I don’t want to teach ESL. I don’t want to work in food service. I would rather sell sex. – Melissa Petro
A woman…coerced into oral sex by [a] Beaverton [Oregon] police officer in 2010 accepted a settlement in her lawsuit…[Joshua] Jensen pleaded guilty to…official misconduct and coercion charges…[stemming] from two incidents…in which [he] arranged to meet a prostitute…and…[showed] up in uniform, in a marked police car. Both women [said] he ordered them behind a garbage container. The woman who sued him said he grabbed her head, forced it down and demanded that she perform oral sex…Jensen was not charged with a sex crime and did not have to register as a sex offender. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison…[but] completed his sentence in November 2011 through an Alternative Incarceration Program.
Other rapists get lifetime sentences on the “sex offender” registry; Jensen got a slap on the wrist.
Another example of what real sex slavery looks like:
A Chinese court sentenced [Li Hao, 35] to death for holding six women as sex slaves…and killing two of them…the former local government employee kidnapped six nightclub and karaoke bar workers and repeatedly raped them in a self-built dungeon. Two of the six were found dead when a 23-year-old woman escaped and led police to the basement. Li forced them all into prostitution and filmed them in pornographic videos he put on the internet…He then instructed three women to kill two of the other captives. The three women were found guilty of murder but were given lenient sentences. One was jailed for three years and two were put on probation…
It seems credulity and sloppy scholarship aren’t Sudhir Venkatesh’s only flaws:
…Sudhir Venkatesh…is a celebrity…through his research on gang life and prostitutes…but…some of his peers say that…he takes liberties not appropriate for a scholar: sensationalizing his experiences, exaggerating the reliability of his memory and, in one case, physically assaulting someone…and…he was the subject last year of a grueling investigation into [$241,364.83] of spending that Columbia auditors said was insufficiently documented, misappropriated or outright fabricated…auditors said that Professor Venkatesh directed $52,328 to someone without any “documented evidence of work performed”…He charged Columbia for town cars to take him around, to take his fiancée home from work…[and] to take someone…from [his] address to a building that houses a nail salon and a psychic…
Flexibeast presents a clever satire making the same comparison I did, namely sex and food:
I’d like to discuss…the commodification of food, and the scourge that is the food industry. Food…is an essential human need. When people buy and sell food, the act of preparing and eating food becomes mere support for, and reinforcement of, the notion that it’s acceptable to transform relations between humans into relations between a human and an unimportant unfeeling object. We must reject all buying and selling of food…
After you enjoy this very funny parody, try this Onion article on “abstinence-only school lunch programs” linked by one of Flexibeast’s commenters.
This may have something to do with the good example of Fiji’s closest large neighbors, Australia and New Zealand: “Health authorities want sex work legalised to remove discrimination…the Ministry of Health’s acting permanent secretary, Dr Josefa Koroivueta…said Fiji was working towards a human rights-based approach and discrimination of sex workers was against human rights…the new legislation should be ready by next year.”
One can never have too many scathing critiques of Melissa Farley, so I present this very effective one from Glasgow Sex Worker, which criticizes both her horrible personality and her awful “research methodology”, with lots of pertinent links.
Hanukkah starts at sundown today; Khag Urim Sameakh to all my Jewish readers!
It’s nice to know that at least one European government is so free from economic concerns that it has time to deal with the little things:
…The German parliament…is considering making it an offence not only to hurt an animal but also to force it into unnatural sex…Germany legalised bestiality…in 1969, except when the animal suffered “significant harm”. But animal rights groups have campaigned for a change in the law…a fine of up to 25,000 euros…is proposed if someone forces an animal to commit “actions alien to the species”…Bestiality is banned in…the Netherlands, France and Switzerland…in the UK…the maximum sentence [was reduced in 2003] from life imprisonment to two years…[it is legal] in Belgium, Denmark and Sweden, though Stockholm is considering a change…
It’s also nice to know that under current Swedish law, animals can consent to sex while women can’t.
