The Naked Anthropologist

Tag Archives: Americas

Melissa Farley and the US government Want You to Stop Buying Sex: End Demand

This piece was originally published in Good Vibrations Magazine 19 July 2011.

Newsweek has released a report on Melissa Farley’s nasty new study on men who buy sex of all kinds, which was financed by the Hunt Alternatives Fund as part of their 10-year plan to End Demand for buying sex. Now the latest Trafficking in Persons Report reveals that End Demand is also part of US government policy, which means that some of the big spending – $109 million last year – on anti-trafficking programmes is going to anti-client projects. US Trafficking magnate Luis CdeBaca attended the Hunt planning meetings, so this development is hardly a big surprise. I recently wrote about a World Gender War in the form of campaigns against male sexuality: desire, penetration and the penis itself: an international trend, but money from a rich philanthropist certainly puts the US in charge.

The theory that if men stopped buying sex no one would offer it anymore is a breath-taking over-simplification of the many different services and desires involving money and sex and the multitude of social and cultural conditions involved. How people now selling sex as a livelihood would earn their living if clients disappear is never mentioned – which is disturbing. I appreciate that campaigners are talking long-term and utopically, but to never address economic and employment issues seriously? I hope they do not feel that preventing women from selling sex means saving them from a fate worse than death.

This notion of demand fails to square with some well-known client types, such as the one Thomas Rowlandson portrayed here around 1800, described by the Wellcome Library as A prostitute leading an old man into the bedroom and taking money from him, implying that her services will act like a tonic and preserve his state of health. I guess Farley didn’t manage to find any men like this to talk to.

Here is the End Demand statement from this year’s TIP, ridiculously called a Fact Sheet, when it is only a moral aside revealing the government’s wish that culture would change. Yes, they wrote the phrase new innovations.

Prevention : Fighting Sex Trafficking by Curbing Demand for Prostitution

A growing understanding of the nature of trafficking in persons has led to new innovations in addressing demand. Corporate standards for monitoring supply chains and government policies for eliminating trafficking from procurement practices are making new inroads in the fight against modern slavery. But the fact remains: if there were no demand for commercial sex, trafficking in persons for commercial sexual exploitation would not exist in the form it does today. This reality underscores the need for continued strong efforts to reduce demand for sex trafficking by enacting policies and promoting cultural attitudes that reject the idea of paying for sex.

Policies to Address Demand for Commercial Sex

Governments can lead both in practice and by example by implementing zero-tolerance policies for employees, uniformed servicemembers, and contractors paying for sex. If paying for sex is prohibited for those who work for, or do business with, a government, the ripple effects could be farreaching. Through their massive procurement, governments have an impact on a wide range of private-sector actors, and policies banning the purchase of sex could in turn reach a significant part of the private sector as well. At the same time, governments have the capacity to raise awareness of the subtle and brutal nature of this crime by requiring training of employees, contractors, and subcontractors about how individuals subjected to sex trafficking are victimized through coercion. Too often, trafficking victims are wrongly discounted as “consenting” adults. The use of violence to enslave trafficking victims is pervasive, but there are other more subtle forms of fraud and coercion that also prevent a person from escaping compelled servitude. A prostituted person may have initially consented, may believe that she or he is in love with her or his trafficker, may not self-identify as a victim, may not be operating in the vicinity of the pimp, or may have been away from the pimp’s physical control with what seemed to be ample opportunity to ask for help or flee. None of these factors, taken alone or in sum, means that she or he is not a victim of a severe form of trafficking. Ensuring that these facts are part of the required training for every government employee and everyone who does business with or on behalf of a government is an important step in shifting attitudes about commercial sex.

Moral Leadership in the Future of this Struggle

Strong policies are critical for ridding countries of all forms of modern slavery, but ultimately for encouraging a broader cultural shift in order to make meaningful progress in reducing demand for sex trafficking. This can only be achieved by rejecting long-held notions that regard commercial sex as a “boys will be boys” phenomenon, and instead sending the clear message that buying sex is wrong. Lawmakers have the power to craft effective antitrafficking legislation, but they also have a responsibility to represent values that do not tolerate abuses of commercial sex. Business leaders need to cultivate a corporate culture that leaves behind outdated thinking that turns a blind eye to the sex trade, including the adoption of codes of conduct that prohibit purchasing sex. And leaders in civil society – from teachers to parents to ministers – must foster the belief that it is everyone’s responsibility to reduce the demand for sex trafficking. It is especially important to reach young men with a strong message of demand reduction to help them understand the exploitation involved with commercial sex and combat the glamorization of pimp culture. It is every person’s individual responsibility to think about their contributions to trafficking. Laws and policies, partnerships and activism will continue to be critical to the struggle against modern slavery, but it will also be the day-to-day decisions of individual men and women that will bring an end to sex trafficking and carry forth a message of freedom for all.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
Washington DC June 2011

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Melissa Farley and Laura Agustín on Prostitution, with Skeletons

Fundamentalist feminists ordinarily avoid sharing a platform with people like me, but it does happen occasionally. These photos were taken in 2004 at UC Berkeley in a debate on Measure Q (Prostitution Enforcement in Alameda County). On the blackboard are two lists: on the left Robyn Few, Laura Agustín and Veronica Monet (on the right Norma Hotaling, Melissa Farley and Davida, whose surname I cannot make out.

Farley’s team were accompanied by people dressed in skeleton costumes. Skeletons adorned one of her polemical books – I guess to suggest that prostitution is death. The groupies sat quietly enough at first; the debate was timed with a stopwatch so each person had only a minute or two to speak. But when a well-known Bay Area activist in the audience started crying and went over her time, the whole Farley team were up in arms, claiming the debate was biased. It was quite embarrassing. She also flung out her arm at one point and called us pimps. Robyn, Veronica and I were polite about it; after all, who looks bad in that situation?

But there was a very funny incident involving me and Melissa. I was staying in San Francisco with an old friend who, by coincidence, was in a reading group with Farley. Nothing to do with prostitution or violence; my friend knew nothing about her. After the debate, my friend went to say hello to Farley, who assumed she was there to support her and was asking for confirmation about how terrible we were. At that moment, my pal caught my eye and waved me over, and smiling charmingly (and mischievously) said, Melissa, I want you to meet my friend Laura. I put out my hand, and Farley, looking appalled, shook it – a pimp’s hand! I got a huge kick out of it.

Farley did leave a restrained comment on this blog once, when I recounted how she called me the Postmodern Nadir. What larks, worthy of a (brief) Monty Python sketch.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

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

Institutionalised arrogance: once again, the Trafficking in Persons report

CNN is calling it the Slavery Report, unhelpfully muddying all possible distinctions between different sorts of human experience. The ever-questionable Trafficking in Persons Report has come out again, complete with photos of Hillary Clinton cuddling brown girls and other colonialist preening. Before anyone says anything, I don’t believe it makes a whit of difference that the US now includes itself in the rankings. I first wrote about this in an editorial for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2007 and haven’t changed my mind since then (see Well-meaning Interference.)

The TIP bureaucracy is big now: 52 people are mentioned as employees of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, including, of course, Luis CdeBaca, whose excesses I commented not long ago. However, office staff are just the tip of the human involvement in producing these reports, which brings me to a discussion of what the report pitifully calls methodology.

