For the life of me I have never met a person even remotely like the stereotypical pimp, and yet I “know” they exist, largely because I have been told so over and over again. – Brooke Magnanti
Myths don’t just lay down and die; they take a whole lot of killing, and like Rasputin they often get right back up again after one thinks they’re done for. After all, I’m sure most of you who remember the Satanic Panic thought it was gone for good once it was laid to rest in the mid-nineties; you couldn’t have known it would be back a decade later in a new guise. So even though regular readers have watched me hack apart the myth that Nevada is sex work-friendly on several occasions, my axe will not rest until it’s completely dismembered and its mangled bits are burned together with the remains of the sex trafficking hysteria (with which it has become entangled the past few years). The Nevada variety of the panic is even more fixated on the lurid, racist stereotype of the “pimp” than is typical in other places, and that is particularly evident in this article; every passage in which the word appears irresistibly brings into my mind the rather revolting image of a telephone interview in which the reporter-interviewer and cop-interviewee are both masturbating furiously while sharing the fantasy which any sex worker or ethical researcher will tell you has essentially no basis in fact whatsoever despite its popularity with the aforementioned cops and reporters. And now that I’ve infected you with that mindworm, let’s take a look at the work of fiction in question:
There was a time when the term “human trafficking” stirred images of Third World immigrants working their fingers to the bone in sweat shops, sewing the latest fashions at a warehouse in the garment district of some major American city…Over the past decade or so, however, the definition of human trafficking has been evolving to include the women working the bars, strip joints, dance clubs, outcall or escort services, massage parlors and street corners in search of tricks or johns. And now a modern-day abolitionist movement that includes Las Vegas law enforcement officials, the state attorney general’s office, legislators and grass-roots activists — supported in many cases from local pulpits — wants to reclassify the pimps who dominate the world’s oldest profession as modern-day slave traders…
Reporter Tom Ragan wastes no time in packing as many distortions, dysphemisms, euphemisms and other departures from fact as he possibly can in his opening lines. No, there was never a time when “human trafficking” meant sweatshops to the average American; in the ‘90s the term was largely used as a synonym for “people smuggling” (carrying willing but undocumented immigrants across borders for a fee), and when the panic was recycled from the old “white slavery” and Satanic panics by a coalition of neofeminists and religious fundamentalists in the first few years of this century, it was already synonymous with prostitution. The direction of “evolution” in the narrative was from “sex trafficking” to labor trafficking rather than vice-versa, and that happened because governments recognized they could use it as an excuse for restricting immigration. Cops use it as a way to get the feds to pay for their hooker-rolling parties, and prosecutors as a weapon with which to cage people for decades for consensual activities; they both love it as another means of gathering loot and for putting down uppity whores by pretending that we’re “dominated” by pimps despite the fact that few of us have even ever met a pimp, much less been “dominated” by one. But by far the vilest bit of propaganda here is that word “abolitionist”, which is used by prohibitionists to pretend they’re all about “freeing” people when in reality they’re only interested in grinding peaceful adults under their boots and “helping” them into prison. And given the highly-uneven racial application of every kind of prohibitionist law, including those against sex work, the word “abolition” in this context is a slap in the face to black Americans.
The next paragraph lauds AB 67, which I’ve already discussed, and contains this scintillating quote:
“The heat is on the pimps; they’re just users and abusers,” said Alexis Kennedy, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas criminal justice professor…“And it’s important to address them first and foremost. When you reduce the supply, you reduce the business. The places that have been most successful are the ones who go after the customers and the pimps, not the prostitutes.”
Kennedy is either an ignoramus or a liar, and I honestly don’t know which is worse in an academic; there is no evidence that ANY criminalization strategy has ever reduced prostitution, no matter who they “go after”. Any fool could understand this; pimps are so rare that even if the law executed them all there would be no discernible effect on the trade, and since clients are just typical men every “end demand” strategy ends up targeting the hookers again anyhow. “End demand” is effective at one thing, though: reinforcing the legal precedent that women are moral imbeciles who cannot be trusted to make decisions about sex. This is briefly mentioned in the next section of the article, which contains its only good quote:
…Michael Horowitz, the conservative think tank fellow considered the father of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, has even harsher words for what has become of…the anti-trafficking movement…“Now it’s just one big federal entitlement program, and everybody is more worried about where they’re going to get their next grant and whether they are going to get it.”
