In a heart-wrenching LA Times article, Joe Markman reports that many child prostitutes can't simply be returned to their family homes. Richard Estes, a social policy professor at UPenn, says, "Most of the girls that have run away and are on the streets have run away because of sexual abuse." Lisa Goldblatt Grace, a consultant for the Health and Human Services Department, concurs: she says underage prostitutes and sex trafficking victims "lack a safe, stable place to live, and that's part of what made them vulnerable to begin with." Estes says kids who escape prosecution need "a rebuilding and remolding of personality and character." Instead, they end up in group homes, inadequate foster homes, or even prison, on "material witness hold." Only three organizations in the country offer residential programs for former child prostitutes, meaning just 44 beds exist for between 100,000 and 300,000 victims.

Adult prostitution may be a controversial issue, but keeping kids out of the sex trade — and offering help to those who do fall into it — seems like a no-brainer. But Markman quotes former LA detective Keith Haight uttering one of the saddest sentences I've heard in a long time: "A lot of places don't want to take responsibility for girls that are known to be sexually active." The idea that sexually active girls somehow become damaged goods that no one wants to deal with is incredibly depressing, but it's just another illustration of the grim fact that America doesn't know how to help kids who violate a certain ideal of innocence. We try child criminals as adults, because we think "real" kids don't commit crimes — and when kids get involved in sex or drugs, they become "undesirable," even though they are the ones who most need care. According to Markman, there's been a trend in recent years against prosecuting child prostitutes, which is a step in the right direction. But his article drives home the fact that child prostitution isn't just a problem of developing countries — it's happening right here, and we suck at dealing with it.

Image via LA Times.

Rescued Child Prostitutes Not Receiving Help [LA Times]

As some commenters pointed out, Grey's words in Newsweek, though unfairly slammed by Kathryn Jean Lopez, were actually kind of annoying. In response to the Mark Sanford scandal, she wrote,

Americans act so shocked when they hear about politicians, celebrities, and athletes having affairs, but I have to believe that many women who are married to men with power are aware of affairs, and accept it. Don't ask, don't tell; as long as they receive something in exchange from their husband-whether that exchange be children, money, material items, or sex. We create our own morals. It's once the affair goes public that morals change. The wife feels shame and humiliation because of public awareness, yet felt no desire to speak out prior. [...] Ideally, we should all openly have something extra on the side.

Commenter Old Jean Gallagher called this response "shockingly victim-blaming," which is pretty accurate. Grey criticizes political wives for making a public stink about their husbands' cheating, and sort of implies that they are all violating some previously agreed-upon quid pro quo. But while we may "create our own morals," when we're in relationships we need to agree on some of them, and it's unlikely that all wives of powerful men agree, even tacitly, to infidelity. As to her suggestion that we should all have something on the side, that's just as prescriptive as saying we should all be monogamous.

Grey seems much more thoughtful in her Dazed Digital interview with John-Paul Pryor. Pryor asks, "Do you think without prostitution and pornography there would be more instances of rape and so on? Or do you think that they actually allow for an arena where those kinds of abuses can take place?" The idea that porn and prostitutes act as a safety valve for men's natural desire to rape isn't new, but it is offensive — luckily, Grey handles it pretty well:

I think it depends. You have women on the street who are obviously being abused and they have pimps, I mean all you have to do is watch a few documentaries to see what that's like and how raw it is. That just perpetuates the negative stereotypes of prostitution, or pimping, or the johns. And then you have the women like Christine – they are like call girls, and they might not have a pimp; they are doing it on their own. I don't think that those necessarily perpetuate the abuse and the violence, but in the same vein, I don't think they help stop it at all. But the guys who are paying for the higher echelons don't beat the girls up – well, that's generally speaking from the research we did, maybe some politicians are going to go out there and beat some girls up, I don't know.

She makes the streetwalker-versus-call girl distinction that's been so much in the news lately, but she's careful to qualify it. She recognizes that just because she hasn't heard of violence against call girls doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Here's Grey on sex and communication:

Well, I just think it's 2009 and we're still so afraid to talk about sex. I think ignorance breeds fear and vice versa and the less you know the more negative things can happen, such as teenage pregnancy or the skyrocketing rate of STDs in young adults. It is about sexual freedom but it's about more than that, it's about communication and talking and learning. I think people are so afraid to do that; people are afraid of the truth – we'd rather hide inside a bubble.

And on acting:

I think the technical aspects and the people and the crews are all very similar but as far as performances go, I really hate it when people say, ‘Oh this is reality porn!" No. Because any time you put a camera in front of anybody, even if they have never been in front of a camera, they are going to act differently. For me, pornography is performing – it is what it is and I am an extension of myself, I am hyper me, whereas in a film like this, I am doing character research and I am stepping into the shoes of someone else, and I am thinking about my mannerisms.

It's nice to hear someone point out that pornography isn't real without denigrating it — Grey's words remind us that we can enjoy porn as a performance without expecting our actual sex lives to mimic it. Throughout the interview, she comes off as smart and appreciative of nuance — Kathryn Jean Lopez is missing out by dismissing her. However, Grey's also only 21 years old. While in most of the interview she sounds very mature and articulate, she occasionally makes statements like this one: "Before Christianity and Catholicism took over most people were in poly-amorous relationships."

I don't have the entire sexual history of the pre-Christian world at my fingertips, but I do know a little bit about Greece and Rome in the centuries immediately BCE, and I know that while upperclass men there often did have sex with multiple partners, the lives of their wives were pretty rigidly circumscribed. Of course, this doesn't mean women never had "something on the side," and it's frankly a little hard to tell who was screwing who thousands of years ago, especially among groups that didn't leave written records. But men were trying to control women's sexual behavior long before Christ, and the idea of a polyamorous pre-Christian golden age doesn't really hold water.

