It’s not about promiscuity, which makes you sound square; it’s not about prostitution, which makes you sound dirty; it’s about sex-trafficking, which makes you sound like you’re on the side of the angels, know-nothing though they might be. – Michael Wolff
“Just Don’t Call It Slut-Shaming: A Feminist Guide to Silencing Sex Workers” is a funny and dead-on-target lampoon of neofeminist anti-whore rhetoric in the form of a mock primer. Definitely a must-read.
Canadian courts slap down another government attempt to stop sex workers from claiming human rights:
The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the right of a non-profit group representing women…in downtown Vancouver’s sex trade to challenge the country’s anti-prostitution laws on constitutional grounds. The ruling means the Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society can go back to B.C. Supreme Court to pursue a case it launched five years ago…
The government’s argument against the suit relied on the sophistry that one of the parties in the suit (Sheryl Kiselbach) was no longer affected by the laws due to being retired, and that the other party (the DESWUAVS) could not be affected because it was an organization, therefore neither had the right to sue. But the judge realized that the government’s claim that streetwalkers had to bring such suits individually was absurd, and ruled in favor of the group. It’s not only good news for sex workers, but for other marginalized Canadians as well:
…[attorney] Katrina Pacey…explained [that] “This would provide a real opportunity for marginalized people, people with mental health issues, people with HIV, prisoners, refugees, children to form a collective organization whereby they then have the support and capacity to bring these cases forward, as a community”…
The bad economy and political tensions between their countries have combined to make things increasingly difficult for Chinese whores in Japan, creating a dangerously unbalanced buyer’s market:
…“Rumors have been spreading that Chinese girls have been beaten up by Japanese Johns, and some of them are even begging off on transactions with customers they don’t know out of fears for their safety,” says “pink” journalist Yasuhiro Ebina. “Many Chinese women tend to be blunt and unsociable, but of late they are forcing themselves to smile, and have been primping themselves to improve their appearance. Before a deri heru (out-call sex) service might have charged an additional 8,000 yen for honban (the “real thing,” i.e., intercourse), but now they’ve knocked as much as 5,000 yen off the total price”…women from Shanghai tend to be proud and many refuse to dispense oral sex, but over the past week they are now even providing lip service bareback. And some ladies from Dalian or Harbin are even allowing customers condom-free rides…
The stupidity, it burns! “…[Washington, D.C.] police lieutenant Jeffery Carroll told residents at a neighborhood meeting…that [a perceived] jump in [street] prostitution may be related to the surge in construction activity and increase in construction workers in the neighborhood. Carroll told residents that prostitution activity typically takes place between midnight and…6:00 a.m. The recent surge has come between 3:30 and 7:30 a.m. or else at around 3:30 p.m….which police say could correlate to changes in construction shifts…”
Yet another poor fool has died from allowing a non-doctor to inject filth into her arse in a non-medical setting:
…52-year-old Morris Garner…who has had gender changing procedures and goes by the name Tracey Lynn Garner, is charged with depraved-heart murder in the March death of 37-year-old Karima Gordon, of Atlanta…Gordon became ill within 30 minutes of leaving Garner’s house in Jackson after…injection [of a silicone-like substance into her buttocks] but decided to try to make it home to Georgia before seeking medical treatment…[investigator Lee McDivitt]…said her chance of surviving the injections was small, anyway…”The [medical examiner] told me…[that when he] cut the victim open…this material ran all over the floor, all over their shoes, all over the place”…
What I can’t understand is why so many of these self-proclaimed cosmetic surgeons are transgendered.
Once again: As long as government actors have excessive power over individuals, this will keep happening: “…Pittsburgh Public Schools police officer…Robert Lellock…was arrested…[on] 23 counts of crimes including corruption of minors, child endangerment and sex crimes…” Lellock allegedly raped several 13-14 year old boys, ensuring their silence by a combination of threats to kill their families and rewards of marijuana and class-skipping privileges.
