The Honest Courtesan

A few months ago I shared this story about a federal lawsuit involving cops protecting what appears to be an exploitative escort service in Virginia in exchange for services (for which the escorts appear to have not been compensated).  The original was drawn almost entirely from a government press release, so I did my best to “extract…what appears to be the important information from amongst the dysphemized descriptions, agency denial, and outright fantasies“.  Unfortunately, most sex workers and supporters of our rights who have linked the story made far less effort to separate fact from fantasy, preferring instead to simply parrot the government’s calling the operation a “trafficking ring”.  If you’ve done this yourself and have actual information on the supposed “ring” that does not come from government sources, please share; otherwise you’re just repeating a prohibitionist narrative.  If you don’t understand what I’m saying, remember that cops and prosecutors use the slur “sex trafficking ring” to mean anything from a broken-down pimp to an ordinary escort service to a sex worker ad site.  Until we know what this organization (if it even was an organization; cops and prosecutors often create imaginary “gangs” and “rings” from people who don’t even know each other) was about, it’s a bad idea to parrot government’s claims.  I understand you want to talk about bad cops, but you don’t know these cops weren’t just accepting ordinary bribes from an ordinary escort service.  So please chill on the “sex trafficking ring” cant and stop denying the agency of women you don’t know just to “pwn the cops”.