The Naked Anthropologist

Tag Archives: helping

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 →

They Speak, But Who Listens to (Migrant) Sex Workers?

Receiving Help

One of the basic principles of my work has been respect for what people say about themselves. Before I emerged from the streets into academic rooms where people use big words and are considered Important Members of Society, I did a hundred different jobs, including manual labour, which in many ways I like best. I did community organising, aids-prevention and literacy (alfabetización is a better word) in the Paulo Freirean tradition of educación popular, which is why, when I decided to go back to school after decades away, I did a master’s degree in education (whose practitioners are not considered Important Members of Society).

My original question from what academics call the field was: Why is there such a big difference between how migrants who sell sex talk about themselves and how outsiders talk about them? It didn’t take long to encounter the postcolonial idea that marginalised people’s voices were silenced. At the same time, I had always known expressive, noisy activists among all sorts of marginalised groups. I thought, the problem is not that people are not allowed to speak but that no one listens. In the following piece, published 12 years ago, I speculate about educational activities that might work among migrants that would not look like outside authorities choosing how to ‘help’ them. The ideas are not out of date all these years later, when I might also call them Naked Anthropology.

They Speak, But Who Listens?

Laura María Agustín

In Women@Internet: Creating Cultures in Cyberspace, ed. W. Harcourt. London: Zed Books, 1999, pp 149-161.

A Parable of Connexion

Scene: A small room with a bed and a washbasin.
Characters: A man and a woman.

It’s the third time this man has paid to spend time with this woman. She only speaks a few words of his language, but he seems kind and she decides to take the risk. She tells him she is being held prisoner and wants to get out. Will he help her?

The man is sympathetic but he doesn’t want to get too involved, certainly not to take charge of this woman. So he takes out his cellular phone and says: “Make any call you want.”

The woman hasn’t used a telephone in months. The only number she knows by memory is her sister’s, back in the Ukraine (…or Paraguay….or Burma). She has trouble dialling, doesn’t know any of the codes, but the man helps her. They have to hurry, because he’s only paid for a short time, and they have to whisper, because there are people in rooms on both sides of them.

The call goes through! Her sister answers. The woman can only say, “Help! Get me out of here! I’m being held prisoner!”
“Where are you?” asks her sister.
“In Israel (…or Holland…or Thailand)”.
“But where exactly?”
“I don’t know.”

Stories like this have made headlines all over the world. In the usual version, the faraway recipient of the call begins a long, arduous search for help through hotlines to embassies and international police. In the end, there is a raid and the woman who made the call is liberated. The police, who knew about the brothel all along, are not the heroes of the story. Neither is the client, who took no risks. In fact, the hero of the story is the small cellular phone that enabled the prisoner to connect to the world and be heard. The story does not end perfectly, however, because the woman is deported, and this is not what she wanted.

When I consider the possible uses of new technology for migrant women, I begin with stories like this one. Here, people are enabled to communicate vital pieces of information. Here, there are processes and chains of events and people help each other. Before we can move to the question ‘How will the Internet benefit migrant workers?’, other questions must be considered, for these are not simple or straightforward situations.

Geographical double-think

Although commercial sex is now recognised as a global, multi-billion dollar industry, its workers–in their millions–are only referred to as ‘illegals’, as victims of ‘trafficking’ and as potential ‘vectors’ of HIV/AIDS–when they are referred to at all. The same London newspaper that runs the story of ‘liberated sex slaves’ in Malaysia never mentions the problems migrant Chinese women have finding childcare (or fish sauce) in London. It is the age-old technique of ‘disappearing’ people simply by not acknowledging them.

To be deemed worthy of recognition and of help, where you are is all-important. The same person identified as ‘indigenous’ in the Andes and included in projects of traditional aid is viewed, if she migrates to the North, as a job-stealer, welfare bum, ghetto resident, drug dealer and addict, candidate for deportation and firmly outside the scope of traditional development aid. Unless she puts on some kind of native dress and plays pan-pipes, whereupon she may qualify for ‘cultural’ funding and will probably be left alone by the police–that is, if she plays well enough to gather audiences.

Those who seek to correct this geographic double-think–whether they are involved in battles for fairer immigration law or for better working conditions for domestics, dancers or prostitutes–often talk about rights: the right to communicate, the right to health care. Similarly, when possible uses of new information and communication technologies are mentioned, we hear about the right to access. But access is a tricky thing with people who are being watched and controlled, don’t have much money and are itinerant. Migrant labourers, whether women or men, whatever their labour, have difficulty finding and using the benefits of settled society. Migrants who don’t enjoy ‘legal’ status or whose status depends on a certain amount of fraud or deception, must be extremely cautious about requesting and using services. Migrant prostitutes have the added problems of having to navigate a labyrinth of laws concerning their work. The problems here are logistical and the need is for wireless, rapid and discreet connexions.

The literacy myth and the new information culture

Beyond questions of access lie dreams of educational growth, spiritual expression, ‘liberated voices’ that media like the Internet offer. Again, advocates often mention rights: to education, to ‘life-long learning’, to ‘self-expression’ or ‘self-realisation’. The ‘rights’ argument, however, sets the discussion firmly within First World norms, where citizens not only already have better access and service but more citizens are prepared to take advantage of them. To use the WorldWideWeb and even the simplest e-mail programme, after all, requires a very high level of literacy.

Classic ‘Development’ projects, whether applied to populations located in the Third World or to migrants who have left it, have assumed that Progress happens in stages, of which literacy is the first. Continue reading →

Helping Women Who Sell Sex: The Construction of Benevolent Identities

This is a long academic piece but useful to understanding the beginnings of what I came to call the Rescue Industry. The links between reference numbers and endnotes go via the original publication’s website (rhizomes). If you use them you just need to click the back button to return to this page.