You may remember that DMSC had formed its own football (soccer) team for the children of Calcutta sex workers; well, two of the boys were picked for a world championship team: “Two sons of sex workers from India’s eastern state of West Bengal will play soccer…in the Indian…team for the Homeless World Soccer Cup 2012 in Mexico…’This is a big achievement in integrating children of sex workers with the mainstream sports community,’ said Dr Samarjit Jana of DMSC.”
This Guardian article is mostly about sex workers’ reaction to the socialist scheme to inflict the Swedish model on France, but it also contains interesting information on French hookers’ efforts to circumvent busybody laws and the sleazy tricks cops use to harass them.
…The “white van women”…embody the French state’s difficult attitudes to prostitution. As in the UK, prostitution itself…is not a crime. But…[a] 2003…law [forbids being]…in a public place known for prostitution dressed in revealing clothes. To get round this, women started working in private vans. Selling sex inside a vehicle was not breaking the law. But police are now using any means to crack down on the growing number of sex-work vans, namely parking tickets and tow-trucks…some…owe thousands of euros in parking tickets and pound-release fines accrued each month…
An excellent op-ed against “end demand” rhetoric appeared last Sunday in, of all the unexpected places, The New York Times; I’ll bet Nick Kristof isn’t happy:
…policy makers have started to push to eradicate all prostitution, not just the trafficking of children into the sex trade. Under the catchphrase “no demand, no supply,” they advocate increasing criminal penalties against men who buy sex — a move they believe will upend the market that fuels prostitution and sex trafficking…[but] the “end demand” campaign will harm trafficking victims and sex workers more than it helps them…End-demand advocates’ prototypical victim — an abused teenage girl…forced into the sex trade…does exist. But they disregard the fact that individuals, including boys, men and transgender people, enter the sex trade for a variety of reasons. The pimped girl who has inflamed the public’s imagination needs government services and protection, not to be made into a symbolic figure in an ideological battle to eradicate the entire sex industry, which, like many other sectors, includes adults laboring in conditions ranging from upscale to exploitative, from freely chosen to forced…despite their righteous anger, the end-demand crowd is quick to dismiss what many sex workers actually have to say. Some activists have gone so far as to brand those who criticize their campaign as “house slaves” unable to recognize their own oppression…
The writer is being polite; Melissa Farley’s actual term was “house nigger”. The article goes on to strongly criticize the Swedish model, flatly stating that it has failed to reduce prostitution and explaining how it harms women; it reports that most abuse of sex workers is by police rather than clients or “pimps” as claimed by the prohibitionists; and it discusses real solutions very much like those advocated in this blog. The article is not long, and well worth your time.
Proposition 35 is so awful (Chorus: How awful is it?) that even trafficking victim advocates oppose it:
…The opponents, who range from a South Bay nonprofit to a co-author of California’s current law against trafficking, say that, instead of helping, Proposition 35 will set back their work by years. Chief among their concerns is the measure’s focus on hefty penalties rather than a collaborative attack on the problem…That approach, they say, ignores the victims…[they] also condemn the discrepancy between penalties for labor and sex trafficking…Most victims don’t end up in the sex trade…yet Proposition 35 provides for lower penalties for labor victims…
The Maricopa County sheriff’s office only “treats prostitutes as trafficking victims” when they find it convenient: “…Over the course of a month, detectives made 37 arrests on suspicion of prostitution-related crimes…in an unincorporated area of the county tucked between Tempe and Guadalupe…suspects made contact with an undercover deputy, who secured an offer of sex for money and then used a code word as a signal for other deputies to storm the hotel room…” “Code word?” “Stormed” the room? Their pomposity would be hilarious if they weren’t ruining the lives of real women.
Thoughts On My First Conference
I’m the third interviewee in this video. It’s not very long, but I still figured y’all would want to see it.
This Guardian op-ed presents Michael Wolff’s opinion of the Backpage-Village Voice split; though he has no love for Lacey and Larkin he has even less for Kristof and company, and the article provides the interesting tidbit that some of the anti-Backpage campaign was funded by the Church of Scientology in revenge for the Voice’s relentless attacks on it.
