• Although death rates for male smokers are declining as more men quit, the death rate for women from smoking-related illnesses is steadily rising in Western Europe. Also scary: those killed before age 70 from smoking lose, on average, 23 years of life. • Since the economic downturn, Ireland has become "firmly enmeshed in the global sex trade," according to Ruhama, an organization that gives support to sex workers. Many of the women being trafficked into Ireland are underage (some as young as 15), and come from Eastern European countries and Nigeria. •  A new law passed in the UK will allow lesbians to register the names of both partners on their children's birth certificates. Previously, only one woman was allowed to register as the mother. Obviously, some homophobic critics say "the change would be detrimental to family values." • A 37-year-old woman from Germany suffers some very interesting seizures, which temporarily turn her into a man (at least, in her own mind). She reports feeling that her voice has become deeper and her arms hairier. She has also suffered damage to the right amygdala, but doctors are uncertain whether that is the direct cause. • The World Endometriosis Research Foundation has announced a new study, which will focus on the estimated 100 million women who suffer from the disease, and seeks to address the dangerous lack of data about the illness. • A 10-year-old girl from Florida saved the lives of many of her neighbors when she ran door-to-door, knocking and yelling, to alert them of the growing fire. "This little girl, a really great person, saved us," said Jessica Phelps, a resident of the Orange County apartment building. • An online survey found that only 13% of Wikipedia contributors are female, and only 31% of its readers are women. • Following her conversion to Christianity, and the subsequent death threats from her father, a 17-year-old Muslim girl ran away from home to live with a pastor. Many Florida Muslims take issue with the press coverage of the story, which they claim has portrayed the entire Muslim community in a negative light. •

[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)

Researchers Dan Allman and Melissa Ditmore surveyed sex workers for their report, Good Practice for Sex Workers' Participation in Biomedical HIV Prevention Trials. They found that sex workers didn't necessarily know about research practices and medical ethics, and that researchers didn't know they didn't know. To remedy this, they suggested that researchers — shocker — actually "consult local sex workers at each proposed location before beginning a trial." Allman and Ditmore write,

Many sex workers had recommendations for researchers hoping to work with sex workers such as involving stakeholders from the outset, explaining procedures in non-technical terms and translating all materials and information into local languages.

They also say that many sex workers "wanted to learn more about research and would consider involvement in research providing they were confident it was ethical and participatory." So basically sex workers are interested in participating in clinical trials, provided they know what they're getting into. We wonder if that was the case with the participants recent nonoxynol-9 trials, who experienced no reduction in HIV transmission and an increase in genital lesions. Whether or not these women were truly informed, it makes sense that future studies need to treat sex workers as "stakeholders," and not passive "subjects" with no interests of their own.

Note: The women pictured are Bolivian sex workers protesting for the right to work.

What Do Sex Workers Think About The Ethics Of Biomedical Research Studies That Are Done On Them? [Feministe]

Earlier: Researchers Stop New Male Circumcision Trial In Uganda

As I've looked to illustrate the stories we've written about sex workers — both in terms of rallies for their rights, and women turning to sex work during the recession — I end up scrolling through pictures of women from all walks of life, and from all over the world, who engage in sex work. And as I've read more and more about sex work, the dichotomy between the ways we view women in the developed world and those in the developing world who chose to sell access to their bodies strikes me more and more deeply.

Although many take a default view of sex workers in the developed world as responding to rational choices about the economic valuation of their bodies, there is story after story after story after story after story about how sex workers in "free" societies are often driven by a sense that they have few other options or coerced into the work; meanwhile, an equally nuanced view of sex work in the developing world seems to escape us.

What follows is a sampling of sex workers from around the world: some are posing; some are protesting; some are simply going about their days. Some are more wealthy, or happier-looking than others; some reveal their faces; others camouflage them; still others hide them in shame. Some are exploited, while others seemingly feel more in control of their destinies. But one thing no one can do is predict from whence they came, or where they're going, simply by looking.

A prostitute blows a whistle during a protest commemorating the International Day of Sex Workers in Lima, on June 02, 2009. The demonstration gathered almost 100 people and is one of the first open event of this group of the Peruvian society. (JAIME RAZURI/AFP/Getty Images)

A picture taken on March 6, 2009 in a brothel in Offenbach, western Germany, shows a prostitute waiting for clients. Times are hard down at brothels in Germany, where the current financial crisis has triggered a sharp decline in clientele. (MARTIN OESER/AFP/Getty Images)

An Indian sex worker shouts slogans during a protest march in Kolkata on July 01, 2008 against the proposed amendments to the Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act in Indian Parliament. Several hundred sex workers and social workers and activists took part in the march where they burnt the effigies of the Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chaudhary and Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil. (DESHAKALYAN CHOWDHURY/AFP/Getty Images)