Helping Women Who Sell Sex: The Construction of Benevolent Identities

Laura María Agustín, rhizomes.10, spring 2005

Abstract: Social interventions aimed at helping the group positioned as most needy in Europe today, migrant women who sell sex, can be understood by examining that time, 200 years ago, when ‘the prostitute’ was identified as needing to be saved. Before, there was no class of people who viewed their mission to be ‘helping’ working-class women who sold sex, but, during the ‘rise of the social,’ the figure of the ‘prostitute’ as pathetic victim came to dominate all other images. At the same time, demographic changes meant that many women needed and wanted to earn money and independence, yet no professions thought respectable were open to them. Simultaneous with the creation of the prostitute-victim, middle class women were identified as peculiarly capable of raising them up and showing the way to domesticity. These ‘helpers’ constructed a new identity and occupational sphere for themselves, one considered worthy and even prestigious. Nowadays, to question ‘helping’ projects often causes anger or dismissal. A genealogical approach, which shows how governmentality functioned in the past, is easier to accept, and may facilitate the taking of a reflexive attitude in the present.

This article addresses the governmental impulse to name particular commercial-sex practices as ‘prostitution’ and its practitioners as ‘prostitutes.’ Although it is conventional to refer to ‘the world’s oldest profession,’ the term prostitution has never described a clearly defined activity and was constructed by particular social actors at a specific time for specific reasons. [i] Within feminism, the phenomenon called prostitution is the centre of an intransigent debate about its meanings, one aspect of the conflict revolving around what words should be used to describe women who offer sexual services for sale: prostitute, sex worker, prostituted woman, victim of sexual exploitation. The use of one label or another locates the speaker on one or the other side of the debate, which essentially asks whether a woman who sells sex must by definition be considered a victim of others’ actions or whether she can enjoy a degree of agency herself in her commercial practice. In the prostitution discourse, those who sell are women and those who buy are men; it is a gendered concept, despite the enormous numbers of transgenders and men who sell sex and the transgenders and women who buy it. The anxiety to define and classify concerns the position of women, and this anxious debate should be seen as a governmental exercise carried out by social actors whose own identities are at stake. Academics and other theorists and advocates for one or another vision define themselves as good feminists or caring persons through their writing and advocacy. Being ‘right’ about how to envision women who sell sex is necessary to these identities, which explains the heated, repetitive nature of the debate. At the same time, for most of those who actually carry out the activity that excites so much interest and conflict, the debate feels far away and irrelevant.

Nowadays, much of the discourse targets migrant women who sell sex, particularly in wealthier countries. I have written in other places about the construction by outsiders of these contemporary subjects as prostitutes, sex workers or victims of ‘trafficking’ when their self-definitions are different (2005a), the construction of victimhood in general (2003a, 2005a), the disqualification of other elements of their identity (2002, 2004b, 2006), the obsession with certain of their sexual practices to the exclusion of everything else about their lives (2003b), the difficulty on the part of many feminists to accept the agency of working-class women who sell sex (2004a) and the voluminous quantity of interventions designed to help, save and control them (2005b).

The social sector desiring to help and save women who sell sex is very large indeed. The proliferation of discourses implicated includes the feminisation of poverty, closing borders and immigration law, international organised crime (especially ‘trafficking’ and modern forms of slavery), sexual-health promotion, the control of contagious diseases, debt bondage, non-recognised economic sectors, violence against women, women’s and human rights, social exclusion, sex tourism, globalisation, paedophilia and child labour, as well as policies aimed at controlling the sale of sex. Attendant technologies have also proliferated, including safe houses, rehabilitation programmes, outreach projects, drop-in centres, academic research, harm-reduction theory and a whole domain of ‘psy’ theories and interventions concerning the causes and effects of selling sex on individuals. People positioned as experts on the subject constantly lobby governments, write and speak at conferences on the subject, with the result that women who sell sex are pathologised as victims daily.

All these preoccupations and apparatuses provide employment for large numbers of people, the majority women. These social-sector jobs are considered dignified, sometimes prestigious and may even be tinged with a sacrificial brush—the idea that those employed in ‘helping’ are unselfish, not themselves gaining anything through their work. The fact that their projects are governmental exercises of power is ignored. There is strong resistance to the idea that rescue or social-justice projects might be questionable or criticised in general, and the internecine feminist conflict focussing on whether the activity called prostitution is inherently a form of violence or can be a plausible livelihood strategy distracts from any real reflection on the usefulness of the projects. Yet, despite the abundant efforts carried out on their behalf, there has been little improvement in the lot of women who sell sex since the whole helping project began two hundred years ago. ‘Programmes presuppose that the real is programmable,’ said Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller (1992: 183). In this case, ‘the real’ is too often a woman designated victim who does not want to be saved, so it is little wonder that programming does not work. This article therefore explores the beginnings of the identification of a pathological activity (prostitution) and the labelling of its practitioners (prostitutes), the governmental projects that resulted and the social effects on both groups involved. Continue reading →

US anti-traffickers think they have a ‘global responsibility’: just more imperialism

Do all Internet websites have a global responsibility just because they are accessible from everywhere? Most people would find that far-fetched, but I’ve received a letter signed by people calling themselves the anti-trafficking community who think so in one case – that of Craigslist. The letter asks the company to close its erotic and adult services sections all over the world, not only in the US, talking about ‘global responsibility’.

The letter demands a meaningful solution of how you intend to guarantee that no children are being sexually exploited on your site. Not only is this a bizarre request but is the same sort of thinking that justifies imperialist actions like invasions of other countries. It reminds me of a speech I heard that explained anti-trafficking campaigns around the world based on principles in the US Constitution.

The signers complain that Craigslist defended themselves at one point by saying that ‘experts’ in the ‘field’ of anti-trafficking approved of what they were doing (this is before they shut down the section in the US). On the contrary, say the signers of this letter, we are the real and only experts. Given the lack of evidence for most claims about trafficking it’s pretty silly to describe it as a field of knowledge, but that is the basis of this letter.

