Tag Archives: money

US spends $109 million to fight human trafficking in 2010

The amount spent by US government to fight trafficking in 2010: $109 517 783. I realise that may look small compared to some other egregious spending, like military, but then some of us would say there is a distinctly military resemblance in much of the trafficking spending. Note how the money is spread around different agencies, below.

I see that when CdeBaca claimed he had only $25 million to spend (and therefore could not be expected to address root causes of the problem), he was talking about spending in the US only. That was certainly not clear when he said it, in the midst of a rousing description of international interventions. 

Is $109 million a large enough amount to consider spending some of it on other things than catching traffickers, rescuing victims and training police officers? Why not?

Note also that the chart showing what types of trafficking programmes focus on (labour or sex) only shows what they may do – not what they do do. So we don’t know how much of programmes allowed to focus on both labour and sex actually only focus on sex.

Taxpayers: any happier now that you know the details?

PS: I removed the decorative banner at the top of this thing: the cliché of accusing eyes will not be seen on this blog if I can help it.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

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 squabbling. The Daily Beast calls it a feud. Both words minimise, or even belittle, the issue at stake – numbers claimed as victims of child sex trafficking in the US. Someone said Can’t we just all work together to rid the world of this scourge? ‘Together’ is the difficult keyword here, since working on a common cause requires a common understanding of just what constitutes the problem.

But a consultant who earns a fee choosing social causes for celebrities to sponsor and then runs their campaigns feels no such scruples, writing emotively There are a few things in life I know in that ‘beyond a shadow of a doubt’ way. One is that children shouldn’t be sold for sex. Dismissing the idea of getting ‘perfect data’, Maggie Neilson asks Who is supposed to monitor, collect, analyze and disseminate it? Cash-strapped governments? Nonprofit organizations that work their hearts out every day and spend every last penny helping people?

Which sounds lovely and smarmy but misses a couple of key points: 1) Since the US government already plows very large sums into denouncing trafficking and attempting to catch traffickers and to rescue victims, some of the money could be spent on well-run research, in order to make the whole operation more efficient; and 2) Organisations may be ‘non-profit’ but those that run and work in them make salaries, receive employee benefits and enjoy social prestige and the possibility of long careers. They cannot be considered self-sacrificing, and the pennies they are spending don’t come out of their own pockets.

Not to mention that they often don’t help people, whether they spend all their pennies on it or not, which is why I entered this field in the first place long ago and wrote Sex at the Margins and keep up this blog questioning the Rescue Industry.  So I left the following comment on Ms Neilson’s piece (misleadingly titled Setting the Record Straight):

Posted: 7/6/11 by Laura Agustín

If facts don’t matter, if we only guess about the extent of a problem, then we have a good chance of attacking that problem the wrong way. What about the frightened guesses from spies for the US government on those non-existent weapons of mass destruction? How many people have died in that pointless cause?

Helping people in danger is not easy. They don’t all want the same things, or to be saved the same way. That is why a lot of children run away from home in the first place and run away from helping projects, too.

The original estimate said 100,000 to 300,000 children in the US ‘could be at risk’. Everything about the statement is so vague as to be meaningles­s. If you want to Do Something about the risk, then you have to get better informatio­n about exactly which people are at risk and how. And you have to be very careful not to undertake actions that smash up the lives of a lot of people that don’t need the help you are offering – collateral damage, if you will.

Referring to critical thinking as ‘inaction’­, as Neilson does, is a cheap shot. Some of us work hard to get closer to the truth and base ‘helping’ projects on that: it is not inaction, it is not a lack of caring, and I object to its being called that by someone making a good living from the ‘actions’ of clueless crusades.

Do you suppose these writers read the comments people bother to make? I doubt it, but I read mine, and was gratified the other day to receive this one from an anti-trafficking activist:

I like your writing. It is interesting and I think you are after the truth, not whatever will support your point of view. I admire that. nikki junker

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Funding for EWL anti-prostitution campaign challenged in parliament

Recently I wrote about a man-licking-women video that supposedly depicts a man who does sex for money and feels oppressed by the job. The only sex we are shown, though, is oral, with the man kneeling on a floor between the outspread knees of women on their backs on a bed. The video, part of a campaign by the non-democratic European Women’s Lobby, has provoked interesting comments on my blog, not least from men who say the video’s message is not easy to grasp.

It seems the actual subtext of the video is that older and fat woman are disgusting and undeserving of sexual pleasure. matt

He seems more bored than disgusted. Alex

What the creator of this video did not realize was that clients love to lick women including the mature providers. Pohaku

It is a big boost for a man’s ego if so many women want to have sex with him, even if they are older women. Kris

The depiction of women who are older or a little bit curvy as disgusting? Talk about misogynistic. Erik

Oh, please. A job described as Help Wanted: male to lick anonymous pussies for $xx per hour, supply your own toothpaste and kneepads would have applicants lined up out the door. There would be plenty of candidates if it was a volunteer gig. ewaffle

Okay, bizarre choice of ad. That turned me on. Randy

These are just extracts; go to the comments directly if you are interested. The point is, the video itself, as opposed to the propaganda surrounding it, is open to a myriad of interpretations – some of them quite the opposite of what the EWL intended. Which is good.

The European sex worker rights movement objects to the characterisation of their lives in this way, of course, calling it anti-sex, woman-hating, sexist, discriminatory. But even more importantly, everyone asks how a campaign can be called Together for a Europe Free From Prostitution when several EU member states permit some sorts of sex work and prostitution (see this example from Italy’s Comitato per il Diritti Civili delle Prostitute). The issue is that the EWL receives public money – your taxes – from an EU programme called Progress, established to support financially the implementation of the objectives of the European Union in employment, social affairs and equal opportunities. I first questioned this use of public funds in April, so I am glad to see that the following question was submitted to the European Parliament on 1 July (note the EU’s executive body is called the European Commission):

Can the Commission explain if EU funds have been used directly or indirectly to finance an abolitionist “Campaign to put an end to prostitution in Europe” and “Together for a Europe Free from Prostitution”, promoting a “Europe free from prostitution” and calling on “individuals, national governments and the European Union to take concrete actions”, substantially on the basis of the Swedish model of legislation on the issue and with the aim of abolishing prostitution, which is presented as a form of violence against women? Have notably Progress funds been used for this? If so, can it explain how EU funds can be used to promote a certain legislative model, notably on a matter where Member States have different policies and sensitivities on the matter? If EU funds have been directly or indirectly used, if a campaign is launched to legalize prostitution and sex work or to promote a different legislative model, would the same EU funds be eligible for it? If not, why? Will the Commission request that EU funds are given back, if the campaign is funded without the Commission knowledge?

I edited a couple of words to make the English more understandable to an international audience; see the original form submitted at the bottom of this entry.

