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Sex Work May Have Been Around Forever, But So Have Efforts To Restrict It
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Sex Work May Have Been Around Forever, But So Have Efforts To Restrict It |
11/08/08
I was in Vegas for Comdex in 99 as a journalist with no per diem or reimbursement, but I dressed well in the hopes of doing a little networking for a better job. I parked my truck at the Hilton Sports Book, right next to the convention, and planned on camping out in the mountains to save on expenses and get away from the flashing lights. After walking the floor for 10 hours, I decided to go get some beers at the Hard Rock, and chill for a bit.
I sat down at the bar near the center of the casino and ordered a beer. A young woman walked up and sat next to me with a plastic tumbler full of quarters and stared playing the video-poker machine in front of her stool, built-into the bar. She was conservatively dressed in a cotton dress that was neither low-cut, nor high-hemmed - she could have passed for a waitress at a diner in the Midwest. She asked if I was in town on business, I replied that I was, and we chatted a bit.
I bought her a drink when I bought my second beer. She asked if I liked my hotel, I replied that I was parked at the Hilton, but wasn't sure if I'd stay there. She told me that she was a Vegas native and was out playing the machines because it was cheaper than going to a show, and more fun than watching TV at home. She was cute and charming, in a "girl-next-door" way. Then she asked me if I liked to gamble. I answered that I don't really gamble much, I've never really had much luck at casino games.
She replied, "I think maybe you gamble on other things. Maybe you gamble on women?"
I chuckled a bit at that, and thought that maybe I was flirting my way into a little fun.
"Wanna gamble?" She asked.
I felt like I'd been smacked in the head with a bat - I suddenly realized had been going on for the past 15 minutes, and in an extremely rare moment, said exactly the type of thing I never think to say "in-situ":
"I'd love to take the chance... But not to place the bet."
"I see," she said.
"I find you attractive, it's just that I..."
"It's OK."
She seemed to understand that I was being sincere and that I wasn't going to freak and blow her "cover" or anything. "We can talk more if you want..." I said.
"It was nice meeting you," she replied and smiled, picking up her tub of quarters and getting up, looking just the slightest bit defeated.
I replayed the preceding moments in my head and began to pick up on some little things that seemed "off" about the whole episode - her body language, the way that she seemed to get me to buy her a drink with just a subtle glance, the way she "followed the money" with her eyes, the slightly suspicious expression she had when the bartender would get near.
For the next hour, I looked around the casino. In a giant room of some 600 people, I began to see patterns that reminded me of what I'd seen. Slowly, I understood a sort of intangible "aura" of behaviors that some people scattered about, exhibited.
It was like the first time I saw a coyote behind the sage in the desert, or an octopus nestled in some rocks on the ocean floor - both masters of camouflage, and skilled hunters that are only observed once you really train yourself to see them, or if they choose to let themselves be seen.
If you keep your eyes open, and your mind receptive, there is another world that goes on all around us, every day - but it is connected to all of us, and our lives, like a delicately balanced ecosystem, whether we choose to see it or not.
11/08/08
Look at Nevada: Their brothels are MUCH safer than most porn movie sets and they have strict regulation for their prostitutes.
11/08/08
11/07/08
I met ladies that were single, divorced and also those that were married. Many were college students and some had children.
The laws in Nevada are very strict as is the medical guidelines. To become a worker in a house they have to get a "workers card" from the police station and it has to stay updated. If they are married the husband is required to have a job or he can be arrested and charged with pandering. The only way that can be overlooked is if the husband is totally disabled. They are required to get weekly physicals and if they get as much as a cold much less a yeast infection they are off work until they are cleared by the doctor. Condom use is required at all times and these ladies do not play around with that rule.
I was totally fascinated by several of the ladies that I dealt with as they just didn't strike me as what I had ever thought of as the type to do that. When I found out one was working on her masters and that she didn't owe one cent in student loans and that she had done it all by working at the "ranch" and she then informed me that she also owned her own condo, car and had savings I was left to wonder who was anyone else to judge her. Another lady I knew was a mother of 3 that took care of them as well as her paralyzed husband with what she made working there. She flat told me that if she didn't do what she did that her family would not be able to live the life they did. Her husband had the better doctors, her kids went to good schools and their home was paid for.
