I rolled my eyes so hard, I think I saw my brain. – Aspasia Bonasera
The typical American news article on sex work is astonishingly ignorant, repeats police idiocy and “sex trafficking” hysterics without a hint of skepticism, focuses on the lurid and is sprinkled liberally with either New York Post-style tabloid inanities such as “sexcapades” or pearl-clutching Victorianisms such as “illicit” and “selling their bodies”. A minority are written by old-school skeptical journalists who see through most of the propaganda and generally advocate prostitution be “legalized, taxed and heavily regulated”. Then there are the Chicken Lickens who seem to believe hooking was a rare aberration until the appearance of Craigslist, the “feminist” journalists who couldn’t be more uptight if they had been educated in a convent, the would-be allies who yet insist that no woman does sex work voluntarily, and the rare (usually but not always libertarian) journalist who really does get it.
But every so often one encounters a chimera seemingly stitched together out of spare parts from all the other types by some journalistic Frankenstein, and one is forced to wonder if the author A) really believes all of his seemingly-contradictory positions simultaneously; B) actually has some coherent set of beliefs and is just incredibly bad at expressing himself; C) is trolling his readers or playing an elaborate practical joke; or D) typed his article under the influence of some pharmaceutical substance which may or may not have been criminalized yet. I recently encountered one of these in Huffington Post, and as I read it I alternated between confusion, annoyance, painfully severe eye-rolling and open-mouthed incredulity. So I saved the link and halfway forgot about it, then a week or so later asked myself “Why did I save this?” And then I read it again, and answered, “Oh, yeah, that’s why.” Judge for yourself; I have tried to distill it down somewhat into a more concentrated Essence of Bewilderbeast, but if you have masochistic tendencies you might want to read the whole thing.
…there’s always going to be a demand for prostitutes willing to sell their bodies for a fee. Like illicit drug use, until it becomes legal, prostitution will continue unabated, unregulated, uncontrolled and untaxed…there [also] will [always] be occasional, much publicized sweeps of prostitutes and johns in some seedy section of a city…[and] righteous state legislators…introducing virtuous bills targeting some aspect of this socially unacceptable behavior.
…Florida’s Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who has been described as not “just a local enforcer of laws but a more universal arbiter of morals,” announced that a four-day prostitution sting had netted 78 arrests that included porn stars. He…said, “We seemed to have every thug and reprobate in central Florida under arrest… Let the word go forward, this is not our last operation, because we like it”…Those morality raids are time tested…political “tricks” for politicians…to remind the public how well they are protecting the community from morally [sic] depravity. And in this virtuous state of Florida, the latest moral flavor of the month is a new campaign…to crack down on…massage [parlors]…where virtual sex slaves, many of them children, are alleged to work long hours…while being held captive on the premises…human trafficking is a serious problem that, unlike prostitution per se, deserves much more sophisticated action than the ineffective political gimmickry used to address pimps and street walkers [sic]…While prostitution is a moral crime that will always continue in one form or another and should be legalized, sanitized, taxed and controlled, human slavery…can’t be tolerated at all…Human trafficking in the U.S. is exploding, and Florida, along with Texas and California, are hotbeds for human slavery…leaning on massage parlors is neither the answer nor a good start to free Florida’s slaves…
The author is a lawyer and a “communications strategist” (whatever the hell that means), and is apparently paid real money to write incoherent rubbish (assuming this is a typical example of his “work”). I know that Florida has essentially become the madhouse for this local region of the multiverse, but I had no idea it was this bad. Still, perhaps that’s a good thing; as potty as America has grown it could only be worse if the Florida Froot Loops were evenly distributed across the rest of the country rather than concentrated on a long stretch of un-submerged continental shelf getting skin cancer together.
I am jealous of the brilliant last line.
That is a high compliment indeed! 🙂
The thing about Florida, is that there are also tons of brothels operating pretty openly down here. There’s one up the street from where I work, for example. Now, it may advertise itself as a “relaxation spa” but why is it putting those advertisements in the escort section of Backpage? (I haven’t been, but only because I promised my lady I wouldn’t.)
I used to practically haunt the infamous Drew Park area of Tampa (I have some pretty great memories of those days, for some reason I always preferred brothels to outcall, maybe it was because if the rooms weren’t nicer, they were at least more entertaining).
Oh, and… ugh:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/tampa-police-announce-new-rule-to-fight-prostitution/1215827
This is targeted at street prostitution.