…[Maharashtra] state minister for women and child Varsha Gaikwad told [the Times of India], “The state women’s policy aims to recognize the concerns of [marginalized] communities…[so] the expert committee reviewing the policy will have…three representatives from the transgenders and the sex workers in order to ensure that their concerns get reflected in the policy document”…
Harvey Silverglate reminds us that some of the victims of the Satanic Panic are still rotting away in prison for “crimes” that never happened:
…Elizabeth Ramirez, Kristie Mayhugh, Anna Vasquez and Cassandra Rivera…[were] accused in 1994 of repeatedly raping Ramirez’s two nieces, then 7 and 9 years old…Mayhugh, Vasquez and Rivera are twelve years into a 15-year sentence. Ramirez was accused of being the ringleader, so she received 37½ years. All four of the women refused pretrial plea deals…and three have refused parole offers conditioned on an admission of guilt and completion of a “rehabilitation” course for sex offenders…In September, one of the accusers recanted, saying she now seems to recall a quiet, even boring, weekend with her aunt, her sister and her aunt’s friends. She has vowed to do everything in her power to help exonerate the four women still imprisoned as a result of her earlier false accusations…
As in other “Satanic Panic” cases and most “sex trafficking” cases, the total lack of concrete evidence, the fact that the accusers’ stories changed frequently and their history of false rape accusations (instigated by their sociopathic father) made absolutely no difference to prosecutors, jury or judge, who wanted to “send a message” that “alternative lifestyles” (the women are lesbians) would not be tolerated.
Melissa Petro is broke, and therefore thinking “a lot” about going back into hooking even though she has often said she didn’t like it. That’s why her voice is valuable; as I said before, “I think it’s extremely important for women who don’t love the work to come out, because I honestly believe they’re the majority. Everybody hears from the ‘happy hookers’ and the ‘survivors’, but…for most of the women I’ve known it was a job like any other, with its own advantages and disadvantages…”
Funny how “sex trafficking victims” magically get their agency back when they’re Mexicans the “authorities” prefer to deport: “Three people pleaded guilty…to bringing illegal immigrant women to [South Carolina] to work as prostitutes whose clientele were migrant farm workers…The prostitutes were illegal immigrants but none were being held against their will, [the US attorney] said…” Apparently, the immigration stooge interviewed for the story got a different memo; he opined that “the women…have been rescued from lives of misery as a result of this investigation.”
Jessie Nicole reviews American Courtesans, a new documentary about the lives of eleven high-end escorts:
Each of the eleven women had profoundly different experiences…[proving] that there is no single narrative of the sex industries. Though each one seemed happy and relatively stable at the time of the interviews, many had experienced violence, arrest, and economic desperation…there was no sugarcoating or romanticization …the film also includes testimony from clients and family members…American Courtesans was a good step in the right direction, but we need to keep pushing further…[with] more and better media projects…
James Cameron, the federal drug prosecutor who fled Maine after his child porn conviction was upheld three weeks ago, was arrested Sunday morning at a used-media store in Albuquerque, New Mexico. US marshals theorize he was headed for Mexico.
Metaupdates
Gorged With Meaning (First Updates of the Year, Part Two)
Pearl-clutching Brits just can’t let this two-year-old study go:
Undergraduates have traditionally pulled pints or waited tables to pay their way through university, but…a significant number are now turning to sex work to make ends meet. The rise in fees which will see some students graduate with projected debts of up to £53,000 …is being blamed for persuading young women and men to take up pole dancing, escort work or even prostitution. Experts say that university welfare officers are largely ignorant of the growing phenomenon and poorly equipped to deal with issues arising from young people’s involvement. Research by Dr Ron Roberts…published in 2010 suggested that one in four students know someone who had worked in the sex industry to fund their studies – up from three per cent in 1990. Dr Roberts found 16 per cent would consider working in the industry while more than one in 10 were open to the idea of being an escort. Research by Teela Sanders and Kate Hardy, of the University of Leeds, found that a quarter of lap dancers had a degree whilst a third of the women they interviewed were using the job to fund new forms of training…
Coed sex workers have never been rare; they’re just more apt to admit it these days, which is good for everybody. The funniest part of the article is that its clueless author appears to believe the claims of the con-man behind “Sponsor A Scholar”.
