It is a somewhat quaint, futile idea that the sex trade, an industry which has continued with hardly a murmur for 20,000 years, will be “ended” by a bill passed through an ineffectual Canadian parliament, but politicians have never had much self-awareness when it comes to the limits of their own power. – J.R. Ireland
…Jennifer Stelly and her boyfriend Channing Castex were…pulled over for speeding in Brazoria County [Texas] in March 2013. Castex said he was handcuffed and put into a patrol car after he admitted to a state trooper that he had smoked marijuana. A female state trooper was called to search Stelly in full view of a dash-mounted camera. “She started going into my clothing and she penetrated areas that I don’t wish to disclose at this point,” Stelly said. “I was scared. I was violated. I didn’t know what to do”…the full, invasive cavity search happened on a busy freeway as people sped by…the same trooper [was] involved in [lawsuits over] two [other] roadside cavity searches two years ago…
Cowboys4Angels is at it again, trying to convince the world that their male escorts only have female clients; the “journalist” who wrote this fluff piece apparently didn’t do enough research to discover that they had to pay women to pretend to be clients on TV. But now agency owner Garren James also wants us to believe the “time and companionship” dodge, which at least in this case is probably closer to the truth.
They Just Don’t Get It (May Updates)
St. Louis cops are trying to convince politicians that knife-wielding hookers who need to be gunned down in the street are among “the risks officers face every day”. I am not making this up.
This article in Cracked entitled “5 Ways Life as a Prostitute is Nothing Like You Expect” is nothing like perfect, and in some places it’s grating. But the reporter troubled himself to interview five actual sex workers for the piece, which is something American non-humor media can’t seem to manage.
…preparations for the upcoming Olympics Games in Tokyo include cleaning up red-light districts…“Nowadays, for job interviews at sex clubs, nine out of 10 women will be refused,” says “pink” writer Taizo Ebina…Such selectivity is due to a decrease in number of such businesses as the city attempts to sharpen its image prior to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of tourists in 2020…Tokyo had 847 “fashion health” joints…in 2007. Six years later, there were 813. Also experiencing declines over the same period were soapland bathhouses (1,239 to 1,218), adult-goods shops (340 to 232) and “encounter” coffee shops…
Something Rotten in Sweden (#445)
…Charles Hill, a business school professor…starts from the increasingly validated position that most sex workers have personal agency, and haven’t been coerced to pursue their trade. Dr. Hill suggests that…reducing demand side will [actually] increase supply…conservative aspects of society use morality as a tool to control sexuality, especially that of women, under the guise of providing a social good. And that the ways in which they exercise these tools consistently puts the weakest members of society at the greatest harm…
…[Former sex worker] Love…caught up [with an old friend], hanging out on the corner of Edgewater Road and Lafayette Avenue. When a car circled the block several times, Love assumed it was an acquaintance. She waved. “Hop in,” the man in the car demanded. “I’ve got thirty dollars for a blowjob.”
“OK, officer, have a nice day,” Love shot back. As she walked away, the man shouted, “You must be a cop. You’re calling me a cop.” Love forgot the man, until, as she walked back to the train station, three police officers…arrested Love for prostitution…[she] spent the night in a cell—missing a day of classes. The whole process took 24 hours…At the pre-trial hearings, Love had become increasingly confused. Undercover officers are supposed to wear a recording device in order to have proof that solicitation took place. Since Love never solicited anyone, the police department had no recording to present. Yet Judge Michels would not throw out the case…when the undercover cop took the stand, Love began to panic. She’d never seen this guy in her life. His story was filled with inconsistencies, but the prosecutor later said this only proved he was honest. The stranger on the stand testified that…Love offered him a $20 blowjob. For $30, he said, she’d fuck him in the street…
Longtime readers may remember my own experience with the adolescent porn cops pass off as “testimony” in prostitution cases.
A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#449)
It’s bad enough that people think anything in a movie most be true; the new thing seems to be that anything written on a card held up by a po-faced person in a photo must be true:
I’m really happy to see evangelicals increasingly embarassing themselves with bombastic Bible-thumping anti-harlot rhetoric in support of prohibitionist laws; the more they do it, the more they’ll alienate their neofeminist allies and open the eyes of ordinary people who’ll buy the pseudoscientific crap but not so much the holy rolling. Here’s a post on the Locust Kings blog which ably takes down both a ridiculously mouth-foaming anti-whore screed in Crisis magazine and the 2006 National Review essay which partially inspired it.
“That cowboy stuff is strictly for fags” – Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy.
From the link in A Procrustean Bed (#448):
From several years from about age four my sister would tell everyone she was going to be a stripper when she grew up (much to the consternation of my staunchly Catholic aunts). Sadly, her dreams were crushed. She joined the army and became a combat medic instead. She now works in a military clinic with severe PTSD sufferers.
Life can be hard on the aspirations of children.
One developing story you may want to keep an eye on, a high profile and high pressure leak as the trafficking boiler reaches the bursting point: Marc Randazza reports a lawsuit in which Alan Dershowitz has filed a motion to intervene. The suit was brought on behalf of various “Jane Does” by former federal judge and current law professor Paul Cassell, who never met an oppressive law he didn’t like, though he claims to have “libertarian” leanings.
