Save your gas money for doughnuts and leave me alone because flashing a badge isn’t going to get you a discount. – Alyssa Ambrosino
Somehow, I Doubt She Thought This Through
…but damn, has she got chutzpah!
…Alyssa Ambrosino of [Pennsylvania]…posted a listing online Jan. 13 that read in part, “Hey guys it’s Marie or you can call me Lyssa. I’m working…within the jurisdiction of East Stroud PD. A police department that couldn’t find their own ass with both hands and a map, so don’t bother even trying to call and set up a date. Save your gas money for doughnuts and leave me alone because flashing a badge isn’t going to get you a discount. For all the REAL men out there I would love to see you”…A [plainclothes pig]…arranged to meet Ambrosino at her hotel room…[but] she [smelled him]…and asked him to leave…[then a plainclothes sow] …went up and knocked on the door…[asking] why her husband was in that hotel room…[the sow then planted] marijuana on the night stand [and arrested] Ambrosino…
If anyone knows how to get in touch with her, please ask her to email me; I may be able to help get her legal defense.
Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic
How many times do we need to say this?
Self-labeled sex addicts often speak about their identities very clinically, as if they’re paralyzed by a scientific condition that functions the same way as drug and alcohol addiction. But sex and porn “addiction” are NOT the same as alcoholism or a cocaine habit. In fact [they]…are not addictions at all…and…don’t constitute what most researchers understand to be addiction…addicts withdraw. When you lock a dope fiend in a room without any dope, the lack of drugs will cause an immediate physiological response — some of which is visible, some of which we can only track from within the body. During withdrawal, the brains of addicts create junctions between nerve cells containing the neurotransmitter GABA. This process more or less inhibits the brain systems usually excited by drug-related cues — something we never see in the brains of so-called sex and porn addicts…porn-addiction [promoters]…are wedded to the idea that porn is an uncontrolled stimulus the brain gets addicted to because of the dopamine release it causes…But there’s a difference between compulsion and addiction…
There’s a word for “partnering” between government and private corporations; it’s “fascism”:
State police officials are working with the Salvation Army and other organizations to help fight human trafficking in the Detroit area…Michigan has stepped up efforts in recent years to [arrest sex workers]…and [steal their possessions]…Human trafficking is a [sexual fantasy]…through which [police departments and rescue industry companies] profit from the exploitation and control of their victims. Victims…include [sex workers, their clients, their] children…[their friends, landlords, roommates and partners]…
Sex workers in Victoria will be able to advertise with full body pictures…under changes to the state’s sex-work regulations. But…sex-worker organisation Vixen Collective says the government should tackle the real issues facing the industry, including full decriminalisation and an end to mandatory health testing…Advertisements are currently limited to head-and-shoulder shots. Ads for sex workers will remain banned from radio, TV, film and video recordings but ads on the internet and in print may contain a photograph of the whole person, as long as…[it] does not show naked genitals or breasts, a sex act or a person under the age of 18 years. Sex workers will now be able to advertise with references to [their] race, colour or ethnic origin…Jane Green…[of] Vixen Collective, said…sex workers have been calling for an end to mandatory testing because of the burden it puts on sex workers and taxpayers…25 years of medical research in Australia have shown that sex workers have lower rates of STI’s and practice safer sex than the general population…
Even cops whose offenses don’t rise to the level of rape employ disgusting defenses:
[Boston cop] Edwin Guzman is currently facing charges of “annoying and accosting” a person of the opposite sex, as well as disseminating harmful material to a minor…if a classmate had sent a photo of his penis to this 16-year-old girl, he might be facing child pornography charges and a lifetime on the sex offender registry, rather than…a maximum $200 fine and 6 months in jail…what’s more disturbing is his lawyer’s dismissiveness of the teen’s response to the unwanted explicit pictures…”Kenneth Anderson…said…’You can’t tell me someone her age has never seen a picture of a penis on the Internet’…by this rationale, the teen shouldn’t be upset if an older relative, politician, church leader, trusted community figure, random neighbor or anyone else…sent her explicit photos. After all, spend enough time on the internet and you’re bound to see a penis. Perhaps Anderson could help her get over her fear of penis pictures by sending a few of his own her way…
Surveillance beyond the wildest dreams of the Stasi:
The New York Police Department has gained “chilling” access to a vast array of surveillance via the use of license plate readers (LPR), the American Civil Liberties Union warns…the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) obtained the final version of the nearly $500,000 contract between the NYPD and Vigilant Solutions for access to the billions of records the company has collected nationwide through the use of its LPRs…the new system “contains over 2.2 billion location data points, and it is growing by almost a million data points per day…Surveillance is about power. Vigilant gives the NYPD power to monitor our whereabouts and, by extension, our affiliations, interests, activities and beliefs,” the civil rights group said in its blog…“Even more worrisome…the data comes from private license plate readers that scan locations that the police are less likely to scan: residential areas, apartment complexes, retail areas and business office complexes with large employee parking areas…And…there is no limit on how long Vigilant keeps all of this private location data…There is no incentive for Vigilant to delete any data because its business model is to profit off of selling people’s data.” Despite promises by LPR proponents that such databases would not be abused, they [are almost constantly]…
What century do “sex trafficking” fetishists believe this is?