By meeting these ladies I came to the conclusion that it should be legal but that it should be regulated the way that Nevada does it.
11/07/08
You can't totally separate legalization and trafficking. Legalization in the Netherlands and Germany has led to increased forced and child prostitution because it is easier to make false documents for a woman to work in a legal brothel than to hide a totally illegal activity. But no one has really combined complete legalization and increased investigation.
Having done research on people's satisfaction with their jobs, I call bullshit on this whole "I talked to a handful of Dutch prostitutes and they were fine!" That is one brothel and it can't be made to represent the whole industry. Furthermore, when you talk to people in their place of business, there is a subconscious pressure for them to say it is awesome since no one wants to get fired. I'm not going to assume that the women she spoke to were lying, but it isn't convincing proof. I also think that it is important to remember that 70% of the legal prostitutes in the Netherlands are foreign born, which complicates things again. In fact, there is a shortage of women in the Netherlands willing to do sex work and a few politicians have suggested that there should be a sex work only visa, which brings up a whole different set of coercive factors.
I'm also not fond of the idea that testing sex workers regularly is a boon to them. It's not, it's a boon to the john and their sexual partners. The sex workers naturally face a higher risk of transmission (unless they are male tops) and the johns aren't being tested. Its treating sex workers as vectors of disease and ignoring how they get the disease.
I don't think legalized prostitution works, but really my objection is moral. I think there are some things you shouldn't be able to sell (organs, children, sex) because the fact that you are willing to sell them suggests that you are in such dire straits that you aren't really making a free decision. But I'm also kind of sick of having this discussion, we've had a lot of sex worker posts in the last month.
11/08/08
As That_little_attention_whore said above: "Actually, I think a big part of "mainstream" society's dislike of prostitution is the idea that A) a woman would want to have sex (outside of a loving, pro-creating marriage, obvs) and B) a woman may exert some control over her own sexuality, and the old chestnut C) any non-romantic sex must be damaging to women because we only "want" to have sex when we're in love.
I detect a lot of that undertone in the more paternalistic "we want to protect the women" arguments."
If I want to fuck someone and get paid for it, I should be able to.
P.S. My mother was an "escort" as well as an exotic dancer. I'm not but I'm fine, she's fine.
11/08/08
I don't have any problem with people sleeping around. But sex work is not the same thing as sleeping around. While there are varying levels of control exercised by individual prostitutes, it isn't as though a bunch of johns put themselves on display for the prostitutes to pick from. Female lust isn't a required part of the equation.
You don't become a prostitute because you really want to screw. Sex is much easier to give away than to charge for, the motivation is money. I find the empowerment argument to be really hollow.
11/07/08
11/07/08
We make choices based on our environment, our experience and history, the alternatives and many other facets of our lives.
What we do know is that there are women who are in the sex industry and are unsafe; this needs to change and keeping it illegal will not change anything
We know that the majority of sex workers have histories of abuse and addiction (obv. not all) and this tells me something is wrong
We know that the only industries where women make more than men are related to sex and yet cost of living is higher for women
This is why i hate both sides rhetoric; of course legalize it and it is total BS to say it is just a matter of individual choice
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and there will still be women who choose to become prostitutes.
It sucks that there are women out there who don't have access to the kind of education, child care, health care, etc. to get a higher-paying job. I don't understand how that fact makes prostitution wrong.
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Heh. You know, many women have the same need.
11/07/08
I detect a lot of that undertone in the more paternalistic "we want to protect the women" arguments.
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I believe the same of drugs.
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11/07/08
exactly, though it was a really narrow margin:
The tally as of Wednesday morning, Nov 5, was:
Yes 89,833 42.44 %
No 121,815 57.56 %
11/07/08
If authorities really cared so much about the trafficking angle of prostitution, and really concerned themselves with the welfare of the exploited victims, then human traffickers would face the same legal consequences as drug or arms traffickers, and they would be treated exactly the same as any other organized crime operation. But they're not.