A sex worker sits in a passageway at the upmarket Xclusive brothel in Sydney's Bondi Junction on July 1, 2008. Upmarket Sydney brothel Xclusive won't be offering papal packages, but it is putting on extra sex workers to provide sexual succour to lonely tourists and Sydneysiders during World Youth Day. The purpose-built Xclusive brothel, which has luxurious rooms complete with double showers, spas, custom-made beds and panic buttons for the sex workers, is expecting a 150-200 percent hike in business during World Youth Day. (GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty Images)

Young women who have left their village after being abandoned by their parents for acting as prostitutes to Moroccan UN soldiers sit in front of a house that they rent in the village of Trainou, near Bouake, Ivory Caost's second city and the former capital of the rebel-controlled north, 29 July 2007. Moroccan UN troops in the central city of Bouake have been accused by locals of committing 'sexual abuses'. The UN suspended the activities of the the Moroccan forces contingent in the west African country last month due to the accusation, pending investigation. (Photo credit should read ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images)

A Ukrainian prostitute stands in front of a bed in a brothel in an appartment in Berlin, 12 September 2007. (AXEL SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)

Bolivian prostitutes turn into their second day of hunger strike at an AIDS clinic they took over defending their right to work, in El Alto, 12 km from La Paz, on October 23rd, 2007. Some 50 prostitutes went on a hunger strike Monday and threatened to march naked down the streets of El Alto to reopen the bars and strip joints closed down by the local population last week. Many of El Alto's residents last week demonstrated outside the town's 32 bars and strip joints forcing them to close, complaining that they are magnets for lawbreakers and a bad influence on children. (AIZAR RALDES/AFP/Getty Images)

Sex worker Sue Davis is pictured 07 December 2007 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Davis is part of the BC Coalition of Experiential Women, a group defending the issues of sex workers. (Philippe MOULIER/AFP/Getty Images)

A semi-nude Nepali sex worker of the Badi community climbs the gate of the Parliament complex during a protest rally in Singha Durbar, Kathmandu, 22 August 2007. Police in Nepal detained 13 men and women who tried to strip in front of parliament here to protest the decades-old practice of forcing girls from their community into prostitution. Members of the poor Badi community are one of the most disadvantaged groups in the country. For generations, many have been forced into the sex trade because of a lack of other options. (STRDEL/AFP/Getty Images)

IPSWICH, UNITED KINGDOM - DECEMBER 12: A prostitute who gave her name as Lou talks to reporters (unseen) as she stands on a street corner December 12, 2006 in Ipswich, England. Police, who were already investigating the murders of three prostitutes whose bodies were found earlier this month, found two more bodies today and are warning sex workers to stay off the streets. The killings recall memories of the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, serial killer Peter Sutcliffe who admitted to killing 13 women, mostly prostitutes, in the 1970s. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

A woman prostitute, drug addict and HIV postive (C) who wish to keep her identity anonymous, smokes a cigarette in a street of a shanty town in Phnom Penh on June 10, 2008. The United States said that Cambodia still needs to do more to fight human trafficking, even though an annual State Department report said the nation had made progress. (NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images)

ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN - AUGUST 10: Khazak prostitutes prepare for the evening ahead as they walk outside their brothel home August 10, 2006 in Almaty in the central Asian country of Kazakhstan. Fifteen years after the breakup of the former USSR, the millions of Muslims living between the Caspian Sea and China, who for decades found themselves repressed under Communism, are experiencing an economic and religious revival. Following the August 1991 abortive coup attempt in Moscow and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan declared independence on December 16, 1991. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo: Prostitutes dance at a centre run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in preparation for World Aids Day, 29 November 2006, in Kinshasa. The 'Biso na Biso' centre in the run down district of Massina provides medicine, health care, and education programmes for sex workers. (LIONEL HEALING/AFP/Getty Images)

Amsterdam. A picture taken 23 April 2004 shows a man standing in front of the window of a prostitute in the Red District of Amsterdam. (TOUSSAINT KLUITERS/AFP/Getty Images)

A group of prostitutes from the Merced neighborhood stand a protest in front of local assembly 04 October 2007 in Mexico City, complaining for the arrests they suffer from police. (ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images)

CAMDEN, NJ - FEBRUARY 17: A woman involved in the sex industry waits on a street corner February 17, 2005 in Camden, New Jersey. Camden, a crime ridden city in the south of New Jersey, has both a high prostitution rate and an escalating HIV/AIDS rate among its young people. A New York man infected with a highly drug-resistant and possibly aggressive strain of the AIDS virus has galvanized health officials around the country to consider the possibility of what some people are calling a 'Super HIV strain.' (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Gisenyi, RWANDA: Adeline, 19, prostitute, stands at the doorway of her house 28 April 2006 in Gisenyi, Rwanda. Forced into prostitution after losing their parents during the 1994 genocide, some 200 women have joined an association to fight AIDS and try to build themselves a new future. (JOSE CENDON/AFP/Getty Images)

