Child sex trafficking: why statistics should matter to the Rescue Industry

After the other day’s question about Ashton Kutcher’s ability to count, I received messages from people who probably had not visited me before. One person lamented that we are all […]

Children and sex: prostitution, rescues, statistics, money and the FBI

Teenager said to be vulnerable sitting on a bench Press Release, 8 November 2010: Over the past 72 hours, the FBI, its local and state law enforcement partners, and the […]

What do sex-buying statistics mean? More anti-trafficking efforts, that’s what

Before anyone claims these statistics on arrests of traffickers and clients actually mean something, read this, published at The Other Swedish Model the other day. Swedish sex-buying statistics: What do […]

The Witches of Manningtree: A Walk on the River Stour

PUBLIC NOTICE: I’ve become a qualified tour guide. Not because I want to take tourists to see the changing of the guard or other typical tourist delights but because I’ve […]

Snake Oil: A Memoir on the Rise of ‘Trafficking’

­When future historians try to understand what ‘trafficking’ meant in the first 20 years of the 21st century, I hope this memoir gives them pause. Recording how my questions about […]

Becoming aware of Awareness-Raising as anti-trafficking tactic

My Google Alerts are now full of nonsensical items on behalf of a Trafficking Awareness Month in the USA. I first discovered Awareness Raising when I began to study assumptions […]

Somaly Mam, Nick Kristof and the Cult of Personality

Many wrote to me during the brouhaha about Somaly Mam and Nicholas Kristof as though I were not paying enough attention to it. There are lots of events in the […]

Sweden and prostitution law: the conditions of possibility

The idea of criminalising the purchase of sex continues to be promoted round the world, usually as part of some politician’s campaign against immoral sex and the exploitation of children, […]

Prostitution Law & the Death of Whores in Jacobin Magazine

This essay ran first in Jacobin and was picked up by Salon and given a different title. Comments on the different slants to come soon. Prostitution Law and the Death […]

Does legalised prostitution increase trafficking? Who knows, without real data?

Long ago I was Managing Editor for the Chief Economist at Merrill Lynch in New York. I know what econometrics are and am not scared to death of mathematical modelling […]

Nordic/Swedish models: laws criminalising the purchase of sex

Nordic model is a new tag on this website, and it doesn’t refer to leggy blondes. People contact me ever oftener asking for what I’ve written on prostitution laws in […]

Sex as Work and Sex Work: a marxian take

A couple of years ago I was asked to write for a special edition of The Commoner on Care Work and the Commons (Silvia Federici and Camille Barbagallo, editors). Atypically […]

Gloria Steinem calls prostitution Body Invasion, as feminists go on quarreling

Oh for goodness’ sake, does everyone in the USA have to take on sex trafficking as their special mission? How conformist! Ashley Judd has joined the list; it turns out […]

Letter from the prostitute that didn’t want saving, 1858

Prostitution, referred to under headings like The Great Social Evil or A Delicate Question, was a common topic of comment in The Times of London in the mid-19th century. The […]

Fallen women, including the one Charles Dickens didn’t save

Two hundred years ago in Europe, women who misbehaved sexually were referred to as fallen from God’s grace. In mid- and late-19th-century paintings, the fallen woman was portrayed in a […]

US Trafficking Office wants your help with imperialist anti-trafficking operations

The US Trafficking in Persons Report has always failed to explain how it gets its information in more than the sketchiest of ways, as I point out in June of […]

Sex workers and Violence against Women: Utopic Visions or Battle of the Sexes?

The other day, discussing the recommendation that DNA should be taken from men who buy sex, I ended with a question: how can anyone maintain a utopic vision about gender […]

Irish government uses my writing on Swedish anti-prostitution law without mentioning my name: theft or taboo?

On sex trafficking, sex work and the Swedish claim that their evaluation of the anti-prostitution law is evidence of anything at all, I am one of few public critics. Is […]

Have fun, take a tour to meet victims of sex trafficking, learn to be a saviour

People have different opinions about tourism by richer people to look at how poor people live. You can argue that it is better that they see some piece of reality […]

Leaving Home for Sex: Cosmopolitanism or sex trafficking or both?

It is striking that in the year 2001 women should so overwhelmingly be seen as pushed, obligated, coerced or forced when they leave home for the same reason as men: […]