Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion. – Gustave Flaubert
Will someone who lives in the state of Washington please tell me what the hell is going on up there? “Sex trafficking” hysteria is epidemic in every state, and “authorities” all over America seem embroiled in a competition to see who can march the farthest up his own arse, produce the most ludicrous, specious nonsense and generally look the most like a credulous clown devoid of even the smallest particle of that elusive quality erroneously called “common sense”. But despite the fact that Washington has a reputation for being sort of laid-back and generally pro-civil rights (it was, after all, one of the first two states to decriminalize marijuana for recreational use), some of the silliest, most absurdly exaggerated and just plain stupidest “trafficking” tripe in the entire country erupts forth from the Pacific Northwest at least once a week these days. You may remember that in the name of “fighting sex trafficking” the Washington legislature actually passed a law which would have totally destroyed the internet as we know it, and despite a federal slapdown they’re at it again; this is also the state which devotes hundreds of man-hours to trying to trick coffee-stand waitresses into flashing their tits so they can be charged with “prostitution”. And who could forget the hilarity which ensued when Shared Hope International held a program warning high school girls, “Don’t run off to the other side of the country with strange adult men after turning over your life savings to them, because pimps are cool and abortion is sex trafficking”. Or something like that. Well, for your amazement and incredulity here’s another one; most major American cities published some local kiss-up to the latest iteration of the FBI’s Crusade Against Harlots, but this one has that special Washingtonian touch:
…Noel Gomez is a former Seattle prostitute who now works with teens in the King County Juvenile Detention Center. Gomez said that the typical age for a girl entering prostitution…is just 14…Gomez offers emotional support and challenges the girls who equate love with bondage to ask themselves a simple question about their pimp: “If you weren’t out there making money, would he be with you? And the answer is ‘no’ because pimps are pimps. That’s what they do,” Gomez said…
She claims to be an ex-hooker, yet she vomits out the “average debut at 14” crap nobody who has ever personally known more than two whores could possibly believe; methinks somebody is either lying or totally delusional. But wait, it gets worse:
…The FBI said the victims are being offered help with job training, housing, counseling, and medical and education assistance…
…these “offers” are apparently so very attractive the girls have to be dragged to them in handcuffs.
…Last year, five members of the Underground Gangster Crips contacted teens at school or through Facebook, DateHookUp.com or other online social networking sites, enticing the girls to use their looks to earn money through prostitution…
OMG they CONTACTED THEM!!!!!!!! Surely their evil vampire-like powers of mind control can reach through the screens and FORCE INNOCENT CHILDREN INTO SEX SLAVERY! WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!11?
…In earlier sweeps, child prostitution victims have been recovered at major sporting events — including the NCAA Final Four and Super Bowl…
No, they haven’t. But apparently that tired myth isn’t enough for the “trafficking” fetishists any more; get a load of the next one:
In the 1990s, gangs took control of street prostitution across America; that forced pimps to move girls into sporting events where security existed, said Dr. Lois Lee, founder and president of Children of the Night, a nonprofit group that has rescued 10,000 children from prostitution since 1979…
I don’t know what Dr. Lee was smoking while she apparently watched Sin City 17 times in a row without sleep, but it must’ve been something potent for her to come up with such a bizarre, wholly unprecedented and totally unsupported fantasy. It’ll be interesting to see if this original urban legend, which I have never seen any cop or prohibitionist spout before, becomes part of the body of “trafficking” mythology the way the “gypsy whores”, “average debut at 13” and “50 clients a night” myths have.
…Pimps operate wherever vulnerable potential victims can be found. Some are being recruited right out of foster care facilities…
It’s true; they lurk in huge, overdressed packs right outside the doors, and infiltrate the facilities disguised as Bibles, rubbish bins and bars of soap so as to “recruit children” right out from under the noses of their valiant rescuers.