PADUA, ITALY: A group of prostitutes took to the streets in Padua, 16 May 2007 to protest against a new fine on clients caught in the act, which is aimed at cleaning up the streets of this northeastern Italian city. The 30 or so demonstrators also distributed leaflets calling for a concerted fight 'against sexual traffickers and not those who ply their trade freely.' Banner at (C) reads- The Symbol of Love-. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

BEIJING, CHINA - JUNE 21: Women hide their faces as police raid an entertainment center which is suspected to have prostitution business on June 21, 2006 in Beijing, China. Authorities have launched campaigns to crack down on prostitutions in the city. According to state media, male and female prostitution, both of which are illegal in China, are nonetheless widespread. According to a draft guideline released by the Ministry of Health, prostitutes are being made the focus of the ministry's latest efforts to stem the spread of HIV/AIDS. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

File photo taken March 30, 2007 shows a prostitute working on the street in central Oslo. On February 6, 2009, and a month after it came into force, a Norwegian law banning the purchase of sex has nearly eliminated street prostitution, but for the few sex workers remaining, working conditions have become much tougher. 'The clients are extremely nervous. Most of them don't dare come here,' says Nadia, a 22-year-old from Oslo who has been a sex worker for eight years. Since January 1, men who buy sex face up to six months in jail, pay a fine or face both. The law prohibits the buying of sex but not the sale, so the prostitute goes free. (TRULS BREKKE/AFP/Getty Images)

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL: (L-R) Brazilian prostitutes Regina, Jane Eloy and Maria model clothes from the fashion brand DASPU, a firm supported by the Non-Governmental Organization Da Vida (To the Life), which supports the project of a new group of prostitutes in Rio de Janeiro, 17 December 2005. DASPU has planned to act as a support to old prostitutes at the end of their professional lives. (ANTONIO SCORZA/AFP/Getty Images)

SEOUL, REPUBLIC OF KOREA: With policeman looking on, South Korean prostitutes sit wearing white mourning clothes take part in a protest rally against new enforcement laws targetting human traffickers, in front of a government office complex building in Seoul, 06 December 2004. Dozens of people gathered to protest a government move to regulate and restrict the local sex industry — including a tough anti-prostitution law which took place in September. (JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images)

Mombasa, KENYA: Photo taken 20 June 2007 shows a brothel run by a number of prostitutes with one of them lying on a bed next to a child, a product of the trade, at Kenya's coastal town of Mombasa where sex-tourism, increasingly involving minors, has become rampant. Between 10 and 15 thousand under-aged girls are now involved in the growing industry that has prompted the Kenya government and hotel owners and managers to introduce a code that must be adopted by hotel operators along the Kenyan coast to prevent the prostitution of minors, many of them girls, by denying suspected under-age clients that are unaccompanied by a related adult admission without proof of age. (TONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty Images)

DUBI, CZECH REPUBLIC - OCTOBER 25: Prostitutes attempt to lure passing motorists from the display window of a roadside brothel October 25, 2003 in Dubi, Czech Republic. Prostitution is big business along the Czech Republic's borders with Germany and Austria, and the country has become a major transit point for criminal gangs trafficking women from eastern Europe into western Europe. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA: Estefani, a sexual worker who is member of the female soccer team 'Estrellas de la Linea' goes back to her 'laboral activities', 23 September 2004 in Guatemala City. The team denounced it has been discriminated by authorities after being expelled from the female soccer local championship because of their profession. (ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images)

TAIPEI, TAIWAN: Taiwan prostitutes, holding hats and masks of their deceased colleagues, protest outside the presidential building in Tapei, 17 September 2004 accusing President Chen Shui-bian of depriving their professional rights. They charged that Chen, when serving as Taipei mayor, refused to follow a 1998 decision of Taipei city council to postpone ending legal prostitution by two years as the immediate crackdown that year had forced many of them out of jobs and driven some into debts. (SAM YEH/AFP/Getty Images)

An Iraqi mother (R) with her 14 years-old daughter, both of them prostitutes, wait for clients at their home in Baghdad 07 September 2003. With the end of the Saddam Hussein's regime, many Iraqi women prostitute themselves to survive. AFP PHOTO/ Thomas COEX (Photo credit should read THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images)

Greek prostitutes argue during a protest held by more than 50 prostitutes in front of a brothel in Athens 04 August 2003. The women protested the plans by the Athens municipality to shut down at least 15 brothels for being too close to churches and schools. (FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images)

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA: A South African prostitute waits for a client on a Johanneburg street corner 23 August 2002, despite the local police effort to 'clean' the city, before the World Summit on Sustainable Development starting 26 August. (Photo credit: YOAV LEMMER/AFP/Getty Images)