Maybe it's ageist of me to chalk up some of Grey's more sweeping statements to the fact that she's barely old enough to buy booze. I'm a half-decade older, and while I bet I could beat her in an ancient-history trivia contest, I may not actually know more about relationships. K. Lo's apparently 33, but being old enough to run for Senate hasn't taught her not to judge other people's personal choices. Grey can be judgmental too, but even in her short and very public life, she's managed to learn the value of "communication and talking and learning." A 21-year-old could do a lot worse.

Sasha Grey / The Girlfriend Experience [Dazed Digital]

Related: Governor Sanford's Appalachian Adventure

Earlier: Newsweek Too Hot For National Review Writer

An escort agency manager identified only as James told the London Times's Helen Croydon that the TV version of Belle's story made some young women proud to be prostitutes. He says,

The TV series did glamorise it [...] Whether that is good or bad I won't say but I noticed that after it was shown, our younger girls - the ones aged 18 to 21 - started to think that what they did was cool. I call it the ‘Belle de Jour phenomenon'. They used to want to hide it but recently I hear they have come clean to friends - boyfriends, even. Not only has it become acceptable to them but some even aspire to it.

So will the revelation that Belle de Jour is Brooke Magnanti — educated, currently with a loving partner, and apparently with no regrets — convince more young women that prostitution can be cool and even risk-free? Magnanti's (alleged) ex, who has begun an extremely long-winded blog about her, has this rather bizarre answer:

Anyone who reads it and decides to take up prostitution because of it has much deeper issues. Her blog and books were merely the litmus paper that indicated/highlighted it, not the cause.

For example, having watched Twilight you don't just then fall for the next moody, pale adolescent you see. He might be a ravishingly intriguing vampire who can unlock the door to an exciting world, allowing you to escape your rather mundane one. However he might also just be quiet because he has nothing to say and pale because the world he will show you hidden in his bedroom is the Online Gaming forum he inhabits everyday when he should be out in the sun kite surfing every now and again as well. He will be fat, spotty and myopic by 30, not eternally youthful with good cheek bones. There is nothing wrong with the former, but don't be surprised and berate him for it when it happens.

Twilight references aside, the Daily Mail offers a cautionary tale for any young woman who might want to follow in Magnanti's footsteps. The lead is classic Daily Mail — "This week the anonymous sex blogger Belle de Jour revealed her true identity as a scientist and claimed she enjoyed her work as a prostitute. But can any woman justify glamorising prostitution?" — but Christina Errington's story is disturbing. She writes about having unprotected sex with older men as a university student, first because she needed the money and later as a form of retaliation against her overprotective and uncommunicative parents. Two men hit her, and she says "it took me several years of being in a trusting and loving relationship [...] before I could make love without stirring up unpleasant recollections of my life on the streets." She concludes her piece thus:

It is easy to say, as Brooke Magnanti did this week, that selling your body for money doesn't hurt anyone. But it does, and the damage that is caused to a woman's self-respect is sometimes irreparable.

It's clear that prostitution can carry psychological as well as physical risks, whether or not a prostitute is educated and middle-class. But it's somewhat unfortunate that Errington implies she deserved to lose her self-respect because she did sex work. Croydon writes that "those entering this sort of 'work' must have specific non-emotive character traits to be able to handle the psychological strain," and it's obvious that Errington, who took up prostitution in response to poor family relationships, felt this strain keenly. But what "non-emotive traits" would someone need in order not to feel it? Was Magnanti's comfort with her profession the result of her personality — which her ex describes with the words, "she wiped her nose on her sleeve and ate peas off her knife whilst discussing advanced astronomy etc at the dinner table" — or simply of good luck? It's hard to know, perhaps because both Errington's story — the fallen woman scarred by her days of selling herself — and Magnanti's — what Croydon calls the "happy hooker" — are such popular media narratives. What's missing from the public conversation about prostitution — and what continues to be missing despite Magnanti's confession — are nuanced portrayals of both the attractions and risks of sex work. These exist — Michelle Tea's Rent Girl is one. But they get less attention than stories that fit into established prostitution cliches, which, despite her new candor about her identity, Belle de Jour's still does.

Image via Daily Mail.

Happy Hookers: The Other Belles De Jour [TimesOnline]
I Was A Student Call Girl Like Belle De Jour - And The Shame Will Never Leave Me [Daily Mail]
Untitled Post [Brookes Owen]
Belle De Jour's Father: I'm Broken-Hearted After Discovering Her Past [Telegraph]