For the past decade, the FBI has been attacking the problem in partnership with…the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. John Ryan, the head of the center, called the problem “an escalating threat against America’s children.” The Justice Department has estimated that nearly 450,000 children run away from home each year and that one-third of teens living on the street will be lured toward prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home…
NCMEC doesn’t exactly have a sterling record of honesty, but that’s not surprising considering the money they make from “missing children” hysteria. And the Justice Department knows damned well that 90% of underage hookers aren’t “lured” in any meaningful way, and that they do it because it’s the best, most dependable way to support themselves on the street; it knows because it paid for a major study that told it so. But since that doesn’t support the official panic narrative, we don’t get to hear about it; instead both state and federal “authorities” compete in this fantastical and ugly race to the bottom, and though it’s still too early to declare a winner, Washington state is among the obvious favorites.
I found the results of the John Jay study in your linked 15/11/13 post interesting but not surprising. Admittedly I’m probably not crash hot at spotting the sex workers among the people I went to school and university with, yet the only sex workers I knew of personally are male.
It seems to me that logically the Governments doing all this rescuing must either concede
a) These young men selling themselves to generally other men are being exploited the same as the women and as consequence are being left by THEIR Government to rot whilst the women get “rescued”
or
B) Sex work isn’t necessarily slavery/”trafficking” if you have certain characteristics “men” have, and so they don’t need our help.
I suppose c) “Gays are deviants and can be exploited/are beyond help, see if we care” could possibly be in play as well, but hopefully not.
But if b is true, that means admitting there are certain characteristics able to make sex work not exploitive. Characteristics that are neither common to all males nor restricted to males. If a man can be paid for sex because he’s more able to stand up for/defend himself and won’t be “ruined” by sex, why can’t a woman?
Any “social construct” making it harder for a female sex worker to be secure and her employ respected is built immensely, if not solely, on prohibition, so the if the social construct of gender to blame for this power imbalance, than legislation that rescues “victims” does nothing to empower women
It can’t be had both ways, Swedish style feminists, either a ho with security smarts and no slut-shame is equal to a man, or you need to start rescuing all the poor little exploited gay boys and see how that goes electorally.
Alternatively you’re more than welcome to be both wrong and hypocritical and say no woman can be equal to a man.
Maggie, apologies that the multiple addressees of this post, ’tis poor form on my behalf
Gay sex workers are, in fact, so problematic to the narrative that when they’re swept up in these gigantic sting operations they’re usually charged with “pimping” instead of prostitution; that’s why every “Operation Cross-Country” nets more “pimps” than “rescued slaves”.
You lost me at ‘must’ – logical implications don’t mean anything to those who aren’t using logic. Many folk can brush off such dilemmas with the brazenness of the hypothetical character in Lewis Carroll’s Achilles and the Tortoise dialogue.
Its far easier to save children from “moral depravity” than to create policies that create jobs, housing and health care for the parents.
Excellent point.
The Pacific Northwest seems to be having a problem with Deep Green Resistance and Microsoft is headquartered there, the Gates Foundation contributes millions to anti-trafficking organizations.
Oh, here’s a clip from that episode of the Equalizer I mentioned:
http://YouTube.com/watch?feature=relmfu&v=zu_ULlrZ07c
I like Ant better as a singer than as a gangster. But still, that WAS interesting. It’s largely the whole trafficking meme in a nutshell.
Maggie, do u know any media in the states that supports ur point of view against the mainstream stories about trafficking and child slavery? I find ur explanations really interesting but I fear that very little people will have acess to them.
After years of struggle we found here in Spain a radio that doesn’t just let sew workers and allies to speak, but is also very pleased to do and they are calling us frequently. I think that we must reach society thorugh media to tell them the truth about sex work and the reality of police operations.
Keep the good work, Maggie.
Isn’t prostitution LEGAL in Spain? I thought it was but I might be wrong. Do police there still persecute sex workers?
I’m in Spain right now, beautiful place – but no one speaks English here (don’t even try) and try giving direction to a Spanish forklift operator when your only “Espaniole” is … “Muy Bueno!” … “No Mas!” … “Uno Mas!” … “Andele!!” …
I was partially able to communicate using infantry hand signals – after I found out the guy was former Spanish Army. U.S. and Spanish infantry hand signals the same? We have to change that shit pronto!! 😛
Do we need to change our currency now that Zimbabwe is on the dollar?
