The laws just don’t make sense. They don’t help sex workers. They don’t protect sex workers. They increase their risks and they make it harder for them to do their jobs. – Chris Bruckert
Ugandan men are even worse about condoms than American and European ones; the sex workers interviewed for this article say that only about 20% of clients will agree to use one, even when the worker tells them she is HIV+. The problem is that many workers there will provide bareback (“live” in Ugandan slang) on demand, so a woman who insists on condoms is at a competitive disadvantage.
A New Zealand court has sentenced a man to three months in prison for downloading cartoon porn. Ronald Clark has previous convictions for sexually abusing a minor, but the Japanese hentai he watched…[involved only] drawings…[and these were not even of humans, but rather] “elves and pixies, which led to concerns the images were linked to child sexual abuse…“
Heidi Fleiss…is…helping to renovate Dennis Hof’s Love Ranch…in Crystal, Nevada… “this…was very similar to a women’s penitentiary…You had to go through all these weird bars and buzzers, and someone’s peering out the little peephole, scoping you up and down… It was really a creepy feeling.” [Fleiss says she wants the brothel to be] “…not the dirty little secret where people drive up and sneak in…and then afterwards they’re full of shame…It’s something where people are so proud to be here, not only do they come back, but bring their friends back.”
In The Client List…Jennifer Love Hewitt plays a struggling housewife who takes a rub-down side job in order to support her kids after her husband disappears. The show…has always struck us as more campy nonsense than an accurate portrayal of the erotic massage business. But how could we tell? We asked an escort to watch the show and help us tell fact from fiction…
Young people being pragmatic and sensible about sex? We can’t have that!
…around 85 per cent of sexually active teens in the Bahamas are engaging in some kind of transactional sex…the majority of middle and high schoolers…are not sexually active. But of those who are, the majority are involved in risky behaviour…Transactional sex…differs from prostitution in the sense that only a portion of the needs of the person providing the sex are met through the practice…“Many young people put themselves through high school and college in this way…They feel that if a man wants to deal with them he has to pay in some way and they are not prostituting themselves by doing this,” [NGO official Prodesta] Moore said…
Somehow I doubt an American court would accept “this isn’t prostitution because I have another source of income” as a defense.
First They Came for the Hookers…
What selfless devotion to duty! Several different Oklahoma “law enforcement” agencies partied for four months at a strip club in order to “keep the citizens safe” from the scourge of private, consensual sex!
A Coweta strip club was busted on prostitution charges…Cherokee County deputies [investigated] the Secret Cavern strip club [for] a total of four months…[Alcohol Beverage Laws Enforcement Commission] agent [Pedro] Zardeneta…[said] “different agencies from different parts of the state worked well together to keep the citizens safe”…
Dear “Sex Trafficking” Fetishists, please keep up the good work; we couldn’t possibly make y’all look as ridiculous as y’all make yourselves look:
Dear Michelle Obama…you were recently quoted as saying that Beyonce is a great “role model” to your two daughters…I think it’s time to stop suggesting to very young girls that ultimate feminine success…comes with the…expectation for them to undress…Variations of Beyonce’s body suit can be found in brothels, strip clubs and red light districts across the world – where sex is for sale…Remember that in the USA, the average age of a girl when she is trafficked for sex for the first time is 13…by drug dealers who promise her a celebrity lifestyle, clothes like the ones Beyonce wears…we are feeding a demonic myth that women must make themselves sexually available to enjoy ultimate success…It can take years of a young girl’s life away from her when she tries to escape a life of abuse at home…only to be sold for sex, beaten, and made addicted to drugs…
A study conducted by a University of Ottawa criminology professor has confirmed what sex workers and those in the industry have said and known for years — the laws meant to protect sex workers from exploitation by targeting people who work in the industry but don’t actually do sex work end up putting those who do at much greater risk…These could include drivers…security personnel…website designers or photographers…receptionists…or the more traditional pimps or madams…Under current Canadian laws, all of those people, even the ones doing jobs that have mainstream counterparts, could be criminally charged…[despite the fact that] anything a third party could do to exploit a sex worker is already illegal if it were done to someone else…
Another sign of the decay of “sex trafficking” hysteria: even the most ignorant, dysphemism-riddled “sex trafficking” scare story chock-full of bogus statistics (“About one-third [of runaways] will be approached by a sex trafficker within 48 hours…the average life span for victims is seven years“) may admit to some real truth these days; this one, for example, recognizes that “pimps” don’t abduct screaming girls from their middle-class homes. It will be interesting to watch as they start contradicting each other.