The current commissioner for Home Affairs is Cecilia Malmström (Swedish), and although she has not said anything publicly so far about the EWL campaign, she is getting close with recent pronouncements on sexual exploitation of children and modern slavery (where she mentions someone who was forced to have sex with 65-70 men a day, every day during five years, just as though it was the most typical story). I will keep my eye on her, both as an anthropologist of Europe and an anthropologist of Bureaucracy. Speaking of which, here is the original form submitted to parliament.


–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

International marriage broking called trafficking, of course

There must be a sociological principle to describe the tendency for a wide variety of phenomena to be subsumed into a single reductionist label. Start a conversation about trafficking nowadays and ensuing comments will relate to rape, sex tourism, child abuse, organ sales, surrogate motherhood, egg donation and prostitution. At the Battle of Ideas, someone brought up ethnic cleansing, too: Everything becomes trafficking.

Marriages between older white men and younger less-white women, or richer men and poorer women, have long been condemned as trafficking, although research abounds on how the businesses work, even before the Internet made websites possible. The condemnation of this sort of relationship rests on the belief that there is a universal right way to meet and become a couple that is violated here, and the history of humankind, in which matchmaking may be an even older profession than selling sex, is forgotten. As is the fact that all marriages are financial arrangements. A lot of critics must also be forgetting that some of their own ancestors’ marriages were arranged by intermediaries, and sometimes brides travelled to another country to marry men they had not met before. The following report from a financial publication focuses on the male point of view about the prices involved, and there is no doubt that comments are sexist and women’s points of view lacking. Does it make sense for someone from NOW to call it all trafficking, however?

The Mail-Order-Bride Trade Is Flourishing

Teddy Wayne, Bloomberg Business Week, 6 January 2011

Times are good for Joseph Weiner. The former investment banker and Wharton [Bachelor of Science in Economics] lives with his wife of 27 years in a three-bedroom London townhouse. When he isn’t lounging in his private garden, Weiner spends his free time playing tennis at the exclusive Hurlingham Club and gliding around town in his Lexus. Though he doesn’t claim to be a philosopher, Weiner’s insight into the human heart has led to a lucrative second career as a matchmaker and packager of amorous adventures. “Every guy wants a beautiful younger woman,” he explains. “It’s the nature of us.”

Fourteen years ago, Weiner, 73, founded Hand-In-Hand, a London-based matchmaking agency that charges male customers up to $2,000 for a “supervised courtship”—a process that matches them with younger Eastern European women. Hand-In-Hand has since grown into a multinational operation with 30 satellite offices from the U.S. to Abu Dhabi. “We’re still opening up franchises, and business is booming,” says Weiner in his thick New York accent. “Financial problems are the biggest cause of divorce. There are more financial problems now. There are more people available!

In the age of globalization, the international matchmaking industry—still known in many circles as the mail-order bride trade—is thriving like never before. The Tahirih Justice Center, a nonprofit organization in Falls Church, Va., that protects immigrant women, estimates that the number of mail-order marriages in the U.S. more than doubled between 1999 and 2007, when up to 16,500 such unions were sealed.

International matchmakers are now a growing segment of the U.S. online dating industry, which, according to market research firm IBISWorld, racked up more than $2 billion in 2010 revenue. Since the recession began, “we’ve seen more men sign up,” says John Adams, the co-founder of Phoenix-based A Foreign Affair, which charges $4,000 for the right to attend champagne-soaked “socials” in various Eastern European cities. The company estimates it sparked nearly 1,000 engagements this year. “Men evaluate their lives a little more closely when the economy becomes more difficult. They look at what’s really important to them and try to find that one person they want to spend the rest of their lives with.” Adams would know. He met his wife, Tanya, at a 1997 St. Petersburg social sponsored by his own company.

Amid the proliferation of dating websites and matchmaking reality shows, venturing abroad for love has taken on a more acceptable mien. International matchmakers have succeeded, in part, by targeting middle-aged men who find dating troublesome—men who, according to Weiner, “don’t have the money to go out on dates and go on weekends to Vegas and Atlantic City. They want someone to take care of them.” While they might not have the means to secure a more conveniently located trophy wife, they must have enough money to travel to Eastern Europe and spend thousands for a shot at eternal bliss. Though love may be priceless, notes Weiner, “$2,000 to get a beautiful woman—it’s a bargain!” According to David L. Knabel, the owner and president of Louisville-based matchmaker A Volga Girl, “It’s no different than a dating site in the U.S.—except it’s international marriage.”

In 2007, Ben Baligad hit a dry spell. The divorced 53-year-old eschewed the San Diego dating scene after discovering Ukraine’s favorable gender ratio—0.92 males for every female between ages 15 and 64, according to the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine. After enlisting companies such as Global Ladies and Army of Brides, the insurance salesman made three trips to Ukraine. The third time was the charm: Baligad met his potential future wife, Natalya Chuprina, 18 years his junior. “I’m planning on bringing her to the U.S. as soon as I get my finances straight,” he says.

By pulling on the heartstrings of single men, the mail-order bride industry has at its disposal untold financial opportunities. In addition to membership fees—which run $29.95 per month at A Foreign Affair—and “romance tours” that can cost suitors thousands, many sites charge between $6 and $8 to translate each e-mail exchanged between interlocutors, and even more for phone and instant message translation. Some companies, like Hand-In-Hand, have also expanded into same-sex international matchmaking. “We’ve been doing gay business for about a year and a half,” boasts Weiner.

Though every site claims to police its users, scams are common. Les Vancil, the founder of Easy Ukraine, an Ohio-based site targeting men traveling abroad for matchmaking opportunities, says the problems lie with the Eastern European agencies contracted to recruit women. Vancil asserts these companies post fake profiles, ratchet up prices for translation, and sometimes impersonate women to ask for money.

When customers complain, matchmakers “wipe their hands clean,” says Steve Ewald, a Detroit accountant who stopped using such sites after several unsatisfying experiences. They blame the agencies, he claims, who blame the women. Ben Baligad says the agency that helped him communicate with his girlfriend skimmed 10 percent off the money he sent her for train fare and phone bills. He also suspects it posed as her in e-mails demanding he pay for a pricey apartment rental for his visit. He hasn’t brought it up with his girlfriend, though. “I think she thinks I will get angry,” he says.

The arrangement can be far worse for the women involved. After a few highly publicized murders of women brought to America through international matchmakers, the U.S. passed the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 (IMBRA). The statute requires background checks on U.S. citizens before communication via the matchmakers. Those who fail to comply cannot obtain a Form I-129F, Petition for Alien Fiancé(e).

However, couples can get around this obstacle by claiming they met through other avenues. There also tends to be little enforcement of IMBRA when the agencies are based outside the U.S. (Hand-In-Hand, for example, is registered in St. Kitts.) “The mail-order bride industry is a softer version of human trafficking,” says Sonia Ossorio, executive director of the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women. Ossorio also acknowledges that some relationships work out—but perhaps not in a way that would please Betty Friedan. “A lot of people who are attracted to it are just looking for a woman who’s docile and obedient,” she says.