Choosing the right name and good keywords for social campaigns is crucial to success, and claiming to be the anti-trafficking community is not a bad effort. There are several implications to the claim:

that there is only one community that cares about victims of trafficking
that everyone in it saw this letter
that everyone who saw the letter signed it

But, of course, there are many other groups, ngos and individuals who do anti-trafficking work of one kind or another and who were undoubtedly not sent this letter to sign. I object to having the entire project of righting wrongs in this ‘field’ hijacked by a group with a particular ideology everyone does not share.

September 14, 2010
Sent via facsimile to
Jim Buckmaster, CEO
Craig Newmark, Founder
Craigslist, Inc.
1381 9th Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94122

Dear Craig Newmark & Jim Buckmaster,

The experts in the anti-trafficking field who have signed this letter stand together asking you to shut down all the Adult and Erotic Services sections of your website around the world.

We all know that plenty of activity has preceded this letter. There have been meetings, news articles, research studies, protests, letters from survivors, blogs, boycotts, earnings estimates, lawsuits, subpoenas, and plenty of other actions. The voices of survivors, advocates, service providers, local law enforcement, members of Congress, and State Attorneys General have all implored you to do more to fight the sex trafficking of women and girls that occurs on your site.

We thank you for voluntarily closing the Adult Services section of Craigslist in the United States. While this is a positive step, Craigslist is a global company, and it has a global responsibility. More than 250 Craigslist sites exist around the world that still feature “Erotic” sections where trafficked children and women are being sold for sex through your website.

Of particular concern is your repeated statement that anti-trafficking “experts” are supportive of your approach. For example, in one of Jim Buckmaster’s online responses on the Huffington Post, he states, “To the contrary, we are convinced Craigslist is a vital part of the solution to this age-old scourge. We’ve been told as much by experts on the front lines of this fight…”1

There are some who may want you to keep the Erotic Services sections going outside the United States for various reasons. Sex traffickers surely want you to keep the sections going because it helps them make high profits by advertising women and children to large audiences of paying customers. “Johns” who pay for commercial sex want you to keep the section because your site makes it easy and less risky for them to buy women and girls simply by surfing the Internet and perusing the photos on various ads. There may even be some law enforcement officials who see some value in placing decoy ads on your site, or using Craigslist ads as evidence in an investigation. However, we highly doubt that on balance, law enforcement would condone a venue that is a platform for the sex trafficking of women and children. The recent letter signed by 17 State Attorneys General strongly suggests that many law enforcement officials believe the best solution is to close the section, as you have done in the United States.

The signers of this letter are the experts on the issue of human trafficking. Many of us work on the front lines, directly with victims on a daily basis. Some of us are survivors of human trafficking.

p 2
With this letter, we are telling you that on the whole, Craigslist’s Adult and Erotic Services sections continue to be more part of the problem than part of the solution. On the day that Craigslist shut down its Adult Services section in the United States, were the pimps and johns who depend on the site to advance the sex trade happy or upset? The answer to this question should help guide your path forward as you address the remaining “Erotic” sections around the world.

We acknowledge that there are some things that Craigslist has done that are part of the solution. Offering to meet with law enforcement and non-profits is a good thing. The decision to start screening the Adults Services ads was a step forward. Eliminating the blatant nudity that persisted in past years in the United States’ Erotic section was also a step forward. Posting national hotlines, and cooperating with law enforcement when cases are found is useful and laudable. As stated above, voluntarily shutting down the Adult Services section in the United States is also a step in the right direction. Despite such steps forward, these efforts are not enough.

We are deeply concerned that you have not yet taken down the Erotic Services sections across the globe. We are also concerned that it seems that you are not applying the screening techniques that were used in the United States to all the other Erotic Services sections worldwide.

In changing the name of the Adult Services section from “Erotic” to “Adult” in the United States, why did you not implement this change globally across your entire site? Furthermore, for the “Adult Services” pages in the United States, there was a “Warning & Disclaimer” page that discusses human trafficking an sexual exploitation. This disclaimer page is also present for the “Erotic” sections in Canada. Yet, as of the date of this letter, there is no “Warning & Disclaimer” page for the other international “Erotic” pages. Nudity is also still present in the photos associated with some “Erotic” ads in the international pages. The reality that you have not made the same improvements globally across your site reveals a disingenuous and inconsistent response on your part. Moreover, the few helpful actions you have taken do not measure up to the amount of daily harm being facilitated by Craigslist through the thousands of Erotic Services ads around the world each day.

In a recent letter, Jim Buckmaster stated that human trafficking ads are “quite rare” on Craigslist.2 Based on our experience and collective knowledge, we know that the presence of human traffickers on your site is more frequent than you realize. Traffickers have figured out ways to post pictures of clothed women and children that can get past your screeners. The anti-trafficking field has yet to be presented with a meaningful solution of how you intend to guarantee that no children are being sexually exploited on your site. As a result, we ask that you take down the Adult or Erotic sections, wherever they appear on Craigslist.

Another important reality for you to realize is that law enforcement does not currently have the resources to review and conduct an investigation of every single Adult or Erotic Services ad on your site. The sheer volume of ads outpaces law enforcement’s ability to respond to each one. Consequently, maintaining the Erotic Services sections in other countries enables the majority of Erotic ads to thrive without a law enforcement deterrent. Cooperating with law enforcement when a rare case is brought is a short-term solution, not reflective of an overall systemic analysis of the crime problem that you are enabling.

p 3
You have asserted that removing the Adult or Erotic Services sections will not entirely eliminate the presence of sex ads on your site. This may be true, but eliminating the centralized thoroughfares of each designated “Erotic Services” section seriously disrupts pimps and johns who buy and sell women and children on Craigslist. Closing this section of Craigslist across the globe will send a clear signal to sexual predators that you will not stand for them using the site to sexually exploit children and women.

You argue that there are other online sites that advertise sex ads. Yes, the signers of this letter are aware of other sites with adult ads, and we are working to address those sites as well. But frankly, the user volume and name recognition of those sites pales in comparison to yours. They are not a household name like Craigslist.