When I read reports on ‘research’, I first turn to the section where methodology is explained. It doesn’t have to be the first section of a report, but it is what I check first. Methodology means the methods used to find information that you present to readers as results – the facts, testimonies and other data your research uncovered. That means everything about how you do the research, whether you are doing a high school paper, a Guardian investigative report, ethnographic fieldwork or a community survey. In 2009 I called the TIP the No-Methodology Report, saying

I want to know how the data was gathered, which sources were consulted, who was allowed to give information, whose estimates were deemed authoritative and how data were confirmed. I want to know precisely how researchers handled the considerable international muddle over definitions, since the fact that people mean different things when they say the word trafficking is a notorious source of conflict and confusion, not to mention that a lot of the English keywords cannot be reliably translated into all other languages (for example, abuse, exploitation, force, coercion).

Methodology also covers how you chose your research questions, how you located sources of information (human and non-human), how you presented what you were doing to people you talked to and how you worded the questions you asked, as well as how much of everything you did and for how long and where, and how you analysed it all after gathering information (computer software for data analysis? mathematical calculations?). If, like the TIP, you are doing international research, I want to know how language issues were handled (interpreters? translation machines?). And not least I want to hear what sort of ethics guidelines and protections were in place, since the framework for all this is about law, crime, criminals and victims.

Yet this is the entirety of the TIP’s Methodology section:

The Department of State prepared this report using information from U.S. embassies, government officials, nongovernmental and international organizations, published reports, research trips to every region, and information submitted to tipreport@state.gov. This email address provides a means by which organizations and individuals can share information with the Department of State on government progress in addressing trafficking. U.S. diplomatic posts and domestic agencies reported on the trafficking situation and governmental action to fight trafficking based on thorough research that included meetings with a wide variety of government officials, local and international NGO representatives, officials of international organizations, journalists, academics, and survivors. U.S. missions overseas are dedicated to covering human trafficking issues.

In other words, no information at all. It’s nice that people are invited to ‘share’ information, only how do recipients of these emails know that the information is any good? They are awfully paranoid about loads of other people making Internet contacts – those they call pimps, pedophiles, traffickers, groomers and all the rest. The TIP office apparently wants us to believe the whole business is covert, a sort of spy operation. One is simply meant to feel awe that they are Doing So Much.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

The (Crying) Need for Different Kinds of Research: Not all is trafficking and AIDS

I first published this piece in 2002, but its message is truer than ever as rescue operations presently receive large amounts of funding in many parts of the world. I am republishing it here since so many new people have entered a research field and joined social movements to save people without understanding how it all started – in conversations about women and travel. Note: Since all brothels are ‘legal’ in Sydney I shouldn’t have used the word, which implies there are also ‘illegal’ brothels. Thanks to Scarlet Alliance for the correction.

The (Crying) Need for Different Kinds of Research

Laura Agustín, June 2002, Research for Sex Work 5, 30-32. pdf

In October 2001, while on a trip to Australia and Thailand, I met five Latin American women with some connection to the sex industry: the owner of a (legal) brothel and two migrants working for her in Sydney, and two women in a detention centre for illegal immigrants in Bangkok. These five women were from Peru, Colombia and Venezuela; they were from different strata of society; they were very different ages. They also all had quite different stories to tell.

The brothel owner now had permanent residence in Australia. Her migrant workers had come on visas to study English which gave them the right to work, but getting the visa had required paying for the entire eight-month course in advance, which meant acquiring large debts. The Madam was very affectionate with them but also very controlling; they lived in her house and travelled with her to work. She was teaching them the business; the outreach workers from a local project did not speak Spanish.

Of the two women detained in Bangkok, one had been stopped in the Tokyo airport with a false visa for Japan. She had been invited by her sister, who had been an illegal sex worker but now was an illegal vendor within the milieux. The woman had been deported to the last stage of her journey, Bangkok; there she had been in jail for a year before being sent to the detention centre. The second detained woman had been caught on-camera in a robbery being carried out by her boyfriend and others in Bangkok, after travelling around with them in Hong Kong and Singapore; she had just completed a three-year jail sentence before being sent to the centre (and she also had completely false papers, including a change of nationality).

Both detained women were waiting for someone to pay their plane fare home, but no one was offering to do this, since their degree of complicity in their situations disqualified them from aid to victims of trafficking, and not all Latin American countries maintain embassies in Thailand. Only one person from local NGOs visiting the detention centre spoke Spanish.

How can we understand these stories?

Given the very different stories these women have to tell, labelling them either ‘migrant sex workers’ or ‘victims of trafficking’ is incorrect and unhelpful to an understanding of why and how they have arrived at their present situations. The placing of labels is largely a subjective judgement dependent on the researcher of the moment and is not the way women talk about themselves, something like the attempt to make complicated subjects fit into a pre-printed form. The following descriptions illustrate this complexity.

While the two new migrants in Sydney seemed accepting of the work they had just begun doing, there was clearly ambiguity about the significance of the language course on which their visas were based, and their debts did not leave them much choice about what jobs to do.

The migrant to Japan believed she would not have to sell sex, but her own family had been involved in getting her the false papers, and she was suffering considerable guilt and anguish. The woman caught in the robbery seemed to have sold sex during her travels, but without any particular intention or destination being involved, nor did she give the matter much importance. The total number of outsiders implicated in their journeys and their jobs was large; nationalities mentioned were Pakistani, Turkish and Mexican. The need for research to understand how all these connections happen is urgent, but funders are unlikely to finance research that does not fit into one of the currently acceptable theoretical frameworks: ‘AIDS prevention’, ‘violence against women’ or ‘trafficking’.

These frameworks reflect particular political concerns arising in the context of ‘globalisation’, and they are understandable. Elements of the stories of people such as those I have described may share features with typical discourses on ‘trafficking’, ‘violence against women’ and ‘AIDS’, but these are prejudiced, moralistic frameworks that begin from a political position and are not open to results that do not fit (for example, a woman who admits that she knew she would be doing sex work abroad and willingly paid someone to falsify papers for her).

The desires of young people to travel, see the world, make a lot of money and not pay much attention to the kind of jobs they do along the way are not acceptable to researchers that begin from moral positions; neither are the statements by professional sex workers that they choose and prefer the work they do. Yet ethical research simply may not depart from the claim that the subjects investigated do not know their own minds.

Why do we do research, anyway?

A theoretical framework refers to the overall idea that motivates services or research projects. For service projects with sex workers this framework might be a religious mission to help people in danger, a medical concept of reducing harm or a vision of solidarity or social justice. Most projects with sex workers focus on providing services, not doing research, though often the line between them is not easy to draw.

Service projects accumulate a lot of information over time, but it seems as though the only thing governments want to know about is people’s nationalities, how old they are, when they first had sex and whether they know what a condom is. Many NGO and outreach workers would like to publish other kinds of information, research other kinds of things. But where, how? If their research proposal does not reflect one of the existing research frameworks regarding migrant prostitution – ‘AIDS prevention’, ‘trafficking’ or ‘violence against women’ – it will be hard if not impossible to find funding.

Some of my own research concerns people who work with sex workers, like the people who read this publication. Continue reading →

Bedford v Canada: Report from the courtroom on prostitution law and sex work

Last October an historic decision was made in Ontario, Canada – suggesting that Canadian laws are antiquated, endanger people who sell sex and violate their civil rights. Immediately, opponents began crying about all the scary things that would happen if decriminalisation came to pass.

Here is an interesting report on last week’s events in an appeals court, in which the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network clearly supports sex worker rights. I added links to rights organisations.

Bedford v Canada: Report from an intervention

From June 13–17, 2011, five justices of the Ontario Court of Appeal heard arguments about the constitutionality of Criminal Code provisions relating to adult prostitution. This was an appeal of an Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision from September 2010, when Justice Susan Himel struck down the communication, bawdy house and living-onthe-avails provisions of the Criminal Code because she found they forced sex workers into more dangerous situations and contributed to a greater risk of violence and other threats to their health and safety.