…Jules Kim – migration project manager at Scarlet Alliance…told the [federal] inquiry into slavery and human trafficking…[that] the current “scatter-gun” approach in which police look for trafficking victims by raiding Asian brothels was an “enormous waste of time, resources and misdirected energy…that has resulted in a gap between law enforcement bodies and…sex industry workers…People change the nature of their work to avoid that harassment…because constant raids on your business have an implication…None of the cases involved deception or trickery of the fact the person would be doing sex work. Instead of an evidence-based approach addressing real vulnerabilities, Australia’s approach continues to try to detect the mythical trafficking victim and trafficker that is a media-driven stereotype”…
According to a report released in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, watching porn only affects [young adult] sexual behavior in a negligible way. Other influences such as personality type, educational and family background and poverty hold more girth than viewing sexually explicit material. The study…surveyed 4,600…people between the ages of 15 and 25 living in the Netherlands during 2008-2009…
Another Small Victory (TW3 #133)
The fight in the SCOTUS over the “anti-prostitution pledge” began Monday. On the side of Good: The Open Society Foundation, the ACLU, the Cato Institute, the Gates Foundation and even such unlikely supporters as Fox News, the New York Times and MSNBC. On the side of Evil: The usual suspects, including the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. Here’s Melissa Gira Grant’s look at the battle-lines as they were set up on Monday; note the important point that the whole thing has been framed as a question of free speech (hence the support of otherwise-hostile media outlets) rather than a referendum on the rectitude of the War on Whores. No matter which way this goes, the persecution will go on until our “allies” stop vomiting out moronic filth like “Sex work is everywhere. It is a brutal system. It is an exploitative system. Nobody thinks it’s OK.”
An excellent article, though I must point out that only someone hopelessly mired in the “left-right” myth could seriously consider Iceland “ultra-liberal”:
Ultra-liberal Iceland wants to ban online pornography…[as] the latest step in its attempts to eliminate the sex industry entirely. In 2009 it introduced fines and jail terms for those who patronise prostitutes (whom it treats as victims). In 2010 it outlawed strip clubs…No country has yet wholly succeeded in controlling commercial sex, either through legalisation or criminalisation…Iceland’s proposal is in its early stages and may lose momentum after an election on April 27th, which the government is expected to lose. But its plan puts it in some odd company. Saudi Arabia similarly bans strip clubs, prostitution and pornography…Prostitution has proved hard…to police and stamp out…[but] regulating pornography is hardest of all. Distributing and selling it has been illegal in Iceland since 1869…[but] a ban would be legally dubious, technically unfeasible and ineffective, argues Smari McCarthy…of the International Modern Media Institute…In an open letter to Ogmundur Jonasson, the interior minister, he and other opponents compared banning online pornography to repression in China, Iran and North Korea. Iceland’s constitution forbids censorship…and…Studies in America, Denmark, Germany…Sweden…China, Finland and Japan…show that as pornography became increasingly available, the number of rapes in those countries remained stable or even decreased…
Anatomy of a Boondoggle (TW3 #314)
Florida rapists are cleverer, excusing themselves via the moral panic du jour:
…Police in Florida [went nude] during an undercover prostitution investigation at a Hallandale Beach massage parlor…and…arrested three women…attorney…Howard Finkelstein…said. “It is seedy, back-alley, icky, and we don’t want our cops doing that, especially so when it’s meaningless.” But Florida ranks third in the nation in the number of reported cases of human trafficking…”This is not just an act of solicitation, but an organized crime effort,” [said] Police Chief Dwayne Flournoy…”It is not just a street-walker. It is a more sophisticated operation…”
The More the Better (TW3 #314)
She hated it so very much that she married a client and went on to own a brothel. That’s deep hatred, y’all!