But that is little more than an aside, and the story soon returns to sexier fare:
…the [Las Vegas] Police Department…painted a grim picture…in a pitch for a federal grant to combat human trafficking: “Trafficking of minor girls to Las Vegas…for the purposes of prostitution, has and continues to be a highly desired destination for pimps”…
After that, the exercise devolves into a succession of hilariously-wrong claims and tortured, pearl-clutching statements. Strip clubs are “where pimps/traffickers lure young women from…around the world to be groomed as ‘Exotic dancers.’ These pimps look to ‘Turn them out’ into a life of prostitution after exposing them to ways to sexualize their interaction with men through exotic dance.” A prohibitionist “appears in churches…to recount horrific stories of abuse by pimps…[but] offers few details.” Touring escorts are said to have been “trafficked into…Las Vegas, their bodies exploited and sold for sex.” The words “daddy”, “family” and “bottom” are said to be “slang associated with prostitution”. The Salvation Army’s profitable ($500,000) slice of the “anti-trafficking” pie is mentioned, and the incestuous interaction between vice cops and fundamentalist churches is described at length. But while the prohibitionists compare whores to Biblical slaves (meaning the Hebrews in Egypt, not the slaves held “justly” by the Hebrews throughout the rest of the book), they ignore the fact that the founder of their religion enjoyed socializing with sex workers, and once said to his own culture’s equivalent of cops and government lawyers: “Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.” Amen.
The book called “Superfreakanomics” pointed out that on average the pimp got more money from the johns to pay for the whores while simultaneously the whores serviced fewer johns than the whores who had no pimps. Maybe pimps are getting an undeserved bad reputation. Maybe pimps deserve a good reputation. What do you think?
1) The term “pimp” is largely meaningless because it is applied by “authorities” and prohibitionists to anyone (of either sex nowadays) who has anything to do with a whore but is not a client; this includes spouses, secretaries, drivers, roommates and even her own dependent kids if they’re over 18.
2) True pimps are extremely rare except among streetwalkers.
3) Only half of streetwalkers actually work with pimps.
4) In over half the cases where a streetwalker works with a pimp, he’s an employee who can be (and often is) fired if he doesn’t do a good job.
5) Where the pimp is the “boss”, most of the time he isn’t abusive or controlling and the woman can walk away just as she can from any other job.
6) The “pimp” myth is largely promoted by neofeminists to advance their agenda and insecure men who need to believe men are in control of whores.
7) As Brooke Magnanti points out in the linked column, the “pimp” narrative is “dog-whistle racism”.
A call girl I knew mentioned she knew a guy who was trying to live out the pimp fantasy that you see in the movies, but from her description he was a pitiful figure trying (and comically failing) to live out an unrealistic ideal. I think she told me about him because she found him so ridiculous. She certainly didn’t find him at all menacing.
You mean, like, a pick-up artist? P^)
I’m fairly close with a few call girls and we talk – a lot. Your description of a pimp is spot on, Maggie.
The most visible kind of pimp I’ve seen is what I refer to as an “empire builder”. He’s someone who likes the lifestyle and managing women – usually he’s a jerk but may not be abusive. He will start out trying to attract a few indy women (or recruit some amateurs) and band them together. He usually handles things for them that they do not wish to attend to – like screening clients and scheduling. He’ll also have a credit card the girls can use and he’ll be pretty liberal about letting them use it in the beginning.
There is one that is well known in the NOLA area … his girls are known as “Elves”. They are a revolving door of 19 – 20 year old women and, from what I’ve seen – they don’t hang around very long. Once his stable empties he disappears for a few months and comes back with new girls that he’s recruited. I won’t patronize any of his girls because I have a bad feeling about the dude – and well, if I can’t bring a bottle of wine to a date without possibly being arrested for facilitating underaged drinking – then I probably have no business getting sexual with a girl that young.
I don’t believe the guy is abusive – but he is “shifty”.
On one occasion, I was a pimp I suppose – by the contemporary definition of it anyway. A girl I know asked me if I would drive her to a call and act as security for the two hours she’d be making it. She was worried about the guy for some reason so she texted me from the room at prearranged times to let me know she was okay. Texting is awesome, a girl can make an excuse to go to the bathroom and text silently from there. Dude was straight up so there were no problems.
My experiences will have to disagree with a few of these statements. I have never met a pimp who was not abusive either physically, emotionally, financially, or some combination. I have met pimps and sex workers that work at high levels, charging 400-500 an hour and staying in very nice hotels across the country. I have never in my life heard about a pimp being “fired.” And if you were ever to mentioned “firing” a pimp to his face there would be repercussions. When you are with a pimp talking to a different pimp or even LOOKING at a man who might be a pimp can be reason enough to be smacked. Just looking at a black man can get you smacked. While it is against pimp rules to force a woman to work for them, if she leaves then she cant take anything with her because everything she gained while working for the pimp belongs to him. If she is leaving him for another pimp, the new pimp has to call the old pimp and let him know that she is working for someone. If a girl leaves to be independent she will be harassed and threatened. Personal information (like where she lives) can be given to other pimps to help persuade her to choose up. (Yes that term is really used.)