Besides the applicants in the case (namely Terri Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott — all current or former sex workers) and the Attorneys General of Ontario and Canada, seven groups were granted intervener status in order to assist the court with the issues before it. The seven interveners included a coalition of the Christian Legal Fellowship, REAL Women of Canada and the Catholic Civil Rights League; a coalition of organizations that included the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres; the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; the B.C. Civil Liberties Association; a coalition of PACE, Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society (or “SWUAV” — both sex worker organizations in Vancouver) and Pivot Legal Society; a joint intervention from Maggie’s (Toronto sex worker organization) and POWER (Ottawa sex work organization); and a joint intervention from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE).

In their appeal, the Attorneys General of Canada and Ontario argued that the purpose of the prostitution-related provisions in the Criminal Code was to eradicate prostitution by discouraging sex work, an argument forcefully countered by Alan Young, a lawyer and professor at Osgoode Hall who represented the applicants. The Attorney General of Canada also argued that the law was not the cause of, nor did it facilitate, the harm sex workers face — an argument that did not seem to persuade the panel of judges.

Among the interveners, the coalition of PACE, SWUAV and Pivot was particularly compelling because it represented the perspective of street-based sex workers, upon whom the communicating provision has had a tremendously harmful impact in terms of safety and health. Counsel for PACE, SWUAV and Pivot as well as Maggie’s and POWER also decried the “asymmetrical” or “Swedish” model, whereby clients and employers of sex workers continue to be criminalized but sex workers are not. This argument, also endorsed by the Legal Network and the BC-CfE, submits that the asymmetrical approach fails to lessen or eliminate the risks to sex workers exacerbated by the current provisions. Under an asymmetrical regime, sex workers would continue to be prevented from screening their clients by negotiating in advance the terms of their transactions, since it would still be illegal for clients to engage in these communications. Also, sex workers would still be prevented from working indoors, where the work is safer, because the bawdy house law would apply to clients and others found on the premises. Additionally, it would still be illegal for sex workers to hire a bodyguard or a driver, since these persons could be criminalized by the living-on-the-avails provision.

The Legal Network and the BC-CfE argued that, in addition to the violence to which sex workers are subject as a result of the law, they are also prevented from taking precautions to negotiate and practise safer sex. The communicating provision, for example, hampers sex workers’ ability to negotiate condom use. Even more broadly, the criminalization of prostitution hinders sex workers’ access to health-care services, including HIV testing, education, prevention, care, treatment and support.

The impact of the prostitution laws on the health and safety of sex workers was a central theme at the Legal Network’s Symposium on HIV, Law and Human Rights held June 9– 10, where sex workers Émilie Laliberté (Stella) and Nikki Thomas (Sex Professionals of Canada) and lawyers Elin Sigurdson (SWUAV) and Alan Young were featured speakers. The timely discussion helped inform the pressing issue of “next steps” in the event of a positive or negative decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal and, ultimately, the Supreme Court of Canada. The road ahead is long, but one thing is certain: there is no shortage of passion, commitment and activism from sex workers and their colleagues to change the law to protect and promote the human rights of all sex workers.

Ambassador CdeBaca’s incoherent ideas on trafficking and slavery

Luis CdeBaca is a US government employee with the misleading title Ambassador-at-Large for Trafficking. I am told this means he reports directly to the President, so he is largely free to do what he likes. At an event I attended in Washington DC last year, he said people ask why he doesn’t address the root causes of trafficking in his work and gave his answer: My budget is only $25 million, so obviously I can’t address root causes. Only $25 million, well that explains it. He went on to say he therefore would continue to concentrate on raids and rescues.

He spoke stirringly of the UK-US alliance to end this scourge and leaned heavily on a supposed connection to William Wilberforce, an evangelical Christian Englishman who neocolonialists claim to be responsible for the end of slavery. In this account no mention is made of the original conquests that set up new and reinforced existing slave economies or of native resistance movements and revolutions: No, one White Man did it practically singlehandedly, and by the way he was also an enthusiast of the Society for Suppression of Vice (father of the Obscene Publications Act, by the way, amongst other repressive delights).

I was surprised CdeBaca was at the Washington event, because all the other speakers were critical of his sort of approach and rhetoric, which is why I accepted the invitation. Thus unprepared, I became very wound up when he cited the US Constitution as justification for interference around the globe, so much so that I scrapped what I had intended to say to the large audience of government and ngo employees and instead, when it was my turn, lambasted the ambassador’s speech. I slipped once and said fucking as an adjective because, I can’t help it, imperialism is the subject that most boils my blood. There were a couple of blanched faces amongst the organisers but also some cheers from the audience, and CdeBaca had left already, anyway. I didn’t know before I went that the Woodrow Wilson Center is supposed to be a hallowed hall, but I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t have said it even if I had known. They describe my talk like this:

While Laura Agustín also critiqued U.S. policy toward human trafficking, her primary focus was on combating the assumption “that the U.S. and other sacred nations must take action” against human trafficking. Rather than assuming that trafficked persons need to be rescued, Agustín believes that we must interrogate the structure of ‘rescue’ efforts that can at times feel more like arrest, abuse and deportation. She also emphasized that migrants are not always passive victims, but rather are courageous, active agents, willing to risk the hazards of the informal economy in order to find work and pay in developed countries. She concluded that the current international discourse on protecting the rights of trafficked workers is misplaced and recommended that developed countries begin to legally recognize more jobs in the informal economy.

CdeBaca was in the audience at the BBC World Debate in Luxor, too, where he heard one of the panellists, Siddharth Kara, inflate so-called estimates of slavery into the 20-millions. That’s one of the places in that programme where I cut in and expressed disbelief, asking how exactly such a figure was reached and why the topic had shifted suddenly from trafficking to slavery. No problem for Kara, however, since the figure is reached by simply including vast categories of people, from child labourers in general to any woman selling sex and potentially to any worker in the informal economy. These are slaves, now, remember, not just trafficked people.

At a recent event at the Vatican, of all places, CdeBaca estimated between 12.5 and 27 million people are trapped in slavery around the world, ranging from children forced to work as domestic servants or in sweatshops to women coerced into prostitution. And here are statements all ascribed to him in Up to 27 million trapped in slavery worldwide (the incoherency might come from the reporter, there’s no way to tell.)

Countries where migrants arrive should try to identify potential victims and protect them, rather than opting for immediate repatriation which often sends them back into the hands of human traffickers. LA: Here he says people shouldn’t be deported (ghastly euphemism, repatriated) because they will run into traffickers again.

Tens of thousands of migrants are fleeing turmoil in North Africa, with many trying to reach Europe by boat, but the problem of slavery exists all over the world. . . Now he switches to saying slavery is everywhere, so presumably it’s on all the borders, too.

The European Union has urged African border authorities to bolster controls to prevent human smugglers taking advantage of the situation. But . . . it is more effective to fight slavery in the countries where the victims are exploited. Here he says it’s no good closing borders and implies they should be open, but I am not clear how this is connected to his claim that fighting slavery should happen in European countries. He seems to be saying it’s no use trying to do anything in the countries of origin, let all these folk get into Europe and then save them.

You don’t fight trafficking on the borders, because people don’t yet know they are trafficking victims, it’s only when they get to where they are going that they are enslaved. People should be keeping an eye on where these refugees end up, what kind of jobs they are being put into and how they are being treated. Again he’s against hardened border controls, but his statement that victims don’t know they are victims till they get inside is a silly and demeaning generalisation, since, if something has gone wrong lots of migrants know so at an early stage. He also calls enslaved migrants refugees, showing ignorance of what the term means in migration policy.