For some companies, such submissiveness is a selling point. Hand-In-Hand’s website trumpets the fact that its females are “unspoiled by feminism.” Company founder Weiner argues this form of chauvinism—like the mail-order bride business itself—is economically motivated. “You take a beautiful woman from the Czech Republic and you bring her into your home, she does all your cooking and cleaning and ironing,” he says. “At the end of the day, the service is free.” Hand-In-Hand estimates the potential savings of a homemaking wife at $150 per week.

Women from economically troubled regions also take part in order to secure an American visa. “People around the world still view the U.S. as a highly favorable place to live,” says A Foreign Affair’s Adams. His wife agrees. “I worked a lot before, but then I was waking up at nine in the morning and was like, ‘Whoa, what do I have to do now?’ ” says Tanya Adams, who remains a supporter of the company. “I even recommended it to my niece.”

Perhaps love can always find a way. Most sites claim a 75 percent or greater success rate, and this boundless quest for passion—one inflamed by hard times—continues to benefit matchmaking entrepreneurs. “Wonderful times for me,” Weiner says. “I can’t complain.”

Desiring different others, different colours, and even paying them

At the time of the World Cup, a reporter asked me, a bit nervously, about the possibility that white football-fan tourists in South Africa might have plans or desire to have sex with black people. I think it’s quite possible, I replied. Silence. Is there anything wrong with that, do you mean? His continuing silence confirmed that yes, that was what he meant.

No, I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with that, I think everyone desires others for something we see or imagine we see in others, which can be their eyes, voice, hair, style, breasts, chest hair, skin colour and many other attributes. We may be imagining things behind this superficial trait, of course. We may imagine they are wilder or more interesting than people we usually meet, or that they are better at sex, or that we are safer with them or that it will be easier to tell them what we like. But whether our partners look like us or different, we are doing that imagining and desiring. I wrote about this for American Sexuality a few years ago.

Does this change completely because there is a money transaction between the partners? Why should it? If you say it does then you grant money a determining status you probably don’t grant it in any other sphere. I know the argument about control and domination backwards and forwards, the one that says that the person who pays has the power to command. I would put it differently: the person who pays has the power to say I want x and will pay for it and if you accept the money I expect you to do it. A notion that the ‘power relation’ will always be skewed towards the white person is too simplistic for me, both too racially oriented and too fetishising of money.

The idea that a richer person will always have more power than a poorer one grants money a singular status I refuse to give it. The idea that money trumps every other type of power crushes the idea of human agency, the space to negotiate other sorts of power. Of course I understand the critique of exoticisation. I understand Frantz Fanon and don’t doubt that poor colonies were in some sense the ‘brothels of Europe’. But such an analysis comes from today, from contemporary perspectives on imperialism and colonisation, and they omit to understand what particular people were doing within their own cultural logics at the time. Every instance of a lighter or richer person wanting to be with a darker or poorer one does not have the same meaning.

I wrote about prices and ethnicities in the sex industry here some time ago.

– Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Young people who sell sexiness or sex and resist victimisation, in the UK

Young people selling sex or its illusions resist victimisation by a typically tut-tutting reporter who not only asks them the facts but also tries to get them to feel bad about their jobs. Someone should make a compilation of just the reporters’ side of these conversations, with their disapproving expressions and head-shaking as they reveal that money matters to people (golly, do they really think most people get to have such neat jobs as theirs??) while at the same time other things than money matter, too. The kids win the show hands down, even though the reporter gives the impression that he Knows Better (latest nomination for Rescue Industry reporter of the month). See the site for two videos, both involving girls, that I cannot copy. In one of them, the escort admits someone once pinned her down and she didn’t like it. Horror from the reporter: That’s rape! (trying to get her to cry on camera, was he?) The escort says I am okay now. Reporter reiterates his personal shock at what she’s said. Feh, I hate this stuff!

Ben and Alex
‘Butlers in the buff’ Ben and Alex are in for the money
My body makes money

10 December 2010, BBC Radio Two

My journey starts in Bristol with students Ben and Alex, both 21 who say their Saturday job is “cheekier” than most. It’s a dream job. We get paid to go to parties, says Ben. We head to a party where the boys have been booked for a few hours. They make their big entrance wearing nothing but a tiny apron, bow tie, and cuffs. They’re butlers in the buff. In my first year I worked in a bar, in order to earn 50 quid, I’d have to work 10 hours. Now I can do that in two hours at the weekend, says Alex. The boys say they love the attention, but admit it’s all about the money.

Topless on TV

Next, I go to meet twins Preeti and Priya, who work for Babestation – one of the UK’s biggest adult TV channels. The girls take calls from viewers while they are topless and say it’s their choice of career. We both left school with good grades. We had a lot of possibilities open to us, says Preeti. They say job satisfaction is the main reason they chose to work in the sex industry over other careers but admit there’s a potential to earn a lot of money. If you work hard you could be earning up to a hundred grand a year. But don’t think, ‘I’ve never done this job before and I’ll walk in and they’ll say that’s your salary’, it doesn’t work like that.

Someone who has used her body to become rich and famous is glamour model Keeley Hazell. However, she says going topless isn’t always the best way to achieve her kind of success. I was lucky to be in that 1% of people that get that, and become really successful. Keeley believes people who want to go into glamour should ask themselves why: If it’s for money, then I’d probably play the lottery.

‘Not prostitution’

I end my journey by meeting a former teenage escort who worked under the name ‘Hannah’.  Aged 18, she was preparing to go to university and owed her family and friends £4,000. A friend suggested escorting as a quick solution to her debt. An overnight stay would cost £800, she says. Hannah doesn’t consider what she did as prostitution because she didn’t stand on street corners. Although she misses the money, she stopped because she became obssessed about catching STIs and couldn’t cope with the nightmares she was having. I don’t feel like I degraded myself in the sense of my naked body being plastered up on a billboard saying, ‘Call this number for good times. But I did degrade myself in that my body was no longer just for people who loved me.

— Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Sex on Sunday: Dinner dates, money dating, shopping money and sex

While so many people are upset about the idea of commercial sex or the sex industry or prostitution, other forms of sex-money exchanges largely escape condemnation. I am interested in where people draw the line between commercial and non-commercial sex in specific contexts, such as transactional sex amongst fish-sellers and the famous sign asking Are you a prostitute? in Shanghai.

Prostitution, Gold-digging, or Just a Dinner Date? How Chimps Get Paid for Sex, at Psychology Today

Women in particular look forward to having a meal at a nice restaurant. Typically, though not always, the male of the species will pay the bill, which he may gladly do in the hope of currying favor with the female. Rarely, if ever, do couples on dinner dates appreciate the evolutionary psychology behind this ubiquitous activity. Taking a step back, it is clear that eating is simply a biological function and sharing food together need not intrinsically be romantic, and yet dinner is often associated with romance. Why?