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - JULY 03: A Prostitute works on Auckland's Karangahape Road, Thursday. The new law passed legalizing prostitution makes it easy for girls to work the streets during the day as well as the night. (Photo by Dean Purcell/Getty Images)

Two teenage prostitutes ... wait in detention October 25, 2000 in the Juvenile police office in Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia. The girl in the middle is 7 months pregnant. There are an estimated 3000 to 4000 street children in Mongolia, a country where 36% of families live below the poverty level. About 20 nongovernmental shelters in Ulaan Bataar try to combat the problem by offering hot meals and places to wash and sleep. The shelters also encourage the children to attend a special school since many of them have no formal education. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Newsmakers)

Paris, FRANCE: French prostitutes demonstrate, 18 March 2006 in Paris, during a 'Hooker Pride' march in protest at a three-year-old old law banning them from soliciting on the street. Banner reads 'passiv soliciting = activ repression'. (FRANCOIS GUILLOT/AFP/Getty Images)

JAKARTA, INDONESIA - JULY 10: A prostitute shows an outreach worker how she uses a condom July 10, 2004 in Jakarta, Indonesia. A recent report issued by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS states that six provinces are now being classified as badly affected with a serious increase in 2003 among drug users and sex workers. The 15th International AIDS conference will be held in Bangkok beginning next week. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Earlier: Can't Buy Her Love
German Sex Workers Feel The Pinch Of The Recession
Helping Women Help Themselves
The Problem With The "Happy Hooker" Myth
When Did Sex Work Become Less Stigmatized Than "Menial" Labor?

[All images via Getty Images]

While you might hear the words "Daily Mail" and "escort addiction" and mentally call for the check - I did - Andy Bodle's essay is suprisingly interesting. Misguided? Troubled? Worrisome? Sure - as only those things written with "now I know better" authority can be - but also thought-provoking. See, Bodle's not, he's at pains to tell us, the kind of guy who would have ever seen himself paying for sex. And he says now, "I'm ashamed of exploiting women, and of having supported a degrading, dangerous industry. I don't expect anyone to condone what I did.But now, after many years have passed, I want to explain why I was propelled into that addiction - and why so many other men are, too." And he;s still kind glad he did it!

Well-educated and successful, Bodle nevertheless had a disastrous history with women: mocked in school, painfully shy, and by his own reckoning stood up 27 times in the 90s. Cue violins.

When I hit 30, I hadn't had a girlfriend - or even a kiss - for three years. I was starting to feel desperate: lonely and with little to look forward to. I'd never seriously thought about paying for female company: my image of the sex industry was of kerbcrawlers and kneetremblers in needle-strewn alleyways. But, according to the article, it was very safe and very clean. You visited the girls in plush, rented apartments; you were paying for companionship, not sex.

Of course, although he treats the transactions like dates - insisting on buying the escorts dinner, bringing them flowers, and choosing to believe the pros "like" him - they invariably end in sex. And not shockingly, this boosts his ego. He gets 'hooked' - blowing through his savings, forswearing normal dating altogether. "My reasoning went like this: why should I hang around trying to pick up women in bars when I could meet far more attractive women with no risk of getting hurt emotionally?"

As we've seen, the man is susceptible to the media; not shockingly, he falls for one of the working girls, even paying for her to spend his birthday with him. "I was convinced, after that, that Hayley and I had a special connection. Maybe the whole Pretty Woman myth was true. Maybe, if I played my cards right, I could persuade her to quit escorting and be with me."

Um, no. His bubble is further burst when one woman mentions that his visit will allow her to pay her electric bill. And he has a revelation.

In a year of visiting escorts, this was the first incontrovertible evidence I'd heard that not every girl did escorting because they enjoyed it. Some of them were doing it because they had to. And even though Sylvia seemed to like me, even though I had helped her out in the short-term, I was helping to perpetuate that situation. Perhaps I'd been naive not to notice anything amiss before; perhaps I was just too immersed in my own self-pity at being single to worry about anyone else's feelings. But the truth is that up until that point, I had genuinely been convinced that all the girls I'd seen were selling their bodies entirely of their own free will.

When one escort starts crying, he leaves without sex and gives up the lifestyle, gradually easing back into non-paid relationships. While the depth of his delusion - or denial - is kind of hard to grasp, we try to stay with him. So, does he regret it? Well, here's where the article gets weird.

Many people say that men who use escort girls hate women. That may be true for some; but in my case, I believe those escorts stopped me hating women. I feel gratitude towards those sweet, beautiful girls for the warmth they showed me. Guilt, absolutely, that I helped perpetuate an industry that is unregulated and potentially unsafe - but also gratitude. I firmly believe that while some sex workers are escorts by choice, thousands of others are not. And the fact is, when you book an escort, you never know which you are going to get. And that's why I'll never again try to re-create the 'girlfriend experience'. The truth is that it's an unedifying sham.