These statements do not add up to a plan. CdeBaca clearly wants to criticise European border policy, but his solutions are incoherent. Maybe he did hear what I said in Luxor, however, about one solution lying in revising antiquated and arbitrary distinctions between informal and formal sectors of the economy, so that people being called slaves could have some labour rights and people being called trafficked might get work permits to do jobs in other countries.

People are always telling me that these moral entrepreneurs went to Harvard and such places, as though that means they must be right. Maybe they are intelligent and got nice degrees, but their understanding of migration, social processes and precarious labour is practically non-existent. Being in campaign mode seriously distorts analytic ability.

By the way, note that images of white imperialism work two ways; in the Tintin picture blacks are carrying a white, while in the other picture a white is carrying a black. In both pictures, the white is in charge.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Women who sell sex do not fall into two neat categories, the Strong and the Weak

Photo Jonathan Lorange

Ottawa sex venue Club Madellyn Jae is presented here as an agreeable feminist spot where ‘clients are friendly and respectful, and everybody goes home satisfied.’ I am the first to welcome such a place, where it seems customers spend their time enjoying intimacy that can end in a hand job. What I object to is the way the proprietor divides sex workers into two easily distinguishable types: the strong and enlightened versus the weak and neurotic. She characterises the latter category as ‘self-destructive’, mirroring the Rescue Industry’s obsession with the psychology of poorer people and the claim that only ‘elite’ women ever really choose to sell sex (see brainwashing and Stockholm Syndrome recently).

It is understandable that sex workers who are struggling to normalise the profession should wish to make this distinction, and, as usual, it holds if one focusses only on the two extremes on a continuum of choosing and unchoosing. But most people who sell sex lie somewhere between those two end-points, and if they are not perfectly conscious and unconfused neither do they deserve to be called ‘self-destructive.’ And although it’s more difficult to defend the rights of people who have mixed feelings about sex work, it’s important to try: understanding precarious employment can help.

Thanks and come again

Tony Martins, Guerrilla, Ottawa

“I believe there are two types of people in this business,” says proprietor Kennedy. “Sound, level-headed, strong women who are focused individuals. They are using their sexuality to get ahead in life.”

“The second type, unfortunately, is in the industry for the wrong reasons and is self-destructive,” Kennedy continues. “They are sometimes addicted to drugs, in abusive relationships, spend the money as quickly as they make it. Often, it’s all about the money and they always want more and more—they chase the dollar and end up starting as a dancer or masseuse and end up as an escort.”

“That to me is very sad about these women,” Kennedy adds. “If they make it past my training, they usually don’t last long at CMJ because I don’t want to be a part of their self-destruction.”
“At the time I started I was mature and experienced enough to make the choice for myself and it felt very empowering,” offers Simone. “I was not a girl, but a woman. I knew my boundaries from day one. I wasn’t comfortable stripping or doing full-service. Hostessing at CMJ was a
perfect fit for me.”

Truckers, truck stops, lot lizards and sex trafficking victims: what confusion

The incredible double-messaging of US prostitution law finds perfect expression in two recent stories from the state of Oklahoma. In one, everyone agrees that prostitutes are a nuisance and a judge forces the owners of a rest stop to post signs, fix a fence, provide cctv and hire guards to arrest sex workers. (The name lot lizards presumably refers to how baking-hot people get hanging around on black asphalt in the sun.) In the second, truckers are admonished to understand that sex workers are victims of trafficking who are passively transported and need rescuing, the focus being, of course, on adolescents (who, we learned the other day, are mostly running away from home.)

One would almost think these stories are describing two separate groups, one that’s bad and one that’s good, but that’s not true, of course. All the people involved are selling sex in truckers’ rest stops. Some truckers are buying sex. Some owners of truck stops are willing for this trade to go on. For people who don’t want it to go on, however, there are two choices: blame the sex workers or rescue the victims. Very confusing.

Truck stop ordered to clean up prostitute problems

Jesse Wells, 8 April 2011, KFOR

Oklahoma City — An Oklahoma County judge forces a metro truck stop to clean up it’s act. . . “The Five Star was symbolic of the worst problem of prostitution in the city,” video vigilante Brian Bates said. For a long time, Oklahoma City police negotiated with the truck stop owners to curtail the illegal activity but got no results. That’s when they took the issue to court. “Prostitution had been running rampant at that business and the owner wasn’t doing anything to stop it,” explains Oklahoma City Police MSgt. Gary Knight.

The court order will now force the business to post additional “no trespassing” and “no soliciting” signs, repair and enhance the fencing, provide continuous video surveillance and hire security guards who can arrest prostitutes day or night. . .

Oklahoma truckers learn how to stop human trafficking

By Kristi Eaton, 25 March 2011, Associated Press/TheTrucker.com

Oklahoma City — It’s been nearly 30 years, but Mark Brown still remembers the face of the teenage girl who approached him at a truck stop in California. He’d just finished a long day of driving across the country when the girl, who wasn’t more than 15 or 16 years old, knocked on his window and asked if he wanted a date. He said he ignored her and let her proceed down the row of trucks, knocking on windows trying to sell her body for money. “I still regret that decision to this day,” he said. “I should have helped her.”

Brown now uses his position as assistant director of Driving Instruction at Central Tech in Drumright to teach new drivers about what they can do combat the industry’s hidden secret. He passes out wallet cards with tips and information to students and is going to distribute a training video to other schools across the country about human trafficking. And it’s all because of a partnership with Truckers Against Trafficking, an initiative that hopes to educate and raise awareness about domestic sex trafficking along the nation’s highways. The program by the anti-human trafficking organization Chapter 61 Ministries specifically targets young girls and boys who it says are transported across the country to prostitute at truck stops and plazas.

Lyn Thompson, who started Chapter 61 Ministries in 2007 with her four daughters and a family friend, said she developed the idea for Truckers Against Trafficking after learning the important role gas station attendants play in identifying victims of human trafficking. Taking it one step further, she began focusing on truck drivers. “Traffickers have to transport their victims, whether by plane, train, ship, bus, car or truck,” said Thompson, a Tulsa resident who acts as a national coordinator for the initiative. “So, all the transportation industries are first-line defenders against this crime.”

The girls and boys who work the trucks stops and plazas are called “lot lizards,” said Kendis Paris, a national coordinator for TAT based in Denver. She said the group is focusing on kids under the age of 18 because by law, they are victims of human trafficking if forced into the sex trade. “I honestly don’t think anybody wakes up and says, ‘I want to sell my body,’ but the kids really have no choice,” she said, adding that many are runaways who have been coerced into prostitution. By attending trucking industry events and meetings, Paris hopes to get the wallet cards in to the hands of every trucker in America. Trucker drivers can call a hotline number listed to report a crime or ask questions if they are unsure something illegal is taking place.

“The issue is difficult to police or get control of, so that’s why TAT’s effort is so important, because we feel like if we can educate the professional truck driver, nine out of 10 of them are going to want to get these people arrested who are doing this stuff,” said truck stop plaza owner Sam Smith, who has hung up TAT posters and distributed wallet cards to drivers at his Nashville, Tenn., store.

Sex slavery scare called a waste of time in Kansas

How very interesting to read an anti-panicky editorial in the midwestern US state of Kansas. The common-sense argument here says no cases of sex slavery have been found in strip clubs, police should pursue such cases where they do hear about them and the morality of a few should not be legislated for all. The editor asks what lawmakers should be spending their time on, especially given that a similar effort was made by anti-prostitution campaigners last year. Dizzying reasonableness.

Editorial: Strip club bill wastes time

19 March 2011, The Topeka Capital-Journal

Republican leaders in the Kansas Senate see no reason to spend time working on a bill that probably would regulate adult entertainment clubs and stores out of business. Neither do we. A similar bill was introduced and subsequently rejected last year. There’s no reason to waste more time on the issue this year, especially given other important issues — including budget deficits — facing legislators.