• Police believe Joshua Woodward, a restaurateur from L.A., gave his 13-weeks pregnant girlfriend an abortion inducing drug without her consent. She claims just hours before she miscarried, Woodward touched her sexually, leaving white powder in her underwear. • Conseulo Carreto Valencia, 61, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison - the maximum sentence - for forcing girls to work as prostitutes. In this rather tasteless article, the NY Daily News refers to her as a "mini-madam," due to her short stature. •  A Danish political party has fessed up to pasting yellow penis stickers all over the posters for opposing parties. "We admit we did it," said party Vice President Niels Andreasen. But it seems like their hilarious efforts paid off: "At first we figured we'd get around 200 votes. But now we've had 10,000 visitors to our Web site and we have 500 new Facebook friends." • Two cities in California have voted to outlaw the declawing of cats. Beverly Hills City Council and the Los Angeles City Council joined Santa Monica and San Francisco in the recent ban. •  A 20-year-old Somali woman was stoned to death for adultery in front of a crowd of 200 on Tuesday afternoon. She had recently been divorced, and was reportedly dating a 29-year-old man. He received 100 lashes for his part in the affair. • A research team from the UK found that almost 50% of women have a genetic variation which reduces their ability to produce vitamin A from beta-carotene. This may mean that up to half the women in England could be at risk for vitamin A deficiency. • Doctors believe that they may be able to use eggs donated by younger women to increase the chances of conception among older women. A team from Japan removed the nuclei from eggs of women undergoing IVF and injected them into eggs donated by women under 35. • The city of Sacramento, California has presented 18-year-old Margarita Vargas with an official proclamation, calling her decision to call the police after hearing about the brutal gang rape of a teen girl "a bold act of humanity." • Olivia Thomas, the oldest person in the U.S., died this week at the age of 114. Thomas was believed to be the third oldest person in the world at the time of her death. •  A police officer in Arkansas recently tasered a 10-year-old girl when she refused to get into his police car. The report says the stun was "very, very brief" and only used to bring the girl to a youth shelter. • It seems Brian Adams, the photographer who shot the picture of Sarah Palin in shorts for Runner's World violated his contract by reselling the photo to Newsweek. A spokeswoman for Runner's World said the picture was supposed to be under embargo until August 2010, and "Runner's World did not provide Newsweek with its cover image... It was provided to Newsweek by the photographer's stock agency, without Runner's World's knowledge or permission." A Newsweek spokesman responded, "We purchased the photo from an agency and were not aware of any issues with it." • Police say they're not filing any more charges in the murder of 5-year-old Shaniya Davis until it's decided which North Carolina county will handle the case. Her mother, Antoinette Davis, and Mario McNeill have already been arrested and charged with kidnapping and child abuse involving prostitution. • Katherine Sebelius addressed the confusion over new breast cancer screening recommendations saying, "The U.S. Preventive Task Force is an outside independent panel of doctors and scientists who make recommendations... They do not set federal policy, and they don't determine what services are covered by the federal government... The Task Force has presented some new evidence for consideration but our policies remain unchanged. Indeed, I would be very surprised if any private insurance company changed its mammography coverage decisions as a result of this action." • A 13-year-old boy in Alabama was arrested after he asked an undercover officer posing as a prostitute for sex. The officer says she tried to run him off more than once, but he insisted, so she had to arrest him. He was charged with a misdemeanor count of loitering while looking for a prostitute. • In its 2009 state of the world population report, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says the world's poor are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and most of the 1.5 billion people living on less than $1 a day are women. "Poor women in poor countries are among the hardest hit by climate change, even though they contributed the least to it," said UNFPA executive director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. • Last month the U.K.'s Law Commission proposed that unmarried couples who live together for two years should be able to claim half of their partner's estate if they die without a will. Baroness Deech, chairman of the Bar Standards Board says, "Cohabitation law retards the emancipation of women, degrades the relationship, takes away choice, is too expensive and would extend an already unsatisfactory maintenance law for married couples to another large category," adding, "Women do not need and ought not to require to be kept by men after their relationship has come to an end." • British hedge fund manager Mark Lowe is being sued for sexual discrimination by female executive Jordan Wimmer because he repeatedly forwarded the office sexist emails. She confronted him when he sent around a dumb blonde joke. He said in court: "I didn't for a moment suppose anyone would take exception to a feeble joke of this sort. It was not directed against [Ms Wimmer]. The thought never occurred to me that she'd be offended." •

[London, November 17. Image via AP]

A detail of an art installation addressing the theme of prostitution, entitled 'The Hoerengracht ' by US artists Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, is seen during a press view at the National Gallery, in central London, Tuesday Nov. 17, 2009. According to the gallery 'The Hoerengracht' ('Whore's Canal') made between 1983-88 and inspired by Amsterdam's Red Light District area is one of the most significant pieces of installation art made by the Kienholzes before Ed Kienholz's death in 1994.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Belle de Jour revealed herself as scientist Brooke Magnanti in an interview yesterday with India Knight of the Times of London. She says she took up prostitution as a way to make quick money while finishing her Ph.D, and that she had begun to feel "it was time" to acknowledge that period in her life openly, not just in her anonymous books and blog entries. Knight's piece also references "an ex-boyfriend with a big mouth lurking in the background," but Helen Pidd of the Guardian says the real impetus was a forthcoming exposé in — of course — the Daily Mail. Pidd also writes that some are angry at Magnanti for "glamorising and normalising" prostitution.

Magnanti says she charged £300 an hour (her cut was £200, or about $335), and was "very lucky" never to have had any problems with her clients. But Pidd also quotes Finn Mackay of the Feminist Coalition Against Prostitution, who fires back:

To come out saying, 'It's so wonderful' is a slap in the face to the great majority of women who have had horrendous experiences in the sex industry. I'm glad to hear that she hasn't been burned, beaten, buggered, raped and spat on, but she shouldn't sell down the river those whose experiences are different from hers by glamorising and normalising sex work.

On the other side, public health professor Helen Ward says,

Belle de Jour's case is not the norm, but it's not that unusual either. Policy makers tend to portray sex workers as either drug-addicted young women [...] or as trafficked migrant women who have no control over their lives. But I've been working with sex workers for over 20 years as a researcher and as a doctor, and I know that there is a wide range of people involved in sex work.

This last statement is key. Not all prostitutes are graduate students pulling down hundreds of dollars an hour for safe sexual encounters, nor are they all streetwalkers exchanging blowjobs for drugs. What separates Magnanti from women Mackay mentions may be simply the presence of other options. Magnanti says she chose sex work over waitressing or borrowing from friends and family. She also worked as a computer programmer at one point but found prostitution "so much more enjoyable." Magnanti had both a support system she chose not to utilize and other marketable skills — sex work, for her, was freely chosen as the most attractive of a number of possibilities.