So I get just a little bit tired of people in power who say they want to do something about prostitution because they want to protect victims of trafficking, because at this point, it looks like they're cracking down on people who buy and sell sex.
You want to crack down on trafficking? Fine. Start by moving it out of vice and hand it over to the people who deal with organized crime. Apply RICO laws. Seize their assets. Get the victims to testify and then put them in witness protection. Any effort that goes into taking down a drug cartel should also be applied to taking down human trafficking operations.
Trafficking in persons exists because there is a lucrative market that carries much less risk than smuggling guns or drugs. Make it more risky, increase the consequences, and you have made it less profitable. Same goes for you UN/NATO peacekeeper types operating in places like Bosnia and Kosovo. Don't want to take on the mafia? Maybe you should have thought about that before you enabled the shit in the first place.
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[www.smartvoter.org]
Oh well, I'm back to giving it away for free!
11/07/08
Look, I agree that trafficking poses a complicated issue, but it is possible to police that and ALSO legalize consensual prostitution, yes?
Anyway, this is maybe not the place to discuss it, but I guess I'd just like to see a more evenhanded approach. Maybe a guest-blogging appearance by collegecallgirl, or something of that nature.
11/07/08
It is also complex, in my mind, because there really is NO example of anywhere where prostitution is legal or illegal that has successfully dealt with all of these issues. So the answer to your question, "Look, I agree that trafficking poses a complicated issue, but it is possible to police that and ALSO legalize consensual prostitution, yes?" is basically.... well, we don't know. Is it? how do we do that?
11/07/08
Consensual Prostitution = nobody else's business
Trafficking = organized crime
The problem is, people often conflate the two. So, for example, you look at US anti-trafficking policy. While those State Dept. Reports are pretty good, and I think their hearts are in the right place, part of the problem is that a lot of anti-trafficking efforts are actually just anti-prostitution. Like people freaked out when Germany legalized brothels before the World Cup, claiming there would be a HUGE jump in trafficking (which there was not, according to German authorities)
At the same time, American - and most western nations' - law enforcement and judicial systems, when presented with the opportunity to really crack down on human trafficking, and really make a hit on the supply side, they really don't. (at least, not to the extent that they do with, say, heroin or arms trafficking).
So, when you look at both of these things together, of course anti-trafficking policy is going to look like a confused, muddled mess. Because it kind of is.
11/07/08
But pimping and trafficking should be treated as a crime, in the same way we treat drug dealers in the US. You have your small-time dealers, and your major trafficking operations. Take the prostitution out of the equation entirely and look at it like an organized crime operation. Investigate and prosecute it thusly.
Also, not all people are trafficked into the sex trade - some are forced into sweat shops, others get their organs sold, etc. So sex trafficking is one (albeit a very prominent) form of human trafficking. I would even take the word "prostitution" out of the language when discussing human trafficking, because that's not what it is. I would use the word "slavery" A) because it is a more accurate depiction and B) it doesn't get the judgment that "prostitution" would incur
That's just my $.02
11/07/08
11/07/08
I think Jezebel should also consider guest posts by feminist thinkers. There are plenty of prominent feminist scholars on both sides of this issue, and they could provide some of the structural analysis that I think readers here would love to read.
The fact that many of the posts on this site speak of trafficking and sex work in the same breath, despite the fact that THESE ARE TWO WHOLLY SEPARATE SOCIAL ISSUES, suggests that the sex work posts on Jezebel could be a bit more sophisticated than they currently are.
11/07/08
There are so many amazing organizations out there right now that are working to change the focus to sex worker's rights...it saddens me to see played-out stereotypes again and again on Jez.
From the intro of "Whores and other Feminists" ed by Jill Nagle:
Sex worker activists around the globe have been laboring for more than two decades to improve conditions for those who choose the profession, and to oppose all forms of coercion, in the process calling attention to the larger economic context that severely cicrumscribes the range of options for all women (and most men). A small group of such activists recently helped ensure that the Platform for Action that emerged out of the United Nation's Bejing Women's Conference in October 1995 clearly differentiated between forced and voluntary prostitution, condemning only the forced variety
Feminism too often has failed to incorporate and theorize this distinction....it is high time to stop excluding the perspectives of sex worker feminists, time to stop assuming that traditional feminist analysis of sexual oppression alone exhausts all possible inprepretations of commercial sex, and time to stop reproducing the whore stigma common to the larger culture. These practices dilute much of feminism's radical potential. This needn't happen. Mainstream feminism can and must take up the mantle to include sex worker feminism -- and feminists -- in the larger picture.
this book is an excellent insight into the framework and dialogue we need to be using.