Supporters of the bill — known as the “community defense act” — contend adult entertainment businesses, strip clubs if you will, are host sites for illegal activities ranging from drug sales and prostitution to sex slavery. We don’t know how much, if any, marijuana or cocaine is being sold at strip clubs across Kansas, but we’re pretty sure that putting the clubs out of business entirely wouldn’t eliminate one dealer or inconvenience one user. Anyone who wants to buy illegal drugs doesn’t have to go anywhere near an adult club to find them.

As far as the adult clubs in Kansas being hot beds of prostitution and sex slavery, we know of no one who has ever produced specific cases or statistics to back up such claims. Sex slavery is a heinous crime and any law enforcement officer who really suspects it’s going on anywhere should be conducting investigations and making arrests. No, the real issue here is that the adult clubs offend the morals of some among us. We understand that, and know their moral outrage is sincere. However, legislation that would force all to adhere to the morals of some is bad legislation. Granted, no one wants a strip club next to their home, their church or their children’s school. But those are zoning issues that can be handled by local governments without state interference.

The “community defense act” would prohibit full nudity at adult entertainment clubs, force them to close between midnight and 6 a.m., require performers to stay at least 6 feet from the customers and forbid contact between performers and customers. It also would require new clubs, adult bookstores, video stores, theaters, modeling studios and sexual device shops to be more than 1,000 feet from any church, library, park, school or day care center.

Proponents say the bill, which originated in the House and was passed along to the Senate, is not an attempt to legislate morality or regulate sexually oriented businesses out of existence. It is exactly that, and no more time should be spent on it. The clubs, book stores and shops will close their doors when they aren’t generating enough traffic to make a profit. But as long as communities are supporting them financially, the Legislature should stay out of their business and find other things to do. . .

Social movement mainstreaming: Anti-trafficking by DJs, by country musicians and at film festival

It’s official: I can’t keep up with all the anti-trafficking actions going on or make all the commentary that could be made. I hope someone else is doing a serious study (would be a great phd subject) of how a social movement develops; I would need a salary to do it. Anyone want to pay it?

Anyway, in case it was thought that only bigger celebrities, like Kutcher, Sorvino and Emma Thompson were campaigning against trafficking and sex work, note how local initiatives are playing out. Here are djs in Michigan, a country musician in Ottawa and a film-festival entrepreneur in Florida. Note Brandt’s comment:

It’s a slow process, it’s not for the faint of heart or the people who want a quick fix. Every little victory is a huge thing on the way to stopping this. It’s like the abolition of slavery -it takes very brave people to jump in and take a stand.

Ty Beat leads the back for concert to help prevent human trafficking

Get down for a cause with the high-energy music of DJs from around Michigan: Ty Beat, K@Dog, DuKtap, Drchandt, and DJ Muchos Gracias, each creating different sub-genres of electronic music—live drumming, synths, and vinyl DJs. All the proceeds go to the Michigan Human Trafficking Task Force. “I want to raise awareness of trafficking in our community,” Beat said. “I hope that when people realize this is happening here, we can organize to find solutions to reduce the incidents, hold criminals responsible, and help rehabilitate victims.”

Country singer calls for action on human trafficking

After country star Paul Brandt met a six-year-old victim of human trafficking and sexual exploitation, he felt compelled to do something. “There are times I wish I hadn’t seen these things because life is a lot easier when you don’t,” said Brandt, a keynote speaker at a human trafficking conference in Ottawa Tuesday. “With knowledge comes responsibility and once you’re confronted with these things, you have to choose. Are you going to do something about it or not?” Brandt travelled to Cambodia in 2004 with Samaritan’s Purse, an international relief organization, to help distribute Christmas presents to children.

Women’s International Film Festival tackles human trafficking at annual event

When Yvonne McCormack-Lyons began screening films to accept into the annual film fest she founded, she noticed a recurring theme in the works submitted: human trafficking. The films, by and about women, dealt with the lives of trafficking victims and the difficult path to freedom. But McCormack-Lyons decided that viewing the films during the Women’s International Film Festival this week wasn’t enough. She wanted the art to lead to social change.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Prohibir anuncios de contactos no combate la trata ni en Mexico ni en ninguna parte

La campaña contra los anuncios sexuales (anuncios de contactos, anuncios clasificados) triunfa en México. Es una onda bien conocida en España, como comenté el año pasado, pero esta noticia es más dramática:

Cárcel a quien publique anuncios relacionados con comercio sexual

La Jornada, 16 de marzo 2011

Los propietarios de periódicos, revistas y medios de comunicación electrónica que publiquen anuncios relacionados con la explotación y el comercio sexual purgarán condenas de cárcel sin derecho a fianza. La reforma a la ley para prevenir y sancionar la trata de personas prevé penas de 27 años de cárcel para los responsables de la contratación de anuncios sexuales. Por mayoría de 401 votos y seis abstenciones, el pleno camaral coincidió en establecer un freno a la publicidad que se difunde incluso en diarios de circulación nacional y en las principales televisoras, donde se pretende contratar a víctimas potenciales del comercio sexual.

Aquí va un comentario de un grupo que lucha por los derechos de las personas que venden sexo en México,

Prohibición de anuncios sexuales incrementará el trabajo sexual callejero

Jaime Montejo, Agencia de Noticias Independiente Noti-Calle, Brigada Callejera de Apoyo a la Mujer “Elisa Martínez”, 22 marzo 2011, México DF

* El espíritu humanista del decreto choca con la realidad mexicana.
* Clandestiniza la oferta de sexo comercial y la pone en manos de explotadores sexuales.
* Institucionaliza la trata sexual, a la cuál dice combatir.

Es un acierto que la LXI Legislatura de la Cámara de Diputados federal institucionalice la trata de personas con fines de explotación sexual al aprobar el decreto presentado por la Comisión de Derechos Humanos de dicha institución. Esa es la buena intención del espíritu humanista del decreto, loable por cierto, que busca sancionar a quienes promueven la trata de personas a través de anuncios en medios de comunicación como la prensa escrita y el internet.

Espíritu humanista que choca con la realidad mexicana actual, donde además de la extorsión habitual de que son objeto las trabajadoras sexuales en todo el país por parte de funcionarios públicos, así como de las ganancias de su trabajo que se apropian los empresarios del sexo y de las nuevas cuotas que les ha impuesto el narcotráfico, ahora tendrán que dejar una derrama económica en “manos oscuras” que les garanticen ganarse la vida en el sexo comercial.

Según el decreto que modifica el artículo 5 de la Ley para Prevenir y Sancionar la Trata de Personas, incurrirá en el delito de trata de personas quien contrate los espacios o de a conocer desplegados o anuncios de ese tipo, que genéricamente incluyen la publicidad que se hace a servicios sexuales. Dicho artículo quedará como sigue: “La persona que contrate publicidad por cualquier medio de comunicación, así como la persona que publique anuncios, que encuadren en alguna de las conductas del delito de trata de personas será sancionada conforme a lo dispuesto en el artículo 6 de esta ley…”.

Por fin todas las fracciones parlamentarias en un acuerdo sin precedentes en el país pudieron hacer realidad los sueños de políticos con vocación proxeneta, al doblegar a quienes trabajan sexualmente por su cuenta, que contaban con la posibilidad de anunciarse en periódicos, revistas y páginas de internet, sin que mediara ningún otro explotador en dicha negociación sexual que no fuera el medio en el cuál promovían sus servicios sexuales.