Basically, what's at war here are what he thinks he should think about the women, and his own self-interest. Is he sorry he - maybe - exploited women and promoted an industry he finds problematic? Nah, it was worth it! And in some ways this piece underlies what many find worrisome about the world of high-class escorting (as opposed to the more obvious pitfalls and degradations of less rareified forms of sex work.) That in some ways it's the men like Bodle - lonely, naive, certainly self-deluding - who are a big part of the problem. Because while these men might treat an escort with respect and kindness, they're also buying into the fantasy - allowing them to misrepresent their own actions, and, more to the point, effecting the way they view real-life relationships. Take that telling admission that now he can have "more attractive" women with less effort - do we really think this superficiality and entitlement won't carry over into a normal dating life? To say nothing of "relationships" - which he admits he considers them - centered around pleasing him, fulfilling him, demanding nothing? Sure, good training wheels. And we're not even getting into the sex element.

It's easy, as women, to underestimate the self-esteem issues inherent in this kind of give-and-take. It's funny: when I ask some male friends (the type who'd 'never pay for sex') what they make of men who do, one word always comes up: "pathetic." A guy who can't get sex on his own terms seems, implicitly, more problematic than one who'd indulge in an unhealthy power dynamic, or a current system that allows for the degradation of women (even allowing for a best-case-scenario view of sex work.) And ironically, of course, it's this same kind of judgment that draws men like Bodle into "addictions" like the one he describes - a wish for that kind of validation. And tying self-esteem up with paid sex? Well, as plenty of women have found out, the Pretty Woman scenario rarely works out.

I Was Addicted To Call Girls: A Respected Script Writer Explains How He Succumbed To The Lure Of Paying For Sex [Daily Mail]

[Sydney, June 2. Image via Getty]

Sydney sex workers 'Ivy' (C) and 'Mish' (R) celebrate International Whores Day in Sydney on June 2, 2009. Sex workers angry at the cost of advertising in local papers staged a protest outside the New South Wales parliament. International Whores day, held on the second of June, commemorates the day in 1975 when a group of sex workers staged a sit-in at a church in Lyon, France to protest discrimination against sex workers AFP PHOTO / Greg WOOD (Photo credit should read GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty Images)

• In contrast to earlier studies, new research has found that strict maternal control over a child's eating habits does not lead to an increased risk of obesity. Previous studies have focused mainly on girls, but the new research takes both male and female children into account. • Cambodian sex-worker-turned-advocate Somaly Mam says the bad economy has had a negative impact on the women's shelter she helped to start. "Since we opened the shelter, I always face this problem. Like the last five months, no rice, we cannot feed the children," says Mam. • Research indicates that women in abusive relationships are more than three times as likely to test HIV positive than those who have not experienced intimate partner violence. • The latest trend in fitness? Nostalgia: 80s-style aerobics classes are back. • Good news for all the ladies who shun softball: the International Baseball Federation is campaigning for the inclusion of women's baseball in the 2016 Olympics. • A recent study from Canada found that babies of East and South Asian descent are more likely to be underweight at birth than Caucasian children. • Hmm. This game of Whack-A-Kitty: Cute or on the cusp of animal abuse? • New research has linked bacterial vaginosis, which can make women more susceptible to STDS, to vitamin D deficiency. Since black women are more likely to have a shortage of vitamin D, they are also at an increased risk for infection.  • Disadvantaged women in India are benefiting from new community radio projects, which allow marginalized women, who often have little formal education, to broadcast their opinions on local and national issues. • Women entering menopause may have more trouble learning than at any other stage in life, a new study says. Experts believe that the temporarily-impaired memory skills exhibited by women during this time may be due to hormonal fluctuations. •

Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason says she doesn't thing it's all that great for women.

The fact is that booking clients online and controlling the circumstances of the rendezvous probably made prostitutes and other users of the site much safer than they would otherwise have been-it's a little tougher to google a guy you just picked up on a side street by leaning into the window of his car. So this is probably a net loss for the safety of the sexually adventurous and/or those who like their sex with a little capitalism mixed in.

While I disagree that people seek out paid sex acts for ideological reasons or just because they like "adventure," many prostitutes do, apparently, utilize Craigslist for the ease of the transactions and the ability to potentially track down clients.

As Hunter Walker at WebNewser points out, though, shutting down the Erotic Services boards (which already cost money to advertise on) will likely do little to stop sex workers from using the site to target potential clients.

Ads for prostitution regularly appear on other areas of Craigslist and getting rid of "erotic services" shouldn't make much of a difference. Today, a quick scan through the first few ads in Craigslist's "casual encounters" personals page for New York revealed multiple posts that were clearly advertising illicit services.