We collectively feel that if you are seriously committed to ending the site’s use as a platform for sex trafficking of women and children, you will apply the same approach you recently took in the United States and immediately close the remaining Erotic sections around the world.

If you continue to keep the Erotic sections outside of the United States, we ask that you at least be honest and more specific about the reasons why you are keeping them. After receiving this letter, please do not claim that it is because anti-trafficking “experts” agree with you and wholly support your approach. In closing, we note that in one of Jim Buckmaster’s recent letters, he asked the question: “Would it not be a step backward to confine adult ads to venues that don’t cooperate with law enforcement, that don’t care what advocacy groups and nonprofits have to say?”3

This statement seems to indicate that Craigslist does care what advocacy groups and nonprofits have to say, more than other venues. If this is true, then you must care about this letter. Please hear what we have to say, read the signers of this letter, and recognize that the anti-trafficking field is standing with solidarity and unity, and collectively asking you to take down all the Adult and Erotic sections worldwide, completely and permanently.

1 Buckmaster, Jim. “An Open Invitation to Rachel Lloyd.” Craigslist Blog. 11 May 2010. Available at http://blog.craigslist.org/2010/05/ (visited September 13, 2010).
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.

To see who signed this letter Continue reading →

Sex trafficking victims help themselves to escape: Thais in Spain

I have objected to the use of the word myth to describe how trafficking is talked about nowadays. Myth implies fabrication, whereas I describe what’s going on as exaggeration, reductionism, over-simplification, stubborn refusal to recognise diversity and victimisation.

Here is a piece of trafficking news in which victims of the crime spoke up and got themselves rescued. Authentic victims who simultaneously acted to take control of their own lives:

Before the raid, one of the seven women had managed to contact the Thai Embassy in Spain and complained that herself and the others were forced into working as prostitutes at the club.

I am not saying this is always possible, but it illustrates how victims can and do act to help themselves. In the terrifying versions of the story told so often nowadays, traffickers exercise total control over sex slaves’ lives. But most sex jobs cannot involve guards remaining beside victims full-time, since the work they are meant to do involves private sex with customers. This Thai-Spanish story illustrates that Great White Rescuers are not always required and that third-world women are not so helpless and ignorant as the rescuers usually imply. Note that the women have also filed complaints against the trafficker back in Thailand.

Spanish sex ring exposed

29 August 2010, Bangkok Post

The Anti-Human Trafficking Division (AHTD) police have arrested a Thai man who is accused of luring seven Thai women into prostitution in Spain. . . allegedly sending seven women to work as sex workers at a night club in Spain’s northern city of Burgos.

The Thai Embassy in Madrid had alerted Spanish police to the suspected forced prostitution at La Boheme, the club, where 20 people, including the seven Thai women, were later rescued in a police raid earlier this year, said Pol Lt Gen Thangai. A Thai woman identified as Jinda Khetwat, who owned the club, fled before police arrived, he said.

Before the raid, one of the seven women had managed to contact the Thai Embassy in Spain and complained that herself and the others were forced into working as prostitutes at the club.

The AHTD investigation showed Mr Noppadon had lured the women to work at the club by telling them they would work as traditional Thai massage therapists. He had arranged their trips to Spain, including finding Thai men to be registered as their husbands to convince officials at Spain’s embassy in Bangkok they were newly married couples on a honeymoon trip to Spain.

Four victims have lodged complaints against Mr Noppadon, and his wife has been arrested in Spain, said the police.

A Spanish newspaper confirmed this story last November, by the way:

Ellas denunciaron: Al parecer, fueron las propias víctimas las que lograron hacer llegar la denuncia de estos hechos hasta la Policía, que desarticuló la parte ‘burgalesa’ de la trama. . . Estos hechos fueron puestos en conocimiento de la embajada del país de procedencia de las mujeres y posteriormente se procedió a la inspección del local. Diario de Burgos, noviembre 2009

My name is not spelled Laura Agustino or Agustine or Augustino or Augustine or Agostino or Augustin or Augustine. Correct is Laura Agustín

Polémica sobre trabajo sexual, anuncios de contacto, mafias, trata y periodismo

En España están hablando de nuevo de prohibir los anuncios de contacto con trabajadores sexuales – o prostitutas/os (y a veces conocidos como avisos de putas). Un artículo desde Tenerife expone los diversos argumentos pro y contra. El 20 Minutos acusa a los demás periódicos del proxenetismo. Malaprensa deconstuye cuidadosamente las cifras enormes siempre citadas sobre el número de prostitutas en España.

La voz de la libertad de expresión dice Partiendo de la base de que ejercer voluntariamente la prostitución no es delito en España, no veo ningún inconveniente en que una persona, haciendo uso de su libertad, se anuncie en un periódico para prestar ese servicio (Leopoldo Fernández Cabeza de Vaca).

Pero claro que la trata sí es ilegal y los que hacen campaña en contra de los anuncios argumentan que no son las trabajadoras sexuales las que se anuncian sino las mafias. El mismo presidente Zapatero se ha pronunciado en contra: no le conviene nada el hecho de que España es el único país de la Unión Europea que todavía permite que los periódicos dominantes-principales publiquen estos anuncios. Atrás está una feminista estatal, Bibiana Aído, ministra de la Igualdad. Es una historia emblemática de la Europa contemporánea.

Al mismo tiempo algo similar está pasando en Estados Unidos pero que tiene impacto para cualquier sitio con Internet – o sea, para todo el mundo. Craigslist, un enorme sitio web de anuncios clasificados, queda acusado del ‘tráfico’ por personas y fiscales estatales que creen que se está utilizando el servicio para explotar a los niños. Escribí sobre esto ayer.