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Look, I can see where you're coming from, and years of policy could make it easy to think they're the same, but they're obviously not. Yes, it is the same demand, but they are COMPLETELY different suppliers, and that is the point we are trying to make.
Think of it as the difference between diamonds that came from a mine that employed only adult, unionized workers versus diamonds coming from a mine that used the forced labor of children. Either way, you're getting a diamond, but I think we should treat the former mine's owners differently than the latter's.
And, FWIW, most organizations that are involved in human trafficking are also involved in drug or arms trafficking. These are organized crime operations. The US, at least, has laws like RICO that could be used to crack down on traffickers. The question we ought to be asking is why the hell do we as a society care more about cracking down on people's ability to get high in their homes than we are on cracking down on the modern-day slave trade?
Trafficking in persons - whether for sex, forced labor, organ sales - is vile and should be investigated, prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of the law.
I could care less if some college girl puts an ad up on Craigslist to get money for "dates"
11/07/08
11/07/08
I suppose you could go after traffickers in a way more similar to arms trafficking and terrorism, but then you are looking at a HUGE intelligence initiative. Perhaps unfortunately, I don't really see the US or UN member states jumping at the idea of setting up such large and expensive programs.
I don't have the answer of how to untangle prostitution from trafficking entirely since, as you said, a lot of trafficking does feed into prostitution rings (though not all, of course). My kneejerk reaction is to say de-criminalize the sale or sex, but keep the purchase criminal.
11/07/08
I think there has to be a way to see if a brothel is not legit other than daily raids as you suggest. I think they would have to approach it from a more top-down approach: investigate the people who are running the brothels. Which is why I would advocate involving investigators who deal with organized crime (rather than, say, the vice squad).
I agree with you that it's not easy, but it has to be more feasible than cracking down on all prostitution indiscriminately. I am trying to think - is there any other industry that is legal, but regulated, and authorities have been able to crack down on operations?
11/07/08
I think it is interesting you chose mining as an analogy because i believe it is the male equivalent to sex work: people dont tend to choose it when they can make similar amounts of money doing something else and it is not good for the body long term and tends to lead to an earlier death (on average!).
11/07/08
11/08/08
They're both big issues, that in many countries actually SHOULD be named in the same breath. Because we cannot have a health sex industry (if we want to) unless trafficking is stopped.
11/08/08
The only thing I have popping into my head, if you want to go with the organized crime example (or drugs/arms) is imposing some kind of civil penalty on suspected traffickers or people possibly linked to traffickers. The threshold for anything civil is a lot lower than trying to get someone on criminal charges, so theoretically you could just have investigators constantly watching brothel owners for anything off and then slam them with a civil action, perhaps blocking their funds, or taking away their passport and registering them on the no-fly list(if they were using it to in anyway move people internationally), or publishing a list of all brothel owners and the names of their brothels (at this point assuming it is regulated) suspected of unlawful business, a kind of name and shame if you will. I think the effect of these type of things though, might be that it would keep the straight owners and operators on their toes, but still may not do anything major to stop the crooked. Not sure though, could at least help if not solve the problem, particularly for the major traffickers. The small time guys would still probably slip through the cracks.
I suppose another way to have prostitution legal and highly regulated would be to just REALLY limit the context in which is is legal, like is done in Nevada. A certain number of brothels/sex workers would be allowed per state (based on population of that state, also taking into account varying size of the brothels)and those owners would be given business licenses. You could then have these businesses highly regulated, perhaps even with authority oversight. You could have the testing, required condom use, health-care, etc. but you would be working with a limitied pool of sex workers in a really limited context. Any other type of prostitution would still be illegal. I still think this would be rife with problems, but I can see it working to a certain extent...