So, then, why do it? Well, Madigan and other prosecutors have been trying for ages to get founder Craig Newmark to better police his boards with regards to prostitution advertisements. Law enforcement has been known to respond to potential advertisements to arrest prostitutes. But with the arrest of the so-called Craigslist killer, politicians and the media finally had a point of leverage against Newmark. They're going after it now under the guise of protecting us ladies from all those big, bad men out there that will try to hurt us. Never mind that prostitutes advertise in other ways, or that the big bad men that are supposedly answering the ads for paid sexual services are the supposed predators: they're going to go after the women (and sometimes men) that supposedly need protecting. They're wrapping their law enforcement strategy in a big, old, paternalistic blanket! Don't you feel warm?

Prostitutes Get Screwed (And A Happy Ending) [Reason]
Craiglist Getting Rid Of 'Erotic Services'... Or Are They? [WebNewser]

Earlier: Craigslist Caves On "Erotic Services" And Goes Adult

According to a piece on the BBC, women hiring escorts is, without exception, practically heartwarming. The news oulet profiles "Catarina," whose disability has made sex painful. Her experience with the male escort Andrew (who has written the new tell-all Whatever She Wants ) was an unadulterated boon: "I was able to have sex that was completely pain-free. My self-esteem grew. My confidence grew. If it wasn't for Andrew I wouldn't be where I am today. I wouldn't be as confident as I am, as sexually aware as I am. I think I grew up as well."

As Andrew puts it, "It's no more seedy than somebody going out to a bar, getting a bit drunk and then ending up going home with a complete stranger. What's the difference? With what I do, you know what you're getting, there's no illusion. You pay your money. You get what you get. You meet some guy at the bar, you don't know what you get - he could be anyone."

Well, sure. And there are plenty of men who pay for sex for any number of reasons that are their business and which many of us would have no problem with. However, one can hardly imagine such a touchy-feely piece on johns and the women who help them "be selfish," live out their fantasies and explore their sexuality without at least mentioning the potential unregulated sex work gives for abuse, exploitation, and flat-out creepiness.

But if we're going to play the warm-and-fuzzy empowerment card (it's like fuzzy dice; kinda hard to shuffle) let's be truly even-handed. Women can take advantage of these situations too. Stories about female sex tourists getting their grooves back with young boys in Thailand or disadvantaged young men in Kenya, are not exactly a step ahead for anyone, and it's disingenuous for the Beeb, in their kid-glove efforts to be accepting, to romanticize a transaction which, in its illegality, is still unregulated and prone to abuse both financial and sexual, whoever is paying. So while we're sure "Andrew's" memoir leaves all his ladies happily satisfied, this "profile" hardly does: a headline called "Women who pay for sex" should deliver a little more.

Women Who Pay For Sex [BBC]
The Shameful Truth About Sex Tourism [Brave New Traveler]
Older White Women Join Kenya's Sex Tourists [Reuters]

These kind of jobs don't usually involve actual sex, writes Tracy Quan (a former call girl) for The Daily Beast. "The sector is poised for expansion as more unemployed and underemployed women begin looking for extra cash." And it doesn't matter if you're not really "into" the scene. Writes Quan:

Because many of these freelance pro-dommes are just supplementing their incomes and don’t plan on staying in sex work forever, they may not be as erotically hardcore in their outside lives. “I wasn't really that interested” in S&M, says Chloe. “I got involved because it was easy money. The strap-on? I'm OK with it, but it's not really a personal interest of mine.”

Maybe you're thinking, why spank a businessman or let some dude suck your toes if you're not even into it? But the same could be said of answering phones, making a latte or cleaning someone's house. (In Mumbai, profesional men are finding that sex work on the side helps them earn a decent living.)

On the other hand, unlike being a receptionist or a barista, working in the sex industry is an occupation some women might be reluctant to talk to friends and family about. Chloe, the art student Quan interviewed for her piece, says her mother "would probably cry" and be "very upset" about her fetish gigs, although Quan speculates: "some parents would be secretly proud of a daughter resourceful enough to hack the increasingly rigid class system that permeates New York life."

Still: Do you believe a job is a job? Do you believe extra money is extra money? If there's no kissing, no sex, just spanking or foot worship, is there any harm in freelance fetish work? Quan puts it this way: "Even if you’re bossing your client around in a pair of thigh-high boots, you’re still working in a service industry. And after an hour, your feet hurt."

Kinkonomics [The Daily Beast]
Male Professionals Double As Sex Workers For Extra Income [Hindustan Times]

The New York Times reports that while most of the women were not forced into prostitution, a group of sex-workers-turned-activists claim that the South Korean government was “one big pimp for the U.S. military.” They claim that the government “trained” prostitutes, giving them lesions in English language and etiquette, with the intention of using the sex trade to bring in much-needed foreign currency.