For many prostitutes, that's not the case. The Chicago street prostitutes Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner spoke to for Superfreakonomics often don't have education or monied friends to fall back on, and for them prostitution may be more necessary than "enjoyable." As Levitt and Dubner point out, their experience with sex work is also very different — they make less money than Magnanti, and they face greater risks. Levitt and Dubner don't really address the fact that prostitution is just one of the many areas where being middle class and white gives you a significant leg up. But Magnanti is now in a position to address this.

Now that she's out in the open, Magnanti could point out that her writing doesn't "glamorize" prostitution — it merely reveals that for some women, sex work can have big payoffs and manageable risks. For others, it can be exploitative and dangerous. Women (and men, and children) around the world need protection from forced prostitution, no one should have to view sex work as the only option, and prostitutes living in poverty deserve protections (like legalization of their activities) that might not necessarily be popular with high-end prostitutes who rely on illegality for high prices. The truth is that prostitution as a whole is neither glamorous nor dangerous. Instead, it's as complex as the sexual urges prostitutes satisfy. Magnanti is well-placed to examine its complexities — let's hope she does so.

Belle De Jour Drops Her Anonymity [BBC]
Belle De Jour Revealed At Last: Scientist Who Penned Diary Of A London Call Girl Outs Herself To Foil Daily Mail [Guardian]
Now I'm Not Anonymous... [Belle de Jour]
Sexblogger's Tale: How My Life Changed Forever [Guardian]
I'm Belle De Jour [TimesOnline]
Belle De Jour Says Her Mother Supports Her [Telegraph]

In an "explanatory note" on the text, Levitt and Dubner admit (in somewhat disingenuous "we're-so-bad" fashion) that their previous book, Freakonomics, lacked "a unifying theme." Superfreakonomics sort of has one — the authors write in the introduction that "it seems to be part of the human condition to believe in our own predictive abilities — and, just as well, to quickly forget how bad our predictions turned out to be." Their aim is to provide a lighthearted and eclectic corrective to this stodgy short-sightedness — a challenge to the status quo, complete with jokes.

Some of their revelations are quite interesting. Particularly timely in light of the recent horror in Richmond is their takedown of the standard view of the Kitty Genovese story. Genovese's death has become a symbol of the apathy of Americans — and New Yorkers in particular — in the face of suffering. A New York Times account of the event famously began, "for more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. [...] Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead." In fact, the number of witnesses was more like six, and one of them may have called the police in time to save Genovese — but they were slow to respond because they thought it was a domestic violence call. As Levitt and Dubner frame it, the Genovese story is less about uncaring bystanders and more about incompetent police and sensationalizing reporters. They roll this information together with a critique of modern altruism research to form a convincing argument that people at large are neither as evil nor as good as they're sometimes made out to be.

Levitt and Dubner are less enlightening on the subject of women in the workplace. We've already critiqued their discussion of prostitutes, but a drop in hookers' relative wages isn't the only social development they try to pin on "the feminist revolution." The other is the decline in the quality of schools, which they blame on women's entry into high-paying professions that had previously been closed to them, like medicine and law. Levitt and Dubner write,

As a consequence, the schoolteacher corps began to experience a brain drain. In 1960, about 40 percent of female teachers scored in the top quintile of IQ and other aptitude tests, with only 8 percent in the bottom. Twenty years later, fewer than half as many were in the top quintile, more than twice as many in the bottom. It hardly helped that teachers' wages were falling significantly in relation to those of other jobs. "The quality of teachers has been declining for decades," the chancellor of New York City's public schools declared in 2000, "and no one wants to talk about it."

The authors don't suggest that we turn back the clock on feminism in order to benefit schoolchildren, but they do question whether women have really profited from their increased opportunities. They mention the wage gap, then contend that because women take fewer finance classes and more "career interruptions" than men, they are actually choosing their lower wages. Levitt and Dubner write, "while gender discrimination may be a minor contributor to the male-female wage differential, it is desire — or lack thereof — that accounts for most of the wage gap." It's hardly a new argument, and their question, "could it be that men have a weakness for money just as women have a weakness for children?" isn't particularly groundbreaking. They don't explain why women should bear the full responsibility for educating schoolchildren, or how districts might make teaching more competitive with other professions. By bookending their discussion of women's work with talk about working girls, Levitt and Dubner try to make their arguments sound hip and different — but really, blaming women not only for their own lower wages but also for the problems of society is pretty darn conventional.

Then there's Levitt and Dubner's discussion of global warming. This part of the book has gotten a lot of media play — Levitt talked about it on The Daily Show — and it's likely to be the most controversial. To be clear, the authors don't argue that global warming doesn't exist — they just don't think we need to cut back on fossil fuels in order to stop it. Rather, they champion a series of cool-sounding inventions like a hose that would squirt sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, blotting out just enough light to cool the earth. These plans sound interesting, and it's not clear whether the scientific and environmental communities are considering them seriously. Part of this lack of clarity may have to do with the fact that Levitt and Dubner portray Al Gore and everyone else who believes in carbon reduction as at best a bunch of stick-in-the-muds and at worst a cult. They write,

[T]he movement to stop global warming has taken on the feel of a religion. The core belief is that humankind inherited a pristine Eden, has sinned greatly by polluting it, and now must suffer lest we all perish in a fiery apocalypse.

In response to ideas like the sulfur dioxide hose, Levitt and Dubner quote Al Gore as saying, "I think it's nuts." It's unclear if that's all he had to say, or if he perhaps had an inkling that he was about to be portrayed as the "patron saint" of a misguided religion and decided to clam up. Whatever the case, it's hard to evaluate the "geoengineering" ideas the authors present because the larger scientific community doesn't get to have a say. The authors have a stake in appearing contrarian and cool, and they don't give much space to the lame-os who might disagree with them.