Yeah, liked that last line. Actually, the quoted article looks like just some more of the same garbage you see every day, badly paraphrased to hide where he plagiarized it from. (Maggie, you can dump the one with the wrong name.)
As a Polk Counry resident, all I have to say is fuck Grady Judd. He is just a publicity whore, but he is really popular here.
Six-Gun Grady Judd, the redneck daddy you crave.
I went ahead and read the full article before getting to your excerpts and comments and while understanding your disgust about the acceptance of the trafficking creed think you might not understand the reasons for inclusion.
There are a large number of moral, conservatives that simply accept that the trafficking stories are real. Due to my having retired to the south eastern bible belt area of our country it is all to obvious how many people have been misled by these stories and take them as fact.
So while I love your blog and totally agree that these types of people just just need to give up on their fantasies about the guy in the sky punishing us for our disbelief, it is also realized that I cannot get them to completely change their world view. Whether due to weakness, indoctrination or a multitude of other reasons they rely on the idea of being saved and a parent figure making their world safe.
So in my opinion this article actually does a good job of speaking to these types of people and starting them towards understanding that while they may not agree with the sin (of prostitution) they are not going to stop the trafficking (which I agree with you is a very minor problem) by attacking the sinners. Perhaps we should consider it as a kind of harm reduction and getting the religious right to take baby steps towards changing their opinions. Because there are just to many that are not going to be willing to listen to you and what I don’t deny are the facts of the situation because of what you have done and where your opinions come from. So if it is possible to get them to understand that our law enforcement needs to be going after the actual problem and not acting as morals monitors then perhaps it will be possible for them to realize that the real problem is much smaller than has been portrayed and is possible to correct without attacking other members of our society that think and act differently than they do.
While I don’t know if this gentleman is a ‘communications expert’ or not it is obvious to me that his approach is what is needed for his target audience to start coming around to the idea that everything won’t be fixed by an indiscriminate blitzkrieg on traffickers and lumping prostitution in with that group.
You are very good at expressing your views and disseminating information to a certain audience and perhaps this article can speak to those that refuse to listen to you because of their belief systems.
I grew up in the “Bible Belt” and I live here now. This is NOT a “religious right” thing. This is not a “conservative” thing.
Try going to San Francisco and you’ll find an equal number of liberal neo-feminists who will babble the same kind of talk about prostitution as religious conservatives do. The reason sex worker rights are so hard to win – is because both sides of the political spectrum condemn sex workers.
Now, there are people on both ends who believe that prostitution should be decriminalized. I was a “conservative” most of my life and believed that. I know liberals who think likewise. However, when it comes to the major political parties – we don’t control shit (yet) … so the drumbeat of prohibition drones on.
I didn’t say that religious conservatives were the only ones with these beliefs but that the article seemed to be directed towards that group.
Perhaps I did a poor job saying it, but the main point that was attempted to be expressed was that people who are caught in certain belief systems can only be brought to change those beliefs in small steps. We will never convince some that prostitution is okay, but it seemed to me that the articles attempt to separate the fight against trafficking from the dislike of prostitution is a step in the right direction.
The main problem with religious conservatives is that “because God said so” is all the reason they need.
So, unless you can convince them with religious arguments, ideas like, “you’re hurting people” won’t convince them, for did the Lord not hurt people when He rained fire on Sodom and Gomorrah? Did He not hurt people when he drowned them in the Flood? “Job feels the rod, yet blesses God,” to quote a rhyme from my childhood. “And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers,” to quote the Book. I was raised by a religious family, close relatives of mine had taken their vows. The whole prostitution thing was not up for debate, trust me.
Not all conservatives are religious conservatives, though. Neither Goldwater conservatives nor neo-conservatives believe in such things, but they won’t rock the boat if it will cost them the votes of those who are washed in the Blood of the Lamb. (I think that was part of what happened to McCain actually, and Romney wasn’t even considered a Christian by these folks.)
Of course, I’m not sure you can convince neo-feminists, either, but the neo-feminist belief system doesn’t have any gods backing it up.
I don’t think you understand the religious argument against prostitution.
It’s really not that “God said it was wrong.”
Look at the ten commandments … things that God said were “wrong”. Not all of them are against the “law”. The most serious one you could break (the Nuns told me anyways) was … “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.”
Yet – you will not find a significant lobby of Christians and Jews who would criminalize the practice of worshiping other Gods. The same goes for adultery – I don’t know of any mainstream Christians who want to criminalize adultery in the current day.