Money Dating, at seeking arrangement.com

Money singles take an ultra pragmatic approach to the online dating game. Most money daters are interested in setting up mutually beneficial relationships, with clearly defined ground rules. In fact, many money daters decide the desired length of their relationship before it begins.

  • Sugar Daddy: A wealthy, usually older man who gives expensive gifts to a young person in return for intimacy or companionship.
  • Sugar Mommy: A wealthy, usually older woman who gives expensive gifts to a young person in return for intimacy or companionship.
  • Sugar Baby: A young person who gives intimacy or companionship to an older man or woman in exchange for expensive gifts.

Top 4 Most Beneficial Sugar Daddy Arrangements, by Andrea Rodgers

Mentorship . . . The value of making connections and learning from first-hand experience can be worth more than gold to women looking for professional advancement… “give a girl a fish and you have fed her for a day, teach her how to fish and you have fed her for a lifetime.”

Arm Candy . . . Many sugar daddies simply enjoy the pleasure of spoiling a woman, especially gorgeous, young and appreciative ones. This sugar daddy takes his. . .

Girls sell sex in Hong Kong to earn shopping money, at CNN.com/asia

‘We skipped the dinner part and went straight to the guest house for sex. Actually, I was a bit scared, but I knew this was the only way I could get money. This customer wasn’t bad, though. We just had sex, he paid, and then he left’. . . a growing social phenomenon among teens in Hong Kong called compensated dating, a practice in which a young woman agrees to go on a date with a man for a fee. More often than not, the date involves sex.

Earlier blog posts on compensated or subsidised dating at Japan’s enjo kosai and Poland’s piggies and mall girls.

– Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

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 National Center for Missing and Exploited Children concluded Operation Cross Country V, a three-day national enforcement action as part of the Innocence Lost National Initiative. The operation included enforcement actions in 40 cities across 34 FBI divisions around the country and led to the recovery of 69 children who were being victimized through prostitution. Additionally, nearly 885 others, including 99 pimps, were arrested on state and local charges.

There is a very long history of alarms about children and their sexual activities, and numerous researchers have had insightful things to say about the contemporary fear of childrenandsex, which is not my area of specialisation. But.

It turns out that the US-government-funded Federal Bureau of Investigation has a human-trafficking programme. Well, they would, of course, and, in fact, given the framework of catching perpetrators of border-crossing crimes they make more sense as criminal-hunters than local or state police.

We’re working hard to stop human trafficking—not only because of the personal and psychological toll it takes on society, but also because it facilitates the illegal movement of immigrants across borders and provides a ready source of income for organized crime groups and even terrorists.

I actually prefer this sort of clarity to the hypocrisy of so many Rescue Industry projects: Here, we know where we are. According to the general description, sex-related trafficking is not the FBI’s only interest. But they have a sub-project on ‘missing children’ called Innocence Lost, where the sex link is overt, their achievements since 2003 described as working

to rescue more than 1,200 children. Investigations have successfully led to the conviction of over 600 pimps, madams, and their associates who exploit children through prostitution. These convictions have resulted in lengthy sentences, including multiple 25-year-to-life sentences and the seizure of real property, vehicles, and monetary assets.

I find that last line disturbing – bragging about how long the sentences are as well as the stuff taken from those involved, but those are the kind of indicators police use to show they are doing something – rescue being, after all, a pretty vague concept (and they know it).

But Innocence Lost turns out to be more than an FBI project; it is a National Initiative (this link takes you to a site on Missing and Exploited Children), composed of no fewer than

37 dedicated task forces and working groups throughout the United States involving federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies working in tandem with U.S. Attorney’s Offices.

Their fear is the growing problem of domestic child sex slavery in the form of child prostitution in the United States.

I would like to see evidence that the number of children taking money for sex is growing, since research has for a long time addressed young people who leave home and then survive by selling sex. Calling it child sex slavery is exciting, but the issue is the same. Leaving home is not always a bad thing, anyway.

But the question has to be: The 37 dedicated task forces and working groups get $26.1 million to do this work. If they have rescued 1200 children since 2003, each rescued child costs more than $20 000.

IF there is an immense and growing number of enslaved children worth investing huge amounts of money in, then some effort should be made to figure out how to find and save more of them. What is the money being spent on?

NCMEC has trained more than 1,000 members of law enforcement on the issue of child victims of prostitution. These specialized courses, developed and conducted in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have trained multi-disciplinary teams, with membership drawn from state, local, and federal law-enforcement agencies and local social-service providers from cities all over the country.

All that training and so few children rescued?

– Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Middlemen: between truck-driving clients and women who sell sex, Uganda

No figure is feared and misrepresented more than a man who facilitates the sale of sex for other people. Massive anti-prostitution generalisations about exploitation too often shut down attempts to understand how sexual cultures work by accusing all facilitators of being exploitative pimps and traffickers and ignoring different contexts and different meanings of the acts for those involved. Whether you want to regulate the sex industry or get rid of it, you have to understand how its many manifestations work. I advocate a cultural study of commercial sex, which you can read about here and here (with links to academic articles, too). Note also that talking about the variety of experience and subtlety of meaning within sex-money exchanges does not imply that everyone involved is happy, satisfied, unexploited or anything else. That middlemen are sometimes fair does not mean all of them always are.

Here are excerpts from an academic study* of one small place, a truck-stop in southwest Uganda. The authors situate what some might see as a conventional prostitution economy within general sexual culture that involves third parties.

Mediation customarily plays a central role in regulating sexual relations in local Kiganda culture. In selecting a suitable spouse, introductions, the process of betrothal through to the hand-over ceremony, the senga, or paternal aunt, played (and still plays) a pivotal role as mediator .  .  .

They then show how the middleman is seen as useful by both buyers and sellers in the commercial sex market of the truck stop.

Passing truck drivers usually do not have the time to Žfind themselves a suitable woman for the night because most must leave early the next morning, so they turn to a middleman to get them a woman quickly.

The driver pays the middleman according to a variety of factors, depending, for example, on who took the initiative, and how satisfied the driver is with the woman.

When the driver and the middleman know each other, or get along well, no payment is expected, but a gift may be offered, or they might share beer together. The middleman accompanies the driver and personally introduces him to the woman.

The most important reason women gave for using an intermediary is discretion. Although everybody knows that serving beer and food and cleaning are not the only work the women in bars and restaurants do, it is still necessary to keep up a certain degree of formal decency in such small communities. . .  Decency is maintained by outward appearance: it does not matter how many partners a woman may have, as long as people cannot see her actually recruiting them.

The driver spends the night with her and gives her an amount of money which usually exceeds the amount which she would get from men she contacted herself. Afterwards she gives a small part of what she earned to the middleman to show her gratitude and in the hope that he will send more men to her in the future.

The women also mentioned that when middlemen are involved, they can expect to receive more money than from the men who approach them directly. In this way, they meet men who are better off, who can afford to spend something on mediation.

The women saw mediation as providing insurance when establishing contact with a customer, as the clients are seen as being socially indebted to the middlemen. The transaction is also clearer from the start: frequently the clients tell the middlemen to inform the women that ‘money is not a problem’.