According to scholars, the U.S. military worked with the South Korean government to regulate the health of the sex workers. However, they did not do so for the health of the women, but rather to ensure that American soldiers would not contract any STDs while visiting the conveniently-located camp towns. Some women claim that the American military police raided brothels, looking for women they suspected to be spreading disease. The Korean police would then step in, locking the accused women up in so-called “monkey houses" until they were deemed well enough to go back to work.

Transcripts of parliamentary hearings support the former sex worker’s claims that the government explicitly encouraged the selling of sex in order to keep U.S. dollars flowing into South Korea. In one exchange from 1960, two lawmakers recommended that the government keep a number of prostitutes to meet the “natural needs” of U.S. soldiers. Lee Sung-woo, the deputy home minister, assured the speaker that the government had already made improvements in the “supply of prostitutes,” which he termed the “recreational system” for American troops.

The camp towns still exist today, and many former sex workers still live in the brothel-dominated settlements. Jeon, a 71-year-old ex-prostitute who moved to the camp town of Dongduchon at age 18, said: “The more I think about my life, the more I think women like me were the biggest sacrifice for my country’s alliance with the Americans. Looking back, I think my body was not mine, but the government’s and the U.S. military’s.”

Ex-Prostitutes Say South Korea And U.S. Enabled Sex Trade Near Bases [New York Times]

Bakewell's argument is that, since time immemorial, men liked to fuck women without actually having to deal with them, and making it into a monetary transaction suits those needs pretty well. She says:

There is, whether we like it or not, a compelling need for many men to have sex without strings, sex with a stranger that is over and done with once the cash has changed hands. Throughout history they have found ways of doing so, whether with sacred temple maidens or in the garrison brothels set up to serve fighting armies. We can chase it up and down the legal ladders, hound it down dark alleys and squalid bedsits, but its persistence tells us that we won't eradicate it. So let's face up to the fact and make paying for sex legal.

Bakewell takes issue with the British government's initiatives to crack down on street prostitution (arguably the least-regulated form with the highest incidence of coercion) and on their efforts to ramp up penalties on men that patronize trafficked women. In her mind, making the whole thing legal and then regulating it is the best (and most feminist) way to go about it, objectification-objections be damned.

Of course, she undermines her argument on two counts. First she argues that regulating brothels will allow residents to keep prostitution out of their neighborhoods — though she points out that a law that deregulated the lap-dancing cafes ended up doubling their number and giving locals little control over having them in their neighborhoods. Second, she says, "I want to see a world where women have enough self-esteem to stand up for themselves against exploitation and abuse." Is sex work not exploitative? Does decriminalization prevent abuse? Does legalizing what some argue is the objectification of women lead to less exploitation and abuse of women in society? Those are difficult arguments to make. Bakewell, having met a handful of regulated Dutch prostitutes and having found them not terribly fucked up, thinks that such is the case. The women at Nevada's brothels might tend to disagree with her description of regulated sex workers:

These particular women - like those I met at a lap-dancing club - weren't the sad dregs of humanity. They had a robust attitude to their lives, a lively street intelligence and an eagerness to better themselves.

Apparently, since Bakewell has found a clatch of well-adjusted strippers and sex workers, we can decriminalize it and stop worrying so much about trafficking and the reasons (or abusers) that drive women into prostitution?

That said, I think there are plenty of good, solid reasons to decriminalize the selling of sex, not the least of which is the ability to then regulate sex work (which Bakewell touches on, albeit briefly). There are also good arguments in favor of the state's interest in criminalizing the buying of sex, and in favor of ramping up punishments on the men that patronize women without giving a thought about whether they are being coerced (since, let's be honest, they're already treating them as objects). But let's not argue that feminists are wrong that sex work is part of the objectification women — because we're not wrong — or that trafficking isn't an important issue that deserves lots of attention, or that there aren't sex workers who are exploited and abused even within legalized systems. That's just willful blindness and unhelpful to the argument — sort of like the men that have sex with trafficked women.

Paying For Sex — What's So Wrong With That? [The Times]

Related: No Federal Prostitution Charges for Spitzer [NY Times]
Election Summary - November 4, 2008 [San Francisco Department Of Elections]

Earlier: To Regulate, Or Not To Regulate: Regarding Prostitution, That's Still The Question
UK Suggests That Men Who Patronize Trafficked Prostitutes Be Prosecuted
Recession And Sex Work

The new Economist takes a look at the different reactions of Europeans to the problems of sex work regulation and trafficking and found that no one has a great solution.

In the Netherlands, they legalized brothels in order to attempt to eliminate trafficking and the participation of organized crime — an effect that has yet to be seen in the last eight years. Since women have to work in brothels, they remain subject to exploitation by management. Around the same time, Sweden decriminalized selling sex but criminalized buying it; the country saw a reduction in the numbers of street prostitutes, but sex workers now have a more difficult time vetting clients and clients supposedly aren't willing to report suspected trafficking and are heading overseas to get their paid freak on. All over Europe, countries are tightening their laws, criminalizing the buying of sex and, as we reported earlier, England is even on the verge of making it a separate offense to engage in sex with a woman who it later turns out was trafficked.