I was shocked to learn that Michigan is one of the top spots in the United States for human trafficking…Michigan ranks No. 2 in the country…No. 1 is Nevada. Two of the things that make Michigan a primary spot is our close proximity to Canada and our waterways…
Translation: They provide forged papers and provide passage for migrants who want to escape Nigeria:
…[A police] raid [resulted] in the arrest of the leaders of a Nigerian-based group running an international sex-trafficking ring in Barcelona. It’s known as the Supreme Eiye Confraternity (SEC), or the Air Lords…[cops] first came across the group in 2011 during a forgery investigation, but quickly discovered it was a huge network trafficking…human beings and narcotics (cocaine and marijuana) and [forging] passports. It has also facilitated the transport of stolen crude oil into Europe…Benin City, Nigeria, is a human-trafficking hub…
WARNING: The badge-licking in here is so loud and fellatory, it may nauseate you:
The customer has no idea what he is walking into. He is in his early 30s, dressed kind of schlubby, and wanting to buy some sex on a gorgeous weekday afternoon…There will be no happy ending for him today. He will be greeted by a [cop]…posing as a prostitute…Elsewhere in the hotel, a 27-year-old woman with heavy eye makeup and a short, short skirt is sitting on a bed looking concerned. She is a prostitute, who, like the man, was [duped by pigs] on backpage.com, a popular prostitution website. She had come to this room thinking she was about to have a “date.” Instead, she is being interviewed by trained advocates from the YWCA who are looking for signs of coercion and fear…
Signs of coercion and fear, when she’s surrounded by armed thugs who’ve just deceived her? How could that POSSIBLY be? The tone isn’t surprising, though, considering that the LA Times is the only newspaper I know whose reporters are specifically forbidden to call rape, “rape” when the rapist is a cop.
…She had spent weeks in Orleans Parish Prison once before, sleeping on a mat, getting in fights. She was desperate to get out. Plead guilty to “attempted intentional exposure to AIDS,” an antiquated felony created during the darkest days of 1980s AIDS hysteria, and the prosecutor would agree to 60 days time served, her ticket to immediate release. She took the deal. About a week after she got out, the 22-year-old woman received a phone call. It was her probation officer, threatening to take her back to jail. Why? She hadn’t registered as a sex offender…nobody – not her lawyer, not the judge, not the prosecutor – had mentioned anything about adding her name to a list of society’s most reviled outcasts. Nobody had said anything about the special driver’s license she would have to carry, or the expense of mailing postcards to hundreds of her neighbors. Aaliyah had condemned herself to 15 years of frustration and humiliation, and there is no record of anybody telling her until it was too late…
Laura Lee talks about how she became a sex worker:
…In 2003, I moved to Scotland to take up a position with a financial institution, corporate prostitution at its finest. Over time, my part time endeavour to top up my miniscule salary became known, and the proverbial hit the fan…In a small highland town, that’s better than a double live episode of Eastenders and various locals couldn’t wait to make their views known. Some were to my face, but mostly it was done on social media, by members of staff during a “confidential” investigation…I was angry I had to leave the town for my daughter’s sake and start afresh. I was angry for being judged, by the very people who’d come to me for help in the past. But mostly, I was angry that many people spouted speeches about the sex industry, when they quite obviously didn’t have a clue…I’ve since learned that some people build entire careers on that…
Journalists are starting to listen:
…The women [Seattle cops pretended] they “rescued”…may not actually have been trafficked…King County’s prosecutor did not charge any of the people arrested with trafficking, only with promoting prostitution…The court documents include no affidavits or victim statements from the women themselves…[the] one woman [cops managed to catch]…said her family in South Korea was in debt bondage and that if she didn’t do sex work and pay off their debt, her family might be hurt…I can’t help but wonder about the element of coercion involved in obtaining the statement of an illegal immigrant who knows she may be jailed or deported unless she depicts herself as a trafficking victim…There is also no evidence that these women were being forced to stay in the apartments or forced to sell sex. Indeed, the instructions on the TRB site says explicitly that “No means NO. Regardless of your particular expectations, what is offered is completely up to the provider”…
This is the typical “Super Bowl sex trafficking” story now; it debunks the specific gypsy whore myth while still accepting the greater “sex trafficking” myth:
On February 7, the Super Bowl will return to the Bay Area…and it’s an oft-repeated chestnut that when sports championships come to town, so too do human traffickers…the link between the Super Bowl and trafficking is, at best, unsubstantiated. (The maybe-canard even has its own Snopes page). At worst, it’s an attempt to link trafficking with hyper-masculine sporting events and voluntary sex work…the mayor’s anti-trafficking task force [imagined] the region to be “a hub for human trafficking and a hot spot for child sex trafficking”; the FBI has also [pretended] it to be one of 13 national “high intensity” areas for child sex trafficking crimes…Traffickers often use airplanes to transport victims through networks that span the globe…
It just so happens that Jim Kelly of Covenant House has commented on that Nola.com article. Now is the time to take him head on.