*Gysels, M. , Pool, R. and Bwanika, K.(2001) ‘Truck drivers, middlemen and commercial sex workers: AIDS and the mediation of sex in south west Uganda’, AIDS Care, 13, 3, 373-385.

Serbian sex work: Doprinos „Razvoju“: Novac zarađen prodajom seksualnih usluga

Doprinos „Razvoju“: Novac zarađen prodajom seksualnih usluga was originally published in English as Contributing to ‘Development’: Money Made Selling Sex , in Research for Sex Work, 9, 8-11 (2006), by Laura Agustín.

The Serbian translation was part of Seks, rad i društvo, projekat na temu seksualnog rada i seksualnosti in Belgrade, 2007.

More information about sex work in Serbia at JAZAS, a member of SWAN, the Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network in Central and Eastern Europe, CIS and South-East Europe. Postcard with Slovakian health message from Odyseus.

Agency and prostitution: Sex workers target rich male victims

Agency: what is it? Simply put it describes the condition of acting, exerting power, being in action. What helps us know the extent to which people do things because they intend to? How do we know whether they are passive victims? A lot of our ideas come through other people’s descriptions. So the principal narrative about prostitutes says they aren’t in a position to elect sex work over other jobs because they are too disadvantaged by poverty, don’t understand how bad selling sex is or do it because they have been damaged by abuse or are coerced or hijacked into it. As I’ve pointed out in a story about sex-hungry babes in Angola, news sources in Africa sometimes use the opposite sort of language. Here, women who sell sex are described as definitely being in action, targeting their rich tobacco-farmer victims. My point in publishing such against-the-current commentaries is to illustrate that what the West says isn’t the only way to talk, and since I don’t believe that Europe is always ‘ahead’ of Rest of World, I don’t say that this characterisation is by definition  wrong or unprogressive. There are some tough, man-eating hussies out there . . .

Sex workers target tobacco farmers

Fungi Kwaramba, The Zimbabwean, 31 May 2010

Harare: Commercial sex workers are making a killing by targeting tobacco farmers at the Boka Tobacco Auction floors, with some travelling from as far as South Africa, says the Population Service International (PSI). Speaking at a media briefing in Harare last week, PSI Interpersonal Communications Manager, Patience Kunaka, said that prices of sex per act have gone up to US$25 a session from US$5 due to the recent targeting of rich tobacco farmers. . .

Sex on Sunday: man-hungry hussies, multicolour marriages, taxes and two interviews with smart women

I chose the one magazine cover that doesn’t show a manly man but rather a manly woman from the collection of Vintage Men’s Adventure Magazines at the Art of Manliness

How times have changed. . .

One-in-Seven New U.S. Marriages is Interracial or Interethnic, from Pew Research Center

A record 14.6% of all new marriages in the United States in 2008 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from each other . . .  an estimated six times the intermarriage rate among newlyweds in 1960 and more than double the rate in 1980. This dramatic increase has been driven in part by the weakening of longstanding cultural taboos against intermarriage and in part by a large, multi-decade wave of immigrants from Latin America and Asia.

The Price That We Pay – Undocumented Immigrants and Taxation from Truthout

According to her 2009 tax return, the divorced mother of three . . . made $18,295.68 of which $1,170.41 was withheld for Social Security tax and $273.73 for Medicare – benefits that Rita is unlikely to ever see. . . Reports by the Congressional Budget Office and the Social Security Administration confirm that undocumented immigrants in fact pay many different types of taxes, including sales tax, property tax, Social Security tax and income tax.

Interview with Nadine Gordimer from The New Statesman

. . . ‘It’s a strange thing. While there is great excitement about the World Cup, at the same time, we’ve got these tremendous difficulties. I’m certainly not a killjoy. People need bread and circuses, and this is a big circus. Let it be enjoyed. But what about the bread?’

The Sex Trade and Feminism: An Interview with Ann Russo from Stories so strong they crumble concrete: Women + Prison A Site for Resistance

Piggies and Mall Girls: teens who sell sex in Poland, and their sponsors

Mall Girls, Katarzyna Roslaniec

I’ve been in the south of Poland for the past few days, where two films about prostitution made waves last year. Both are concerned about teenagers’ immorality and lack of meaningful values, a topic that never seems to go out of style. Japan’s enjo kosai are the most famous teenagers who have sex with older men in order to buy stylish goods, but research reveals this relationship around the world. What seems to signal a loss of morals (for many commentators) is that the teenagers in question are not ‘poor’, since poverty is seen to ‘excuse’ selling sex. See recent ideas about the desire to keep whore stigma away from women engaging in transactional sex.

The two films from Poland tell the story in a post- communist context, where an abundance of money and consumer goods also signify the failure of another system of values. Note: I haven’t seen the films yet.

Piggies is about young men who have sex for money with Germans who cross the border. The film’s director, Robert Glinski, says he wanted to ask the question: Do young Polish people have any morals? ‘Twenty years ago we finished with the socialist system and we went into capitalism. The morality in Poland has changed at every level, mostly in young people.’

Katarzyna Roslaniec shot Mall Girls at a shopping center in central Poland, where four teenage girls turn tricks with men they call sponsors. ‘Look at a guy’s shoes, his watch and his phone and you can tell if it’s expensive. It’s a start, right?’ Sex is exchanged for products like blouses, not for cash, and is provided in mall toilets or cars in the parking lot (Poland Looks Inward).

Tonight’s talk on Sex at the Margins is at the Jagiellonian University, 1800.

– Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Bisexual men have wives, tourist boyfriends and also sell sex in Kenya

Those who work in outreach know the fluid, category-resistant sexual behaviour common amongst so many people. So-called sexual orientation, ideas about family and a distinction between sex-with-money and sex-without-money cease to be very useful, as this story shows. Note that homosexuality is illegal in Kenya, as an earlier story about MSM relationship explained.

Kenya: Bisexual male sex workers run big risks

20 April 2010, Irin/PlusNews 


Photo: Jimmy Kamude/IRIN
 

At a nightclub in Mombasa, on the Kenyan coast, Tito Bakari a local man, and Leonard Smithberger, a tourist, make out in a dark corner before the bouncer asks them to leave. Hand in hand they walk to another bar nearby, where they party through the night. “My love from Germany has been here since Easter – the party has just begun,” Bakari told IRIN/PlusNews. Smithberger visits Kenya a few times every year and showers gifts and money on Bakari, who moves out of the house he shares with his wife and child and into his lover’s hotel.

Up to 60 percent of male sex workers in Mombasa also have female sexual partners, according to a recent study presented at the 17th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in San Francisco. “Although most sex partners of MSM-SW [men who have sex with men sex workers] are men, sex with local women is also common, usually transactional, and often unprotected,” the study noted. . .