The pimps I know travel to different cities recruiting women out of strip clubs. They also place ads in “adult jobs” on sites like back page and routinely visit malls and other places to try to get “squares” to join. Lots of them have business cards that they give out to women.
Women I know who work with pimps range from women in Atlantic City who work the casino floors all night to a porn star charging 900 an hour and several exotic dancers who work out of their clubs.
In the big picture pimping probably is rare, but it definitely exists and it is a sucky situation. I’m not talking about husbands or boyfriends of prostitutes, even if they rely on the earnings of their partner and I’m not talking about drivers or agency owners.
That’s a pretty good description – I would only take issue with “physical abuse” – I don’t think most pimps use that anymore. Like I said above – they’re pretty shifty characters. Yes, they will place ads for adult or even “modelling” jobs – fly a girl across the country and then she finds out it’s really a call girl position. She might be pressured to join up but she can also say “no” and walk out. She may not have a plane ticket home but she can find a way to get back. Usually I think the pimp “woes” her with a credit card and takes her shopping. If women are this stupid and fall for this lame-ass line then what can be said of their intelligence?
Yeah, some do play hardball. One “pimp” in my area got close to a local girl and she foolishly allowed him into her personal world. He learned everything about her, where she lived … her daytime employment, etc. Once she figured out who he actually was – she kicked him to the curb … at which time he began attempting to blackmail her by threatening to out her to her neighbors. She didn’t play with that though – and went to the cops and got a restraining order against the guy. She also knows a lot of personal information about him – and were she to release it – he’d have to suddenly start watching his back.
I don’t believe a legitimate pimp would ever blackmail a woman by threatening to tell people what she did. Typically when a woman leaves she is threatened with “I can’t protect you now.” Meaning he can’t “protect her” from other pimps or bad dates. Sometimes information is given to other pimps so that they can try to recruit her or scare her but telling family or neighbors would be a form of “snitching.”
Thanks. It really makes no sense to hate most “pimps” then. I’m sure some are bad news, but most seem to benefit the whores.
Well it’s an article written by a tenth grader basically. Hell, that’s the media theses days.
It’s also politicians … they’re all a bunch of “Tracy Flicks”.
If you ignore the lurid fantasy being peddled, it’s easy to figure out what a pimp really i: The pimp is the male lover of a sex worker, either her husband or a steady boyfriend that people feel is in the role of husband. If a woman has a husband figure and is doing sex work, then society blames her man for not controlling “his woman.”
He’s supposed to be the primary enforcer of social taboos. He’s either supposed to stop her, or if he can’t then he’s supposed to leave her, taking their children, if any, with him. Sex work is one of those things that our society is actually intent on extinguishing, and therefore it doesn’t want it left entirely to law enforcement.
Of course if he actively encourages her, or even reluctantly helps her, then he’s even more of a monster, but I think even passive acceptance that she’s not going to be content to make do with less when she can do real work making real money will condemn him. (Besides, cops love a pimp, such a big fish to catch. Even if they have long bitter fights over her career choice, if he stays with her and their finances aren’t completely separate you can bet he’ll be sent to one of our lovely Rape Institutions. Cops will lie about him as much as they please, no matter what.)
Mind you, none of this is in “Iceberg” Slim’s book Pimp, which seems to be all full of mistakes.
The frightening thing is how deeply and widely the “evil pimp” and “trafficking” memes are accepted.
Every time a supposedly victimised woman or girl is mentioned in a forum of any kind, a chorus of cries for the castration and murder of pimps and traffickers will instantly pop up. The most shocking thing is the absolute hatred and anger that greets anyone who tries to post an opposing point of view and especially when they speak up for prostitutes, not just from feminists, but from normally rational and skeptical men as well.
Here’s a good guess as to what’s going on in the heads of men who embrace the “pimp” myth:
“If it’s true that whores are normal women acting without coercion, that means normal women can choose to be whores without being coerced. My girlfriend, sister, mother and daughter are women; therefore they could choose to be whores.” That thought is totally intolerable, so his mind instantly rejects it and he falls back onto one of two narratives: if he’s a misogynist it’s “whore as criminal” or “whore as monster” (the latter including the “junkie” and “child abuse” variations), and if he’s a fundie or wimp it’s the pimp/trafficking myth. Recognizing the agency of the whore requires admitting that sex isn’t ritually polluting and that nearly all women are capable of stark pragmatism, neither of which is the average American man prepared to accept.
That last sentence was a homerun!!!
cf. ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ for another example of a myth that refuses to die, despite absolute evidence of its being a complete forgery written solely for political ends.
A narrative that tells people what they want to believe will endure despite any evidence to the contrary.