“sex workers have been calling for an end to mandatory testing because of the burden it puts on sex workers and taxpayers…25 years of medical research in Australia have shown that sex workers have lower rates of STI’s and practice safer sex than the general population…”
Is there any possibility that the lower rate of STIs is *because* of the mandatory testing? I’m having trouble with the logic: “Fewer people have been dying in car accidents since we made seatbelts compulsory, so obviously we don’t need seatbelt laws anymore”.
Many escorts get tested regularly on a voluntary basis when it’s not mandatory. It’s possible that mandatory testing has a positive effect on STI, but that is beside the point. Should we force it on all the population? Why only on the small percentage of the cases that involves money?
Having a lot of partners increases risks of STI, but money is not the issue. For instance, people who go to swingers club can have sex with more peole than some sex workers who only see a few regular clients.
Moreover, mandatory testing may reduce the STI in the fraction that work in the legal system, but it certainly increases the incentive to work illegally, where they will be exposed to other dangers. And of course it marginalizes all the immigrants who can’t work legally, have no access to testing and may not have good sex education to practice safe sex. It’s more useful to make testing and education available without stigma, rather than forcing it on a relatively small fraction of all the casual sex.
Standards for professionals are different: Medical professionals will get regularly tested for things and in quite a few countries have mandatory vaccinations. Pilots get regular mandatory health checks. Here, you need a special permission to drive a car with more than 7 passengers. Comes with a mandatory health-check every two years. Incidentally, at age over 70, private citizens here need a regular health-check to keel their drivers license. And so on.
The reality is that most of these people would not need this to be mandatory evaluated at all, because they are responsible professionals and people and know and understand the risks. But because a single bad actor can do quite a bit of damage, these things are made mandatory for all.
Now, statistics seems to say sex workers are actually very low risk to their clients. Hence it may be sensible (and I think it is) to make an exception for them and drop the mandatory testing. Some countries do this. But it would be an exception as most other professionals that can endanger a significant number of customers (no matter how likely) are subject to the respective oversight.
The difference is that most professionals, like medical staff, do things that common people are not allowed to, even for free. These extra responsibilities and dangers come with increased regulations.
The exemples you give about driver’s license are dependant on the number of passengers, the age/health of drivers, etc, not whether there is money involved. The equivalent of your exemple would be to have mandatory medical testing when you sleep with more than 7 peole under any circumstances, or after you reach a certain age (not just because of the *reason* why you have sex).
If the argument is to prevent the spread of disease by promiscuous people, it should apply to everyone that has X number of partners. If not it is clearly a disguised attempt at discouraging this activity.
You overlook that doing it professionally always adds obligations and a reasonable expectancy of the professional knowing his/her job and the associated risks. When I have sex with an escort, I can not only reasonably expect that there is no risk of an STD, I can also expect that she has an understanding of other risks. For example, I would expect an escort to be able to recognize a hart-attack during sex early and know what do do.
On the other hand, when you do the same things with an amateur, you understand that they may be just as clueless as yourself, and possibly more so.