The Course of a Disease (TW3 #8)
Prohibitionists are furious that the Israeli legislature allowed the wildly-unpopular (opposed by 59% of Israelis) Swedish model to die in committee, but what makes this prohibitionist op-ed entitled “Prostitution in Israel: Myth vs Reality” so interesting (if nauseating) is that it completely inverts the two, labeling myths as “facts” and vice-versa. One wonders how people manage to make it through life in such a deeply-delusional state.
Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (TW3 #20)
Despite a few good advance hints, the news about DSM-V is mostly bad:
…The [APA] has given its final approval to a deeply flawed DSM 5 containing many changes that seem clearly unsafe and scientifically unsound…Fortunately, some of its most…unsupportable proposals were eventually dropped under great external pressure (most notably…internet and sex addiction…) But…DSM 5 will start a half or dozen or more new fads which will be detrimental to the misdiagnosed individuals and costly to our society…
Dr. Frances’ list of the ten worst changes includes DMDD; the redefinition of normal grief into “Major Depressive Disorder”, the normal forgetfulness of old age into “Minor Neurocognitive Disorder”, and gluttony into “Binge Eating Disorder”; and (most dangerously) the introduction of “use disorders”, essentially “Behavioral Addictions that…can…make a mental disorder of everything we like to do a lot.”
One Born Every Minute (TW3 #48)
The man uncovered as running a “sex for tuition fees” website…[was] secretly filmed…[and identified as] Mark Lancaster, but when contacted by a television programme refused to speak about the Sponsor a Scholar scheme…
The Course of a Disease (TW3 #48)
Dr. Brooke Magnanti vs. Rhoda Grant on this week’s Sunday Politics Scotland.
This Week in 2010 and 2011
Beside a two-part column on the myth that most whores are enslaved by pimps, this week also featured posts on Barbie, Saint Nicholas, toys, the Salvation Army, my favorite bands and albums, “sex addiction”, sugar daddy sites and the bizarre pretense that historical courtesans were not prostitutes. We also saw articles on the anti-whore hostility of Canadian “authorities”, the lack of outrage when criminals use Craigslist to commit non-sex related crimes, and why ignorance really is bliss for some people, and I gave advice to a young man who wanted to “rescue” a hooker.
Prosecutor Roger Hanlon doesn’t regard an armed police officer in uniform threatening a woman with arrest if she doesn’t suck him off as meeting the criteria of “forcible compulsion”?!! Absolutely bizarre. In Italy, not paying a prostitute the agreed price for sex is legally considered rape. Obviously the decision not to charge Jensen with first-degree sodomy has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that he was cop and ex-Marine who served in Iraq and his victim was a whore.
They didn’t teach him how to be an asshole in the Marine Corps.
Anyway – I still don’t like the way this went down. She only got $5K – and that’s chump change. The city gets off virtually scott-free. Until these cases start becoming uber-expensive to law enforcement agencies and the cities and states that employ them – don’t expect for anything to change.
“One of our cops took liberties with a whore … it cost us less than $5,000!”
You can bet they’re laughing their asses off.
Even then, there’s no incentive for change. It’s not the perpetrators themselves that are paying, but the tax-payer.
I agree, but the reality is he probably has more to lose financially if his wife divorces. I’m sure there would have been a very different outcome if the victim was a high school football player pulled over for speeding.
