different positions etc. A small group of prostitutes ask extra payment for extra positions. If you want to stay an hour with a prostitute, you pay 200 Euro, if you want to stay half an hour, you pay 100 Euro. I stayed three quarters of an hour once, that cost me 150.
I have heard bad stories about FKK clubs in Germany. I heard these stories from clients (reading a forum). Many Eastern European prostitutes work there. And they are often heavily exploited. Usually they initially chose to work in prostitution, but they have to hand over a large part of the money they earn to pimps or intermediaries. Very little is for themselves. They have to work very hard, and they often live inside the brothels. One client told that during closing time, pimps entered the brothel and herded the prostitutes together like cattle. The windows of some FKK clubs have bars. One client told that one of the prostitutes who worked there, absolutely hated men because of her work. During some periods she locked herself up in her house, so she could avoid men this way. One client told that the FKK clubs were like heaven on earth for him, the prostitutes who worked in these brothels were much better and more friendly and inspired than what he knew from the Netherlands. Until he found out the awful truth.
The only problem with all that, Kris, is that the data simply don’t support it…and neither do the experiences of any European other punter (besides you) I’ve ever heard from, or the experiences of sex worker rights organizations. I’m no psychoanalyst, but you seem to me a person with deep sexual guilt who is projecting his own feelings onto the women he sees and deliberately (if perhaps unconsciously) choosing to read propaganda which confirms his worst nightmares in order to reinforce that guilt. I strongly suggest you get in touch with a local sex worker organization so as to put yourself at ease, and you might also consider seeking professional help to deal with your guilt complex.
I indeed have mental problems, and a very awful sex addiction. I’m working on it. I try to be an asexual. It is difficult, lately I didn’t masturbate and watch pornography for six weeks, until I fell back into my old behavioural patterns.
The Red Thread acknowledges that the large majority of Eastern European prostitutes are forced. They said something like this on their website once (translated from Dutch): “Multiple sources indicate that 90 percent of the Eastern European women who work legally in prostitution are one way or the other extorted or exploited. The question remains if this falls under human trafficking or only under the offence of extortion. This also affects women who have settled all their residence documents.” And: “Three quarters of the prostitutes on de Wallen are rumoured to be working under some form of force. We are always wary about giving percentages, but we know that a lot is wrong in prostitution. Anyway, we know that many Eastern European prostitutes work under the supervision of a pimp or another criminal. We also have doubts about the level of independence of African prostitutes. What we do about it? We have information in many languages for women who want to change their situation. We hand it out on average once per month. We would like to do that more often, but we have limited means. We regularly emit signals of abuses in prostitution and are also a walking encyclopaedia for prostitutes.”
Metje Blaak is a spokesperson for the Red Thread. In an interview for MUG magazine in 2002 she said (translated from Dutch): “And nowadays eight out of 10 girls are forced. That’s a misery, you have no idea. Those men around it are called pimps, but these are big fat criminals. Those pimps of the past were a joke compared with what happens today. You slipped them something if they did something for you, and then they thought they were a pimp. In fact you controlled them. But now the girls are being threatened with their lives, that has become a different story.”
The only positive news is that I believe she talks about De Wallen in Amsterdam, because she speaks to prostitutes a lot in that particular area.
If you don’t mind, I’ll show you some links to my blog in which I gathered some evidence about forced prostitution in the Netherlands, especially in window prostitution.
http://fleshtrade.blogspot.com/2006/11/eastern-european-prostitutes.html
http://fleshtrade.blogspot.com/2006/12/evidence-of-human-trafficking-in.html
I will read the posts you referred to!
Kris, there isn’t any such thing as sex addiction; it’s just a way for moralists to “medicalize” the concept of sin, as I explained in my column “Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic“.
There are occasions when I obsessively watch pornography. I can do that for hours, and something within me says to stop, but I don’t. It is scary to notice that hours have gone by, while it only felt like 10 minutes. I believe you can get addicted to sexuality. I like to watch cam-girls take off their panties and show their asses. I feel the most incredible thrill when they do that. It is indescribable. And obviously I want to repeat that feeling. I notice that when I masturbate and watch cam-girls or pornography, the biggest high is in the beginning. It is as if your brains start to get used to the drugs that your brain itself produces. So for hours and hours you try to repeat that feeling, but this obviously won’t work. This high is just for a short while. I have never used cocaine, but I can imagine that cocaine users must have the same high. If you can get addicted to drugs, you can also get addicted to sex.
No one can maintain a sexual high at the same level for hours at a time. It’s just like any other activity. After a point, even though you still enjoy it, a certain amount of boredom and physical tiredness sets in.
Have you ever been driven to watch porn in your place of work instead of doing your job, or regularly skipped meals in preference to watching porn? Unless you have regularly done something of the sort, it is not even an obsession.
Liking something so much that you spend hours and days doing it is not addiction. Many gamers spend entire days in front of the screen. I’ve done it, especially in RPGs. And just like you, time seems to fly by.
The real problem you are having is clear from your own words, “something within me says to stop”. It is not that you are addicted, it is that you feel you shouldn’t be enjoying the porn as much as you are. You are beating yourself up for doing something that you enjoy.
If you are “addicted” to anything, it is guilt.
No, you can’t. You can be obsessed with sex, but not addicted. It’s simply not physiologically possible to be addicted to sex, any more than you can be “addicted” to food or oxygen. You really need to read my essay on the subject and stop listening to moralists who want you to believe natural impulses are wrong or bad.
can i suggest trying to see escorts instead?it is rare for an escort to have a pimp and be coerced, plus she can provide a better experience for you since you seem to be sb whos looking for touch, so a gfe experience will be more fullfilling.continue watching porn,no coercion there,especially in american porn ,some of them are stars there.honestly,you dont seem like what sb would call an addict.you feel horniness after 6 weeks of no sex or masturbation,extremely normal.what made you want to visit sex workers in the first place,you were extremely socially awkard and unable to find a girlfriend?are you lonely and have no friends as well?i think youd better visit a psychologist for your mental problems and try to improve yourself,asap.