My wife knows that I am bisexual, but I provide her needs and equally satisfy her sexually. I even have two children with her, so she never complains,” said Ben Maina*, a male sex worker in Mombasa who doesn’t always use condoms with his clients, and never with his wife. In 2007, another study in Mombasa found that the high prevalence of HIV in Kenyan MSM was probably due to unprotected receptive anal sex and low condom use. Despite the risks and the lack of acceptance by society, Maina makes too much money to consider leaving the trade – in a country where half the population lives on less than US$1 per day, he can earn up to $365 per week. “The cash assists me in providing for my family,” he said. . .

Dr Mary Mwangombe, a researcher at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), in the coastal town of Kilifi, said HIV programming for men who have sex with men and their partners – both male and female – was difficult because of the illegal nature of homosexuality and the public’s intolerance of it. “Most male commercial sex workers live and go about their business secretively to avoid being victimized, either by the council officials, the police or the public at large”. . .

Everyday street prostitution with mobile phones in prohibitionist Pakistan

Those concerned about justice for sex workers focus on the law. If you’re interested in culture, however, you find that the sex industry looks and acts quite similar no matter which prostitution law is in place: the scene – the milieux – tend to be similar everywhere, with stylistic local differences. The health problems, the economics, the labour issues also are remarkably alike across cultures and borders, so that what workers experience in Ghana resembles what they experience in Thailand or France, and so on. Not so long ago I published a vague but suggestive story about the diversification of the sex industry in Pakistan,  Now here’s another story from there about how that old favourite ‘street prostitution’ has changed with the times, so that mobile phones play a big role. The reporter’s tone is pleasantly neutral, and note that he ends with my point about the law: ‘In a country where commercial sex is officially prohibited, it is usually available just a few minutes’ drive away.’ Note: 100 pkr = 0.89 euro

Business as usual for street prostitutes

Amar Guriro, 16 April 2010, Daily Times

Karachi, Pakistan: In the simmering heat of the afternoon, two ladies, one in her early 20s wearing shalwar kameez and other in a burqa, stood on the pavement under the shadow of a tree. Several cars and motorcycles queued up beside them. A young man on a motorcycle talked to the ladies, the one in shalwar kameez shook her head in refusal and the man left.

Then a man in a car came by, rolled down the window, and spoke to the women. However, he left as well. Then another motorcyclist spoke to them for a while and the girl in the shalwar kameez went with him on his bike. The lady in the burqa stayed back. The queue was over and all of them went their way. This was a typical scene out of the many that take place daily outside the nation’s founder Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s mausoleum, where dozens of street prostitutes stand and wait for customers. Many of them have their own places where they can take their customers to provide their services.

Gone are the days when the famous Napier Road in the downtown area of the city was supposed to be the centre of commercial sex. One can find street prostitutes waiting for customers at different spots while driving around the Mazar-e-Quaid, near the Do Talwar roundabout, on Shahrah-e-Faisal, MA Jinnah Road, Tipu Sultan Road, Main Korangi Road, etc. Their presence also becomes a nuisance for the other ladies taking a walk or waiting for buses, since the people ‘on a hunt’ often mistake them for sex workers and bug them. In recent years, Karachi has become a major market for prostitutes and attracts sex workers from other provinces since they can fetch higher rates for their services in the city.

One can find sex workers of different ages and ethnicity in Karachi. From a 15-year-old girl to a woman as old as 50, they could be of any ethnicity or even foreigners such as Russians and Burmese. The rates start from around Rs 400 and could go up 10 times this amount depending on the time, service, age and features of the sex worker. According to a sex worker, more than 150 street prostitutes roam inside the premises of Mazar-e-Quaid during the day. They usually sit on a bench in the lawn of the mausoleum so their customers can single them out easily.

Usually, they have regular customers, who know which spot they prefer and the sex worker then takes her customer to her home. “It is a risk to go with just anyone, so usually we rent a home and when we find a customer, we take him to our place. We charge extra amount for this service,” a sex worker told this scribe. She said the employees of the mausoleum know about their presence. “Sometimes we find two or three customers in a day, while on some days there are none.”

Convincing a street prostitute to let this scribe visit her house and speak about her business was not an easy job. However, when one finally agreed to it with the help of a politician who is her customer, this scribe drove towards the place thinking that the place would be something out of the movies, situated in a narrow lane, have a long row of rooms and sex workers turning up in odd make-ups, etc. But surprisingly, it was nothing like that and in fact, it was situated in a double-storied building in the Lighthouse area, where a young lady, who only told this scribe her nickname ‘Bindia’, lives with two of her colleagues. Bindia said cell phones had made their business much easier and the role of the ‘middlemen’ was almost finished now. She said that usually they manage to evade police, but if caught, they are asked for bhatta, which is provided in the form of a free-of-cost service. “most of the girls in this business are unaware about sexual diseases,” she said.

In a country where commercial sex is officially prohibited, it is usually available just a few minutes’ drive away.

– Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Transactional sex and bartered sex: Is there a good reason to distinguish from commercial sex?

When we study things, we name them, but when we live things we usually don’t. I had a weird date the other night, I thought the girl was out to get something from me or We have a great relationship; I love to cook and he fixes my computer. Labels potentially applied include transactional sex, barter, survival sex, girlfriends, sugar daddies and sugar mommies, jaboya, something-for-something love, husband-wife relationships, free love, opportunistic sex, exploitation, enjo kosai – and a lot more, believe me. The other week I used a couple of tags myself whilst commenting on a poster exhorting fishermen not to exchange their fish for sex.

Some wrote to me to say Those women are not sex workers, they are fish traders, but they are poor and can’t pay the fisherman money so they offer him sex in exchange for fish. Well fine, but what’s the motivation for making this distinction? Is it to keep these women free of the whore stigma? Is the idea that to be properly commercial transactions must involve coins and bills? And that everything else is barter? And is barter somehow okay because it doesn’t involve filthy lucre? (note barter’s image in a white person’s context, where it’s called the no-cash economy).

Let’s look at this logically: If the fisherman gets money from these women, the transaction is considered okay. Now what happens if he takes candybars for his fish, is that not okay, because he’s supposed to be getting money? Or is fish for candybars okay but fish for, say, a shoulder massage not okay, again because he’s not getting money? Or is a shoulder massage all right, too, because it’s a service that helps him feel better, but fish for sex isn’t because presumably he doesn’t need sex to feel better? You see the problem? You might think that labels and names clarify different actions, but typical comments about transactional sex from cultures where it’s common refer to the blurry line dividing it from sex work or prostitution. On top of that, one commentator says ‘some women and men who have sex in return for gifts, money and the like would not classify themselves as sex workers although they might be’. So who is deciding which label applies and for what reason?

The main point I want to make is: To attempt to distinguish these human situations with labels contributes to the idea that there is something about sex-money exchanges that is utterly different (perhaps scary or terrible) and that women who do that are set apart from everyone else. That is a very old-fashioned and stigmatising view we should avoid. Unfortunately it’s also misleading to try to distinguish clearly between wholly involuntary, passive transactional women and wholly free, active sex workers. It’s all much more interesting and muddled than that.