Now, keeping up professional standards is a job for trade associations, certification organizations, educational organizations and, if they fail, the government. Sure, regular medical checks for sex-workers do not need to be something imposed by law. It could, for example, be a well-known certification label, that requires regular medical checks in order for a brothel or an independent to get and keep an nice shiny quality certificate. (Please do not make it ISO9000, that one sucks badly….) In cases where no such certification is available or generally recognized, the question arises whether the government needs to do something or not. And while I think most sex workers have a pretty good understanding of things and will fulfill professional standards anyways, there are enough black sheep described here in this very blog (and you can feel Maggie’s anger when she describes their lack of professionalism) that the question is not moot. It just takes a few that think the rules of sensible behavior do not apply to them.
The problem is the definition of which arrangements constitute a ”job”. The ways to earn money with sex are unlimited. It’s impossible to control them all. Put too much control somewhere and it migrates to a different form. And sex by it’s nature is the easiest business to do on the slide since pretty much everyone already has access to anything that is required to do it.
An assurance of professional standards can be a good thing, but this is what reviews are for. Even those who don’t read reviews benefit because it uphold standards in the market, so it’s not hard to find reputable agencies. Also, many clients like to feel that it’s not a business transaction, like if they had a mistress. So they don’t think about it the same way they would deal with a bank or insurance salesmen.
There will never be zero regulation but they should be minimal, unobstrusive and not put restrictions on who is allowed to do it.
That one is very simple: If you pay income tax on it, then it is a job. If you advertise a service, then it is a job. That covers enough of the field. There is no need to get everybody. And I do not see any problem with a prostitute advertising with a certificate of being up to professional standards either.
Sure, the amateur-part of the business cannot be regulated and attempting to do so will likely not have any positive effect. But when the clients buy the full amateur experience, they also buy the full risks, so they are warned.
You really cannot have it both ways. Either you buy a professional service and then you have a reasonable expectation of professional standards and certifications, education, health-checks and the like come into the picture. Or you do some fuzzy transaction with an amateur, but then you have no reasonable expectation of professional standards at all and I do not see any need to regulate that part of the business at all.
First, public health is about risk management. Yes, there are many individual persons who maybe have a great deal of sex with multiple partners. But few of them will have as much sex with as many partners as a prostitute. The reasoning for treating prostitution in particular as a likely STI vector is so obvious I can’t help but think you are being maybe a little disingenuous about it. In other words: “Duh!”
As to the cost – regulatory compliance is part of running any business. Here in Oz prostitution is legal and we have a robust public heath care system. (IOW: health *care*, not health *insurance*.) This means that a sex worker simply claims it as a business expense, job done.
Yes, it’s different elsewhere where it’s not legal. But that isn’t an argument against making it legal and regulated as it is here.
Seeing as Maggie is a fan of actually talking to sex workers to find out how things affect sex workers, maybe you or she should ask a few of the girls working here what their experience of legal, regulated sex work is.
I never had the chance to talk to a ”legal” sex worker but even in legalized places I would be surprised if the black market was not bigger than the legal one. I am in Canada where some workers and clients even hope it stays as it is (illegal, but not really enforced) mostly because they are afraid that legalization would be more repressive than the criminalization. Many others would welcome some legal system, but none of the workers would approve of mandatory testing as far as I’ve seen.
They currently have access to free confidential medical testing, so it has nothing to do with the cost of testing here either. No one wants their name to be on file as being a sex worker.
I favor decriminalization but I am not against all forms of regulation, just against some like mandatory testing and licensing. The more tightly it’s regulated, the more you have people working outside the legal framework. What good is mandatory testing of legal prostitutes if many of them prefer to work in the black market?
And I’d be surprised if the black market was bigger. Why go to an illegal hooker or brothel just to get your end wet? You see – that’s the missing part in this reasoning: the johns. It’s a common blind spot when people discuss prostitution: the fact that the customers are mostly regular Joes (whose wives won’t fellate).
Even if regulatory compliance is a hassle for the girls, the market for legal, safe sex is bigger than the market for sex with some triad junkie in a back room somewhere. Most customers of sex workers aren’t into illegal stuff – they simply want to have no-strings sex with a real live woman. Being able to do that legally and safely is market “added value” that your illegal provider has trouble matching.
That is probably true of many client, but I’m not convinced it’s true for most. It may have been true before the internet, but today you just have to see what happens with legal taxi cabs vs Uber. It’s so easy for people to hook up on their own and bypass regulations. Legality has it’s own value, but just to avoid paying taxes many people would see an illegal provider. And many people will choose a provider that is close to their place. Unless you have a legal brothel in every neighborhood and every small town, that will most likely be an illegal indy or brothel, or a street worker.
Another factor is that some clients are not even aware of the legal status in their jurisdiction.