I indeed am very socially awkward, and I’m unable to find a girlfriend. I know exactly where to find voluntarily prostitutes. Just pick an older prostitute, preferably Dutch, older than 35, works in a club or as an escort. But for some magical reason, I’m very attracted to young window prostitutes.
There are some high-class escort agencies. They are okay. But you are heavily screened as a client before you are admitted into their clientele. I know of one high-class escort agency that they consult the Land Registry to check if you have a house in your possession. This is just to check if you are a real person. Unfortunately, I don’t have a house of my own. So I won’t be admitted into their circle of clients. I have read that the call girls who work for this agency are very satisfied about this agency. Also the women are screened by the agency before they are admitted.
Thirty-five isn’t magic. If she’s at least twenty, you should be fine. Actually, thirteen is old enough for her to know if this is what she wants to be doing, but thirteen is too young for my tastes and, I hope, for yours. Also, it’s illegal in nearly any country you care to name. But twenty? Twenty-five? If a pimp can’t enslave a thirty-five-year-old, he won’t be able to enslave a twenty-five-year-old.
What you describe above is an obsession, not an addiction. The two words are often used interchangeably in common conversation, but they’re not really the same thing. For a song or a poem or a joke, it’s OK to do that, but only if we remember that they’re not really the same.
there are many escorts who are within the age group you are attracted to,often girls who study while working at the same time. you dont have to visit an older woman to make sure shes not trafficked.as for screening is there no agency that will accept you as a client?keep searching,there is high possibility to find one that will accept you.and really follow everyones advice here and visit a phychologist.you have an extremely unhealthy attitude towards sex.you were never able to find a girlfriend,maybe because of this you tried to convince yourself that women just dont like sex because for them it means humiliation and abuse,you started visiting sex workers in a place notorious for human trafficking whether propaganda or not and now for you sex=guilt.please,try to find help, calm down and not to pass by de wallen at all,it will make you feel worse.
Dude, here’s the thing: if you are nervous and jumpy, she’s going to wonder why you are being like that. Especially if she is young and relatively inexperienced.
She may have heard the same “misinformation” about sex work as you, in fact.
She’s going to wonder “Is this twitchy guy going to hurt me? He sure looks jittery”… and may react to your fear/anxiety with her own.
She might simply find you unappealing (for whatever her reason is) and “close her eyes and think of something else”, because your money is what is important to her.
She may be deeply conflicted about her own sexuality too. She may simply be *feeling unattractive* today. She still needs money to eat, pay bills and live.
It’s a truly exceptional person who loves their job every minute of every day, wether that’s programming, science, taxidriving, or sex work.
Sex is about *feedback*; we adapt rapidly to the anxiety/passivity/excitedness/avidity of our partner in an instinctive and reflexive way. That forms both positive and negative feedback loops in our behaviour.
Whenever I hear well-meaning NGO’s spouting statistics like “8 out of 10 women from the east are trafficked” my BS alarm starts ringing. This is compounded when the person posting these stats claims to know the nationality (Hungarian for example) of girls he chooses from a lineup, then proceeds to build a picture of Europe-wide abuse based on this girl’s attitude and body language. I wonder whether Kris is actuually a guy with real sexual and emotional issues, or just a shill pushing an unstated agenda. In any case, I don’t want to leave his half-truths and exagerations (or outright lies) unanswered.
Admittedly, my own personal experience of these matters is not very scientific. But I have been interested in this subject for many years – as both a client and occassionally a friend of Eastern European prositutes – and I know quite a few Eastern European women who are or have been sex workers. I have met them mostly in their home country, but a number of them have also worked aboad. Here’s my unscholarly opinion. Whether these women work in their capital city or Zurich or London or Frankfurt, they are not trafficked. They are free agents who either rent apartments and get clients through the internet, or voluntarily enter a brothel or escort agency, which they can (and do) leave whenever they choose to. I am sure that some clients are unpleasant and there are dishonest middlemen. But on the whole, financially and in terms of working conditions, they seem quite satisfied. Often this reflects the fact that their others choices are pretty grim – a low paying, dirty job in a crappy town, or dependancy on a low achieving, possibly abusive man (or even having to materially support said bum with her meagre income.) But it is also due to something which many in our Puritanical age cannot fathom. That is, there are many women who have no problem engaging in sex without feelings, even with multiple partners. It can be nice sometimes, usually it’s a bit of a drag, but at the end of the day these women don’t feel humiliated or degraded for having had sex with five or ten or however many men. It’s just another day, and they got paid very well for it. Some have psychological strategies to distance themselves from the job, or just think of the money. Others seem to have a high sex drive and can enjoy the experience if the partner and circumstances are right. Others genuinely feel satisfactilon from helping men sexually. But the fact is there are a great many women from Eastern Europe and elsewhere who don’t get PTSD, or need therapy for life, or God forbid, require rescuing just for going through the motions of a sex act several times a day.
Note that I said MANY – not ALL – women. But for the protitutes I have met, it is not a bad way to make a living. Indoors, no heavy lifting, no dirt, and mostly decent, courteous, even interesting customers. And in many brothels (to say nothing of private services), the girl has a veto if the man is truly repulsive, aggressive or drunk. The businessses don’t want those kinds of clients around either.