Levitt and Dubner write in their introduction that "we're trying to start a conversation, not have the last word." If their book really does spark a discussion about creative ways to reverse global warming — or to improve schools, for that matter — that will be all to the good. Unfortunately, right now Superfreakonomics looks like that very dangerous thing, a little bit of knowledge. Casual readers may pick it up, find out that women don't want higher wages and that a special hose will save the world, and assume that neither social nor environmental change is necessary. Because as much as Levitt and Dubner portray themselves as upstarts, many of their ideas just give people permission to behave as they always have. And as much as they claim to want to open a dialogue, they don't really give the other side its say.

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance [Amazon]

• The suspects range in age from 15 to 21 and included a 17-year-old boy who turned himself in and a former Richmond High School student. Richmond, California Police Lt. Mark Gagan said, "These suspects are monsters. And, I don't understand how this many people capable of such atrocious behavior could be in one place at one time." • A lawyer for Susan Finkelstein, the Phillies fan accused of offering sex for World Series tickets, said her post on Craigslist saying she'd get "creative" with payment, "was a variation of 'will work for food.' It doesn't mean she was a prostitute.'" Attorney William Brennan denied an undercover police officer's claim that she offered him sex for tickets and added, "You're talking about a 43-year-old woman who was overcome by Phillies fever. All she was looking to do was take her husband to a World Series game. You know that Madonna movie Desperately Seeking Susan? This was Susan Desperately Seeking.'" • Edward Ates of Florida testified in court today that he couldn't have killed his son-in-law because he is too fat to commit the crime. Paul Duncsak, who was in a child custody dispute with Ates daughter, was shot in his home in 2006. Ates says he weighed 285 lbs at the time and wouldn't have had the energy needed to climb and descend the staircase where prosecutors say the killer was perched when he shot Duncsak. • A Utah judge has sentenced 21-year-old Leo Harrison to prison for accepting $150 from a pregnant girl to help her kill her fetus. Harrison was facing 21 years in prison for pleading guilty to second-degree felony attempted murder, but the judge sentenced him on a charge of third-degree "attempted killing of an unborn child" under Utah's anti-abortion statute, which means he could serve up to 20 years in prison.The woman, who gave birth to a healthy baby, pleaded no contest to second-degree felony criminal solicitation to commit murder for paying Harrison to assault her. • Using forceps if a woman is having difficulty during the "pushing" stage of labor has fallen out of favor, but a new study found that trying forceps instead of immediately performing a C-section does not raise the risks to the baby in most cases. A study of 3,200 women who had an unplanned C-section found that when cases in which there was already a problem with the fetal heart rate were excluded, the rate of complications were the same whether forceps were tried before a C-section or not. • While many Indian women are acting as surrogate mothers, more than half a million Indian women die every year due to pregnancy complications, despite government programs guaranteeing free obstetric care. According to Human Rights Watch, India is doing a poor job of monitoring how maternal health programs are implemented. UNICEF estimates that for every maternal death, there are 20 to 30 cases of other complications including obstetric fistulae, uterine prolapse, infertility, vaginal scarring, and sepsis. • A Spanish study of contraceptive use by 11,000 women from 14 European countries found that after condoms, the pill is the most popular contraceptive method. IUDs are the most popular long-acting contraceptive, but only 10% of women surveyed use them and most are over 30 years old. • Scientists at the Institute of Neuroscience in Alicante, Spain say they've figured out the secret behind Mona Lisa's smile. They say the smile depends on what cells in the retina pick up the image. Sometimes the image is transmitted to the brain on one channel and you see the smile and sometimes another channel takes over and you won't see it. • In a session on grieving during The Women's Conference in California, Maria Shriver said she's been telling people she's OK since her mother's death two months ago but, "the real truth is that I'm not fine... The real truth is that my mother's death has brought me to my knees. I had feared this my entire life... She was my hero, my role model, my very best friend. I spoke to her every single day of my life. I tried really hard when I grew up to make her proud of me." • According to a UC Irvine study, 30 percent of Americans have a gene variant that is linked to performing 20 percent worse on a driving test than people without it. Previous studies have found that in people with a BDNF gene variant, which supports communication among brain cells, a smaller portion of the brain is stimulated when doing a task than in people with a normal BDNF gene. • Check out Live Science's guide to everything you always wanted to know about constipation but were afraid to ask here. (Paging Tracie Egan.) • Accused murderer Drew Peterson is suing JP Morgan Chase because he says the company violated truth-in-lending laws by cutting off his home-equity credit line in May. He says he is now unable to post bond and pay his lawyers, and said if his accounts remain frozen he'll ask the court to approve taxpayer money to fund his defense. • Germany's Lutheran Church Margot Kaessman is one of only two women to serve as bishop in Germany's Protestant church. • Indiana University researchers studied workplace politics at an urban elementary school and found that people who are targets of gossip are negatively evaluated during formal work meetings, but gossip can be derailed by changing the subject, targeting someone else for criticism, or by pre-emptive comments that are positive. "When you're sitting in that business meeting, be attentive to when the talk drifts away from the official task at hand to people who aren't present," said sociologist Tim Hallett. "Be aware that what is going on is a form of politics... that can be a weapon to undermine people who aren't present. But it also can be a gift. If people are talking positively it can be a way to enhance someone's reputation." • Sasha and Malia Obama were given the H1N1 vaccine last week after it was made available for D.C. schoolchildren. The President and First Lady still haven't been vaccinated. • Sarah Palin has responded to Levi Johnston's claim on CBS' Early Show that she repeatedly referred to her son Trig as "retarded" saying, "Trig is our 'blessed little angel' who knows it and is lovingly called that every day of his life. Even the thought that anyone would refer to Trig by any disparaging name is sickening and sad... Consider the source of the most recent attention-getting lies — those who would sell their body for money reflect a desperate need for attention and are likely to say and do anything for even more attention." • Rep. Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, says it was inappropriate for him to call Federal Reserve advisor Linda Robertson a "K Street whore." "I offer my sincere apology," Grayson said in a statement. "I did not intend to use a term that is often, and correctly, seen as disrespectful of women." • The Australian Sex Party has nominated Marianna Leishman (a.k.a. Zahra Stardust), for a December election to fill a vacant seat in the Australian House of Representatives. Leishman is a feminist writer/pole dance instructor who has worked at the United Nations and has a law degree. She said in a statement, "In an area that claims 50 years of conservative representation from white, heterosexual, able-bodied, suited, male protagonists, the Australian Sex Party is excited to provide a modern, outward looking female candidate." On her agenda is legalizing gay marriage and abortion, examining child sex abuse in religious institutions, and pushing for more sex education in schools. •