Nadie niega que dichos anuncios son un gran negocio y que periódicos enteros obtien millonarios ingresos con ellos. Tampoco se cuestiona el hecho de que algunos anunciantes contraten para un solo día 50 o más anuncios en un solo periódico. No está en duda que haya otros anuncios que pretenden enganchar a jovencitas y mujeres para realizar servicios sexuales.

El asunto es que no hay un sólo tipo de prostitución como pretenden las abolicionistas feministas, católicas o cristianas, ni tampoco todas las personas que ejercen el trabajo sexual están emancipadas como lo señalan madrotas de Sullivan, Tlalpan, la merced, la zona rosa del Distrito Federal o de los nuevos centros nocturnos que se encuentran entre la calzada Lázaro Cárdenas y el zócalo del Distrito Federal.

La legislatura federal nunca quiso escuchar la voz de las trabajadoras sexuales. Tampoco les convocó para escuchar sus opiniones. Nunca consideraron el impacto funesto que dicha norma jurídica tendrá sobre la prevención del VIH/Sida. La única palabra que escucharon fue la aquellas personas que pretenden “salvar a las víctimas de la prostitución”.

El problema aquí es que no todas las trabajadoras sexuales son víctimas, como se pretende hacer parecer, ni todas son esclavas de proxenetas. Explotadas sí, como toda persona que se ve obligada a vender su fuerza de trabajo para ganarse la vida, en donde sea que tenga que hacerlo. Brigada Callejera de Apoyo a la Mujer “Elisa Martínez” A.C., organización de la sociedad civil dedicada a la defensa de los derechos humanos y civiles de las trabajadoras sexuales, conoce ambos planteamientos. Sin embargo, ambas posturas son reduccionistas y muestras sólo una parte de la realidad del comercio sexual.

Qué curioso, que una propuesta abolicionista, esa de prohibir los anuncios de contactos sexuales, facilite y promueva la trata de personas con fines de explotación sexual; así como lo hacen los operativos anti trata del gobierno de la Procuraduría General de Justicia del Distrito Federal (PGJ DF), o de la PGR que terminan haciendo más clandestino el trabajo sexual, sea éste esclavo, servil, asalariado o no asalariado. Decreto y operativos policíacos que dejan en pocas manos y bien gandallas por cierto a quienes trabajan hasta hace poco por su cuenta, que ahora tendrán que vérselas con las y los impulsores de dicha iniciativa legislativa, trátese de diputadas, senadores, delegados (como Agustín Torres de Cuauhtémoc), presidentes municipales, fiscales de delitos sexuales o de fiscalías especiales anti trata sexual y jefes policíacos, para poder trabajar como en los tiempos de la Dirección Federal de Seguridad de la Secretaría de Gobernación, que perseguía a guerrilleros, luchadores sociales y trabajadoras-es sexuales, con saña y odio extremo.

Las opciones para trabajar en el sexo, serán “contratarse” con un empresario del sexo, buscar el apoyo de “enganchadores” bien relacionados con los funcionarios públicos de turno, “apoyarse” en algún legislador o recurrir al crimen organizado para poder vender servicios sexuales sin la molestia de dichas disposiciones.

Para el caso es lo mismo: mayor clandestinidad del oficio, lo que aliviará las conciencias de católicos, cristianos y feministas, al no ver lo que se hace fuera del alcance de su vista. De paso, aumentarán las cuotas de extorsión que pagan las trabajadoras sexuales y muchas tendrán que recurrir a la oferta de servicios sexuales en la vía pública, manejadas por madrotas y padrotes con una vieja escuela de explotación sexual y trata de personas. Como dice un refrán, el camino al infierno, en este caso al infierno de la trata con fines de explotación sexual, está tapizado de buenas intenciones como el decreto que modifica la Ley para Prevenir y Sancionar la Trata de Personas, y tipifica como un delito grave la contratación de espacios publicitarios o de a conocer desplegados o anuncios de servicios sexuales.

Sex on Sunday: Foreign brides in Taiwan, Celebrity (not Julian Assange) accused of rape in Mexico, Asexuality and romance

What the cats of Houtong say about the population of Taiwan

demography matters

One major theme of my Taiwan posts here has been the very low fertility rate, for the main the standard combination of patriarchal cultural norms with the substantial emancipation of women. Another theme has been the sex ratio strongly biased towards men, producing a deficit of marriageable women. Just as in South Korea, this has led to substantial marriage-driven immigration to Taiwan . . . with women from mainland China and Southeast Asia–particularly but certainly not only Vietnamese women–contributing a notable, if declining number and proportion of newborns. . . Foreign brides mainly refer to women from mainland China and Southeast Asian countries who marry Taiwanese men. Taiwanese men used to be a priority husband target for women from Southeast Asian countries during the years of Taiwan’s economic prosperity. But their willingness to marry Taiwanese men has been undermined by Taiwan’s economic shrinkage in recent years.

Celebrity rape case grips Mexico

Ioan Grillo, GlobalPost

The case itself revolves around 17-year-old escort Daiana Gomez — sent to accompany Kalimba and his entourage at the nightclub where they played the concert on Dec. 18. Gomez said in a TV interview that she and another escort aged 16 indeed were invited back to the hotel expecting a party. Back in the hotel, Gomez says she saw the fellow escort go into a room with three naked men and the door being closed. Kalimba then hit her, told her to shut up and raped her, she claims. In his own interview, Kalimba on the verge of tears said Gomez is lying. “I didn’t rape anyone. I didn’t abuse anyone. It was a small hotel. Someone would have heard if I attacked her. How come I have no marks on me?” he said. “I have many women in my family. I would never abuse women.” However, Kalimba did not confirm or deny whether he had sex with the underage girl. He also said that both girls went to see him off at the airport, remarking that would have been strange if Gomez had been raped. State prosecutor Francisco Alor took declarations from both Kalimba and Gomez and ruled there was enough evidence to file preliminary rape charges against the pop singer.

Sexual Attraction vs. Romantic Attraction

Good Vibrations

There exists a small but significant portion of the population that identifies as asexual. This, for those not up on their terminology, refers to those who don’t experience sexual attraction. But within that group, there are further subdivisions—notably, those who are romantically inclined and those who are not. There are heteroromantic, homoromantic, biromantic, and panromantic asexuals out there who experience non-sexual forms of attraction toward potential partners. The practical upshot of this distinction is that some asexuals, despite not feeling sexual attraction to their partners, nevertheless do want to have satisfying romantic relationships which function the same as anybody else’s . . . that is, everywhere but the bedroom.

Texas prostitution policy sends sex workers to jail, costs taxpayers a fortune

Talking about human rights and pity goes nowhere with some people who want to end prostitution. What about how much it costs to jail them, then? Do the taxpayers of Harris County, Texas, really want to be spending $2.3 million a year housing and feeding sex workers? Do all Texas taxpayers want to use $8 million for this? It is inconceivable. This story quotes women who sell sex in order to buy drugs about their repeated arrests and how they feel about a new programme to help them get unaddicted. What’s missing are the figures on just how much the rehabilitation costs in money (leaving self-esteem, rights and all other humanist values aside), and how they calculate that cost. Such rehabilitation programmes are not for everyone, whether they are addicted to a drug or not, but it seems obvious that everyone in a prohibitionist context should get a chance to try it.

Millions of tax dollars spent yearly to incarcerate prostitutes

by Dave Fehling, 27 January 2011, khou.com

Houston: Every year, millions of tax dollars in Texas are spent on prostitutes. The money goes for housing hundreds of them in Texas prisons and Harris County jails. The 11 News I-Team found Texas has tougher laws for prostitution than most states, which can mean prostitutes can be charged as felons. That qualifies them for prison.

But the I-Team found one relatively new program in Houston that may be a far more cost-effective way to prosecute prostitutes. In researching the story, the I-Team talked with three former prostitutes about their previous lives and the punishment they faced.