Linda Fondren, a mayoral candidate in Vicksburg, Miss., not only admits to a past life in prostitution, she says her husband was one of her Johns. “I was a working girl in a legal brothel over 30 years ago. It’s true, my husband was my client…[we’ve] been married for 28 years”…Fondren tried to hold off making that admission for weeks…she…[says] she only did it to support herself after she got pregnant at age 14 and…her mom died of cancer…“I hated it. I hated it.” She also said that she would not support legal prostitution if elected…
That last bus-throwing line earns her a nomination for my Hall of Shame, though she’ll have to be still more disgusting to actually be inducted.
Held Together With Lies (TW3 #316)
Step 1: Define some normal behavior as a problem. Step 2: Redefine it so you can claim it’s “growing”. Step 3: Increase “regulation” so as to narrow the bottleneck for “legal” behavior:
After years of dispute, Germany’s center-right governing coalition has agreed to enact tougher penalties for human trafficking and forced prostitution…and [to] more strictly regulate the commercial activities of brothels…brothel operators will need special authorization…authorities will be required to enforce hygienic standards and operators will be screened for prior criminal offences…recently, a report by the European Union…showed that human trafficking in Europe has risen sharply.
Step 4 (early next year): Complain that “criminality” has increased, and repeat step 3. Proceed until full criminalization is achieved.
Down near the end of this article about another idiotic and dangerous “sex trafficking” law is a reason for hope: “A bill focused on tightening punishments for pimps…[which] would require some to register as sex offenders, is progressing in [Texas]…Opponents believe the…requirement for sex offender registration may overwhelm an ‘overly broad database that includes too many offenders who are not threats to the community’…” In other words, these opponents recognize the “pimp menace” as hype and the “sex offender registry” as far too large. The same could be said for the reporter covering this story in which a Florida police department is claiming that the law says it “has to” humiliate so-called “sex predators” with huge red warning signs in their yards; she seems extremely skeptical of these theatrics, and asks a number of very sensible questions which the police chief of course answers dishonestly and smugly.
I want to thank you keeping an eye on all this. it is clear that while everyone thinks they are doing good in all this the end result is people in danger.
Hey Maggie, on “The More the Better (TW3 #314)” you wrote: “She hated it so very much that she married a client and went on to own a brothel. ”
Unless you have a separate source, I wasn’t seeing where she “went on to own a brothel”?
Other than that, I largely agree with your take on these issues. Again and again criminalizing sex work demonstrably produces the opposite of its intended result. However, there *are* examples of “sex trafficking” and “child sexual abuse”. Would you content that legalizing sex work would reduce “forced trafficking and abuse” or would you contend that (and least some of) these are criminal activities that would occur in *any* event, and that they are unrelated? For example, the Catholic Church has a centuries long history of torture (Spanish Inquisition) and (recently) the covering up of rampant child sex abuse, yet no one calls for the abolishment of the Catholic Church.
With rare exception, every item in a TW3 column has a title which relates back to an earlier post; clicking on the title will open a window to that referenced item. Sometimes in my comments, I refer back to information presented in that earlier text; this is one such case.
Coerced prostitution is almost entirely enabled by laws on the subject; see “Enabling Oppression” and “Bottleneck“. The single most important truth about prohibition of any kind (which is always ignored by prohibitionists) is that it does not stop the prohibited thing, but merely creates a black market in which the thing is provided by criminals rather than legal businesses.
Thanks, I missed the reference to her having owned the Sagebrush Ranch. Remarkable. It’s one thing for her to claim regret (and to say she “hates” it), but to do so after having owned and profited from a brothel — wow. There are born-again Christians in the same soup, but still. Seems her hatred of sex work is (what’s the word?) expedient?
//The single most important truth about prohibition of any kind (which is always ignored by prohibitionists) is that it does not stop the prohibited thing, but merely creates a black market in which the thing is provided by criminals rather than legal businesses.//
Capitalism at work. Curious how the same politicians who extol the sanctity of private enterprise, on the one hand, think that they can dictate access to or control the market for drugs and sex — arguably humanity’s two most ancient commodities.
See No Evil:
It is really worrying when people are prosecuted (and persecuted) for viewing cartoons and reading comics.
When you consider children are also being expelled from school for drawing pictures of guns, and people are being arrested for having an inappropriate expression or for being fidgety, we are getting perilously close to the prosecution of thought crime.
What’s next? Electronic detection of erections and vaginal moisture in public places?