I have no doubt that there is some trafficking and pimping of women from Eastern Europe and elsewhere. My experience doesn’t extend to streetwalkers or other more desperate ends of the spectrum. But I don’t think that trafficking or pimping is the norm, simply because there are loads of women who are highly morivated and willing to be prositutes! And once you get your head around that basic fact, the “problem” is diminished to its real size.
I believe I’ve read on Laura Agustin’s blog that the issue of exploitative conditions, where a woman knows she will do sex work but discovers the conditions are far worse than what she originally expected, is actually a common problem for migrant sex workers. I don’t remember exact links. Consequently, what Kris writes about does not seem implausible to me.
As for client POVs not matching his… may be he is reading into things. But from what I observed on message boards and then discussions with other escorts, they can be prone to self-serving self-deception. So may be, other accounts are equally biased in the other direction.
I also once met an anti-trafficker from Netherlands who started as a support social worker for sex workers – and only after running into plenty of cases of coercion, she founded her own anti-trafficking organization. She still respected and supported consensual sex workers and had no ambitions to abolish sex work. But she also saw more than enough need for an organization with several employees to help exploited women, based on experience rather than ideology.
By the way, why I can I no longer post comments without logging into WordPress?? I had a stable handle I used on sex worker resources and I hate that I can no longer use it here, and all my posts now have to be linked to my WordPress account. I had to go and delete my old blog after discovering this, because I could not figure out how to quickly make all of it private…
A few of us have had problems with the log-in thing lately. Not sure why. It isn’t Maggie’s fault, it’s WordPress.
It’s something to do with their acquisition of Gravatar. I think most people solved it by logging in to their Gravatar accounts.
Thanks, Maggie and Sailor Barsoom! I’ll look into Gravatar.
1 time when I logged into my Gravatar account everything on here showed up OK. The other times I logged into it didn’t work. This is frustrating.
“Based on experience rather than ideology.” Experience as a social worker, not as a prostitute. I wonder why so many of these self-appointed advocates are a) not current or former hookers and b) not from one of the ethnic groups they claim to represent. OK, Dutch language skills may be a barrier for immigrants, but let me tell you from experience, Eastern European women have a voice and an attitude. It would give the anti-trafficking NGOs more credibility of they let the prostitute’s voices be heard more often, through a translator or English if necessary. Or is it really about paternalism? Or the temptation to have your own “organization with several employees”, and the political posture required to keep the funds rolling in? Some more questions… In an open society like the Netherlands, all the light shone on this issue must have revealed identities of pimps and traffickers, their modus operandi, money trails etc. Can I respectfully ask you to point the way to this data? Or is it mostly “rumours”?
Several people here said they know Eastern European women as clients or friends. Good for them, really.
I AM an Eastern European woman. A retired escort. Every single man who knew me as a client or friend knew me as strong, intelligent, and capable. I still stand by every single word I said here.
And as someone who volunteered with social workers, I actually do like and trust them, when they follow rights and harm reduction approach. It’s great to say that sex workers should speak for themselves. Who wouldn’t agree with that, in principle? And who would dare to risk the lives they worked hard to build to come out? I don’t have that courage. Virtually nobody I personally know has. It’s a difficult problem: as in gay movement, social attitudes won’t change without a massive coming out, but a coming out carries a cost too high for most people. So yes, I would accept if a social worker or an academic, whose position I share and whom I trust, were to speak on sex worker rights instead of me.
I did not claim any knowledge of trafficking in the Netherlands. I am on board with believing most are not trafficked. But as a former sex worker with a deep interest in what distinguishes good conditions from bad in this industry, I am also frustrated when concerns about exploitation are minimized by clients. I am equally frustrated when all anti-traffickers are demonized. GAATW is an anti-trafficking organization that published a “the cost of a rumour” report, debunking the connection between trafficking and sporting events – Maggie lists it in the resources. They also had a “collateral damage” report several years ago, on human rights abuses in anti-trafficking operations. I think it is a good thing when an organization like that speaks up or gets funding.
All respect to you. And to balanced, honest and courageous.organisations representing prostitutes. The friend and client of Eastern European prostitutes you read here was probably me. I understand what you say about the personal cost of coming out for prostitutes. Of course the issues clients face are different to prostitutes, but a bit of coming out by them wouldn’t hurt either. As a group of men we are stigmatised too – just look at the Swedish model. It would lead to more sensible decision making on prostitution if it was realised that men who use prostitutes are overwhelmingly decent people who treat women with respect and have found an excellent, mutually beneficial outlet for their natural sexual needs. And if the hysteria about normal men using consenting prostitutes died down, resources could be concentrated on finding the real traffickers, pimps etc. To find a needle in a haystack, first get rid of the hay.
On the website rechtspraak.nl you can find a lot of verdicts, also many verdicts related to forced prostitution in the Netherlands. There are quite some lengthy stories you can find there. I notice that pimps are often not part of a large crime syndicate. Usually they operate in very small groups. Usually they offer women to work in prostitution in the Netherlands, and then they offer to arrange all kinds of things, like the trip or accommodation. They pose as managers, and they usually demand 50% as a return. But then they start to threaten the women, for instance to kill their family members or to spread nude pictures. And then they take more money than was agreed. Or they say that they will save the money for the prostitutes, and then the prostitutes give all the money assuming that the managers will save it for them. Obviously the manager keeps all the money.
What many pimps also do is to start a relationship with a prostitute, or to try to convince a woman to work in prostitution for them. Then they use the same tricks as I described earlier. So they tell the women that they will save money for their future, or they threaten to use violence if the prostitute doesn’t want to work. Some pimps are really violent.