Metaupdates
Bad Fantasy, Good Reality in TW3 (#7)
Cambodian cops are learning to parrot their American masters quite well:
Chan Sreynuch, the owner of Mikasa Coiffure and Beauty…was arrested…on suspicion of human trafficking, according to the national military police spokesman Kheng Tito…According to him, Sreynuch would lead young women — often aspiring singers and students — to her salon, then connect them with wealthy businessmen…Three of her manicured and coiffed callgirls were also detained…[and] sent to Phnom Penh Municipal Hall’s rehabilitation centre for “re-education”…
“Anna Gristina…has pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution…[she] will be sentenced…to time served and probation as part of a plea deal. The judge warned the Scotland-born woman she could also be deported…”
An Example To the West in TW3 (#14)
“Workers in the [Korean] sex industry called…for the scrapping or revision of anti-sex trafficking laws…[which limit their] rights to sexual autonomy and their freedom to enjoy a free sex life as adults…another sex worker surnamed Kim submitted a petition…for…judgment on whether the laws are constitutionally acceptable…”
British prohibitionist Julie Bindel interviewed the Fokkens sisters, the elderly Dutch whores about whom a documentary was recently made; unsurprisingly, she only reports the negative parts and dismisses the “rosy picture the twins paint of prostitution” as just a kind of weird twin-thing. Of course she is pleased to report that the Fokkens say legalization has been bad for Dutch hookers (largely because of the exaggerated tax assessments European officials commonly use to persecute sex workers), but cannot or will not comprehend that no sex worker rights organization in the world supports Dutch-style legalization.
Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic in TW3 (#29)
If you’re impressed by those brain studies that “prove” porn, sugar, the internet or whatever is “as addictive as cocaine”, you need to consider the study which won this year’s Ig Nobel Prize in neuroscience “for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon.”
This Week in 2011
My columns on Mabon and Banned Books Week were followed by others on misuse of the word “vagina”, the fallacy of “empowerment”, dehumanization of whores, dominatrices in the news and women’s views of male sex workers.
This Week in 2010
My first Mabon column, the problems caused by unsatisfied male sex drives, my sex-related pet peeves, one of my earliest columns on “sex trafficking” hysteria and an angry reply to it, the growth of opposition toward prohibition and my announcement of the Himel decision.
Nice to see you have a promotion on Bindel’s article. I think it will fall on deaf ears though.
Nick Kristof has probably never been happy in his life. That’s why he has what Mencken called “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.”
That primer that you started is very good, but just make sure you set aside some free time before you start reading it, because the links in it are also very interesting, and soon your morning will be gone.
The epigram captures popular support for a lot of disastrous policies, unfortunately. A lot of people can’t explain why they support the positions or laws they do, but do so simply because they sound like the kind of thing they should support.
Forward and Backward: Oh my goodness. I mean, I get it. Intuitive economics dictates that if you increase the demand (i.e., the number of men) you will increase the supply (i.e., the number of sex workers) as the market moves to match – supply and demand. But it’s not like whores follow medium-sized groups of men around in time and space. I’ve never had to shake a whore that was tailing me because I, as a man, was a mini-hub of demand walking through the city. Prostitutes don’t actually follow men around in fishnets, harassing them into patronizing them.
“Just Don’t Call It Slut-Shaming: A Feminist Guide to Silencing Sex Workers” is an excellent example of Poe’s law in action.
For a useful, um, organizational model that leveraged the phenomenon for use in culture jamming, see The Lumber Cartel.
IYGMM, IYCMD…
LOL!! The intellectual dishonesty of feminism is never more blatant than when talking about prostitution.
My body my choice….her body and she better not use it for prostitution..she is not allowed THAT choice.
I have often pointed out that prostitution is the irrefutable evidence of the hypocrisy of any woman who claims to be a feminist. You can not argue for the right to kill your defenseless baby in the womb while ALSO arguing for the right to tell and adult woman she can not use her body as she pleased to make her living.