Amazing isn’t it? In the late ’70’s one Rhodesian Dollar was worth about U.S. $1.50 … more competitive than the Euro is today.
Mugabe’s black-rule currency didn’t even last 30 years and before they hit the “eject” button on it a TRILLION DOLLAR Zimbabwean note was worth about five bucks U.S.
I can hear Ian Smith yelling, from his grave … “Somehow “I told you so” … just doesn’t quite say it.” 😀
Don’t get me started on Zimbabwe. I only wish I had been able to visit it during the Rhodesian years. Beautiful country … transport American agricultural tenacity to that nation and it would be the richest nation in the world. Rhodesian coffee was the best in th world – you can still get it inside Zimbabwe from some small farmers who still raise a little of it.
But yeah, you can use the dollar now in Zimbabwe – but there’s no change. Shop owners and restaurants either “round up” prices to the nearest dollar or tell you to go back and do more shopping to get your bag closer to the even dollar.
Umm… I was riffing off your comment that now that Spain is doing something, we can’t.
Prostitution is legal in Spain in the sense that there is no national law against it; the problem is that local councils can pass bylaws that harass street workers. This creates problems in some towns and cities.
Well, gumdeo, prostitution in Spain is ALEGAL. Not directly firbidden but also not regulated and assmililated legally as any other job. In fact, a prostitute MUST work by her own, our penal code (article 188) forbids anyone to employ a prostitute EVEN with her own agreement. This makes all clubs, flats and agencies to fall into illegality. ANd why there are so many in Spain, then? Well, it seems that our laws are not enforced correctly. But this is not really what happens. Our law was not designed to avoid “sexual explotation” but to have a way to blackmail all those business. That’s why sexual worker’s activists in Spain are against that law (abolitionists use to say that we are defending pimps… omg, the real pimps are them!).
Prostitution laws here are all around penal code (Spain was a signatory, in the time of the dictatorship of the General Francisco Franco, of the UN Convention of 1949 against prostitution and technically is “abolitionist”) and others under internal regulations of our policial forces that I think are not constitutional. For example, the “Guardia Civil” has the directive 3/2000 that lets them to inspect any local they believe where could be any underage of trafficked woman. WITHOUT JUDICIAL AUTHORIZATION. Only terrorists suffer such lack of rights. This, in practice, is the tool used by our policial forces to blackmail brothel owners and prostitutes: if u don`t pay we will be busting ur workplace everyday. So well, this is the way the law protects prostitutes… I think that u should be used to the critics of Maggie.
Street workers, that are independient, should have no problem then. But wait, here comes our beloved public sector to create new troubles. As u say, our local councils were creating bylaws, well in reality copying the first one (approved in Barcelona in 2005, effective from 2006) that forbid street workers TO BE in the streets. As u know they not “work” there, just get their customers. Well, our own Ministre of Justice said that was against Constitution because local councils (that are ejecutive and not legislative power) couldn`t legislate over issues that affect fundamental rights and freedom. It doesn’t matter, this is Spain land of corruption (I hope u have heard news). We had many of such by laws from 2009, when a journalist from “El Pais” (main left wing newspaper here) published some photos against prostitution increasing social alarm and giving public powers a justification to go after prostitutes.
If any of u have any more questions about prostitution in Spain I`ll be very pleased to answer u. Or also u can read more in my blog:
http://barriorojo-esl.blogspot.com.es/
Technically is not forbidden, so its not “illegal” but let me explain me in detail in my answer to gumdeo.
Oh, yes, it’s incredible how few spanish ppl here speak englisg fluently. Well, many aren’t even able to speak their own language properly… (omg)
PS: “Andele” is more “mexican” than spanish, man. Anyway if u want to translate anything I can help u. Here we would use the word “vamos” (let’s go).