Whether he did or didn’t learn to be a rapist in the USMC, whether he was or wasn’t suffering from combat stress at the time, his lawyer was playing the hero card and the Prosecutor seems overly accommodating. I agree on the face of it, the City’s offer to these women is derisory.but she did accept it and probably because she was advised that with a jury award she might not get much more. But what’s more troubling is that a cop/rapist was allowed to plea to a lesser charge and avoided serious jail time, and both the mayor and prosecutor are satisfied with that outcome.
Agree with all. Just one note though – only an idiot would buy the “combat stress” line. If he were under that kind of stress – it should have been identified in his psyche eval when he joined LE. It really pisses me off to see people use PTSD to excuse their crimes. I don’t have a problem with them playing the “hero” card if he had that going for him. But judges and juries need to realize that a “hero” on one day – doth not make a “hero” on any other. I’d actually like to see his military service record too as it probably indicates something toward a tendency for this kind of behavior.
I agree. His defence lawyer Mike Staropoli argued “There’s a generation of soldiers who are experiencing things half a world away that are affecting them very deeply,” and that his behaviour was a “very embarrassing” isolated incident and “an anomaly”, which sounds more like he got caught masturbating in his patrol car than forced oral copulation. And even if he is emotionally scarred, this would be mitigation (Jensen committed this criminal offence because…) as opposed to a defence (Jensen is not guilty of this criminal offence because…). so it should have no bearing on the charges against him.
I think that both the cop, the department and the city should get hit hard. To make them realize that they do have skin in the game. And it should follow with a consent decree that the department doesn’t get a higher budget – they have to pay the fine out of current monies – until the fine is paid. Ditto the city – no tax increases until the debt is satisfied.
Plus, this kind of case is what makes me laugh at the ass-hats that claim, “Well, cops are held to a higher standard and are given harder sentences!” Well, bullshit. The only time that happens is if the cop in question pissed off someone in the hierarchy or made themselves such a political liability that it’s easier to bring the hammer down on the cop than to try to explain to the citizenry why what he was doing conformed to department procedures. Especially if it looks like the cush jobs of the politicians are threatened.
“I think it’s extremely important for women who don’t love the work to come out, because I honestly believe they’re the majority. Everybody hears from the ‘happy hookers’ and the ‘survivors’, but…for most of the women I’ve known it was a job like any other, with its own advantages and disadvantages…”
That’s completely true for me, and the reason that I separate my work and activist personas – so that I can say so without driving away clients. I like the flexibility, the being my own boss – mostly – but the actual work itself? Pfft. Not a turn-on. Not a fun adventure. Just turning up to a job, and doing your best.
It’s more important that the cases become expensive to the individual cops. Cops don’t care how much their behaviour costs the cities, the taxpayers pay. Only when they, like other “professionals” can be personally sued for malpractice, will that change.
I agree it should be more expensive to the individual but there’s always going to be “warped” minds out there wearing uniforms. The agencies that employ them need to pay too – so that they have some skin in the game to watch these freaks.
As far as “malpractice suits” … good luck. A cop doesn’t make quite the salary as a Doctor does. Basically any judgement against a cop is going to have him running to a bankruptcy filing. I know people who file for bankruptcy at the drop of a hat – I don’t think there is any real “stigma” behind it anymore unfortunately. It’s not a bad idea to make the crooked ones pay in this manner – it’s probably diligence that should be paid – but in the end it won’t amount to much.
RE: An Educated Idiot:
As someone who manages research funds for various contracts, I have no concept of “losing” or otherwise being unable to account for a quarter of a million dollars. Most of the grants I manage are a fraction of that size to start with (sex work survey would run ~$50,000 in most ambitious form). It’s flabbergasting that, as it was happening, no one raised their hand and said “so where did $X go last month?”.
RE: Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (TW3 #20)
Ugh. This stuff is so unquestioned among psychologists that I have hard time discussing it with them. Why does everything need a diagnosis? Why doesn’t a patient turning up and saying, “I have a problem with X – please help” suffice?
They make a diagnosis so they can bill the insurance company.