“Do what you do, it’s over in a few minutes and you got this money,” said Loisteen Phillips. “You can go anywhere to find a customer,” she said of her time spent selling her services in Houston.
“If he looked like a treat, we tricked him,” said Alfonette Thomas.
“(It’s) the oldest profession on the face of the earth,” said Kathryn Griffin Townsend. Townsend and Phillips said they were repeatedly arrested. “Many times,” said Phillips. She said she had over 20 arrests.[The Harris County jail] became a home away from home for me, a revolving door,” Phillips said.

They were hardly alone. At the county jail recently, there were 130 inmates charged with prostitution. Assuming that number is constant for a year, and with each alleged prostitute costing just under $50 a day to care for, Harris County taxpayers are therefore spending some $2.3 million a year on them.

Then there’s the state prison system. The 11 News I-Team found that Texas is one of only seven states where prostitution can even get you time in prison (the other states besides Texas that make repeat offenses a potential felony are Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Illinois and Michigan).

The I-Team checked Texas prison data and found that in 2009, the state held over 300 female prostitutes at a total estimated cost to taxpayers of nearly $8 million a year.

“Three or more prostitution convictions, we’ll send you to prison five or 10 years. No other state even thinks about that,” said State Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. “I had no idea how severe the penalties were,” said former prostitute Townsend, who moved here from California. “I was terrified,” she said about getting sent to prison. She said she actually did spend one year in a Texas facility. It convinced her that she wanted to quit prostitution.

But here’s the thing: each of the women told the I-Team that prostitution wasn’t their real problem — drugs were. “I wanted my high, I wanted my drug,” said Thomas. Townsend agreed. “Drugs had become the pimp,” she said. Probation officers and court employees said it is the common denominator when they work with prostitutes. “The ladies are in prostitution to support their drug habit,” said Bernadine Gatling, with Harris County Community Supervision.

But as the I-Team found at the Harris County Criminal Courthouse, there’s now a new way to prosecute prostitutes. It’s called the STAR court (Success Through Addiction Recovery). The court launched in 2003, and its aim was to exclusively handle addicts, male and female, getting them into treatment — not jail — so they hopefully wouldn’t come back. Of the women who began showing up in front of the STAR court judges, one thing stood out: the majority of them were, or had been, prostitutes. But now, instead of being sent back to jail, they’re getting drug treatment — closely supervised by a judge, who they have to report to weekly. The court has a vastly different decorum than what you might expect.

One of the judges who rotates through the court, Denise Bradley, smiled as she greeted the women, one after another, as they reported their progress to her in various recovery programs. After one woman told the judge about her arrest on cocaine charges and her ongoing substance abuse treatment, Judge Bradley told her: “You’re doing great, we’re very proud of you.” Then, the courtroom erupted in applause from the other offenders, as well as court personnel. “It’s so night and day from what it would be in a regular criminal court,” said Townsend. She went through the STAR program and said it saved her life. Phillips said the same. “They have people who come teach you about how to get a job, how to be a lady, how to talk, how to recognize your defects of character,” said Phillips.

The court staff who runs the program told 11 News it doesn’t work for everyone, but it sure beats just sending them to jail over and over and at a fraction of the cost. “I have quite a few ladies that are doing very well,” said Gatling with Community Supervision. Bradley agreed. “I’d say it’s one of the most effective uses of taxpayer dollars that occur here in the courthouse,” she said. Currently, the program can help only a fraction of the women prosecuted in Harris County for prostitution.

Super Bowl fans greeted with End Demand (for paid sex) billboards in Texas

The Super Bowl of US football is approaching and I am pleased the media have largely not been disseminating the myth of the 40 000 itinerant trafficking victims who will soon descend. The police chief of the city of Arlington, Texas, home of the Dallas Cowboys, did try to get permission a while back to

ban convicted prostitutes from the entertainment district. The proposed exclusionary zone, which would have been the first in Texas, would have let Arlington officers arrest convicted prostitutes and their customers if they were found in the area without a permissible reason.

Since all buying and selling of sex is against the law there, this request might seem odd, but I suppose the wording would make arresting people easier. Permission was refused, but there have been all sorts of awareness-raising events about child sex slavery and now here are billboards warning men not to buy sex: Dear John, You Never Know! This Could Be You! These messages to End Demand have become a whole genre of public expression, this one belonging not only to the SHAMING variety (see Sevilla’s signs) but to the THREAT variety (see UK signs). Clients Beware.

Please do note a difference from the usual victimising of women who sell sex, though, as the story refers to prostitutes looking to cash in on big spenders from out of town. This is still the way a lot of people think about sex workers and at least grants them some agency in their own lives.

Arlington police using billboards near Cowboys Stadium to try to deter prostitution

15 January 2011, Susan Schrock, Star-Telegram

Arlington, Texas. There’s one souvenir that football fans probably don’t want from their Super Bowl Sunday experience — a police mug shot. Arlington police have posted mug shots of men convicted of or given deferred adjudication for prostitution-related crimes on electronic billboards near Cowboys Stadium to discourage would-be johns. The billboards, featuring four booking mugs and a message, are on Interstate 30 and Texas 360 at entryways to Arlington’s entertainment district. “We want people to think twice before they engage in that activity, because maybe they don’t want their face on a billboard,” Assistant Police Chief James Hawthorne said. More than 100,000 visitors are expected in the city for Super Bowl XLV on Feb. 6.

The Super Bowl has brought a blitz of human-trafficking awareness events and enforcement activities to North Texas. Law enforcement personnel, volunteers and advocates have been concerned that the high-profile event will draw prostitutes looking to cash in on big spenders from out of town. The Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Task Force is teaming up with local officials to provide resources and training before the Super Bowl, which Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott called “one of the biggest human-trafficking events in the United States.”

Arlington police have worked for years to combat prostitution around the entertainment district, which includes top tourist attractions such as the stadium and Rangers Ballpark. Recent efforts have included stings at budget motels and electronic message boards along roadways warning visitors about high-crime areas. The department had posted john mug shots online as part of its prostitution crackdown, but it had never bought billboard space, Hawthorne said. The space was bought with federal grant funds, police spokeswoman Tiara Richard said. The billboards also encourage residents and visitors to report suspicious activity.

“With prostitution, there is an element of human trafficking that exists. More than just addressing the criminal element, we also recognize the opportunity to rescue some of these victims who might be in situations where they feel trapped, helpless and unable to get out,” Hawthorne said. “We want as many eyes and ears on that issue so we can be effective in dealing with it.”

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

All the scary things a little decriminalisation of prostitution might cause in Canada

In September an Ontario judge struck down three provisions of Canadian prostitution law as causing sex workers’ lives to be riskier than other citizens’. If attempts to delay this new regime fail, soon three activities considered criminal by the law up to now will be allowed: operating brothels, soliciting and living from money earned by someone selling sex. The central government is decrying this decriminalisation, which applies only to Ontario, claiming all manner of dire consequences will ensue:

irreparable harms to the public interest
distinctions in the operation of the Criminal Code between Ontario and the rest of Canada
profound and immediate consequences upon communities, neighbourhoods and women engaged in prostitution in this province
legal uncertainty across Canada
the movement of prostitutes to Ontario from other jurisdictions
more drug trafficking, violence, garbage, noise and traffic from johns
red light districts will emerge
prostitutes’ lives will be in danger
authorities will be powerless to protect residents in vulnerable neighbourhoods
more prostitutes will likely be exploited by pimps
police would be forced to abandon all ongoing investigations
human trafficking, prostitution of minors, extortion and assault will go undetected
four pimps expressed concern that organized criminals will get involved in street prostitution and guns and gang violence will follow
a youth worker said pimps were making preparations to come out of retirement.
an increase of numbers of women on the street would make it easier to camouflage underage prostitutes among them
Canada will be plunged into a social experiment unprecedented in this country that will profoundly and irreversibly alter the status quo

In other words, they are afraid of Change. They are fantasising all the scary things that could happen, but they cannot provide any evidence that they will happen. Since the status quo on prostitution is dysfunctional in so many ways everywhere, an experiment based on sound judicial reasoning seems like a good idea. The government’s argument

that the laws that exist, exist to protect people and protect communities . . . We don’t want people to be lured into this area. We don’t want communities to be dealing with this. These laws have been on the books for a reason and for a long time.

is a weak argument. Think of some of the terrible laws that have been overturned as societies interested in social justice realise they are unjust. New Zealand, which decriminalised the sex industry in a comparable way some time ago, has not been plunged into social chaos, and I suppose Canada belongs to the same socio-legal universe as that country (settled by British migrants, originally, for one big thing).

