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Posts Tagged ‘Philippines’

Against Their Will

Posted in Current Events, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 23, 2011| 23 Comments »

What ever crushes individuality is despotism, no matter what name it is called.  –  John Stuart Mill

Imagine this scenario:  you’re at work one day; maybe it’s a job you really like, maybe it’s one you just tolerate because it’s better than the alternatives, and maybe it’s one you hate but keep working at because the money is good and you’ve got bills to pay.  So you’re just minding your own business, dealing with customers or whatever, when suddenly a bunch of armed police thugs smash the door down, start pointing guns at everybody, arrest your customers and boss, handcuff you and your fellow co-workers and shove you into a van.  While this is going on you notice that there are some people with the police who are dressed in plain clothes and appear to be foreign.  The police eventually lock you and your co-workers in a cell and one of the foreigners then tells you all that you’ve been “rescued” from your job because the business owner was “exploiting” you.  Now, if you hate your job in the first place you might even agree about the exploitation bit, but you’d probably still be pretty angry about being arrested and scared half to death by the goon squad’s commando tactics.  And even if you did hate the job, how do you think you’d feel when the foreigner told you that they didn’t have any comparable work lined up for you, but that you would soon be transferred to a “rescue home” for an indefinite period of time and while you were there you would be taught to sew so you can be forced to work in a sweatshop at less than a tenth of your previous salary?

Don’t answer yet; now imagine that some of your coworkers who liked the job begin to protest, and are told that they don’t know what they’re talking about, that you’ve all been “programmed” to think you were working voluntarily but you “really” weren’t no matter what you remember.  You are informed that your “exploiters”, meaning every customer and member of management (including the cool manager who buys pizza for everyone on Fridays and the nice old man who always tells you about his grandchildren) are evil monsters who are going to prison for decades and that you are expected to testify against them in a kangaroo court; if you refuse you will be sent to a “deprogramming” facility where you will be psychologically tortured until you agree to say whatever your “rescuers” want.  In the meantime, nobody is allowed to call friends or family to let them know where you are, because the “rescuers” have no way of knowing which of you are “brainwashed” and you might call gangsters or something.  Finally, sometime in the next few days, you find out the whole thing was cooked up as a publicity stunt to please a foreign government (the one the foreign “rescuers” came from) in order to seal some kind of political deal.  How do you think you’d react?  Obviously you’d be angry, probably furious.  You’d probably join with the others in demanding a lawyer, transportation back to work and an apology, and if a reporter or social worker was sent in to talk to you you’d probably give her an earful in hopes of raising a public outcry.  You might even join in a riot to overpower your guards and escape.

Well, for many women in a number of countries (including The Philippines, India, the Republic of the Congo and the United Kingdom) this isn’t just a theoretical question because it’s happening quite often, and as you might suspect these women are pretty angry about it – often angry enough to become violent, just as you or I might be in their situation.  I’ve mentioned before that the rescue industry has become a major social problem in many developing countries, especially in the Far East; if you think I’m exaggerating with the above scenario take a look at this protest video from the Asia-Pacific Network of Sex Workers, then read on to the following examples which, as happens so often, came to my attention through Laura Agustín’s blog of July 12th.

The first of the cases is from the Philippines, May of 2009 and is unusual in that the “rescued” women were not actually prostitutes but operators for a paid “cybersex” service; apparently the reporter thought this sounded a bit too benign, so he referred to it as a “cybersex den”:

Fifteen girls, rescued by police and National Bureau of Agency (NBI) men [on April 23rd] from a cybersex den operated by two Swedish nationals, have escaped from the Department of Social Welfare Development office in Cagayan de Oro City…after mauling the duty security guard.  The girls then flagged down a passenger jeepney and forced its driver to bring them away from the DSWD office…Senior Superintendent Noel Armilla…of the…Police Office, said the girls would not be charged or arrested because they are not facing any charges.  Armilla, however, said they would have to locate the girls because they would need them to testify against two Swedish nationals and four Filipinos, who have been arrested for allegedly operating the cybersex den…

It takes some serious doublethink to be able to use the word “rescued” in conjunction with arresting and confining non-criminal adult women against their will.  Nor is their violent reaction unusual, as we can see in this story from India, last October:

…sex workers rescued on Wednesday and sent to a shelter in the city began a violent clamour last morning…At 9 am, all 21 sex workers stomped out and created a ruckus.  They broke off the grill and engaged in a fight with the management.  “The rescued sex workers began insisting on going back…” [the shelter manager] said…”In major raids, initially such things happen…In an earlier raid, when 46 girls were brought, the same thing had happened…They are programmed to lie, so we don’t have correct information about them…They even lie about their origin.”