As Marc Randazza put it in a January 4 blog entry titled “Alan Dershowitz’ Sex Orgies??? (I call bullshit)“,
Needless to say, Alan Dershowitz was not pleased to be falsely accused in such an underhanded way, so he filed a motion to intervene. It’s underhanded because the false accusation is not technically libel due to the litigation privilege exception in libel law.
Marc Randazza’s January 6 update, with links to Dershowitz’ motion and declaration is here:
http://randazza.wordpress.com/2015/01/06/update-dershowitz-moves-to-intervene/
Dershowitz’ declaration is a thing of beauty.
In the circus of national news this suit could either explode or fizzle, but either way it will expose yet another gaping hole in “trafficking” mythology. It’s an event worth watching as it develops.
Charles Hill’s article is pretty good, I like the supply and demand argument he makes but I actually understand graphs and all the math stuff so I am clearly prejudiced in favor of facts and logic. The best/worst part was the first comment which pointed out the well-known fact that “The average age of entry into prostitution in the US is at 12 years old” which Hill denies in his reply. He cites this article http://www.politifact.com/oregon/statements/2013/mar/02/diane-mckeel/Is-average-age-entry-sex-trafficking-between-12-an/
which gives it a “Half true” rating. Of course, that number is unsupported and unsupportable, as any reader of this blog already knows
And yes, it is an excellent article.
I can’t link to Hill’s post. It seems to have been removed. Does anyone have a copy of it…? Thanks!
Go to the link, then go to Charles Hill’s home page and scroll down. It’s there.
What’s interesting is that neither Chrome nor Safari on my MB Pro bring it up, but my iPad does.
I use Firefox on an MBPro, it found the article via the home page without any problem.
That quote about sex work being 20,000 years old….any references on that number? I can document to 4,400 years back, but no further and that number is dangerously sounding like before written records. It might be hyperbole, but I’m not warm in giving prudes any chance to raise doubt about any part of the argument for sex work.
My understanding was that sex work could be traced to around 6000 BC. There really aren’t any written records from earlier than this, surely?
It’s a lot older than any of those estimates.
I’m not disbelieving you in any way, nor am I surprised. I rather imagined that sex work began with settled agriculture around 8000 years ago, with the beginnings of concepts of property, virginity, monogamy, inheritance through the male line etc. Do you have a link/resource to the history before this?
There’s pretty solid evidence for settled agriculture dating back 10-12,000 years in the Middle East (Jordan), Asia (North Thailand) and North America (Mexico). Some anthropologists speculate that grain eventually became the first standardised medium of exchange and store of wealth about 9,000 years ago. If they’re right, I’d suggest sex work as we know it probably started then.
OK, I’m not going to quibble about a few thousand years; but there is a difference between 10,000 years ago and 20,000 years. Now, as I’m fearsomely empirical, where’s the evidence rather than the thoughts or opinions? (Not that I’d be surprised by 20,000 years, I seek the facts.)
I’m not trying to be pedantic about dates. Rather I’m trying to suggest that the question has no answer without an explicit definition of ‘sex work’ and that the definition I would support implies the first sex work took place well before any durable means of recording it existed.
The earliest written account I know of is in Numbers when God orders Moses to genocide the Midianites for harboring prostitutes. He did allow a caveat though. Under-aged female virgins were to be spared and enslaved, with God taking 32 of them for Himself. Apparently young virginal sex slaves not only fetched a premium in ancient Canaan, but even in Heaven.
Interesting. This got me curious enough to do a little reading. If this comment is “TL;DR” for you, by all means “pass over” it. 😀
1. When the men of Israel “played the harlot” with the women of Moab and Midian (Numbers 25:1), I’m pretty sure that simply means that they had sex with them in any social structure — including taking a “foreign” woman as a second-class wife (such as a concubine). “Harlotry” was often used as a metaphor for any instance of “not being faithful” to The LORD God, i.e., not following his commandments.
For example, see Numbers 25:2-3: “They [the women of Moab invited the people [of Israel] to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the LORD was aroused against Israel.” And a plague broke out in the camp. Hmm, that stuff must be bad juju.
2. The number “32” comes about like this:
After the crucial battle was won, the army had brought to the camp everything and everyone they had captured. The “everyone” consisted of the women and children. (Num 31:9). At this point Moses ordered that the mature women be killed. (Moses didn’t want another plague to break out now.)
He also ordered the male children to be killed. (Probably so that none would grow to manhood with a burning desire to avenge his father.) The children who were left were then, of course, the virginal girls.
Once that was done, all of the loot — everything and everyone — was counted up and divided into thirds. Those who had been in the army got two-thirds; those who had stayed in the camp got one-third.
But the priests and Levites were a special category. They were not soldiers, but they were also not low-status non combatants.
So the priests got 1/500 of all of the army’s loot — as “a tribute for the LORD.” The Levites got 1/50 of the non combatants’ loot, again as “a tribute for the LORD.”