One of the most well-known human trafficking gangs is the gang of Saban B. This gang had more than 30 members. They mainly operated in the window prostitution areas in the Netherlands, particularly De Wallen in Amsterdam. According to one bodyguard belonging to the gang, the gang had around 30 women on De Wallen. This gang mainly recruited women who already worked in prostitution. They extorted prostitutes and other pimps. They could operate freely for many years. They were extremely violent towards the prostitutes. The gang was dismantled by the police in 2007.
Thanks for the information. The rechtspraak.nl site only has a bit of info in English, but I’ll take your word for it that there are documented cases of these kinds of crimes. As I said before, I don’t doubt that they exist. But to what extent are they normal or exceptional? I remain highly skeptical of the claim you posted earlier from an NGO that 8 out of 10 Eastern European prostitutes are trafficked. This goes against the experience of women I know and common sense. Sure there must be isolated cases, but women are tougher and smarter than to fall like a herd of lemmings for scams like that. There are plenty of women who do want to work as prostitutes, so this kind of crime is not necessary to get the labour; in fact, it would seem to be far more complex, expensive and dangerous to coerce women into prositution than to have them willingly show up and work.
Also, why were those thugs allowed to operate openly for many years? Is this due to intimidated witnesses, bad policing or what?
The “80%” figure has been floating around the “trafficking” cult for years; like an urban legend, it vanishes when one tries to trace it to its source. The “white slavery” fanatics made similar claims a century ago. It’s not about fact but about trying to establish prostitution as “abnormal” and women as helpless, “pure”, childlike creatures who just couldn’t do “dirty” things like harlotry and who aren’t smart or resourceful enough to arrange international travel on our own. A lot of the so-called “evidence” is interpreted onto women by police and social workers rather than claimed by the women, and those who do agree to the narrative are generally those who face criminal charges they can escape by claiming “victim” status, or those who want to switch careers and see playing the do-gooders as morally equivalent to playing clients, i.e. acting in a pleasing way and telling people what they want to hear in order to get their money.
shouldnt a sex workers rights organization,like the read thread not belong in those trafficking fanatics who produce propaganda to promote their ideology and be in touch with actual sex workers,without basing its facts on police and politicians(which the vast majority are corrupted,anyway)at first,when i saw politicians preaching about trafficking in netherlands and wanting to ban tourists from coffee shops,i said great,they are known worldwide for being a nation that everyone visits for the sex and drugs and they want to cut down on this kind of tourism cause theyre mad,but why a sex workers rights organization whould try to misinform or cant get its facts straight?
I don’t know how Metje Blaak arrived at this number. But it could be that she knows this from her own experiences. I know that she hangs around a lot on De Wallen in Amsterdam, and she speaks a lot with the prostitutes there. De Wallen has a very bad reputation, so perhaps she spoke about her experiences there. I have also seen her myself on several occasions near this area. By the way, she has worked in prostitution herself for many years. It must also be said that she often changes her opinions. She once said in a late-night television program that the problems in prostitution weren’t so bad at all.
There are a lot of very bad stories about De Wallen in Amsterdam. Also some prostitutes told me bad stories about this area (usually via internet). Also a prostitute whom I visited on De Wallen told me that many girls who work there have a pimp. If you read reports you often read that it is impossible to work there independently. Pimps extort the women. But I also know that when you hear about forced prostitution you often hear that it happens in window prostitution, especially De Wallen. It happens far less often in for instance De Oude Nieuwstraat, which is also a street with window brothels. Mainly much older women work there.
The reason why these gangs could operate so freely for so long, is that the police didn’t have enough capacity, and another reason is that many women simply don’t go to the police for several reasons, I believe because either way they are too afraid or they are in love with their pimps.
It is true that it isn’t really necessary to trick women to work in prostitution. There are enough women who voluntarily choose to do this work. The only problem is that some are extorted and then hand over a large part of their earnings, or cannot control themselves when they want to work. Others decide it for them.
I believe that if you look at percentages, then a realistic percentage would be that around 10 or 20% of the total number of prostitutes are forced in the Netherlands. However, if you ask it the prostitutes themselves then none say they are forced, but some admit that they were forced in the past. There are some exceptions. A group of students once interviewed many prostitutes on De Wallen. 8% said they were forced. This surprises me, but perhaps they meant that they were forced in the past, not now.
how big is the problem of illegal immigration in netherlands?is there an influx of illegal immigrants that they just cant control?often bad immigration policies are responsible for the exaggeration of human trafficking numbers(illegal immigrant who works as a prostitute=trafficked woman to many).i just think that there cant be numbers,noone can say for sure who is there on their own free will and who is not,in such a chaotic situation,that illegal immigration creates.it is certain that illegal immigrants have middlemen who helped them come to the country, whether men or women.but you cant say for sure who is aggressive to them or forces them into a work they dont want to(trafficking isnt only limited to prostitution, the majority of it is in labour,in fact in greece where i live there are many gangs who use force to control beggars from pakistan)
8% is definitely a believable figure under a legalization or criminalization regime; that’s similar to the findings of the John Jay Study of underage New York streetwalkers. The best way to reduce coercion to practically nothing is decriminalization, which removes the artificial restrictions exploited by criminals.