“Lie” in this context obviously means “tell us things we don’t want to hear.”  Then there was this report from January 1st of this year:

Police from China flew to the Democratic Republic of Congo in November…They found 11 Chinese women who had been promised decent jobs in Paris by traffickers but ended up working in a Chinese-owned karaoke bar in…Kinshasa…After a joint raid by Chinese and Congolese police…the women decided to stay…saying it was easier to make good money there than in China…”They make 100 US dollars for receiving one guest – half of the money goes to their boss and they keep the other half”…the women…were [also] able to take cheap goods from China to Africa after visits home and sell them for big profits…

Yes, you read that correctly:  the “trafficked sex slaves” made more per client than German brothel girls, could go home at will and were allowed to conduct side-business as well.  The horror!  The most recent episode was again from the Philippines, reported June 29th:

A hundred female sex workers…and five foreigners were arrested, in  raids on three night clubs in Angeles City Tuesday night…“The women don’t really consider it a rescue,” said [the NGO manager] who led the raids.  “They kept cursing us, and tried their best to escape”…She said she assumed that some of the rescued women were below 18.  “Or they were taught to say they’re 18,” she said…the successive raids in Angeles City’s red light district bolstered the US government’s recognition of the Philippines’ commitment to combating human trafficking.  The Philippines has been taken off a watch list of the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report and elevated to Tier 2, a category of countries that do not fully comply with anti-trafficking standards but are making efforts to do so…

The total disregard for these women’s autonomy is deplorable; the few underage ones (if there were any) are said to be so stupid that they can’t even think of passing themselves off for 18 without being “taught” to say it, even though every teenager in the West can think that up all by himself.  This story is at least honest about the real motives of the Filipinos, though; these women were “trafficked” from their workplaces into jail due to U.S. pressure; their wishes were ignored and they were treated like commodities, handed over as gifts to the U.S. State Department like slave-girls given by a local king to the Roman governor.

One Year Ago Today

“The Numbers Game” is a column about why women in general and escorts in particular lie about our ages and weights, and the effect this has on both the business and the male brain.

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Imaginary Lines

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 7, 2011| 64 Comments »

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!  –  Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

When my husband and I first met he lived in the Los Angeles area, and after we were engaged I would travel there several times a year to spend a few weeks with him, leaving Grace to run the agency except for my shift on the phones.  Occasionally we had to run down to San Diego, north of which (along Interstate 5) lies an immigration control center which in those days was rarely open, thus allowing undocumented migrants to pass through the area unmolested.  Whenever we would pass and see this, my husband would say something like “I guess they must need dishwashers in Los Angeles or vegetable pickers in the Sacramento Valley.”

This was his way of pointing out what Americans who support greater restrictions on immigration love to ignore:  that the majority of jobs they whine about immigrants “stealing” from “real Americans” (most of whom are themselves no more than three generations removed from immigrants) are those no native American would touch, such as agricultural labor.  Some of them have an answer for that:  “if they paid higher wages they could get American workers.”  Of course, increased production costs would increase the price of the produce and any finished product which relied on it, which the anti-immigrant people would then complain about; perhaps these good Americans believe the farmers should simply accept decreased profits, or that the federal government should subsidize the greater costs?  But that would be socialism, wouldn’t it?  And judging by the noise these folks raise about the costs of “illegals” (as they’re so fond of calling them), they obviously aren’t in favor of that.

Proponents of tighter immigration are fond of saying immigrants need to “get in line”. Here, courtesy of Reason magazine, is a flow chart of that “line” (click to enlarge, and again to magnify).

I’m not denying that there are migrants who cross into welfare states in order to sponge off of their largesse, but how are they different from home-grown freeloaders?  A parasite is a parasite, and judging by America’s ever-increasing government bureaucracies, we have nothing against them.  Contrary to what the pundits claim, the majority of migrants want to work for a living, just as the majority of native-born citizens do, and since they are often willing to work harder, longer and more cheaply at less-pleasant jobs than those born to the softer life of a developed nation, they can out-compete natives at such jobs.  That’s called capitalism, folks; it’s what made this country the wealthiest one in the world, and if you don’t like it I’m sure there are a number of nice socialist (and a couple of leftover communist) countries to which you could yourself migrate.