The predictions, compiled from a number of Canadian media sources, would seem to indicate that this issue will end up in a higher, national court – which is presumably what the sex worker-complainants wanted.

Note on bawds: the Ontario law preserves antiquated language, so the brothel-ban is on bawdy houses, soliciting is known as communicating and avails are what no one is allowed to ‘live off’. The fact that these terms still describe the law was in itself a reason to consider revising it – not for the sake of updating language per se but because the concepts behind them indicate a social context that has changed. I did so appreciate Judge Himel’s analysis of the history of the laws.

– Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Child trafficking, or kids who leave home, and their pimps and their friends, in Las Vegas

I accepted an invitation to talk about the much-publicised US child-trafficking sweep last week that resulted in lots of arrests of adults and rescues of a small number of people under 18. I wrote about this FBI-led event the other day, and I was initially reluctant to speak on a public-radio show from Las Vegas, Nevada, that seemed to be composed exclusively of crime- and rescue-oriented people. But the producer asked me for suggestions for other speakers, and I was able to get a couple of names to her fast enough, with the result that the panel became reasonably balanced.

Child Prostitution in Nevada, an audio link to the hour-long programme, illustrates four points of view: a court defender of young people caught selling sex, a psychologist who tries to help them feel better, a harm-reduction project for teenagers in New York (Safe Horizons) and me on childhood, migration and sex.

I find the format of such programmes repressive, the taking turns and inability to converse normally with other participants. The public defender seemed to say the word pimp a dozen times, expressing frustration that the girls refuse to denounce any. How can I help them if they won’t give up their exploiters? she wails. How do you know they actually have pimps? I wanted to ask. There could be some classic pimp figures involved, but it is very possible that she is generalising lots of boyfriends, girlfriends, family members and other folk who live with or share the girls’ earnings as pimps whom the girls themselves do not see that way. I doubt that many of them look like the picture above.

A local paper’s news story about the raids illustrates clearly the police focus. Most of those picked up were adults, and they can’t all be traffickers, which makes it obvious that consenting adults carrying out sex-money exchanges are those suffering most from such operations. The article’s title even admits the operation was a sting, and the gallery of arrested faces, one crying, is enough to make one sick: National prostitution sting nets 20 locally.

There are other ways to think about young people who don’t want to stay home, or who can’t, than trafficking, prostitution and pimps: the children tag on this blog provides a few.

– 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

Inexperienced sex workers, unscrupulous agents: recipe for trafficking

Few people explain how trafficking situations actually work: not the lurid, sensationalistic stories told by crusading rescuers but the more banal crappy stories. In Everybody Loves A Sob Story, Serpent Libertine describes how an inexperienced woman who was trying to make money selling sex was manipulated by people calling themselves an escort agency.

. . . I was dealing with a young girl who had been working for an escort agency out of Des Moines, Iowa. She called our hotline from the lobby of a motel and said the agency had flown her in from out of town with the promise they would pay her travel expenses back home. She’d been taking calls at the motel all week and after each client left, a gofer for the agency would come and collect all the money, leaving a small amount for small expenses like meals. She had told them earlier in the day that she was ready to return home, but they stopped taking her calls and refused to bring her the money she was owed or provider her with funds to get transportation home. Yeah, it was a fishy situation, but the agency seemed to prey on young girls with very little experience in the industry, who didn’t know any better about how a decent escort agency would be run. She’d never worked independently before, didn’t know how to advertise for herself. When she finally got someone from the agency on the phone, they said they planned to “pick her up and drive her to another city to work.” These people basically had a mini-trafficking operation being run through several states and one look at their website (a free WordPress blog, no less) showed what kind of creeps they really were. . . Over the course of two days, with a lot of help from others in this community, we had gotten the agencies website pulled, their Paypal account frozen, and got this girl on a bus back home. Regretfully, it was a loooong two days for this girl, who ended up placing a lot of hotline calls but finding virtually very little resources for a trafficking victim in a smaller Midwestern city. And it made me think back to my agency days where I worked for people who promised the world, but instead played games with your livelihood. . .

This story points up the important role life experience plays in situations that can be called trafficking or not, as you like, but that depend on a worker who isn’t able to evaluate offers made by agents. The problem here, according to the sex worker, is not the sex nor the clients – it’s the intermediary. And despite what anti-prostitution fundamentalists might say, all intermediaries are not evil monsters by definition.

For that matter, I got into trouble myself this way once by going along with some cute guy’s proposition to go with him to a party, for god’s sake. I ended up somewhere I knew nothing about, surrounded by people who had unsavoury plans for me. I talked my way out of it but it was a close call. And I wasn’t a kid, either.

– Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

This reporting is better: human smuggling and exploitation of migrants

This reporting is better. Maybe the operation was even better, I would like to hope so. In the end most of the migrants will undoubtedly be deported, but perhaps without unnecessary trauma inflicted by the police?

23 arrested in human smuggling bust in NYC

Julian Cummings, 7 October 2010, CNN

New York — Federal officers on Thursday arrested 23 people suspected of smuggling up to 70 men from China to work in Chinese restaurants in and around New York City. “We allege that this was a for-profit smuggling scheme,” said Jim Hayes, Immigration and Custom Enforcement special agent in charge of the investigation. He told CNN that the men were brought into the United States by business owners and illegal recruiters, who would get families to pay a fee of up to $75,000 each.

“The employment agency would arrange for them to be brought into the United States and the restaurant owners would harbor them and transport them after engaging the employment agency to get the type of worker they desired,” he said. None of the illegal workers was arrested, Hayes said. “We’re working through that group of people to determine who were knowing participants, who may have been exploited, who may have desired to leave and weren’t allowed to leave,” he said.

The investigation found instances in which workers were paid as little as $3 an hour and were forced to live in sub-par living conditions in Connecticut, New Jersey and on New York’s Long Island, he said. “Many of these aliens were housed in squalid conditions and unsanitary conditions, certainly conditions they were not desiring to live in.” he said.

The ongoing eight-month investigation is part of a new initiative by the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to target employers of illegal aliens rather than the workers. “It’s different in that we are looking to eliminate the magnet that draws the workers as opposed to focusing on the employees themselves,” Hayes said.

The status of the workers remains uncertain. Some will be witnesses, which could lead to benefits for them, and some may face deportation. All of them, according to Hayes, did not get what they came to the United States for. “They believed they were coming over for the American Dream, but the fact of the matter is, whether their families paid it or not, that $75,000 is not something they are going to be able to pay off in their natural lifetime,” he said. “It’s certainly much, much less than they bargained for.”

Three additional suspects remain at large, according to a statement released Thursday afternoon by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office.

– Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

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