There have been more of such questionnaires done on De Wallen.
http://www.stichtingdehaven.nl/Artikelen/Manifest_Platform_Organisatie_Opvang_Prostitutie.pdf
The POOP interviewed 72 women in 2002, 11 (15%) said they didn’t work voluntarily in prostitution, 43 said they worked voluntarily in prostitution. According to the Scarlet Cord, 450 out of 892 (50%) prostitutes they had contact with in 2002, handed over all the earnings to their boyfriend or pimp. According to the Scarlet Cord, of the 439 Dutch window prostitutes on De Wallen in 2001-2002 they had contact with, more than 380 entered prostitution because of a loverboy. During 7 out of 10 contacts the phone of the prostitute starts to ring within 2 minutes, and the woman has to explain why she doesn’t work and who visits her. (Uit het donker opgelicht, 2003).
http://www.vng.nl/Praktijkvoorbeelden/VEIL/2010/Amsterdam_Kwetsbaar_Beroep_2010.pdf
The Scarlet Cord interviewed 202 women, mostly on De Wallen, 16 (8%) said they were forced. (Kwetsbaar beroep, 2010)
http://www.womenlobby.org/spip.php?action=acceder_document&arg=1163&cle=947780cd19f9ed171506fecf1352c08044840c76&file=pdf%2Fmatolcsi_toos_heemskerk_amsterdam.pdf&lang=en
The Scarlet Cord interviews 84 Hungarian prostitutes in 2010, 10 (12%) say they are forced. 44 women (52%) work more than 70 hours per week.` (Powerpoint presentation: Amsterdam’s ’Nyíregyháza street’ – Results of a research carried out by a Dutch social worker among Hungarian prostitutes)
The report by the students of the UvA is named De Amsterdamse Prostitutie Monitor (2010) and can be downloaded here:
http://www.prostitutie.nl/fileadmin/nl/5._Professionals/5.6_Documenten/5.6g_Mensenhandel/pdf/DeAmsterdamseProstitutieMonitor.pdf
I made a tiny mistake, 9 out of 94 women said that they were forced in this report, that’s 9.6%.
It beats me why there are no prostitutes who say to the sexologist Ine Vanwesenbeeck that they are forced.
I also want decriminalisation by the way, I believe in self-determination.
My experience of Eastern European women bears out what Krulac says. The idea that they are passive losers is just racism in a bit of gift wrapping. I know ladies who go back and forth hooking in Switzerland, Germany and the UK and are quite happy with the lifestlye. I haven’t done the precise maths, but a woman from a small town Eastern Europe with limited education and few prospects beyond (at best) a factory job and/or marriage to the alcoholic next door can do multiple times better fucking for cash in her country’s capital or abroad. Plus the conditions are probably better, the people encountered quite possibly nicer and horizons are wider. One woman I know who periodically works as a whore and says she genuinely finds fulfilment in the job told me succinctly: “There really are worse things in life.” A few years ago there were horror stories about recruiters for nanny jobs in Germany entrapping girls and forcing them into prostitution. There were news reports about some of the traffickers being busted. While I don’t doubt that this stuff goes on on a small scale, I cannot see how it could be a huge business because there is so available, voluntary labour. And it must be hard to keep someone enslaved in Europe these days. There are no barriers to free movement between most European countries these days thanks to the Schengen Agreement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_agreement). You hardly ever get your passport checked when crossing the border, so the idea that a pimp can control a girl by taking her documents is bollocks. Unless she is literally chained to the bed 24/7, what is stopping her from hitching home in a few days? Or going to her embassy?
Kris, since you don’t go into detail about how you “abuse” the women, I can’t say for sure but- There are women out there who deal with rough scenes, and do it well. If that’s what you like find one. Also, if you’re not the client, someone else will be. If you enjoy seeing hookers, stopping isn’t going to solve some woman’s problems.
Kris is an adherent of Jeffreys and Dworkin, he believes sex is abusive in and of itself.
Yes that’s true. I believe if you truly respect a person, then you don’t want to have sex with that person. You don’t even think about it. I believe sexuality is a kind of fetishism. You stare at asses, at thighs, watch women bend over, and feel the strong urge to penetrate her. The first moment she is a person whom you respect, the next moment you objectify and humiliate her. I believe sexuality is about crossing boundaries, breaking taboos. Once a taboo has been broken, then you must find a new one that you want to break to get high. Taboos are usually related to shame, humiliation and desecration. If you watch pornography, you often see women being fucked in the ass, and then immediately after the penis is removed from the anus, a woman gives a blowjob to it. This is clearly the breaking of a boundary. The penis has been in the anus, then the unwashed penis enters the mouth or even the vagina of a woman. This is to humiliate a woman. I believe sexuality is about humiliation. I believe when men have sex with their wives or girlfriends, they get sexually aroused because of the contrast. They view their loved ones as goddesses of fairy princesses at first, then they desecrate them by putting their cocks into them. I believe it is a big shock to see a person you love and respect naked. It is humiliating, shameful. But it is also the reason why you get aroused, and are capable to have sex with her this way. It is the breaking of a boundary, a taboo. But if you truly respect her, you don’t even think about it. I believe Andrea Dworkin and Sheila Jeffreys are right.
If you are male and believe with Dworkin and Jeffreys that sexual attention is abuse, and you don’t recognize the biological absurdity of such a belief, then you seriously need far more help than commenters on a blog can give you. I urge you to get professional help right away; you can even give the therapist a link to this page so he can see (and I strongly advise you to get a male therapist for reasons that should be obvious) the kind of disturbed thoughts you have become obsessed with. I sincerely hope you find someone to help you very soon, and PLEASE believe me that you need it desperately; you are mired in self-loathing that can only lead to deep depression and possibly self-destructive behavior if it is allowed to continue.
Often times I agree with Maggie, and sometimes I do not. Looking over this blog for any half-dozen posts chosen at random will convince you that I’m not shy about expressing myself in either case.
This time I agree with Maggie whole-heartedly. Please, please take the advice she has freely given you. As long as you loath your maleness, you will be unhappy. This is because you will always be male. You need to make peace with your maleness. A good therapist can help.