Now, ancient warfare had no category, “prisoner of war.” It had no protection for non combatants. When a city was taken, the survivors were taken as slaves. This happened at the fall of Troy, it happened in wars throughout the ancient Middle East. So the remaining survivors, the female children, were going to become slaves. According to the account in Numbers, there were 32,000 of them.
The army got 16,000 of them (2/3). 1/500 of 16,000 is 32, so the priests got 32 young female slaves. (Hence that number, “32.”) As “a tribute for the LORD.”
The non combatants got 8,000 of them (1/3). 1/50 of 8,000 is 160, so the Levites got 180 young female slaves. As “a tribute for the LORD.”
Were all of the girls destined to be “sex slaves?” Dunno. Those passages, and the Laws of Moses, seem to be silent on the subject of the rights and protections of a female slave from her owner.
OK, the primary function of slaves, in the days before the widespread use of machines, was to provide human laborers. Anyone who has a lot of children knows how useful it can be, to have some girls who can help with the household’s chores.
Still, we are hearing more and more of the shenanigans that took place in the slave-owning South. So … I would say, maybe for some, and maybe not for others.
Trading objects of value for sex is older than Homo sapiens – Maggie’s link was to an article about chimpanzees whoring – and it’s probably older than land-dwelling vertebrates. In many varieties of insect and arachnid, the male had better come bearing a meal.
If you insist on defining prostitution only as a money transaction, then I’m sure it dates back to the invention of money, and that’s older than the Old Testament. Moses’s issue with the Midianites wasn’t with prostitution in general, it was with temple prostitutes. This was an era when nationality = tribal membership = religion. The Hebrews of that era probably weren’t even a real tribe or nation, but a collection of escaped slaves of various tribal origins, and Moses was working to keep them together and form a nation by keeping them worshipping YHWH and no other god. It was hard enough keeping his people worshipping an invisible sky fairy when other tribes had impressive statues to worship, but when a man could worship an idol and get laid too…
There might have been another reason for the Midianite genocide. There’s an earlier passage where a Hebrew man brought a Midianite woman back to his tent. Moses or one of his priest/captains ran them both through with a spear and “kept the disease from the camp”. It doesn’t say what disease, but the implication seems obvious. In an age without antibiotics or effective condoms, several types of VD were terrifying diseases.
Maybe they had bloodborne diseases from all the people with more boring religions sticking them with unsanitary swords.
BTW, you notice the armies of Moses have the same number of soldiers at the end of the battle as they started with?
Now maybe they just had a very efficient replacement system, but when you look at the enemy OOB and casualty rate you’ve gotta suspect a war crime.
God and his allies have long been suspected of deploying theatre WMD in places like Sodom, Gomorrah, the Suez and Jericho. In fact throughout recorded history most militaries that used WMD on their enemies had God on their side.
God is notorious for calling down plagues upon his enemies, so I’d suspect another use of bio-weapons here. Doubtless Moses restricted the number of attackers for the same reason Joshua did later during his assaults on entrenched Canaanite formations. Limited quantities of vaccine and protective gear.
Virgin girls fetch a good price on the slave market though, so by inoculating them and selling them off they could fund their entire expedition. Unfortunately they’re prone to spoilage so you have to move them quickly and risk flooding the market.
My apologies, I didn’t recognise this as a link. But in humans?
Interesting post Maggie.
There’s a very fat redback living under the worm farm in my garden. I wonder how many tricks she turns per night.
It would have to be a pretty broad definition of ‘sex work’ considering that 20,000 years ago there was neither agriculture nor ‘proto-money’ media of exchange. Even the capuchin monkeys mentioned in an earlier post didn’t invent sex work until they were taught how to use proto-money.
Most historical hunter-gatherer societies used gift economies within a tribe or band, though they generally traded goods between tribes. It’s hard to see how sex work would function within such economies.
If you take ‘sex work’ as meaning any quid pro quo arrangement involving sex then it’s almost certainly older than the human race. But a definition like that would imply that pretty much all sex is sex work.
Hey, I wrote the original article and was speaking in an exaggerated way for effect.
Sorry if there was any confusion, but I didn’t mean for that to be taken as a literal statement. I was just mocking the idea that a law passed in 2015 by a Canadian parliament could end the demand for sex work based on the fact that it’s been around basically since the beginning of recorded history.
My whole article is a bit hyperbolic, so my apologies for any confusion on the actual history of the sex trade. I think Maggie McNeil would probably have a much better grasp of the historical roots of prostitution than I would.
Thank you,
Jon Ireland
I dug what you were trying to do, Jon; I guess some of my readers were just a bit more literal-minded. Thanks so much for your support of sex worker rights! 🙂
I saw the original of Charles Hill’s article when it was published. I’m not an economist, but what he says makes a lot of sense—and it is evidence based. It’s perhaps a little difficult to understand the economic theory at first, but when you do, it all becomes clear. Unsurprisingly, our local politicians ( in N Ireland) are on record as saying that they don’t need evidence.
So, if the end-demand model, to be introduced here, actually has an affect, will the effects of such Swedish model laws really be counter-productive?
Further, as much of Europe in in the grip of ‘austerity’, will this mean that prices will be reduced, and that people will have to work more, and/or there will actually be more workers? Anyone have any figures?