The American media are nearly all owned by large conglomerates now, and thus part of the fascist social control complex; they won’t allow anything other than the official story, which is why most of our news about government surveillance now comes from the international media rather than the American. There are a few exceptions, mostly in the form of individual columnists, and whenever I see them I feature them in my TW3 columns; however, it will still be about three more years before you start to see a considerable number of mainstream stories debunking the hysteria.
The lockstep of the American Media has far less to do with Corporate Culture than it does with the reporters, editors, and talking heads all (with very rare exceptions) being self-described Liberal Intellectuals, for which read Lightly Educated Self-Important Trendy Lefty Nitwit.
And the lefty owners of media don’t care about making money. Except somehow they do make money.
#ELEVENTY!!!
I laughed my ass off all through the reading of this article!! Great stuff!
LOL – My daughter’s been on FaceBook since she was eleven years old. I just made her “friend” me and I see everything that’s posted on her wall. My wife has a log in to see any messages she receives.
Not a single time has there been anything suspicious.
People need to watch their kids … and stop being afraid so much.
Maggie,what would you answer to the those women who say thats its an indicator of an unequal and sexist society that women are getting paid for sexual services more than in other roles and that sex workers wouldnt choose this job if men and women were truly equal?i have an answer to this,but since youre way more experienced in such matters than i am id like to have your opinion as well.
My answer is that the only way for two things to be “truly equal” is for them to be the same, and since men and women aren’t the same we can never be “truly equal”. In some ways men will always have the upper hand, and in some ways women always will; that’s the way it always has been and anyone who is horrified by that needs to find another universe to live in, because in this one there is no such thing as a Utopia and never will be.
true,but i dont think men have the upper hand when sex work is concerned and its definitely not sexist for a woman to capitalise on her body anymore it is for men to become bouncers.i think the whole argument that if you use your body in a sexualised manner you take womens rights backwards is a ridiculous concept and i must admit i dont understand the mindset behind it.they say women shouldnt be looked only as pretty faces,but shouldnt they favor the elimination of all manual labor if we should only look what exists in peoples minds?and even then,if the mind is something more valuable than the body shouldnt they be appalled by how its objectified by the capitalist bosses?yet women who work for theese people are branded as feminist role models.
I think that women have more options than men do. Men can use their brains or their muscles (or both) to get a job. Woman are more versatile. They can use their brains alone to get practically any job a man can do. They can also make a living off of their beauty such as models do. They can also make a living off of their sexuality as sex workers do. Also when I hear that women make less than men do, are they really comparing a man and a woman in the exact same job?
You can’t compare men’s and women’s salaries because, on the whole, women aren’t motivated to work the way men do. Men are more likely to identify themselves with their jobs. They get their self-worth – mostly – from a job.
Not so with women – they get their self-worth from other parts of their lives. I don’t know a single professional woman in my family who’s worked more than five years and wouldn’t give it up in a heartbeat if she met a man who could support her.
I know two female electrical engineers who were making $100K plus – and they chucked it to start a furniture refurbishment business and make less than half the money they did before. They don’t even think about going back though.
re government studies: I’m reminded of the government study of the effects of pornography, which showed that there really wasn’t any effect; but since it done during the highly liberal Nixon administration, it had to be scrapped and a new commision formed to reach the politically correct conclusion. I wonder why the NCMEC didn’t do this?
EXCUSE ME? The Nixon administration was LIBERAL?
Compared to most high profile Democrats and Republicans in our current political climate, yes he would be considered fairly liberal nowadays.
Yes it was …
Wage and Price Controls.
The closest the U.S. ever came to Nationalized Health Care was during the Nixon Administration. Nixon’s Nationalized plan was far more liberal than ObamaCare – he wanted employers to buy health care plans and subsidize those that couldn’t afford it. It was killed by Democratic opposition (deciding to “die” on the hill of “single payer”) and Ted Kennedy said later that one of his greatest regrets was opposing the Nixon healthcare plan.
Nixon CREATED the Environmental Protection Agency.
Nixon was a champion of affirmative action. He was the first to form employment goals to break barriers for minorities.