So why am I discussing this topic?  Well, it’s partly because as I mentioned in my columns of June 22nd and 29th, increasing anxiety about unorthodox methods of migration is one of the root causes of “trafficking” hysteria, which is then conflated with prostitution and results in ever-more-Draconian prostitution laws and greatly increased anti-whore police activity, and that makes it my business.  But it’s also because I’m really sick of hearing the lawhead phrase “illegal alien”, which is of course intended to make them sound like criminals.  How, pray tell, are arbitrary immigration laws any different from the arbitrary laws you break?  Don’t say you don’t break laws, because everyone does.  And I don’t mean Silverglate’s inadvertent felonies (which are an entirely different issue); I mean the victimless “crimes” that you, I and everyone else purposefully choose to commit on a regular basis.  There is no moral difference between a migrant choosing to violate an arbitrary immigration law in order to have a chance for a better life, my violating arbitrary laws against my profession, your failing to pay state use taxes for online purchases, or your brother-in-law smoking weed.  And all of those actions are far more moral than the rampant violations we as a nation allow cops and prosecutors to commit every day, because their actions genuinely hurt people (often grievously), whereas breaking of arbitrary codes, statutes, ordinances and rules almost never does.

I’ve been thinking about this a great deal lately, and when I read this New York Times article posted on June 22nd, I felt it was time to write a column about the subject.  The article is the story of Jose Antonio Vargas, an undocumented immigrant from the Philippines who came to the U.S. in 1993 when he was 12, worked hard to learn English, discovered he was “illegal” when he was 16, excelled in school and became a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist…only to be told that the only way he could ever become “legal” was to accept a ten-year exile before reapplying (presumably this is intended as a paternalistic “punishment”, the governmental equivalent of “go to your room and don’t come out until I tell you”).  Vargas decided it was time to to tell his story in the hopes of educating people about the myths and realities of undocumented migrants, and a few of the things he said in his article may sound very familiar to my prostitute readers:

…I am still an undocumented immigrant.  And that means living a different kind of reality.  It means going about my day in fear of being found out.  It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am…There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.  We’re not always who you think we are.  Some pick your strawberries or care for your children.  Some are in high school or college.  And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read.  I grew up here.  This is my home.  Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.

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King Day

Posted in History, Holidays, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 6, 2011| 6 Comments »

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. –  Matthew 2:1-2

In the Catholic calendar today is the feast of the Epiphany, popularly called “Little Christmas” or “King Day” in some places because it is the observance of the visit of the Magi, also called the “Three Kings”, astrologers of Persia or Babylon whom Matthew described as coming to visit the infant Jesus.  Though Matthew only refers to them as “wise men”, the legend grew until they became kings in accordance with Isaiah 60:3, “And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.”  The tradition eventually assigned them the names Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar; these appear to derive from an early 6th century Greek manuscript composed in Alexandria.  Because Matthew describes them as bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh many Christian countries shifted their Christmas gift-giving to this day.  This was the prevailing custom in Christendom from the Dark Ages until the Reformation, when it returned to Christmas Eve in most countries (though Spain and former Spanish colonies such as Mexico and the Philippines still give gifts to children on the eve of this day).  Indeed, in some countries the traditional gift-givers are the Three Kings themselves rather than one of the many versions of Saint Nicholas/Father Christmas, and children in those countries fill their shoes with straw on the eve of the Epiphany so as to provide fodder for the kings’ camels.

Italian children also receive their gifts on Epiphany Eve, but not from the Three Kings; the traditional gift giver is instead a witch named Befana, a Christianized version of the Roman goddess Strenia (who was associated with ancestral spirits, forests, and the passage of time and identified with the Greek Hecate).  Some authorities claim that her name is derived from an Italian mispronunciation of the Greek epiphaneia (epiphany), but if that is the case it is likely in combination with the word Bastrina, the Latin word for the gifts given by Strenia.  Like Santa Claus she flies, enters through the chimney and leaves presents for good children and coal for bad ones (even good ones receive a lump of black rock candy because all children are bad sometimes).  It is also customary to leave her food and wine just as Santa is left cookies and milk (or sherry in England).  But while Santa has a sleigh drawn by flying reindeer, Befana flies on her broom and often sweeps the floor of a house before she leaves.