I think you sex workers would be well advised to make a LOT more noise about the hypocrisy of feminists, both male and female.
the “japanese prostitution” article sounds a lot like what is happening here in america….
It’s always kind of cool to hear your voice on an interview. It’s like you’re a real person! 😉
And you even got to see me talking with my hands and everything! 🙂
Re: transgendered cosmetic ‘surgeons’. I think it may come down to two things: shame/rejection and economics. As far as the former, there are many transfolk who are in the process of transitioning physically but mentally and emotionally are still wrestling with a lot of the prejudices lobbed against them. They may be afraid to approach any doctor who is ‘heteronormative’ for fear of judgment, ridicule, and possible rejection for any cosmetic procedure.
Concerning the latter, many cosmetic procedures are very expensive and depending on other economic factors like job status, won’t be affordable for some time. Then there’s also a trust issue, which kinda relates to my first point. Going to someone who is in the same position, or was not too long ago, is sensible on the face of it. But unfortunately, then things like that story and others happen.
Nice to hear your voice, Maggie! And your nails look awesome.
I don’t think most of the victims are transfolk themselves, though; this story had another woman who decided not to go with the procedure because she was “taken back [sic] by Garner’s size”, and there was a guy a while back who got enlargement injections in his penis.
Thanks for the compliment! It’s funny you mention my nails because they’re just about at their worst there; the interview was recorded on Thursday and I was due back at the nail parlor the following Monday. It’s good to know they still look that nice so close to manicure time. 🙂
Oh okay. I thought this was primarily within the transgendered community.
Re: Real People – the Fokkens Twins.
The Dutch taxman does not persecute hookers with exaggerated taxes. The tax man doesn’t care whether you’re hooker or the prime minister, or a white-collar high-roller real-estate criminal. The taxman doesn’t apply morals but he’ll do everything to ensure that you pay the taxes you owe like any other citizen, and by the way also that your privacy is guaranteed (it’s the law).
Since it became a legal trade – in 2000 already 12 years ago! – hookers must charge VAT for every transaction, like any other retailer or independent contractor must do.
As of October 1 2012, the Dutch VAT rate is 21% across the board. So if you are or are getting into sex work now, you simply must set your service fees knowing that 21% of it belongs to the taxman, and you hand it over every month or every quarter.
If you set your fees right, it doesn’t come out of your pocket but your client’s pocket, like any sales tax.
Because you hand over your VAT to the tax office regularly, the taxman has a fairly good idea about your yearly income for income tax obligations. Any other business person has that same problem.
So the tax law does not treat hookers differently than other professionals. As long as you report it reliably and pay the taxes you owe, your just fine like anyone else.
And in case it comes after you, it doesn’t come after a hooker but after a citizen that has not filed properly, or where irregularities are suspected.
So the major difference in doing sex work between before and after the legalization (twelve years ago) is that you’re treated like any other professional. including taxation and various regulations.
Sex work is a legal trade with administration, bookkeeping, paperwork, tax returns, Chamber of Commerce dues, professional registration, licenses, mandatory medical care, liability insurance, and what have you, No fun, but not inherently wrong, not counter to the purposes of sex work, not degrading to sex workers.
I’m talking Sex Work 2012 in a wealthy, liberal, capitalist nation with social welfare; I’m talking a legal, full-fledged profession, not some hidden, spare-time income hobby.
Sex workers must realize that in Holland virtually any profession and trade is regulated: politicians, attorneys, bankers, physicians, pharmacists, hospitals, nurses, grocers, street vendors, street musicians, churches, accountants, tax consultants, artists, athletes, contractors, bars, massage parlors, and even cops. So why not sex work? And look at the sex work regulations: they’re rather simple and benevolent compared to those for banks, pharmacies, police, attorneys, and universities. Better a hooker than an attorney in terms being regulated. Legal hookers shouldn’t complain, and illegal hookers… well, now that they have the opportunity, aren’t they much better off doing business legally?