Anti-trafficking campaign with movie star: Emma Thompson doing good

What are we to make of this photograph? Who is saying HELP ME? Is this a men’s toilet or a women’s? Is the victim hidden behind the wall? There’s something fundamentally wrong with the grammar of this warning. And then Emma Thompson – is she identifying with the person crying help? or perhaps a bit nonplussed, or distracted by the dirtiness of the sink.

Here Emma is on surer ground: the correct response is dismay and disapproval that sexual acts could be written on a list with prices next to them. Unless it’s the prices that bother her – or the amounts of time. Do the men beside the movie star not look slightly uncomfortable? Of course the menu-price list is a fit-up invented by some intern who didn’t know how these things work.

Emma with Mr Costa of UNODC. Is that an anti-trafficking mural painted on the wavy metal wall? It turns out to be part of a giant installation. The fake bathroom and price list must be inside.

The big letters on top spell JOURNEY.

Here’s that picture from the front. Now it’s clearer that the viewer is being asked Is this sexy to you? At least I think so. But who is meant to answer? And what if some viewers’ response is Yes, in fact, I find it sexy ? Awkward.

My point is not to claim that trafficking is a joke or efforts to stop it always ridiculous but to suggest that many attempts at campaigning (these included) are confusing, non-educational and belittling to real victims. Or is the whole exercise simply meant to demonstrate a set of values for people who already share them?

‘With two of us you had backup’: Prostitute on trial because she didn’t work alone, Britain

A woman who sold sex from home along with colleagues goes on trial in the UK for brothel-keeping. This charge is possible when laws are written to discourage people from exploiting others for gain, living off immoral earnings and a host of other vague conditions. The sex worker in question, Claire Finch, alternated shifts with a couple of colleagues so that no one was ever alone: ‘My main thing is safety. It’s not safe to work on your own. With two of us you had back up, you had camaraderie.’ Since she was raided she has had to work alone.

So prostitutes must work alone; they may use no management or support services; share no workplace; enjoy no collegial relationships. Only independent workers are to be respected even minimally. The contradictions of such laws are simply bizarre.

The story behind the trial and further comments are from the ECP:

On 19 November 2008, 20 uniformed police officers from Kempston Economic Crime Unit, kicked in Ms Finch’s front door and searched every room in the house including Ms Finch’s personal belongings, taking over £700 from her purse that had been put aside to pay the mortgage. Her laptop computer, mobile phone, driving licence and passport were also taken. No receipt was given.

Brothel-keeping charges were introduced in 1956. Since Proceeds of Crime legislation (reinforced by the Policing and Crime Act), raids and prosecutions against women working from premises have escalated. Police and prosecutors have a vested interest: the police keep 25% of any assets confiscated both at the time and from subsequent prosecutions (50% in some areas); the Crown Prosecution Service keeps another 25%; and the Inland Revenue the rest. Even if no one is charged, the money is rarely returned. Women who have worked for years to put money aside lose not only their livelihood but their home, car, life savings, jewellery, etc.

Finch’s case contradicts the Crown Prosecution Service’s obligation to consider the public interest when considering charge. Public-interest considerations for brothel-keeping charges are:

To encourage prostitutes to find routes out of prostitution and to deter those who create the demand for it

A criminal conviction is the biggest obstacle to leaving prostitution.

To keep prostitutes off the street to prevent annoyance to members of the public

Ms Finch’s neighbours have no complaints and are coming to court to support her. Closing down premises drives women onto the street where it is ten times more dangerous to work.

To prevent people leading or forcing others into prostitution

All the women were working consensually and independently. There was no force, coercion, violence or trafficking.

To penalise those who organise prostitutes and make a living from their earnings.

There was no profiteering. Everyone worked collectively and shared expenses.

Generally, the more serious the incident, the more likely a prosecution will be required

While time and money are going into prosecuting Ms Finch, the investigation of rape and other violence continues to be downgraded. Public opinion opposes women being criminalised for working collectively and consensually.

The age of the prostitute and the position of those living off the earnings will be relevant

All the women working with Ms Finch were over forty, mature women able “to make their own minds up. They’re not being hoodwinked.” Ms Finch has said that as a mother, working with inexperienced younger women “would not sit morally well with me.”

The case is to be tried at Luton Crown Court, 9.30, Monday 26 April to Thursday 29 April.

This won’t stop trafficking: UK law on exploitation and gain

On the left you see the now common phenomenon of nicely dressed women attempting to save naked Other women from the chains of sex slavery. In England and Wales, the Policing and Crime bill that just came into effect says it will help stop trafficking like this:

On 1 April 2010, it will become an offence to pay for sex with someone who has been forced, threatened, exploited or otherwise coerced or deceived into providing the sexual services by someone else who has engaged in such conduct for gain. If convicted of the offence you could face a fine of up to £1,000, a court summons and a criminal record and risk having your name mentioned in newspapers. It will be no defence for a person to say that they did not know the prostitute was being forced or threatened.

The last sentence is known as a strict liability defence, invoked in situations the law believes to be ‘inherently dangerous’, which is how the British government now views prostitution, in a breath-taking reproduction of all the worst cliches generalised to ‘most’ and ‘many’ women who sell sex (and, as usual, only to women):

Most women involved in street-based prostitution are not there through choice. They are among the most vulnerable people in our society. Nearly all prostitutes are addicted to drugs or alcohol. Many of them have been trafficked into the country by criminals, and are held against their will. Many were abused as children, and many are homeless. Kerb crawlers, on the other hand, have a choice. Men who pay for sex are indirectly supporting drug dealers and organised crime groups, and funding violence and abuse. They are fuelling the exploitation of women by creating the demand for prostitution.

Most commentators object to how the law unfairly affects maids, managers and other conventionally employed people who work in sex venues without selling sex themselves – as well as unfairly condemning sex workers to constant aloneness. The law is also unworkable as a way to stop trafficking, as I wrote in The Guardian at an early stage of the bill:

The police will have to identify the real trafficked victims in order to identify customers at fault – a notoriously difficult enterprise. In a few high-profile cases, self-identified victims name and help find their exploiters, and sometimes these traffickers are successfully prosecuted. But these cases are few and far between. More often it is difficult to point to migrants who knew nothing about their future jobs, who agreed to nothing about their illicit travels and who are willing to denounce perpetrators who may be family or former friends and lovers.