In Russia, today is not Epiphany but rather Christmas Eve; the reason for this is complicated.  The Gregorian calendar was developed in 1582 on the order of Gregory XIII, a Roman Catholic pope, so the only countries which adopted it immediately were Roman Catholic ones.  Protestant countries took longer; Denmark and her possessions adopted it in 1700, and the British Empire in 1752.  But Eastern Orthodox countries took longest of all; Russia remained on the Julian calendar until the revolution of 1917, and Greece until 1923.  In 1582 the accumulated error of the old calendar was ten days; by the time the British Empire switched the error was eleven days, and by the time Russia adopted the new calendar it had grown to thirteen days.  But though the new Communist regime had accepted the Gregorian calendar for pragmatic and scientific reasons, the Russian Orthodox Church would have none of it; Orthodox Church leaders saw no reason to use a calendar developed by Roman Catholics and endorsed by atheists, and so remained on the Julian calendar despite its 13-day error.  Pre-revolutionary Russians celebrated Christmas on what their calendar said was December 25th, but the rest of the world called it January 7th and so it is today.  And unless the Russian Orthodox Church adopts the Gregorian calendar within the next 89 years, Russian Christmas will after that time occur on January 8th.

In New Orleans, King Day is the official beginning of Carnival, the season between Christmastide and Lent.  The last day of the Carnival season is Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras in French), so called because it is the last day of normal eating and drinking before the fasting season of Lent begins on the next day, Ash Wednesday.  The latter changes from year to year; it is always 40 days before Easter, but Easter is defined as the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring and can thus vary by as much as four weeks.  Since Epiphany occurs on a fixed date, Carnival season is of variable length.  It is a festive time in New Orleans, dominated by parades, Carnival balls, private parties and the eating of king cakes (see yesterday’s column for recipe).  Carnival is the most lucrative time of year for New Orleans whores; locals in a celebratory mood spend more freely, and since no other part of the United States has such a tradition tourism sharply increases as well.  Best of all, the police are far too busy with crowd control at parades to have any time to spend on harassing prostitutes.  So though I did not realize it at the time, January 2nd was a very advantageous point at which to start my career; I think I made more money in the next two months than I had in the previous six as a stripper.

I don’t live in New Orleans any more, and I must admit I miss it most at this time of year.  Though I was never all that fond of parades, I enjoyed the high spirits and festive atmosphere of Carnival despite the hassles caused by parade traffic and blocked streets.  Still, you can take the girl out of New Orleans, but you can’t take New Orleans out of the girl; I always make our first king cake of the year on this day, and while it’s rising and baking we put away the Christmas decorations and take the tree down, just as most New Orleanians do.  And at some point in January, we always take a trip down to New Orleans to visit and exchange presents with Frank and Olivia and with Denise, to eat at a few of our favorite restaurants and see a few of our favorite places, and to stock up on some of the foods unique to the Crescent City.

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The Cold, Grey Light of Dawn

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 3, 2011| 12 Comments »

The ground for taking ignorance to be restrictive of freedom is that it causes people to make choices which they would not have made if they had seen what the realization of their choices involved. –  A.J. Ayer

In prohibitionist regimes all over the world, the first feeble rays of light are beginning to creep into the brains of those who, while perhaps not actually prohibitionists themselves, have always gone along with government policy on the matter.  Judges, legislators, police, journalists, academics and other “pillars of the community”, secure in the status quo, have long accepted prohibitionist rhetoric about the “necessity” of suppressing the sex trade, whether that rhetoric is traditional (social morality and “public health and safety”), legalistic (“neighborhood deterioration” due to streetwalkers and the self-reinforcing “associated crime” argument), hysterical (“sex trafficking”) or neofeminist (prostitution as “inherently degrading and exploitative”).  But now the internet has made our once-invisible world (the demimonde as the French call it) far more visible to outsiders, enabled articulate sex workers to write about our lives and views, restricted the ability of prohibitionist governments to hide the truth from those who care to look beneath the propaganda, and enabled intelligent, informed citizens to criticize repressive policies and expose misinformation.  And because of this, many of the aforementioned pillars of the community are beginning to realize that, whatever personal discomfort they may have with prostitution, either the prohibitionist laws themselves or at least the ways in which they are enforced are in violation of basic civil rights and create dangerous conditions for real, living women.  In today’s column I’d like to look at a few recent examples of writings by such people; none of them seem to like whores very much, but all of them apparently recognize that attempting to abolish prostitution altogether is not the answer.

I first started thinking about this last Tuesday morning when Kelly Michaels called my attention to this article by a retired New York City police detective (on a police technology website, no less!) which, though it mentions the same old tired excuses for criminalization, also contains this paragraph:

I had seen his face hundreds of times before, but never knew his name until now.  He lives in a beautiful house, just off the “Members’ Tees” at the 11th hole at my golf club.  A pleasant looking chap in his mid-sixties…after seeing his name and photograph in my local newspaper I seemed to recall that his wife had died a couple of years ago.  Sad, but death is a natural part of life.  Sad, too, was the reason that his name and picture were in the newspaper:  patronizing a prostitute.  Yes, a police “sting” operation had finally brought him to justice.  This depraved individual was now off the streets.  Society was now safe from his need for companionship, or simple sexual satisfaction.  We were all safe, now that his crime was exposed for all to see.  All it took was some hot looking babe with big breasts and a short skirt, and, oh yeah, a badge.