Now about the fish transactions:

Recent studies in Botswana, Swaziland, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania have shown associations between acute food insecurity and unprotected transactional sex among poor women. Fish for sex deals are also common in Kenya on the shores of Lake Victoria, where women fish traders meet incoming boats and sleep with fishermen for a favorable price. Healthdev.net

This could be interpreted to mean that fish traders do pay with coins and bills in part but supplement them with sex, in order to pay less out in money. Or it could mean that because they have sex with the fishermen they get more fish in exchange than if they hadn’t had sex with them.

A programme in Uganda calls this kind of transaction Something for Something Love, said to be a relationship where sex is given in exchange for favours, money or gifts. I suppose this name was invented to distance the topic from previous labels, but note that now money is explicitly mentioned – this isn’t just barter. The posters used in this campaign depict a young woman whose real love rejects her because she’s had something-for-something-love, a girl who saves her friend from getting into a car with a man holding out a mobile phone, a man whose wife leaves him because he’s bartered something for money with another female  and so on.

Young people are often pressured to do things that they would not normally do, like having unwanted or unprotected sex. These relationships usually cause problems for young people including unplanned pregnancy, dropping out of school, abortions, HIV/AIDS, and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Violence is common in Something for Something Love, especially if the young person refuses sex or tries to end the relationship. For adults, Something for Something Love often results in broken marriages or violence if the wife or husband learns about it. Something for Something

Others – not surprisingly USAID amongst them – go to the extreme and label transactional sex exploitation

The first phase of the initiative is now underway and focuses on sexual exploitation, including transactional sex. Transactional sex refers to exploitative relationships where sex is given in exchange for favors, material objects or money. PEPFAR message

Health programmes that want to prevent the spread of hiv tend to link this something-for-something love with Young Empowerment and True Manhood. These are all well-intentioned efforts, but the moralistic messages end up excluding a lot of people who don’t experience all this as oppressive or exploitative.

There is also a confusion about whose point of view we are taking and whom we are trying to protect.

  • The original poster wants the fisherman to get money for his fish, not sex, the protection sub-text being that if he avoids sex he’s less likely to contract venereal diseases or hiv (and have more money to buy things he needs).
  • Others want the girls and women not to exchange sex for fish, for moral and the same health-protection reasons – sometimes assuming that the fishermen are coercing them.

If money is scarce, then people may barter. The fishermen ‘sell’ the fish for sex, and the women sell the fish for money in the marketplace – and it’s quite possible that some customers who want to buy fish from the women traders could offer *them* something other than money, some other object or service the traders want. Money can therefore be seen as the means to cut through the need to find exactly matching offers. It doesn’t have to become so symbolic that we hasten to say which people are *not* prostitutes. Could the subject get more complicated? You bet.

Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Mujeres migrantes empleadas domésticas y su trabajo feudal: Migrants demonstrate in Spain over feudal conditions of domestic work

Las empleadas domésticas van a marchar limpiando con plumeros los cristales de las tiendas que recorren. Mientras existe un sinfin de denuncias sobre la situación de las migrantes que venden sexo, pocos piensan en las condiciones feudales del trabajo doméstico y del cuidado. Muchas viven como internas – es decir, en un pequeño cuarto dentro del piso o de la casa de sus empleadores, sin intimidad propia y vulnerables a que se les exigen días laborales muy muy largos, mientras los salarios están bajísimos. El darme cuenta de esta contradicción fue un momento clave en mi análisis de la indignación que se demuestra sobre la prostitución. Ojo: En España hay 700.000 mujeres dedicadas a la limpieza de hogares

Manifestación por los derechos de las empleadas domésticas
28 de marzo 2010 – 1300
Plaza Jacinto Benavente, Sol, Madrid

Las mujeres de SEDOAC (Servicio Doméstico Activo), el grupo Cita de Mujeres de Lavapiés y la Agencia de Asuntos Precarios, quienes juntas damos vida al Taller Territorio Doméstico, les convidamos …
a todas las empleadas domésticas
a todas las empleadoras y empleadores
a todas las feministas
a todas las inmigrantes, trabajadoras, precarias, estudiantes y paradas
a todas las cuidadoras
a las personas con diversidad funcional que luchan por ser atendidas de otro modo
a todas las trabajadoras invisibles que sostienen la vida
a todas las personas, colectivos, grupos y asociaciones que apoyan la lucha de las empleadas domésticas
… a salir a la calle: ¡Se acabó la esclavitud!

El grito de las invisibles

Susana Hidalgo, 15 marzo 2010, Publico.es

Madrid – Domingo por la tarde, en uno de los pocos momentos de respiro que tienen un grupo de empleadas del hogar. ¿Un rato para descansar, estar en casa, con la familia o en el cine? No. Las mujeres, la mayoría inmigrantes, se reúnen en un local del centro de Madrid para preparar una manifestación que el próximo 28 de marzo a la una de la tarde las llevará a ellas y otras muchas mujeres que trabajan en la más absoluta precariedad a defender sus derechos.

En la sala hay café y té, pancartas por rellenar y mucho debate. Las presentes están agrupadas en una asociación: Territorio Doméstico. En 15 días todo tiene que estar listo con el objetivo de reunir en la manifestación a todas las empleadas del hogar, cuidadoras y demás mujeres que se mueven en la invisibilidad laboral. Para ello, ya están repartiendo folletos en los lugares de paso de estas trabajadoras, como las principales estaciones de transporte.

Ellas trabajan; sus maridos, no

No creía que fuésemos tan invisibles“, se queja Micaela, empleada del hogar que esta tarde ha venido a unirse al grupo desde Valladolid. Con la crisis, reflexionan, la precariedad del trabajo femenino ha ido a peor: “Hay mujeres con marido en paro que están buscando trabajo como locas“, dice una de las presentes. Y los datos le dan la razón: la estadística oficial señala que, en los dos últimos años, por cada mujer que se ha quedado en paro, lo han hecho 14 hombres.

“La cobertura de los cuidados no tiene que dar lugar a la explotación”, apunta otra. Silvia López y Marina Orfila, también de Territorio Doméstico, ultiman el lema de la concentración: Última hora, se acabó la esclavitud. Por la inclusión de las empleadas del hogar en el régimen general y por los derechos de las trabajadoras sin papeles. Las mujeres han redactado también un manifiesto en el que recalcan: “Tenemos unas condiciones laborales que nos hacen muy vulnerables: las jornadas laborales pueden llegar a ser de 16 horas, no tenemos paro ni baja laboral hasta el día 29″.

Bajo un régimen especial

En España hay unas 700.000 trabajadoras dedicadas a la limpieza de hogares. Desde 1985, estas mujeres se rigen por un régimen especial en el que no se aplica el Estatuto de los Trabajadores ni el del Trabajo Autónomo. Hay tres tipos de trabajo dentro de las empleadas del hogar: las que están internas, las externas y las que cobran por horas. Ninguna gana más de 1.000 euros al mes. En general y teniendo en cuenta cualquier empleo, las trabajadoras ganan un sueldo medio al año de unos 17.000 euros; el de los hombres ronda los 23.000.