The only country with as liberal laws on sex work as those Prop K is proposing is New Zealand — in 2003, the country decriminalized prostitution altogether (although without the bit on trafficking and racial profiling). Since then, police report that the number of sex workers appear to be constant and

More than 60% of prostitutes felt they had more power to refuse clients than they did before. The report reckoned that only about 1% of women in the business were under the legal age of 18. And only 4% said they had been pressured into working by someone else.

One of the major differences between the Dutch (and Nevada) experience and the New Zealand one — other than that its isolation appears to mean that trafficking is less of a problem — is that, in New Zealand, most sex workers own their own businesses, so to speak, and that the law is not only designed to encourage sex worker entrepreneurship but, additionally, bans pimping. Another big difference between the New Zealand law and the San Francisco proposal is that the New Zealand law codifies a series of occupation health and safety standards, such as a requirement that condoms (and other barrier methods) be used, a requirement of sex education for all sex workers and a requirement of regular testing and training. It also allows that sex workers can claim worker's comp if they're injured on the job or contract an STI. None of these things are part of the San Francisco proposal, which seems like a bad idea.

All of this is to say that it's a thorny problem with no simple solutions but — as with health care and the financial system — maybe rapid and unmonitored deregulation of sex work in San Francisco isn't going to be the boon to sex workers there that Prop K proponents hope, or the anaethma to moral values and law enforcement that opponents fear.

Prop K Calls For Decriminalizing Prostitution In San Francisco [SF Chronicle]
Regulating The Sex Trade [The Economist]

Earlier: UK Suggests That Men Who Patronize Trafficked Prostitutes Be Prosecuted

Related: A Guide To Occupational Health And Safety In The New Zealand Sex Industry [New Zealand Occupational Safety & Health Service]
Brazil's Government Gives Tips To Prostitutes [Forbes]

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As a feminist, I want to not define what is right and wrong for somebody else, but I recognize that some women and men don't make the choice to be sex workers as much as they are pushed or fall into it for the wrong reasons. As a politically-inclined person, I am keen to see as many people participating in the political process as possible, and I'm keenly aware that sex workers aren't accorded the rights here that they deserve. As a woman, I'm bothered to find out that a lover or a boyfriend has patronized a prostitute and I'm never keen on them going to strip clubs. And, frankly, I've walked past the strip clubs on M Street enough to know that the objectification that goes on in there doesn't stay behind those closed doors — and while I blame the men that stare at my tits, I can't honestly say I never blame the owners of the naked breasts those men were recently drooling over. And so I put on my 5 inch heels and teetered over to BeBar on 9th Street last night to check it out. And it turns out the way to reconcile 15 different points of view on sex work is really easy — you just spend the night talking to sex workers and their friends and supporters outside of the contexts of their jobs.

I met a lot of cool people last night from all walks of life (and including one Jezebel commenter) all of whom were there to support the cause of treating sex workers more like normal working people. The folks I spoke with want the rest of us to know that they didn't all get into sex work because they were abused or on drugs and that, for some of them, it's just a job like any other. It's work which, like your job, can be fun or monotonous, intellectually stimulating or a reason to read Jezebel all day at your desk, physically demanding or a reason for your butt to spread like mine. There's no one reason people choose to get into sex work or stay in sex work.

And prostitutes don't just face discrimination and condemnation from women, they face it from their own clients. They also face serious risks, like diseases and beatings. The police tend to go after sex workers rather than the clients — just ask David Vitter what charges he faced for using the D.C. Madam's services, or Senator Debbie Stabenow's husband (who turned state's evidence against the prostitute he hired). In D.C., the city has designated certain places prostitute-free zones, in which people who "look like" prostitutes can be arrested for having prior charges or more than 3 condoms on them — and where transgendered people are often harassed. So, while having (and using) condoms is taking an active approach to one's own safety and that of one's clients (and their current or future partners), it's actually punishable by law in D.C.. Great plan there, guys.

The groups that sponsored last night's event — HIPS, $PREAD Magazine and Different Avenues — are working not to eliminate sex work, but to make it a safe alternative for the women and men who choose to do it, and to help those that don't feel free to choose to leave to get out. They provide testing services, counseling, drug programs, social support services and outreach in addition to working to educate the public and our elected representatives about what's being done wrong and right in regards to sex work. Plus they throw really interesting parties where they help get people registered to vote.

At the end, the sex workers I was talking to and I came to an agreement. If a woman's husband or boyfriend is utilizing a sex worker's services (and, God forbid, leaves her with some consequences of his actions), we should blame him and not the sex worker. The sex worker was just doing his or her job, not trying to hurt anyone else.