With the total cost of a 4 year degree upward of £80k ($128k), and most graduates leave without a job, savings or any source of income. So of course more students will consider prostitution. It’s one of the only part-time jobs that a 18-22 year old girl could realistic expect to earn over £20k a year. But she doesn’t have to go to uni and most prostitutes are not uni students.
Colleges are driving these women into prostitution with their socialist system which values an engineering or scientific degree the same as a liberal arts degree.
Why does anyone pay the same money for a degree in “Women and Gender Studies” as an egghead pays for an EE? The libby arts grads aren’t going to be paying off their expenses quite as effectively when they graduate (without a job).
As a guy who attended college for like, two semesters, majoring in “girls” … I’ve never been able to understand this. This seems like going to a car dealership and purchasing a Volkswagen Beetle for the same cash as the dealer charges for a Porsche.
So I think these colleges are “trafficking” these co-eds in liberal arts programs by forcing them to pay punitively high prices for a degree that they’ll end up having to pay for on their backs.
I know the above sounds like a rant but believe me – I have my tongue in my cheek right now! 🙂
I couldn’t agree more. I’m writing a post about university degrees at the moment. Obviously, if Unis are forcing women
to face the economic realities of doing a degreeinto prostitution, it’s not intentional. 🙂i said it before and ill say it again.Brits should first have a moral panic about the idiotic youngsters who visit greek islands and puke all over passers by shoes,have orgies in the streets and the next day visit the local clinics to get the morning after pill,with the very high chance to have gotten a disease,even AIDS and the reputation this gives to the country to foreign people(the stereotype of the British tourist in Greece is a drunken idiot,who has fainted in the street or shows his ass to the camera).And Brits who sport this behavior are more than the percentage of students in the sex industry.I find it lauphable that they consider the bar job for minimum wage not being out of financial desperation but they welcome it so much.students would prefer the univerity to be free and every other expense they have to be paid by their parents(unless someone doesnt want anyone to support them,because they want to be totally independent).thats what many would prefer to sex work.but saying how sad it is that they dont do a minimum wage job,which most people do out of desperation is just ridiculous.as for that professors findings, its not just because of austerity.its not something rare or unheard of.its because as Maggie says sex workers are now more open.and what he says about how sad it is that people with money take advantage of vulnerable women,thats exactly what i say about every capitalist boss on the planet,but unfortunately people that work for them cant have someone to express the sadness of it,because their exploitation has nothing to do with sex,so its perfectly moral.maybe we should spill our tears about the poor girl who works twelve hours for 500 euros per month in a factory,so that women with money can have their expensive fur coats and luis vuitton bags,but we reserve them for the girl who earns this amount in a day for far less hours just because she does the worst thing that can ever happen to a woman;have sex with someone shes not married to.
You need to patent the phrase, “A load of Farley”. And it could have a broader application than merely sex trade advocacy.
I’m not kidding. This phrase should enter the culture. Just look up “Santorum”.
It’s not originally my phrase, I’m afraid; I borrowed it from Brandy Devereaux.
Typical prohibitionist drivel from Grant. The idea of “screw your free choice because others are being exploited”…imagine applying that to everything in life? Ha! Talk about a collapse of civilization.
Good point.
That’s exactly what the left does, when applied to smoking, food choices, and the like. It won’t surprise me if ten years from now, that funny comparison of sex to food needs to be used in the opposite direction, as an argument for freedom to choose your own diet.
It’s also what the right does, in terms of sex, speech, oh some of the same stuff as the left I’d bet a dollar to a hole in a donut.
BTW, smoking and food choices are still legal, while hooking rolling are not, so the right is more successful at criminalizing its pet peeves than the left is.
Hi Maggie,
Harvey Silverglate’s piece on the San Antonio 4 was a sobering recollection of past and on-going injustice in the satanic panic arena. An acquaintance of mine saw the same thing happen in Wenatchee, WA and the parallels to Salem were interesting in that the circle of accusations continually widened to obviate the attempts of character witnesses to stem the abuse of power and that it only ended when the girls in question started to accuse members of the power elite.