Note that both women and men are urging you to get this help.
Jeez Kris. See a therapist at your peril. If you’re not screwed up now, you will be after seeing one of those kooks.
I actually agree with you, at least a little, about these mind-fuckers. That’s not an insult, BTW. Mind-fucking is their job.
But I feel that Kris is near or at the Godzilla Threshold. At this point, a therapist is justified. But yeah, be careful which one you choose.
That explains why Kris perceives the women as scared – they are, when they come to the realization that they are alone with a severely disturbed man.
Hmm, I hadn’t considered that; you may be right. It could also be a projection of his own fear and nervousness onto them.
It could even be part of the act. If the idea that the women are helpless victims is part of the attraction, she might pick up on it and act appropriately.
We can’t know for sure; it’s not like telling your pettanko hooker, “I know you’re over eighteen, but you don’t need to say so. Like, don’t say anything about college, or voting, OK? Oh, and could you carry this?” {hands her 9th grade math book}
No, this is less certain. What if she really is scared? Or maybe he’s imagining it. Or maybe it’s HIM she’s scared of. Or she could be acting the part.
I read some reviews about the Hungarian young woman. Also the other men described her as very shy and depressed. This time it wasn’t only me.
I must notice that most prostitutes were friendly towards me. They just don’t like the sex, you see this in their behaviour. It is very embarrassing actually to have sex this way. One woman I have visited even sighed when I asked her to switch to doggystyle. When these things happen you feel very depressed afterwards.
I also visited a woman once who asked me what we should do. I asked her to sexually arouse me. She became very angry, and asked me how precisely she must sexually arouse me. Obviously I couldn’t get it up, then she became even more angry. Then she lied down on the bed angrily, and asked me what I really wanted. Things turned positive later on, she became more friendly after talking for a while, but I felt very sick afterwards.
I did have some positive experiences with prostitutes, there are some women who don’t show these negative signs. They were very friendly towards me, and the sex didn’t seem to bother them. I didn’t feel as if I was abusing a person. But I know that I was.
I have visited a psychiatrist, and he said what happens in pornography is not real. It is fantasy in his opinion. But I explained to him that what happens to the people in pornography is very real. The physical abuse when being brutally anally penetrated is very real, I then knew that it was senseless to talk with him about this issue even further.
Why is it important that they like it? When you eat at a restaurant, does it matter to you that the waitress “enjoy” serving you? If people “enjoyed” their jobs, we wouldn’t have to be paid to do them; we’d just do them for free. But for some reason people only pretend it matters when sex is involved, which is an extremely male chauvinist view since only men enjoy sex nearly every time they have it. Women use sex for LOTS of reasons that have nothing to do with personal pleasure, despite what feminists try to tell you.
But really, all this is immaterial. Even if 80% of hookers were coerced and hated their jobs, criminalizing them and their clients is STILL not the answer. Decriminalization has been repeatedly proven to dramatically reduce (often to nil) all problems “authorities” blame the sex trade for, including coercion and so-called “trafficking”.
But why hasn’t it worked in the Netherlands? The Netherlands has also decriminalised prostitution. What is the magic trick in New South Wales and New Zealand? Why don’t they have any forced prostitution cases?
I believe that it doesn’t really matter for criminals. If criminals see money in something, they go after it anyway. Criminals steal copper to earn money. They could just as well force or manipulate young women to work for them in prostitution, if they can earn money with that.
The Netherlands has NOT decriminalized prostitution; they’ve legalized it, which means treating it as a special case needing all sorts of arbitrary rules. It’s not as bad as criminalization, but it still creates ample opportunity for corruption. But obviously you haven’t read that Wendy Lyon article I gave you. You seem to believe nobody has ever asked your questions before, and that rights advocates haven’t already been through this thousands of times; it really is a species of hubris on the part of prohibitionists to imagine they know things the people DIRECTLY INVOLVED in the sex trade don’t.
But if prostitution would become totally decriminalised, then brothel owners can open brothels everywhere in the Netherlands. They could open window brothels in Staphorst if they wanted to. It wouldn’t matter for criminals to recruit women and place them in window brothels. It just wouldn’t matter.
I read the Wendy Lyon article. I believe the human trafficking statistics indeed don’t give a good impression of forced prostitution in the Netherlands. I notice that there are many African victims on the list. The fact of the matter is that there aren’t really many African prostitutes in the Netherlands to begin with. There have been some trafficking cases in the Netherlands involving African prostitutes, but it turned out that they all worked in prostitution outside of the Netherlands. The Netherlands was simply used as a transit country.
But the impression that many forced prostitutes in the Netherlands are Dutch could be right. That’s what I’ve found by analysing over a thousand cases of forced prostitution in the Netherlands. I calculate that nowadays around 50% of the forced prostitutes in the Netherlands are Dutch. Often they work in window prostitution. But it is difficult to say if the sample that I gathered is really representative of all forced prostitution in the Netherlands. It must also be said that the number of Dutch window prostitutes has gone down significantly during past years. In 2005 around 30% of all window prostitutes were Dutch. Now it’s more like 10%.
Cooking isn’t criminal, yet I don’t see restaurants springing up on every street corner. People want to pretend the sex business is magically different from every other one; it isn’t. It can be regulated like any other business, and doesn’t require moralistic pretenses and exaggerated claims of “special” problems.
“Cooking isn’t criminal, yet I don’t see restaurants springing up on every street corner.”
You should live here.
Can you open window brothels in just any place in New Zealand and New South Wales? I believe not! That means that these countries/counties must have some kind of regulations specifically for prostitution! You cannot open a window brothel in any shopping street just like that. I believe decriminalisation and legalisation are essentially the same.