I think of this story every time I get to the 11th Tee.  I must admit; I do have mixed feelings about investigating and enforcing the prostitution laws.  There are some very good reasons behind the various state statutes…[but] there is also a very good, time proven reason for prostitution to exist:  the human need for sexual contact.

Simon Byrne, ACPO lead on prostitution

Considering the source, that’s practically a shout of “Decriminalization now!”  But he’s not the only cop who’s beginning to recognize the damage done by criminalization; in England, the Association of Chief Police Officers has called for a debate over prostitution laws so as to change them to protect prostitutes from violence.  While some local jurisdictions in England (such as Liverpool and Merseyside) have adopted a progressive approach to reducing violence by tolerating prostitution, others (such as Blackpool and Bradford) prefer American-style antics which endanger women by forcing them onto the street; decriminalization (or at least law reform) would put an end to such irresponsible and asinine behavior by prohibiting it from above.

Elsewhere in the Commonwealth, the Western Gazette of Canada published an editorial supporting decriminalization; though the editorialist seems to consider it a given that most women want to leave prostitution and makes the absurd statement “It would be ideal if society had no prostitutes or sex trade industry,” he also places partial blame for the murders of prostitutes on prohibitionist laws and includes the following paragraphs:

Laws criminalizing prostitution do more harm than good.  By striking down these laws, Ontario has modernized its view of prostitution, putting the province more in line with European countries.  Governments overseas abandoned the perspective that criminalization was the cure for society’s woes long ago.

The United States has taken that approach for years with their infamous War on Drugs.  The country poured billions into criminalizing drug addicts to no avail.  This not only forced addicts into even more peril, but it failed to stop the drug problem.  Addicts, like prostitutes, often have few alternatives once they enter their situation.  Making laws to deny them safety and protection just adds fuel to the fire.

Though comparing whores to addicts is both ignorant and insulting, the author at least recognizes that prohibition is not only dangerous but also ineffective in accomplishing what it was supposed to accomplish.  Meanwhile, in Vancouver, a group named “FIRST” has become the only mainstream feminist organization in North America to advocate decriminalization; this article not only advances that position, but also debunks the ridiculous myth that vast numbers of prostitutes flock to major sporting events such as the Super Bowl, Olympics or World Cup:

However, there is no evidence of dramatic, let alone “explosive,” growth in sex industry activity at large sporting events.  In 2006, we saw headlines that 40,000 women would be trafficked into Germany for soccer’s World Cup.  The Swedish government funded an independent report that conclusively found that an increase in human trafficking did not occur, either during or after the World Cup.  The report concluded, “The 40,000 estimate was unfounded and unrealistic.”

After the last four [Olympic] Games (Turin 2006, Athens 2004, Salt Lake City 2002, and Sydney 2000), there were almost no confirmed reports on the numbers of sex workers, level of violence or other associated factors.  Notably, almost all anecdotal reports suggested no obvious change in level of activity.  During the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, where sex work is legal, only a marginal increase in prostitution was reported. In Salt Lake City, one confirmed report indicated that city licenses for escort services increased by only 12 per cent in the period leading up to the Winter Games.

Wendy Chapkis

A few individual mainstream feminists outside Canada have also seen the light.  This article about Wendy Chapkis, a professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Southern Maine, makes many of the same points as I and many other whores make about the advantages of our profession and the reasons for decriminalization.  And in the Philippines, legislator Susan Yap advocates that prostitution be decriminalized and police resources directed toward chasing the “pimps” who “lure prostitutes into the business.”  Yap’s stated goal is to eradicate prostitution by hunting the men she assumes force most of the women into it, which probably means anti-brothel and “living off the avails” laws as in the UK and Canada, but that’s still a step in the right direction from Manila’s current policy of US-style criminalization.

Slowly but surely, anti-whore attitudes founded in ignorance and maintained by propaganda are beginning to erode, and even some who would prefer to see our profession abolished are beginning to realize that prohibition is not the answer, and indeed endangers the women it claims to be interested in protecting.  Reluctant allies like Susan Yap and the editor of the Gazette may not be as helpful as educated advocates like Wendy Chapkis and the women of “First”, but I’ll take them over trafficking fetishists and Swedish Model proponents any day of the week.

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