In an excerpt from their new book Superfreakonomics, Levitt and Dubner profile two women. One, LaSheena, has "a beaten-down look in her eyes," and makes her money stealing and turning tricks on Chicago's South Side. She says prostitution "bothers me mentally," and she's not pulling down that much money either — street prostitutes in Chicago make about $350 a week. The other woman is Allie, an attractive blond who works about 15 hours a week having sex with men in her pretty bedroom for $500 an hour. Allie "genuinely likes the men who come to her" and "they treat her, in many ways, as men are expected to treat their wives but often don't." She's also building on the entrepreneurial skills she's learned as a prostitute by going back to school in economics. Life, for Allie, is good.

It's so good, in fact, that "the less she works, the more she earns," and she can charge ever-higher fees without scaring off clients. Levitt and Dubner write,

Although she views herself as similar to a street prostitute, she has less in common with that kind of woman than she does with a trophy wife. Allie is essentially a trophy wife who is rented by the hour. She isn't really selling sex, or at least not sex alone. She sells men the opportunity to trade in their existing wives for a younger, more sexually adventurous version - without the trouble and long-term expense of actually having to go through with it.

And:

Street prostitutes like LaSheena might have the worst job in America. But for elite prostitutes like Allie, the circumstances are completely different: high wages, flexible hours and relatively little risk of violence or arrest. So the real puzzle isn't why someone like Allie becomes a prostitute, but rather why more women don't choose this career.

Echidne of the Snakes takes Levitt and Dubner to task on several points. She points out that they don't delve at all into the reasons why women aren't all lining up to be hookers:

It's something about the mysterious women, refusing to supply sex for good money, when they should. They are probably too stupid to realize that they could do that instead of getting married as trophy wives. Which is just prostitution under another name.

She also thinks Levitt and Dubner see Allie's behavior — "She is happy to see you every time you show up at her door. Your favourite music is already playing and your favourite drink is on ice. She will never ask you to take out the rubbish." — as "the proper way for a wife to act." That may be true. But the whole analysis comes off as less sexist than flippant, uninterested in larger questions of why some women can make lots of money at prostitution but others can't. Levitt and Dubner imply that it's some combination of talent and business smarts. But the real issues here may be those of race and class.

Levitt and Dubner don't explicitly identify Allie's or LaSheena's race — in terms of physical characteristics, we know that the former is blond and the latter has "straightened hair." And we don't know all the details of their backgrounds either. The authors say nothing of LaSheena's upbringing or education, but we know that Allie "grew up in a large and largely dysfunctional family in Texas," joined the military, and became educated enough to get a job in computer programming. So at the time she became a sex worker, it seems that Allie had entered the middle class. Given that she makes her living as a street prostitute, thief, and drug lookout, we can assume that LaSheena has not. And this may be the biggest difference.

LaSheena probably doesn't have the resources to set up a nice bedroom where gentlemen can lay their $500 on the dresser. She may not be able to afford their favorite drink, or a stereo to play their favorite music. She may not have the education to engage in the kind of talk that Allie's clients want along with their sex. And most of all, by virtue of her class, she's probably not able to act like the kind of trophy wife Allie's clients — middle-aged white men with plenty of disposable income — think they deserve.

The fact that Levitt and Dubner ignore all this — in addition to whatever role race might play in prostitution opportunities, if any — is the biggest blind spot in their article. Yes, the comparison between wives and prostitutes is sexist and outdated and problematic. And yes, the question of why more women don't become sex workers ignores the fact that sex isn't just a commodity like any other. But what Levitt and Dubner really seem to be asking is why more women don't become high-end escorts like Allie. The answer is probably that they can't, but Levitt and Dubner apparently aren't interested in why.

Freakonomics Returns: Vice Work If You Can Get It [TimesOnline]
The New Career Choice For Women: High-End Prostitution! [Echidne of the Snakes]