I believe there’s really something sinister going on in Dutch prostitution. Check my blog. I’ve also tried to translate some verdicts from rechtspraak.nl, so everybody can read it in English.
(There are many restaurants in Dutch city and village centres)
You apparently have no ability to distinguish between criminal law and zoning regulations, and that’s rather pathetic.
Precisely. You believe, which doesn’t require evidence. People believe in all sorts of things, but those beliefs do not give them the right to control others or invalidate their decisions. I’m growing very tired of this line of attack from you; please take it someplace where your fellow true believers will pat you on the back and agree how right you are in branding yourself an evil abuser of women. You will not get it here, where we believe in facts. Please do not post again until after you read these three essays by Doezema, Jordan and Weitzer, and finish Laura Agustin’s Sex At the Margins; otherwise I’ll be forced to return your comments to moderation. You are wasting my valuable time by asking me to refute every unproven “belief” you have that I and others have refuted many, many times before, and I need that time to write articles for EVERYONE rather than serving as your unpaid therapist.
I believe decriminalisation and legalisation are essentially the same.
No, the two are not even close. Imagine that instead of being decriminalized, homosexuality had been legalized on the basis that gays are a problem to be controlled. Thus, we would have a central registry for gays, they would be forcibly tested and have all manner of rules placed on them; they would not be allowed to live in the same house as other gays, nor associate with friends or relatives. Finally, they would have to keep their sexuality a secret in public, lest they be arrested.
This is such an amazingly good reply that I just “tweeted” it. 🙂
I don’t want to control others. I believe people have the right to do with their bodies what they want to do. But reality is often more complex than theory. Who are the people who have total sexual self-determination? Who are the voluntarily prostitutes? I believe it is important to know as a client, if you want to avoid raping people.
I used the word ‘belief’ because it is very hard to research prostitutes or people in general. What people tell is nearly always unreliable and difficult to use in scientific research. I referred earlier to the research done by Ine Vanwesenbeeck. It is very interesting to see that none of the prostitutes she interviewed said that they were forced during the interview, but some admitted that they were forced in the past. If you take everything what people say literally then you must conclude that something is very fuzzy going on here. It must mean that they lie at least about something, or that the forced prostitutes simply didn’t take part in the interviews. I take the social workers who work in the red light districts seriously who say that many Eastern European prostitutes are strongly under the control of pimps, and that Dutch window prostitutes often entered prostitution because they were forced to do that. I believe the prostitutes tell things to social workers that they don’t say to researchers. But this is indeed belief.
You can’t prove anything with hundred percent certainty. You must make a choice what information you want to discard if it doesn’t fit with other information. I also used the example of the police raids in the Doubletstraat in Den Haag and the Baekelandplein in Eindhoven. None of the prostitutes who were interrogated by the police said that they were forced, they all said they worked voluntarily in prostitution. But this contradicts all other information. What must you do with it? Do you take the prostitutes seriously? Then you must conclude that at least in these areas there is no forced prostitution. But on the other hand you know that there are many Eastern European prostitutes who work in this area, many Hungarian prostitutes. And you know the bad stories from social workers regarding Eastern European and Hungarian prostitutes, and you know other research in which some prostitutes say that they are forced during the interviews. Which information must you filter out? I believe the decision what must be filtered out is very subjective. I cannot believe that absolutely none of the prostitutes in the Doubletstraat and the Baekelandplein are forced. So I filtered that out. I use other information to explain why these prostitutes all say they are working voluntarily in prostitution. It is known from police investigations that many forced prostitutes are simply afraid to tell that they are forced, because they are threatened with their lives, or their loved ones are threatened with their lives. Or they are so in love or so loyal to their pimp that they tell to the police they work voluntarily in prostitution. But indeed, this is ‘belief’.
Another thing I belief is that forced prostitutes often work in window prostitution. That’s because when I analyse all the forced prostitution cases window prostitution is often overrepresented. But this is also belief. Berhaps forced prostitutes in other sectors simply don’t reveal themselves.
And sometimes I doubt. There is a voice within me which says that forced prostitution indeed doesn’t exist. And that I can visit prostitutes without hesitation, and I do visit prostitutes without hesitation. But then I read a horror story again, and it makes me doubt again.
I have read the articles Doezema, Jordan and Weitzer you referred to. I don’t agree with them. Forced prostitution is not a myth. What is a myth is that forced prostitutes often didn’t know that they would be working in prostitution. The reality is that many forced prostitutes actually did choose to work in prostitution initially. But they ended up in bad circumstances anyway. I also know this from the verdicts on rechtspraak.nl. But this is also belief, I assume that these cases are somehow representative of all forced prostitution cases in the Netherlands. It is funny to see that Jo Doezema refers to the TAMPEP field reports to prove that the great majority of foreign prostitutes knew that they were going to work in prostitution. She sees this as proof that they work voluntarily in prostitution. But if people would read all these TAMPEP reports then I belief it would fill many with horror. It turns out that the situation of the foreign prostitutes is actually very bad if you read those reports.
I have read in one of your posts that you estimate that 1,5% of the prostitutes are forced. I think a more realistic estimate is 15%, an order of 10 higher. But this is belief. How do you know that a more realistic percentage is 1,5 percent? I believe that you took the data that fits your belief, and that you discarded the rest.