The editors almost instantly hid the piece where it wouldn’t be seen.

UNAIDS People on the Move, including mobile sex workers and their clients

Last year I contributed comments and resources to a UNAIDS paper written to support discussion for their Thematic Segment on People on the Move—Forced Displacement and Migrant Populations. The paper gives basic information on types of movement and links between mobility and HIV vulnerability, including how to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support. ‘The paper points out that mobile people and international migrants are diverse, ranging from highly educated and high-earning professionals, to low-earning unskilled and exploited labourers. Although very different circumstances may drive migration and mobility, it is not mobility per se, but the conditions under which people move—and the ways they are treated throughout the migration cycle—pre-departure, in transit, at destinations and upon return—that most determine their vulnerabilities, which in turn affect their risks of acquiring HIV.’

This language and tone are to be celebrated, departing as they do from the usual crude separation assumed to exist between a freely-choosing middle class that always travels happily versus a downtrodden, forced poor that ‘migrates’, often unhappily. The paper is available as People on the move – forced displacement and migrant populations

I’m pleased that a boxed highlight in the report called Mobile sex workers reads pretty straightforwardly (no heavy emphasis on victimhood) and refers to clients without demonising them.

Sex workers are highly mobile both within and across national borders. Documented and undocumented migration for sex work often occurs between neighbouring countries, but there is also considerable inter-regional movement. The migration and mobility of sex workers can significantly increase their vulnerability to HIV and sexually transmitted infections. Many migrant and mobile sex workers, especially those who are undocumented, are excluded from basic education, legal and public health-care systems, and are vulnerable to violence and other forms of abuse from customers, criminal gangs and corrupt law enforcement officials, with little or no social or legal support and protection. In addition, migrant sex workers face additional cultural and linguistic barriers that adversely impact upon their ability to access local services and support networks. To reduce HIV risk and vulnerability for mobile and migrant sex workers there are key actions that need to be funded and implemented for all sex workers irrespective of their gender (women, men, transgender) or legal status. These include access to HIV prevention and treatment services, comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services, legal information and advice and necessary social services. To support these services, training of healthservice providers and law enforcement agencies addressing stigma, discrimination and violence needs to be developed along with occupational health and safety standards to make sex work safer.

Clients of sex workers are also highly mobile and their behaviour determines epidemic speed and severity (Commission on AIDS in Asia, 2008). Currently, few programmes target clients directly to promote safer sexual behaviour. Such programmes should: be provided in the workplace (where appropriate); be based on the different settings where sex work occurs; provide clients with information to protect sex workers, their regular sexual partners and themselves from HIV and other sexually transmitted infections; emphasize client responsibility to treat sex workers with dignity and respect; and incorporate approaches to eliminate genderbased violence in the context of sex work.

MSM, some sex workers, want services without being counted and outed, Kenya

‘How do you convince me to come out and say I am a homosexual yet the same government that is asking me to do this criminalizes what I am engaged in? I would rather they offered the services without going into the business of knowing who we are and trying to count us.’

Stigma for homosexuals is strong in Kenya, as this earlier story showed. The issue in these excerpts is the government’s belief that before it can provide HIV-prevention services to these men they have to be identified, surveyed and counted. But, as often happens, those to be researched don’t want to have to identify themselves to authorities when homosexuality is against the law in Kenya. Seems obvious, no?

Kenya: New survey to inform HIV programming for MSM

Photo IRIN

Irin Plus News
10 November 2009

Nairobi: A planned national survey of men who have sex with men (MSM) will be the first step in the government’s plan to incorporate this high-risk group into the country’s HIV programme, a senior government official has said. “We have continued to ignore this group of people yet they are responsible for a big chunk of new HIV infections; we have resolved as a government that we cannot sit back and wait for things to get out of hand,” said Nicholas Muraguri, head of the National AIDS and Sexually transmitted infections Control Programme (NASCOP). . . .

HIV programming for MSM is extremely limited despite the country’s national strategic plan for HIV/AIDS classing them as a “most at-risk population”. “We cannot do this [provide HIV programmes for MSM] without knowing roughly how many they are and what special needs they require; I hope the survey that we will embark on will help us answer some of these questions,” Muraguri said.

He noted that the survey – due to start in December and last six months – will attempt to discover information such as the specific sexual health risks and needs of MSM, MSM “hot spots” around the country, and the number of MSM-friendly health facilities available. It will use respondent-driven sampling, recruiting openly gay men to reach out to other MSM who may not be out of the closet, and using existing MSM-friendly facilities to help conduct the research. . . .

Joshua* is a male commercial sex worker in Nairobi who recently received training from NASCOP on reaching out to his peers with HIV/AIDS messages. “Today I talked to 75 male commercial sex workers – 40 of them are HIV-positive but they do not know what to do,” he told IRIN/PlusNews. “Many are homeless after being kicked out of their homes due to stigma.” Joshua hopes the survey will enable the government and NGOs to provide more services to MSM.

“Currently at a clinic in Nairobi, we are given one bottle of [water-based] lubricant to last three months but you know as a commercial sex worker, you finish it in a week,” he added. “So it means for the remaining time, you engage in sex without the lubricant, putting yourself at great risk.”

He noted that there was also a lack of sufficient knowledge about the risks associated with HIV and anal sex in the general population. “Many women [clients] approach us for anal sex wrongly believing that it lowers their chances of getting infected,” he said. “Everybody should be educated on the dangers of this kind of sex because it seems people have the wrong perception.”