Paul Craig Roberts, though a conservative of sorts, had much the same thing to say on the topic – specifically using the Wenatchee event – here.
Like Harvey Silverglate, he also criticized the George HW Bush and Clinton administrations in 2000 for their destruction of due process in this piece by Peter Brimelow and has since criticized George W. Bush and the Obama administrations for doubling down on the destruction of civil liberties. He blames “an unholy alliance between business-hating liberals and crime-hating social conservatives” for the breakdown and points out that modern jurisprudence is in the process of destroying the Blackstonian basis of American legal rights that underpinned the US notions of due process including the coercive aspects of plea-deals and the like. He also finds the War on Drugs and the War on Terror accelerating the trend.
And like Silverglate, though somewhat before his “Three Felonies a Day,” Roberts had this to say about his former associates.
“They may have dented crime,” he says of his former allies, “but they’ve dented justice, too. With sweeping criminal laws the prosecutor can find some technical charge to hang on just about anybody.”
The website you link to is shutting down. After looking it over, I can’t say that I’m sorry.
I don’t agree with Paul Craig Roberts on most of his stuff. But he was before his time – at least among conservatives or former conservatives – in pointing out that the consequences of the War on Drugs reinvigorated by the Elder Bush and Ronald Reagan would be to undermine the Bill of Rights and to destroy liberty wholesale. So when he is right, I’ll acknowledge that even if he needs a solid intellectual kick in the teeth on all others.
In addition, he was one of the few commentators who was pointing out that the wenatchee panic was just more of the same while everyone else was still jumping on the bandwagon. And for that he deserves kudos as well.
It’s a little bit like the Waco atrocity. I was no fan of Koresh, but for chrissakes, we’re going to give law enforcement a pass for a military style assault on a church including firing from helicopters into unknown targets when it is on record that Koresh invited the BATF in to inspect his inventory at any time they cared to come – without a warrant, no less. And when gov’t force apologists on both the left and the right tried to blame the victim.
Roberts has shown some integrity in his opposition to the war on terror and all the abuses it has brought in its train. So however much I dislike his other stances, I’ll still tip the hat to him for that.
Anyway, that’s my rant for the day. Not actually directed at you, though Sailor. 😉
Dear C andrew, speaking of Paul Craig Roberts, you may want to check out a group called the “Council for National Policy” that he’s been in.
I do believe in giving credit where it is due, even if it’s to people I don’t much like for one reason or another. I’ve had to give occasional “thumbs up” to such as Pat Robertson and George W. Bush.
As far as pleading prior war experience to get out of rape charges goes…the Ranger company clerk who earned a Silver Star in Mogadishu is currently serving thirty years in military prison for raping his pre-teen daughter. (In the movie, the real guy was replaced with another, named “Grimes.” Those familiar with the flick should know who I mean…the guy who was always brewing coffee.) Guess the military is a little harder to snow than a civilian jury.
Thanks for mentioning the tragic injustice of false accusations of child sexual abuse. Some idiots now want to consider bathing a child over four as sexual abuse. http://sexhysteria.wordpress.com Even though I don’t usually comment, I do read your blog every day and often visit the sites you link to.
Speaking of Israel, what do you think of their definition of rape? (Men have been convicted of rape there for lying about their religion or ethnicity. Give me a break!)
Religion and ethnicity is the very essence of Israel. So I can easily see the path in their culture for this definition to be applied.
Maggie, I watched that video you linked to. That was not a fair argument. Magnanti had all the facts, and poor Grant had to fight with whatever she could make up. Now really!
Governors need to just start pardoning anybody still in prison for ritual Satanic abuse. Unless it can be shown that the prisoner committed a real crime with no connection to the Global Satanist Conspiracy, the prisoner should go free.
I look forward to seeing American Courtesans.