• After being passed over for a promotion at McDonald's because of her pregnancy, Rhonda Floyd started a support group of sorts to benefit women in the hospitality industry. "McDonald's is very male-dominated," she said, as are many businesses in the leisure and hospitality sector. • British cops recently caught three woman and a man who were trying to pimp six girls aged 14-23 at a West London hotel. They were also offering a 12-year-old virgin for up to £50,000. All four have been arrested and are facing criminal charges. • According to Nicola Pease, the very same laws designed to protect women in the workplace are actually holding us back. Pease says there is no more sexism in the finance sector, except that which the ladies bring upon themselves by having babies and demanding maternity leave and other unreasonable things. • Author and women's activist Malalai Joya on Obama: "He must criticize how the United States helped turn Afghanistan into a safe haven for fundamentalist terrorists and now helps prop up a corrupt regime and a powerful drug mafia... If I ever do have the chance to meet President Obama, I will try to convey to him these points and tell him very clearly that U.S governments have betrayed the Afghan people enough." • Ximena Hartstock is the acting director of D.C.'s Department of Parks and Recreation, but she may be forced out because of her race and gender. She claims that at a recent city council meeting, Councilmember Marion Barry raised questions as to whether Hartstock could relate to African Americans or if she could do the job as well as a man. •  Kim Ng may become the first female General Manager in baseball. She was spotted having lunch with Padres owner Jeff Moorad, and has previously interviewed for GM positions with the Dodgers and the Mariners. •  As part of a charity event a group of men from New York state put on some pumps and walked a mile in women's shoes. The money raised by the walk has been donated to Alternatives for Battered Women, which operates a shelter for victims of domestic violence. •  A television show/internet competition that has been described as a "cross between Sports Illustrated and Next Top Model" has come under attack from feminists, who think the bathing suit-based contest is sexist. • Researchers have found that new mothers spend 20% more time awake than they did before giving birth. The resulting "postnatal insomnia" can often lead to depression and anxiety problems for stressed parents. Doctors advise that women suffering from postnatal insomnia seek help as soon as possible. • Quinceañeras — lavish parties given by Latino families to celebrate a girl's 15th birthday and transition into womanhood — are gaining popularity in America. Michele Salcedo, author of a book on the practice, says, "It's a way to push back a lot of the negativity that a lot of Latinos feel is directed at Latinos. It is a way for people who have recently arrived, or maybe not so recently arrived, to say 'I have done well here.'" • In a speech at Morehead State University, author bell hooks said, "God is a feminist because if we accept that God is a god of love then we know that God fully intends for females and males to be self-actualized, self-empowered and full of self esteem." • Just one of many problems for working moms is the fact that many of them continue to see child care as coming out of their paycheck alone, not their family's overall income. Nora Bredes, director of the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women's Leadership, says, "Our belief as a society is that mothers are responsible for the care of children, not the couple. We give lip service on how it's a family priority, but it really is all on her." • Québec's fashion industry has adopted a charter to help promote healthy body image, including resolutions to "encourage healthy eating and weight-control habits" and "discourage excessive weight-control practices or appearance modification." • The success of New York police and prosecutors in using DNA to catch rapists in cold cases has lead to a greater push to use DNA evidence in the investigation of other crimes. "It is a tremendously powerful tool that allows us to protect the rights of victims," said California District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert. • 

• According to recently released statistics, Florida is where you wanna be if you're a divorcee. Three of the top 10 counties on the list of most divorced residents are located in Florida. However, the divorce capital of the U.S. is located in Indiana. •  In the UK, 46% of children born in the first three months of 2009 were born out of wedlock. The percentage of unwed mothers has risen by over 20% since 1991, and is now at an all-time high. • Accused rapist Rolland Hill didn't want anyone in his Massachusetts town to hear about his charges (aggravated rape and child assault), so he went out Tuesday and attempted to buy as many copies of the local newspaper as he could, thus insuring that his story would make even bigger news, and eventually end up here. • Authorities have busted a dog-fighting ring in Chicago that was being run out of a suburban daycare facility. The Cook County Sheriff said that the children "were playing on a swing set just 10 feet away from a vicious fighting dog and blood-stained floors...To be engaged in this sort of activity is disturbing enough, but to take a chance with anybody's children is reprehensible." • Jaycee Dugard's lawyer has said that she will probably testify against Philip Garrido when the time comes. Dugard is currently in seclusion with her family. •

Apparently prostitutes report their income on a 1040 Schedule C, just like I have since I started freelance writing five years ago. Thanks to the Fifth Amendment, they're allowed to avoid incriminating themselves by being vague about what their actual business is — Slate's Brian Palmer says they could write something like "sale of leisure services." But they do have to enter a code for their business — ACORN apparently suggested 711510 ("independent artists, writers, and performers"), which is the same code I use.

Unlike a prostitute, I don't have to worry about balancing the penalty for being caught doing my job against the penalty for reporting income from it (in most states, says Palmer, punishments for tax evasion are stiffer). Nor do I need to know about laws that prevent police from using tax returns as the initial tip in a criminal investigation. But I do have some advice for anyone filing a schedule C — don't report a loss more than two years in a row. The recession may be hitting prostitutes just as hard as it's hitting writers, but if you lose money for a third year, the IRS could determine that having sex is your hobby, not your job — and then your expenses aren't deductible.

If you're a john, though, you could try writing off the money you pay prostitutes as a health expense. A tax attorney recently tried to deduct $100,000 in prosecution and porn expenses as "sex therapy." Unfortunately for him, he lost.

How Do Prostitutes Pay Their Taxes? [Slate]
Tax Court Writes Off Lawyer's Deduction For Prostitutes [Legal Blog Watch]

John schools, or First Offender Prostitution Programs, have been around for more than a decade now. The impetus was obvious: after years of targeting only the prostitutes themselves and letting johns off with a fine and a slap on the wrist, it was clear that the system was not only unjust but wholly ineffective. And, the thinking went, wouldn't it be more effective to speak directly to the men perpetuating the system than prostitutes frequently impelled to the streets by addiction, desperation or pimps?

Now, there are about 50 john schools in America, with more set to open this year. Available only to first-time offenders - and not to those soliciting underage prostitutes - the programs rely on a combination of education and shaming. The Nashville program profiled on CNN is, for starters, in a church. The men hear the stories of former prostitutes to help them, as one advisor puts it, "see that this is not a victimless crime, and they are contributing to the exploitation of women"; are told the risks by health experts, and are assured by cops that if they're caught again, they'll go to jail. In the Nashville program, too, the offenders' mug shots are displayed on a public web site. They pay $250 which goes to a prostitute-rehabilitation program called Magdalene House - meaning there's no cost to the taxpayer - and the charge can, if all goes well, be dismissed after a year.