Beatriz Vahos es colombiana y trabaja como interna en una casa de la urbanización de lujo La Moraleja (Madrid), haciendo de lunes a viernes jornadas maratonianas. Considera que, dentro de su profesión, está “bien tratada“, pero quiere ayudar a otras mujeres con menos conocimientos para que no las exploten. “Tienen que saber que ningún jefe las puede denigrar porque no tengan papeles, que tienen derecho a reclamar”, insiste. “No es mi caso, pero hay empleadas que, cuando han ido a pedir algo, se han encontrado de contestación: tú cállate que no tienes papeles, a ver si voy a llamar a inmigración“, añade.

Rafaela, de origen dominicano y con 20 años a sus espaldas limpiando casas, asiente con la cabeza al escuchar a su compañera. Esta trabajadora denuncia que las condiciones laborales del gremio están condicionadas a la “bondad” de la persona dueña del hogar donde trabaja. “Y en eso las que peor lo tienen son las internas, muchas están en régimen de esclavitud”, critica. Continue reading

Fish for money, not for sex: opportunistic sex work

My question about this warning against the temptations of sex was: Are the women portrayed considered sex workers, in the context of the poster? The reply was: I think they are keeping their options open. In other words, the fisherman is being warned not to waste his money on women – paying to wine, dine and possibly have sex with them. Selling sex is often opportunistic, a snap decision unrelated to any professional identity as sex worker or prostitute (whether celebrated or deplored). As a story from Angola had it the other day, people may prey on others’ desires to have fun if there is money to be made from it. But the ‘preying’ may also be what those with money want – that those who know how to provide fun come and present themselves! Traditional language of the market (workers, clients, soliciting) masks the realm of ambiguity and opportunism inherent in many sex exchanges. Note too a recent post about the meanings of prostitution in Egypt.

The poster was produced by Young Men as Equal Partners (YMEP), with support from SIDA (Swedish development agency), Family Health Options Kenya and RFSU (Swedish sex education).

Sex worker union raises prices in Ghana

Again a different sort of tone from an African country. Here, the raising of prices by sex workers is reported as a conventional and rational action. Not much comment is needed from me; the news speaks for itself. Note: 1 GH=.52 Euros

Prostitutes Increase Rates Per Sexual Round

18 February 2010, Accra Times

Commercial sex workers at Ashaiman, in the Greater Accra Region, have increased their rates from GH3.00 per sexual round to GH4.00, the Accra Times newspaper has been reliably informed. The increment, according to the sex workers, took effect from January ending this year.

A leading member of the Ashaiman “tuutuuline” branch of the commercial workers union, disclosed this during an interview with the Accra Times over the weekend. According to her, their decision to increase the rate from GH3.00 to GH4.000 was as a result of the recent increase of goods and services.

The member (name withheld) explained that the high cost of living that has hit the country in recent times was so alarming that in order to safeguard their profession; they needed to increase their rates. She explained that prices of pomades and clothes which they usually use to brighten their body, as well as food prices, have all gone up drastically, a situation which does not augur well for their trade for they do not profit from their trade at the end of the day.

We pay for the structures we use, pay for electricity, attend to hospitals regularly for medical checks, buy buckets of water and take care of our families, all these call for money, hence if we sit aloof without doing anything to remedy the situation, our trade will collapse”, the member bemoaned, adding however that consideration would be given to those of their customers who would want to go for more than two rounds of sexual bouts.

She also bemoaned about the area where they practice their trade saying the area was not environmentally sound for them as it poses danger to their health, but since they have no other place to relocate to, they have to manage their life that way, and think of raising funds from their trade to go to the hospital any time they fall sick.

‘Economic’ an insult only when applied to migrants: Israel builds fences to keep them out

Melilla-Morocco fence

Fences and walls are still seen as a reasonable barrier to keep unwanted migrants out. Along the Mexico-US border, between Morocco and Spain’s colony of Melilla and now on two of Israel’s borders: a physical barrier to stop migrants identified as ‘economic’ from getting past. It seems strange that this adjective, referring to migrants’ desire to make money, should become a negative term, when all of life is suffused with the message that we must make lots of money and buy lots of stuff in order to be successful. Some people in Europe cite the fear that national characters will be lost and authentic cultures spoilt if too many outsiders get in. Those ideas are overt in the reasoning of Israel defending the building of fences to keep migrants out.


Israel orders new fence to keep out African migrants

12 january 2010

Ben Lynfield, The Independent

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the construction of two massive fences along his country’s southern border with Egypt in a bid to keep out African asylum seekers he claims are threatening the country’s Jewish character. The barrier will also thwart terrorists from infiltrating the porous border, according to Mr. Netanyahu. “We are talking about a strategic decision to guarantee the Jewish and democratic character of the state of Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said. The prime minister insisted that the step will not stop refugees in dire need from reaching Israel, saying that the country would “remain open” to those with a genuine claim.

But critics dispute this. “This nationalist and racist rhetoric is divorced from reality,” said Dov Khenin, a left-wing member of the Knesset. He added that it was “intended to frighten the Israelis that ‘the Africans are coming’. Sudanese and Eritreans make up many of the about 20,000 asylum seekers to reach Israel via Egypt since 2005.

The project is expected to cost $270m, and will cover two parts of the border, near the city of Eilat and on the edge of the Gaza strip. Although the army began planning the fence in 2005, Mr. Netanyahu’s backing for it now is part of a wider crackdown against the influx, which refugee-rights activists say has dropped somewhat recently because of Israel’s policy of immediate returns of refugees to Egypt and shootings of refugees along the border by Egyptian troops.

The government insists the asylum seekers are economic migrants seeking a higher standard of living, but the refugees themselves often have harrowing tales of persecution in their home countries and Egypt. Egyptian police killed at least 28 Sudanese refugees during a protest in 2005, the year people began trickling to Israel. Egypt has also come under criticism for forcibly repatriating refugees to Eritrea and Sudan, where human-rights groups say they face imprisonment and even torture.

To justify its often harsh approach, the Israeli government has been repeatedly playing on the core fears of public opinion. Tzahi Hanegbi, the chairman of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defence committee, told Israel Radio yesterday that there is no alternative to building the fence. “The infiltration of the migrants is threatening the very existence of Israel and its character,” he said. The country defines itself as both a Jewish and democratic state, something its leaders believe depends on maintaining the country’s present clear Jewish majority.

But critics of the government believe that it is contriving the threat. They note that the government itself issues visas each year to 120,000 non-Jewish migrant workers who arrive at Israel’s borders legally and that hundreds of thousands among the wave of immigrants from the former Soviet Union to reach the country during the 1990s were not Jewish. Continue reading