Nixon didn’t just give out a “re-set” button … he went to China and totally “re-set” U.S. relations with that COMMUNIST nation.
Nixon ENDED the Vietnam war – JFK and LBJ started it.
Nixon ENDED the draft – Jimmy Carter brought back Selective Service Registration.
He rhetorically attacked Liberals – but that was only to get what he called “right wing nuts” to vote for him. He governed more liberally than Barack Obama has.
The GOP establshment has ALWAYS been liberal. It was the “outsiders” like Goldwater who started the push to Conservatism. Goldwater failed though … it wasn’t until the Democrats destroyed Nixon with Watergate that the GOP establishment became discredited enough with it’s voters for them to take a chance on a guy who WAS NOT a part of the establishment ….
Ronald Reagan.
Still, in order to appease the establishment Reagan picked, as his running mate … George H.W. Bush – an establishment Republican who had called Regan’s economic plan … “Voodoo Economics”.
There is myth out there that the GOP is Conservative. It most decidedly isn’t. There ARE some Conservatives in the GOP – but Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Mitt Romney, and most of the other party “Ayatollahs” aren’t.
No the GOP establishment has not “always been liberal.” Robert Taft, Herbert Hoover, Andrew Mellon, William McKinley, et al., were staunch conservatives, coming out of the progressive-probusiness schism in the 1872 GOP convention. Teddy Roosevelt restarted the GOP liberal wing, and it actually began to thrive during the Great Depression. But now, it is only a distant memory. Even Goldwater’s wing is gone, buried by the reactionary radicalism of the tea party.
Sorry, my sarcasm marking was not on; what I was pointing out is that a government study during the Nixon administration came to a completely opposite conclusion than a much later one, and that conclusion was far more in favor of free speech than you would expect.
I’ve read that Nixon had a similar situation with a study on marijuana. The experts ended up recommending legalization, but Nixon didn’t like that idea so he just tossed it in the trash and launched the major anti-drug campaign that he had already planned.
Actually, the Meese Commission on porn in 1985 arrived at a similar conclusion if I remember correctly.
The Meese Commission divided pornography into layers, and concluded that the layer most of the porn out there fell into was “mostly not harmful.” The guy heading up the Commission (not Meese but the guy actually on it, I forget his name) knew this was unacceptable, so while the other commissioners were away he relocated most of the porn into another layer which had been deemed “harmful.” This is why several commissioners refused to sign the final report.
So yes, the Meese Commission, stacked as that deck was, concluded that most porn is mostly harmless. But that’s not what came out of the publicity.
The apalling letter quoted below was published in the NY Times, and BEGS reply. To my great frustration the online version was not open to responses. I think it is important that such destructive lies be countered, and only hope that someone with credentials will submit a rebuttle. Whether it would be published, who knows, but you’ve addressed this articulately and forcefully many times in your columns, and the NY Times has recently published a number of more open-minded comments. As popular as your blog has deservedly become, the NY Times continues to enjoy a somewhat wider readership. What do you think?
“To the Editor:

Re “F.B.I. Charges 159 Men With Forcing Teenage Girls Into Prostitution” (news article, July 30):
While the widespread arrests were an important step to help break up child prostitution rings, the elimination of sex trafficking can’t happen exclusively through victim rescue and by arresting pimps. To get to the root of the crime, the demand for commercial sex must be exposed and eliminated.
Without sex buyers, there wouldn’t be sex trafficking. Currently, however, buyers are not being prosecuted under federal law. Representatives Ted Poe and Carolyn Maloney and others have introduced an important bill that would remedy this by expanding the Trafficking Victims Protection Act to penalize those who solicit or patronize sex trafficking victims.
As you report, 105 prostituted children were rescued, but countless others remain victimized. To eradicate this exploitation in its entirety, Congress must pass this bill so that buyers can no longer fuel the market with impunity.