However, not all MSM are as enthusiastic about the prospect of being counted and questioned by a government that has thus far shown little support for the rights of MSM. “People in this country are still very homophobic and we are stigmatized a lot; who will want to come out to agree that he is a homosexual? Let them address issues of stigma first,” said Donald*, who has not come out of the closet. “How do you convince me to come out and say I am a homosexual yet the same government that is asking me to do this criminalizes what I am engaged in?”

“I would rather they offered the services without going into the business of knowing who we are and trying to count us,” he added. Continue reading →

What does sex work have to do with climate change? Anti-prostitution campaign at Climate Conference, Copenhagen

Susanne Møller, SIO

Sex workers in Denmark are protesting a campaign against prostitution during the UN Climate Change Conference. The city of Copenhagen wants to discourage delegates from buying sex, despite the fact that it is perfectly legal there and has nothing to do with climate change. The sex workers’ interest group, SIO (Sexarbejdernes Interesseorganisation), was not consulted and so, annoyed, they are offering free sex to any conference delegate who turns in his ridiculous postcard (see below), which also went to 160 hotels.

This is sheer discrimination. Ritt Bjerregaard is abusing her position as Lord Mayor in using her power to prevent us carrying out our perfectly legal job. I don’t understand how she can be allowed to contact people in this way. – SIO Spokeswoman Susanne Møller

The unfounded idea at the bottom of the city’s campaign is that prostitution increases enormously when big events come to town and therefore trafficking and exploitation must. Meanwhile, legal businesses are punished. The below Norwegian story focuses on SIO’s ideas.

Derfor tilbyr Susanne gratis sex

Pål Nordseth, 7 december 2009, Dagbladet.no

Susanne Møller, prostituert i København og talskvinne for Sexarbejdernes Interesseorganisation (SIO), sier deres kampanje under det kommende klimatoppmøtet er et svar på det de oppfatter som årelang hets fra kommunens side. Ved å framvise offisielt akkrediteringskort for FN-møtet, samt et postkort fra kommunenes anti-prostitusjonskampanje, vil delegatene kunne benytte seg av 79 organiserte sexarbeidere helt gratis.

Vi gjør dette for å skape oppmerksomhet om et problem: At København kommune under toppmøtet profilerer seg selv på bekostning av en helt lovlig bransje. Dette rammer sexarbeiderne, som ikke er blitt rådspurt på forhånd, sier Møller til Dagbladet.

Nekter for toppmøte-oppsving
Mens både Norge og Sverige har kriminalisert sexkjøp, er det fortsatt legalt å betale prostituerte for sex i Danmark. Susanne Møller avviser blankt at sexmarkedet i København får et oppsving under store internasjonale hendelser i byen, slik det hevdes i kommunens behandling av anti- prostitusjonskampanjen.

Dette er helt udokumenterte påstander. Vi lever av våre faste kunder, og kommer det noen ekstra til under slike møter, er det ikke noe vi legger merke til. . . Selv om det var slik, er det feil å se på det som et problem. Om delegatene har sex eller ikke under toppmøtet, er det en privat sak. Det vi gjør er helt legalt og skader ingen, og som alle andre forretningsdrivende ønsker vi selvfølgelig flere kunder og bedre omsetning. Jeg synes det er forkastelig, det kommunen gjør. De innfører sin helt egen kriminalisering, legger hun til.

Talskvinna sier så drastiske tiltak som å tilby gratis sex er nødvendig for at de prostituerte skal kunne nå fram med sitt budskap.

Kommunens mål er å få en prostitusjonsfri by. Toppmøtekampanjen er bare et ledd i det som har vært en årelang hets av sexarbeidere. Vi går gjerne i dialog med kommunen, men har så langt ikke hørt fra dem. Heller ikke at vi gikk ut med vår motkampanje. – Susanne Møller

Studentesse e precarie in solidarietà con le sex workers: Women are not victims or social problems, Rome

Here’s a beautiful example of a protest with red umbrellas, symbol of sex worker rights used here by students in Rome in front of Berlusconi’s residence. As in many such demonstrations in Europe these days, alliances are sought between those concerned about ever more precarious employment (not least for students), migrants and people who sell sex. Here protesters refer overtly to government measures that force women to be either victims or a social problem policymakers have to Do Something about. Yet another bill is proposed in Italy to suppress street prostitution, this time of course in the name of criminalising trafficking and exploitation. At the end of the video note the struggle between larger male security types and smaller female protesters on a narrow street: Cinematic.

Escort sauvage…Non c’è casa più chiusa di Palazzo Grazioli

27 November 2009

Oggi 100 donne, studentesse, precarie, migranti hanno manifestato di fronte a Palazzo Grazioli contro il ddl Carfagna e il blocco alla commercializzazione della RU486, approvato ieri dalla commissione salute del Senato. Nonostante l’inutile aggressività della polizia le donne sono riuscite ad aprire uno striscione con su scritto: “NESSUNA CASA E’ PIU CHIUSA DI PALAZZO GRAZIOLI. NO ALLA LEGGE CARFAGNA”. Rossetti rossi e ombrelli rossi, simbolo internazionale delle sexworkers, sono stati i simboli scelti per comunicare la nostra solidarietà alle prostitute di strada che con la nuova proposta di legge rischiano l’arresto. Tra gli slogan “Ma quali Escort, ma che moralità, vogliamo diritti in tutte le città”, “Basta ipocrisia, basta sfruttamento, libere di scegliere in ogni momento”. L’azione ha voluto denunciare le politiche di governo e parlamento contro la libertà di scegliere delle donne, che si concretizzano in misure e proposte di legge che in nome della sicurezza perimetrano la nostra libertà e controllano i nostri corpi.

Il comunicato

La giornata mondiale contro la violenza sulle donne in Italia cade nel pieno del secondo scandalo di “sesso e potere” dell’anno. Dopo le escort di Berlusconi arrivano le trans di Marrazzo.
E le imbarazzanti rivelazioni sui meccanismi di reclutamento delle donne interni alla PDL e per le cariche elettive e di governo lasciano il posto all’ennesimo mistero italiano, l’omicidio di Brenda, in cui potere politico, criminalità organizzata e carabinieri si sovrappongono e confondono in un quadro inquietante.