Erections, yes, vaginal moisture, no. If a woman gets aroused in public, that’s “empowerment”; if a man does, that’s “creepy” and “deviant.”
It’s only empowerment if she gets aroused for approved reasons. Otherwise it’s “off with her head” because she’s a “self-hating womyn.”
For this, too, is “feminism.” (Amazing how much it reminds me of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.)
Somewhat on topic, Sarah Hoyt, a scifi writer once replied to a publisher’s comment that “you don’t write like a woman” by writing, “no, because those parts of my anatomy are grossly unsuitable for typing…”
Re: Held Together With Lies
I can only guess how German authorities will “enforce hygienic standards”. When people ask “what’s so bad about requiring prostitutes to be examined in a legalisation scenario”, THAT, among other issues, is why.
I probably don’t say this enough Maggie, but thanks for creating this Oasis of Sanity in the Mad Tea Party that is the Internet. (You have no idea how many times I flee to your blog after reading some other Websites out there.)
You’re very welcome; I honestly mean it when I say it’s my pleasure. 🙂
<3 Love you, Maggie.
In the “big red warning signs” link, the last Q&A is incredibly revealing (and makes me think this county somehow elected their *least* qualified non-criminal resident as sheriff):
But when you were a kid, wouldn’t you have totally gone to a house with one of those signs and all the lights off?
I didn’t even like going to the scary movies when I was a kid, let alone going to scary houses. Nobody had to tell me that I had to be careful. And in this day and age, kids are much smarter and heed warnings better than I did when I was growing up.
Please, let’s cure HIV, and while we’re at it cure a few more things, so that this whole condom thing becomes irrelevant. In the meantime, guys, wear the frikkin’ rubber, will ‘ya?
Well, there goes my image of New Zealand as some sort of magic land, where one might almost expect to find Elves… and Hobbits.
Well, good on Heidi. Brothels should be places people enjoy going to even before the sex happens.
I suppose a series where a woman becomes a sex worker as a last resort due to economic desperation, but is neither a cold bitch nor a helpless victim, is better than a lot of the other images out there.
It seems that the problem isn’t that the girls are getting paid, but that they offer bareback if the client is a nice guy, because hey, a nice guy wouldn’t have HIV, right? So back to my first paragraph.
Oklahoma might as well be Texas most of the time.
So… Michelle Obama lets Sasha and Malia watch Beyonce, so when the girls reach thirteen they’re going to run away from the White House and becomes slaves to a pimp because, you know, drugs and pretty clothes. OK wait… Malia should already be on some street corner servicing thirty clients a night in a brothel thanks to the international pimp network which… I think my head just exploded. Fortunately, Michelle still has ONE YEAR to save Sasha from this fate worse than death.
It seems the Canadians know that “casting a spell around” prostitutes does as much damage as casting the spell on prostitutes. They just need to get their elected leaders to stop pretending that they don’t know it.
It’s always a sign of hope when the jihadi start killing each other. But they could always reunite if the right story or common enemy appeared.
Yeah, that’s the way to get the Asian community to work with the police: raid their businesses. Gee, don’t know why they don’t like the police more.
Because teenagers aren’t as stupid as we like to think. They can watch Iron Man 3 and know that you can’t buy your own power armor, and they can watch porn and know that this is also a fantasy. And BTW, that also holds for twenty-somethings.
It’ll be interesting to see how SCOTUS deals with this.
Censorship has never really worked before the Internet. It sure as hell doesn’t work now that we have it.
Vice cop must be one of the most fun jobs in the world… if you have no morals at all.
I could certainly see a single, fourteen year old mom whose mother had just died of cancer taking up a job she hates out of desperation. But that doesn’t really carry over to owning a brothel. At this point, you can afford to buy a McDonald’s franchise or something, if you hate prostitution so much.
I can see how a country that’s doing it wrong has trouble changing, because change can be difficult. Why is that countries that are doing it right are so willing to change over to doing it wrong?
We may soon have the answer to the question, “Just how overblown and ridiculous does something have to get before we realize that it’s overblown and ridiculous.”
[…] “crisis pregnancy”] centers…is urging the United States Supreme Court to overturn a federal pledge against prostitution. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the Christian Legal Society are doing the same. […]