I have GOT to remember that bible quote. So much fun arguing with people and quoting their own source of morality.
The piece of fiction from the Las Vegas Review Journal was part of a series of unfortunate articles on human trafficking in Nevada. The collection of stories seemed like an attempt by the LVRJ to validate their controversial endorsement of AB 67. One of the more entertaining articles in the series begins with this gem:
“In a world of sex trafficking, where prostitutes are coerced or forced through violence to turn tricks, Christina is an example of a woman trafficking herself.”
There must not be many slavery victims who have been rescued in Las Vegas because our local media continues to provide the same couple of cases as evidence of our massive trafficking problem.
The example that is cited the most is particularly irksome. The mother of an adult sex worker has been very vocal in the community. She tells the tragic story of her daughter being trafficked on the Las Vegas Strip by her pimp who has brainwashed the daughter to believe is her boyfriend. The mother admits that her daughter voluntarily engages in prostitution but this is because her pimp is exceptionally gifted at brainwashing her victim daughter. In fact, he is such a gifted con artist that the mother, a school psychologist, and her husband, a POLICE detective, trusted him enough to allow him to move in to their home a few years ago. The couple fed him and provided him with a cell phone and bus passes. Then she found out he was forcing her 20 year old baby to be a sex slave so she and husband managed to get him sent to prison for two years for pandering. The mother explains how the fact that her daughter regularly visited her trafficker in prison, without exception, is confirmation that her daughter has suffered psychological abuse through forcible indoctrination. Not surprisingly, the mother recently started her own non-profit organization devoted to rescuing the victims of trafficking. She is accepting donations.
I saw that story too, although I didn’t see that Mom had set up an anti-trafficking charity or that Dad was a cop. I did see that it was the textbook case of a prostitute’s boyfriend being persecuted because he hadn’t prevented her from going into the business. The Dad angle makes sense here, he probably feels like he “failed as a man” and needed a scapegoat for his “fallen” daughter, especially since he’s a police detective.
The younger couple is obviously having trouble getting by too, she’s probably the only one able to really earn, and there was probably constant pressure on both of them for being “failures” and “sponging off of her parents.” She obviously loves her boyfriend regardless, it’s too bad they hadn’t gotten away from her parents before she started.
I know that Vegas isn’t the great sex worker heaven people might think it is, but I had a friend of mine basically flee Tampa to go work at the Crazy Horse Too there so I thought it was a little friendlier. Of course, Nevada is also well known as the only place in the U. S. of A. where prostitution is at all legal, so I knew that detail too. So reading stories like this out of Vegas just leaves me feeling, well, confused. How can you have “anti-trafficking” and any legal prostitution in the same state, I wonder?
The legal brothels are, I believe, known to work very hard at stigmatizing all other types of prostitution, in an attempt to keep their monopoly in the legal sex business.
That makes sense of course, but when I think of similar cases, such tactics usually end up backfiring.
I think that it will backfire in Nevada, too, but it’s taking longer because of the whole morality* thing and the whole “but if it’s against the law* it MUST be bad!” thing.
* Mostly with people who think that morality begins and ends with sex, with no stops along the way.
* against the law anywhere, apparently
Off topic, Maggie, but have you ever seen the Salvador Dali anti-VD painting he did for the US armed forces?
http://www.planetperplex.com/en/item/soldier-take-warning/
What’s your take on the message being conveyed. Specifically the optical illusion.
And do you think that it was inspired by Gilbert’s “Vanity?”
The Dali painting is clever, as Dali paintings tend to be.
I don’t know if this is on your radar but I thought it was topical.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/06/prostitutes_in_nyc_sex-traffic.html
NEW YORK — Prostitutes in a sex-trafficking case that’s winding down in New York City say they and their pimps were one big happy family, enjoying a comfortable suburban life as “wife-in-laws” in Pennsylvania and commuting by night to work in Manhattan.
But prosecutors say the women were coerced into prostitution by a father-and-son team that threatened them with beatings, withheld money and referred to them as animals.
.
.
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Wearing a striped dress that revealed her pregnant belly, a 26-year-old woman had a tattoo on her neck that said “King Koby,” a nickname for George Jr., whom she met when she was 19 and working as a prostitute in upstate New York.
“I would say that I make my own choices,” she said. “I am not a dumb person. I know what I’m doing.”
The women have been sexually exploited and stripped of their self-worth, said Norma Ramos, executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. Ramos said tattoos are commonly seen among sex trafficking victims.
“They’re branding their women. They’re branding their victims,” Ramos said. “They’re treating them like cattle.”
So, once again, women are told that they don’t know what’s best for them, but prosecutors and “rescue” agencies do.
I guess you missed it on Friday.
whoops!