Most Christians do understand that the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Man are two separate things. Jesus even said … “Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”. So there is plenty of liturgy in CHRISTIAN scripture which argues for the separation of church and state.
The argument that Christians have against prostitution is complicated – but stems from several things …
1. Their view that women are to be placed on a pedestal and protected from sin and every other evil thing.
2. Their belief that prostitution is damaging to women.
3. Their belief that women are coerced into prostitution.
4. Their belief that prostitution breaks up families (this was the same motivation behind alcohol prohibition in the early 20th century).
5. And finally – Christians in America – in 2013, have a “siege mentality”. Things like gay marriage are reminders to them that they are losing the culture wars – so they “dig in” to their moralistic positions on other things.
I just went back to “bouncing” in bars part time. What I’ve been reminded of – is the fact that … you just don’t throw a guy out of the bar when he gets unruly. Victory – is when you convince him to walk out of the bar on his own. He’ll never do it though if you put him into a siege mentality … challenging him personally.
Christians COULD BE brought around to the anti-prohibition position IF their opponents would stop reveling in watching Christians lose on issue after issue – and instead talk with them.
Talking is NOT what we do in America though. We have political enemies – WE WANT TO BURY THEM.
Don’t believe me? – see Martin Bashir’s comments on Margaret Thatcher today on MSNBC. That’s just one example.
To be honest, I’m not seeing where the confusion arises. (Although I CAN see where some of your other reactions come from…) The author is drawing a line between prostitution (which he essentially says ‘yes, it’s immoral and people don’t like it; tough, because it’s going to exist and you’d better just accept that, rather than think that some self-styled guardian of morality will be able to stop it”) and human trafficking (where the writer falls into the idea that trafficking is common and increasing, rather than a rare occurance.
Because girls who work in massage parlors are NOT “virtual sex slaves”, as he would have known had he spoken to even ONE qualified expert on the subject. Furthermore, he equates all sex work with cop propaganda of streetwalking, calling it a “moral crime”. Presumably, unlike politics. The man is clearly an ignoramus who nonetheless presents himself as an expert, like about 95% of all non-sex workers who write on the subject.
Why do they continue to say this? Hookers pay taxes. In fact, tax returns are used for a number of things – like determining how much a gal can pay for a mortgage on a house. If she doesn’t declare enough income on her federal tax returns – then she’s not eligible for more expensive mortgages.
Every hooker I know has a CPA – and shit, I can’t afford a CPA. Look on ECCIE this time of year and you’ll find all manor of girls “in search of” a CPA who will take “barter” for his services – and they always find someone. In fact, I kind of wish I was a CPA it happens so often.
Most hookers I know are very deligent about filing taxes.
I suspect poor writing again. What he means to say is that prostitution will not be taxed as a profession (through licensing fees, mandatory inspections, etc.), not that prostitutes aren’t taxed in the same manner as everyone else. (Ever since Capone, intelligent people in illegal professions know that if the authorities can’t find anything else, they’ll try to charge tax evasion.)
It is easy to fall into a position of legalization by default as many believe it is the only alternative to full criminalization.
Once they know that decriminalization is an option which is beneficial on all sorts of levels, from personal freedom to public health, they can gradually be brought around.
[…] via I Saw My Brain | The Honest Courtesan. […]
Loved your choice of Hieronymous Bosch. Florida is indeed the garden of earthly delights. Except at times like these, when those drunk on power run amok. Much like here in South Africa. Thank-you for such a well thought out and entertaining blog, Maggie.
I get them impression he doesn’t know what audience he’s writing for, so he just threw it all in.
I think the author doesn’t do a very good job of making his point. I think he has bought into the human sex trafficking myth. But I think what he was trying to say is that the police raids on massage parlours on the false basis and allegation that they are `filled with trafficked children who are virtual sex slaves working long hours…while being held captive on the premises` (paraphrase) are political chicanery to trick the public that they are defending public morals whilst actually being total BS in being a policy fo fight human trafficking and that that needs more sophisticated thinking.
The moral crime statement isn’t helpful, and I can’t quite work out whether it is there for political cover or whether it is a badly made point that “moral” crimes shouldn’t be legislated against or bring the attention of law enforcement; but that might be giving him too much benefit of the doubt.
That is the only reading your excerpts of the article that I can make into any logical or coherent thought pocess.