Results are somewhat encouraging: the established San Francisco program has seen a 30% drop in re-arrest rates. But critics say this isn't enough. Some feel it's still too light, compared to the jail terms prostitutes are often given. Others, that it doesn't address the violent offenders who are a more serious problem. The program only addresses street prostitution, as pointed out by a Village Voice piece on New York's version, "The Respect Project," "Uhu Thukral, director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center, says that johns who get caught just turn to escort services or Internet hookups. "John schools are part of an effort to address the demand side of the industry, but it's really just a revolving door," she says." And advocates of legalized prostitution, that it doesn't address the key issues. And, given that a recent study the article quotes finds that men would be far more deterred by being placed on a sex offender registry, some wonder why that's not the de facto punishment. Certainly, for programs that don't post an offender's picture, it seems a lot easier for a john to throw money at the problem and spend 8 hours in a classroom - which, after all, nobody needs to know about - than risk trial and jail time.

But if they learn something in that 8 hours, even just one guy, isn't that a lot better than the alternative? The CNN article quotes several men who are deeply shamed and affected by the presentation, however - at least, directly after seeing it - and it's hard not to want to support anything that can effect actual change on a human being. In a piece on a Canadian version of the program, one director observes that it's the presentation by a wife who's marriage was ruined by her husband's whoring - and subsequent STD - that's most compelling to the largely-married population. And, one hopes, that the existence of the classes themselves is a small step towards changing a long-standing double-standard. I'm not assuming the existence of 50 such programs in the country (really, very few - shouldn't this be standard?) is going to change the day-to-day treatment of prostitutes by cops - but at least it has the chance of changing one such interaction, which wasn't even a possibility before.

'John Schools' Try To Change Attitudes About Paid Sex [CNN]

John School Helps Break the Cycle of Prostitution [PERC]
John School Takes A Bite Out Of Prostitution [SFGate]
School for Johns [Village Voice]
Recidivism Among The Customers Of Female Street Prostitutes:Do Intervention Programs Help? [WCR]

[Rio de Janeiro, August 26. Image via Getty]

A Brazilian prostitute dances among performers as part of a Rio de Janeiro Health Secretary event running alongside a fashion show presenting creations by DASPU - a local fashion label run by prostitutes - in Tiradentes square, a hub of the city´s prostitution, in Rio de Janerio, Brazil on August 26, 2009. Prostitutes and advocates paraded the summer collection by DASPU, owned by Davida, a Brazilian NGO that works towards better health, safety and legal conditions for sex workers on the streets of Brazil. AFP PHOTO/ANTONIO SCORZA (Photo credit should read ANTONIO SCORZA/AFP/Getty Images)

M. Catherine Maternowska, who's done relief work all over the world, recounts visiting a clinic in Swaziland designed specifically to treat and prevent the rampant STDs of truck drivers and the women who service them along the route. While this may sound oddly localized, there's good reason: the country, she explains, is heavily dependent on its many truckers to receive supplies, and they're a contributing factor to the fact that it has "the highest H.I.V. rate in the world: one in three people is infected." And these clinics are set up so truckers are inclined to go: they can visit and get treatment while their paperwork is processed and their vehicles are refueled.

And, of course, the sex workers, many very young, fall victim to disease, too.

I met eyes with a 16-year-old named Mbali. She was thin, with close-cropped hair and a beautiful smile. I offered her a packet of crackers, which she ripped open with her teeth. After wolfing them down, she looked at me and said, "I hate having sex." Her parents were dead; she was unable to pay her school fees, had been abused by an overburdened aunt - and now, like many of the girls, she was a runaway. Nearly one in four Swazi girls is H.I.V. positive, and Mbali is one of them. Her treatment options are limited. "I have nowhere to sleep unless I find a man," she said. "Sometimes I don't have money and food for two days. A man without a condom will pay more, so obviously I say O.K. because I need money."

While the clinic is filled with such stories, its existence is actually encouraging, as it at least acknowledges the problem and goes some small way towards preventing further spread of the epidemic. Explains an article on AllAfrica, quoting one official,

"In Swaziland, denial about AIDS is one factor that has made it almost taboo for families to admit their loved ones passed away from an AIDS-related illness. You won't find AIDS listed as the cause of death on death certificates, and so we have no official number to work with."

And considering that as recently as May, a prominent minister suggested that AIDS and HIV victims be "branded," clearly obtaining treatment is not a simple matter.

Despite its high AIDS and HIV rates, Swaziland is not a country we hear about very much in America; but in any discussion of AIDS prevention and African's women's issues, it can't be denied, and one presumes that Hillary Clinton's stated commitment to prioritizing women's health will include a nation where one in three people has AIDS, and an ever-growing population is turning to sex work. Recently, the U.S. Africa Command held a MEDFLAG program in Swaziland, a "two-week medical exercise" designed to "improve medical disaster preparedness and humanitarian assistance management." While this seems like a drop in the bucket of the nation's problems - and unlikely to address the more immediate "medical disasters" ravaging Swaziland - it's something. Private organziations like those Maternowska refers to are doing important work - but need larger support. And increasing awareness is crucial.

Truck-Stop Girls [NY Times]

Related: Swaziland: HIV/Aids Blamed For 25 Percent Job Absenteeism [AllAfrica]
Timothy Myeni apologises…Again [Swazi Observer]
U.S. Africa Command Opens MEDFLAG 09 In Swaziland [Africom]