LAUREN HERSH
New York Director, Equality Now
New York, July 30, 2013”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/opinion/prosecuting-sex-buyers.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0
http://www.equalitynow.org/node/1010
Ms. Hersch was simply quoting the official policy statement for her organization. All commercial sex is bad; it must all be stopped. (This could possibly be done via mandatory chemical castration for all adult males, placed in worldwide water supplies. I’m pretty sure the results would be fairly unpleasant for all concerned.)
The question which has been running around in my head is this Cui bono ultimum? Who is behind this and why: the neo-feminists, the religious organizations, law enforcement agencies, are the front men, but are they actually the motivating force. I have my doubts, just as I have my doubts about the CIA, Mob, J. Edgar Hoover being behind JFK’s murder. With President Kennedy it was ultimately the oligarchs who had lost control of JFK after Joe, Sr.’s stroke. With the sex workers world-wide…any ideas folks?
It’s all of them, but with different emphases in different parts of the world. In the US it is mostly feminists, in other regions it would be religious fundies, etc. They make strange bedfellows but they curiously have common goals.
I would refer you to Blair’s Law: “”the ongoing process by which the world’s multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force.”
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blair's+law
I apologize in advance if this is a little too long, but I hope my explanation for Laida is a little helpful.
Textbook definitions of objectification are honestly poor. A better definition would be “to treat a subject as one would an object rather than as a subject.” Objects differ from subjects in that they are, for example, acted upon and accessed and used however their owners choose to use them. Sometimes they can even be broken or destroyed at their owner’s wishes.
Without a doubt, this is not how human beings should be treated. There is also a relationship with objectification and domination. Historically, slave owners often saw their slaves purely as tools, and they may have humiliated their slaves to remind them that they were less than human.
When radical feminists say that women are objectified, they mean that men are using women as objects rather than as subjects. Usually, this means using women as eye candy, sex toys, or kitchen appliances.
I should clarify that they do not believe there is anything inherently objectifying about physical attraction or nudity. However, they believe women are normally objectified when they are attractive or nude because society measures a woman’s worth almost exclusively by her physical appearance, in order to be sexually exciting to men.
Based on Marxist theory, radical feminists believe that women are victims of systemic oppression by men that has reduced women to the sex class, a slave class reduced to sexual and domestic servitude to men. They call this oppression “The Patriarchy.” The objectification of women is a symptom of this oppression, where men are seen as subjects or fully human, and women as sex objects. While women can objectify men, radical feminists would say that these are isolated incidents and the objectification of women is systemic in scope.
Because women are supposedly subjected to male domination, men claim sexual rights over women. Conservatives claim women as private property, and Liberals claim women as common property. However, men of both persuasions treat prostitutes the same, and they use them because of their supposed sexual entitlement.
Which is why radical feminists do not like prostitution. They view prostitution as the ultimate expression of women’s oppression. While wives may be afforded some human rights, prostitutes have none because they are reduced to mere sexual commodities that can be bought, sold and consumed on the capitalist marketplace. Because prostitutes are viewed as commodities and therefore denied their humanity, radical feminists argue that society excuses men from any moral atrocity committed against a prostitute. Likewise, prostitutes are at the mercy of “johns,” pressured to “consent” to horrors such as sadistic treatment and bare back full service in order to survive.
As a result, radical feminists believe that the demand for prostitution is created by men’s sexual entitlement, and that demand is supplied by economically vulnerable women who are deceived and then enslaved by pimps and traffickers. So when radical feminists connect prostitution with inequality, they are talking about systemic inequality that results from slavery or class oppression, where men as a class have privileges over a subclass of women.
Of course, radical feminist theory is wrong. Most of what they claim outright contradicts the experience of most men and women, and what points they have are better explained with other theories. Where they go wrong with the cause of prostitution is that it depends on the assumptions (big assumptions) of radical feminist theory. Moreover, if we apply the scientific principle of Occam’s Razor, there is a much simpler and obvious reason for why there is prostitution: there is a shortage of horny women compared to horny men.
Thank you. This lays out the radical feminist argument without either advocating it or slamming it. Yes, you pronounce it to be wrong (I happen to agree that it’s wrong), but you lay it out first, in simple term we can understand.