The law requires almost any professional to register within his or her profession. But since the sex trade has no formal trade association that certifies and registers members, and doesn’t seem anywhere close to getting something together, the government steps in. I find this a very unfortunate and undesirable situation for an otherwise legal trade.
As long as mandatory registration for sex workers is not based on (some kind of illegal) discrimination, it is part of the socioeconomic normalcy, whether you like it or not.
In Holland the bottom line of legal sex work is this, I think:
if you choose to enter this trade to earn your living or just for the kick, you choose to deal with its pros and cons. It ain’t perfect but if you can’t deal with the consequences of it being legal and regulated, then don’t become a sex worker. And if you become or are a sex worker, then don’t blame society, the law, or anyone in society for the consequences of your choice.
However, if you can prove that the law or law enforcement discriminates sex work negatively, relative to other professions, or discriminates you as a human being because of your work, you are protected by the same laws as any other citizen and business, and you should take legal action.
Finally, if sex workers at large avoid and even obstruct their legal status, if they “go underground” and work “illegally”, then expect a government to regulate and straightjacket the trade much worse then you would like. That’s inevitable, and it could happen any moment in Holland because, reportedly, evasion practices increase. I think in Holland the major issue lies currently with sex workers more than with society. Prostitution is declared legal and therefore “open for social business” for 12(!) years already. Society has fundamentally done what it can do for prostitution. A long-desired and constructive beginning, but not the end of the journey. Rather than taking society up on this drastic change for the better, and doing what they can to make the best of being legal and above the ground, hookers go en masse underground!
Is society to blame for this, or the hookers who go underground and refuse to behave as normal and open as the law / society wants and allows them?
So what is this whole sex workers rights activity about?
About having your cake and eating it too?
Please someone, anyone: give me a detailed draft for a realistic, pragmatic, prostitution legalization – with a few details. A proposal that a reasonable legislature of a reasonable nation can consider. Nothing fancy or heavenly, but a proposal that makes sense in our kind of Western civilization and that satisfies our sex workers. What are the fundamental ingredients, what are the pragmatic details?
Anyway, as long as the client continues to be happy with the hooker’s service, and as long the hooker is free to build her legal business as best she can, there’s no real problem. As in any trade: what matters in the sex trade most is Customer Satisfaction, the key to success. I don’t know of any fundamental, insurmountable barrier in Dutch laws and regulations that stands in the way of satisfying both hooker and client. There’s a lot to be improved, as always.
That article on “end demand” and why it isn’t a good idea is important, and I hope more people read it. It isn’t “pro-prostitution” by a long shot, but it does point out something I don’t hear a lot about: exactly how is the ex-hooker supposed to make a living, now that she’s practically got a scarlet letter on her (a big H or maybe a snazzy W instead of Hester’s traditional A, perhaps)? I mean, we say we want them to get some other job, but we make it so damn hard to do so.
That “slut-shaming” thing was a work of genius. Did you look at the “BINGO” thing? “You’re not a $2 crack whore, so you don’t count.” Or something like that.
Waitaminnit… these boys are going to be transported across national borders to engage in strenuous physical activities? IT’S SOCCER TRAFFICKING!!!
By browser wouldn’t play your video. Fortunately, I’ve got IE and could use that. I wonder: do the cops pick up stud-muffin MEN who carry more than three condoms at a time?
No. Though some sex worker rights advocates dislike the fact that I generally only talk about female prostitutes, the fact of the matter is that the great majority of anti-whore persecution is directed toward women. Men are never arrested for “acting sexy” and rarely approached by cops posing as clients, and though they are arrested for “loitering” they are not generally charged with “prostitution” or “soliciting” when they are. The presumption that biological males are clients instead of prostitutes is so profound that in Chicago, arrested drag or transgender hookers are charged as clients to inflate the numbers under their “end demand” program.
Wow. Go to the Swedish model, and hookers become magically transformed into johns.
Speaking of Swedish models…