In that case, welcome to permanent moderation. I don’t have time for someone who rejects facts and methodologically sound research because they conflict with his personal misogynistic belief in the inability of women to make valid choices.
kris,if you feel guilty about watching ”gonzo”porn,the really hardcore one that the sex seems violent then try to watch more vanilla porn.i know nowadays mainstream porn seems to be all ”gonzo”,but you can definitely find sth softer,the stuff produced by vivid,wicked pictures or digital playground comes into mind.still,you have to understand that there are many porn actresses who have no problem with having this kind of sex,without this being because they have issues.some do,but its unfair to stereotype people based on their job or the kind of sex they prefer.someone who likes it rouph doesnt mean that has more issues than sb who only does it missionary style.and the fact that you werent helped by a particular psychiatrist shouldnt discourage you, you can find another that will truly help you.
The reason the psychiatrist couldn’t help Kris is because Kris refused to believe what Dr. Shrinker told him.
Look, the performers in porn are like stunt men: they really are doing the stuff you see, but not always the way it LOOKS like they are doing it. Just like the stuntman really does flip the car and crawl out the window in flames, but he isn’t really killed due to special seat belts, a flame-suit, and fire extinguishers as soon as the camera stops rolling. The same sort of thing is done in porn. For instance:
What you see is some guy with a huge dick grabbing a petite woman, ripping her panties off, and ramming that fat sausage up her ass while she whimpers and begs for mercy. Damn thing has to be at least twenty-three centimetres long, and he didn’t use any lube! OUCH!!
What really happened is that they know each other, the panties were pre-treated to rip just right without much effort, she’s only pretending to be in pain, his dick is only sixteen inches long but since he isn’t as tall as you think and they use careful camera angles it looks bigger than that, lube was applied earlier, and the audio is turned up on the ‘slap-slap-slap’ sound.
Indeed. If you have ever seen the out-take clips that sometimes come with gonzo or even BDSM videos, you often see the actress moaning and even screaming, and then suddenly she breaks out in giggles and the director shouts “cut”. I even remember one where the actress in a BDSM film complained that she was being whipped too lightly and she couldn’t convincingly look like she was in pain.
As for all the sad and angry hookers that Kris meets, I get the feeling there is an element of confirmation bias going on here. Random selection should have brought him to at least a few girls who were OK with what they were doing, but according to him they are unrelentingly frightened and/or angry and depressed. I would guess that he subconsciously selects his partner for those very traits.
Sixteen CENTIMETRES long, not sixteen INCHES. Sixteen INCHES would be quite impressive indeed, and no need for camera tricks if Mr. Porn Star is swinging that much meat.
You misunderstand, I had some positive experiences visiting prostitutes. I visited 21 prostitutes in total. I would say that four women behaved rudely towards me. Two others were like frightened chickens. One behaved like a zombie. The rest were friendly towards me. But I could see boredom in their faces when I fucked them. This was very embarrassing. I would say that with five women I had a very positive experience.
What difference does any of that make? If a hairdresser or waitress doesn’t particularly care for her job, does that make her a “coerced victim” to be “rescued”?
Hello, Maggie. I’ve reached ur blog via a recent post from Kris2 and I want to speak about my experiences with “forced prostitution”.
In the beginning, when I began puntering, I was 21 yrs old and i tought that all, or almost all, prostitutes were sex slaves. That was that media was showing everytime, and I was so innocent. I knew that they will never recognice that they were slaves, so I felt guilty each time I was with one of them like Kris2. I feel like if I were an abuser.
But I kept going with them, specially after I broke up with my gf. Then I began to lose the fear I had to this world in the beginning. I was able to speak with the girls, to go out with them (to lunch, go party, just walk with them and their children…). Ouw. I was astonished. What a kind pimp they should have that he let them to do whatever they wanted. Even they could go on Christmas or Pascua to their country to visit their relatives… really that was not as I tought. The doubt was the seed to knowledge.
So nice were SWs with me that I spent more and more time with them. First after university and then after work, I was almost daily with them. Not just fucking, but chatting and staying with them. I became not just a client but a friend. Then the surprise came.
What I know about prostitution is not ASKING prostitutes but HEARING them. If they feel comfortable with u, they will tell u things. And same comes into sex. I’m mainly with streetwalkers that many ppl speaks badly: that they fuck with apathy, rob or lie. Well, I laugh bcause this is not my case. Of course they do, but not to me. Why? Bcause they are not robots, they are nice with some johns and very bad with others. The way a SW is with u depends of how are u, If like Kris2 u look like a retarted, they will treat u like one.
Well, the surprise was that a sw told me that she couldn’t get out from one of the houses they worked to the street bcause that week she didn’t pay the police. That was a shock for me, but I found many more SWs that told me similar histories. They were not forced into prostitution, but to PAY to our authorities to let them work. That was I found in the streets, not by my imagination of readings. Btw, when I began to search about this discover in the academic studies, I found that other ppl had also found same as me. But the abolitionists and traffick myth supporters NEVER said a word about that. Then was evident for me what was the real intention of their histories: to cover the real mafias. Nowadays I don’t say that mafias are nonexistent. They are real. They are the abolitionist associations, the police and the government.
Thanks to let me give my opinion and excuse my basic english (also I’m in a hurry and I can’t check my comment, sorry).
So to summarise:
1) Govt makes anti prostitution laws
2) Cops use said laws to extort/abuse prostitutes
3) Prostitutes are deterred from calling cops when they suffer extortion/abuse
4) Other criminals join the Abuser-Cop bandwagon since whores are much more vulnerable now.
5) Govt says “see! look at the extortion/abuse of the poor whores, we must pass anti-trafficing laws too!”
6) GOTO 1)
Anybody else see the flaw here?
That’s right, it’s step 1) that creates the vulnerablity of ALL whores, not just the few that were being abused/extorted in the start.
So as I understand it, the lack of evidence of trafficking is proof of an epidemic of trafficking. We all know what the real problem is: overpaid, underworked, slow witted bureacrats trying to justify their budgets and useless jobs.