Ma non sono serviti gli scandali e le rivelazioni sulle abitudini, i gusti e la propensione al sesso a pagamento di alcuni suoi eminenti rappresentanti a costringere la classe politica italiana ad abbandonare le ipocrisie e a fare i conti con la realtà.

Mentre l’opposizione, bacchettona e morbosa, inorridisce di fronte alle frequentazioni tanto di Berlusconi che di Marrazzo e lancia la crociata anti-Berlusconi parallelamente alle purghe interne, abbiamo una maggioranza di governo che fa passare con la solita scusa della sicurezza la legge Carfagna contro la prostituzione, il cui leader Berlusconi rivendica per sè il diritto alla privacy. La libertà è di tutti e non solo delle alte cariche dello stato: se Palazzo Grazioli è zona franca, allora entriamo noi!

La legge Carfagna, anticipata dalle ordinanza dei sindaci, vuole apparentemente essere un intervento punitivo contro lo sfruttamento della prostituzione, ma in realtà, invece che punire gli sfruttatori, colpisce solo le prostitute di strada e i loro clienti con l’arresto, additandole tra i nemici pubblici numero uno. Lungi dal contrastare la tratta delle migranti spesso minorenni, costringe le prostitute a ritornare alle case chiuse – bandite dalla legge Merlin del 1958 – luoghi di ghettizzazione, sfruttamento e violenza fuori da qualsiasi visibilità e controllo. Molto più utile sarebbe abolire lo status di clandestinità, condizione sine qua non dello sfruttamento sessuale e non delle e dei migranti.

Tutto questo accade mentre le statistiche parlano di una fetta sempre più ampia della popolazione maschile che ricorre al sesso a pagamento. In più il caso D’Addario ha reso esplicito che la prostituzione non è fatta soltanto di sfruttamento e costrizione ma può essere una libera scelta per quanto per alcuni difficile da comprendere.

Nel momento in cui le prostitute e i loro clienti hanno avuto tale e tanto “autorevole” visibilità ci saremmo aspettate maggior rispetto per delle lavoratrici e maggior onestà nell’ammettere che non si può punire e condannare pubblicamente ciò di cui si gode nel privato delle proprie case.

Infine, apprendiamo con indignazione che ieri la commissione salute del Senato ha votato un documento che pone il veto alla commercializzazione della RU486, la pillola abortiva al centro del più ampio dibattito sulla libertà di scelta. Le inquietanti motivazioni di tale voto sono l’ennesima testimonianza di come ad avere la giusta rilevanza non sia il tema della tutela della salute fisica e psicologica e della libertà delle donne ma, al contrario, la necessità di costruire sempre più capillari e intrusive pratiche di controllo sui nostri corpi.

No al reato di clandestinità
No alle case chiuse
No alla segregazione e allo sfruttamento
Per il diritto di scegliere della propria vita e sul proprio corpo
Verità per Brenda
Libertà, diritti e dignità per tutt@
Studentesse e precarie in solidarietà con le sex workers

Rhode Island sex workers out of business

Photos of her flat contributed by an indoor worker in the UK

The other week a bill passed the US state of Rhode Island’s legislature closing a loophole that permitted prostitution indoors. While Nevada’s licensed brothels are famous out of proportion to their number and size, few people knew about the Rhode Island situation, which had been going on for many years. In the following story I removed government spokespeople’s statements about how this law ‘brings the state into line’ with the rest of the US (always excepting Nevada) and will help stop sex trafficking and other kinds of organised crime (go to the original story for those). Here are excerpts focusing on the comments of one former sex worker: how she sees the difference in her life if forced to stop selling sex and go into various government assistance programmes. Also note the comments by police: since no extra funds have been allotted for enforcement, he expects little to change.

What does the ban on indoor prostitution mean for RI?
Vasundhara Prasad, The Brief, 10 November 2009

. . . While it was clear that the legal status of indoor prostitution was an unintentional loophole for the past several years, what is less clear is the impact that the ban has had on those whose livelihoods depended it. Are all indoor prostitutes victims of sex trafficking and abuse? Stephanie, a pseudonym, is a twenty five year old mother who runs her own service.

Stephanie: “I’m a single mother, at one point I didn’t have money to feed my kids or myself, so that’s when I got into the business and that’s how i’ve been supporting myself and my kids.” But since the ban was signed into law, she’s stopped, and she’s left with very few options, especially in this economy. “Now that the law’s been passed, I’ve stopped but I also have no money and I’m not sure of what to do now. I’m looking for a job, but it’s kinda impossible. Running out of food, so it’s a sucky situation.”

When asked about people in this situation, Amy Kempe insists that people like Stephanie have other options. “There are a number of resources available to assist individuals during economic recession. Be it food stamps, be it public assistance, be it job training programs.” . . . training programs in healthcare, customer service, and biotechnology. But the single mother of a two and seven year old says the quality of life for her family is dramatically worse when she relies on government services.

Stephanie: “I struggled on a daily basis. I barely had enough to pay the bills and the rent. Then when I started in the business, my kids never went hungry another day. I mean, we went from living on peanut butter sandwiches and noodles to having nice normal meals – breakfast, lunch, and dinner – and being able take my kids and just live a good life. Now I’m not really sure what I’m going to do.” And she says she’s not the only one in this situation.

Stephanie: “Almost every girl I know that has ever been in the business has children and this is how they support, you know, their lifestyle. And a lot of the girls I know go to school – so the way it’s affecting me, it’s going to affect them. Basically paying the rent and making sure the kids are fed. It’s gonna be hard.”

. . . Whether or not the ban on prostitution will be good or bad for the state and its residents, what about the issue of enforcement? Lieutenant Correias had this to say. “It’s not legal any more to go into someone’s home or their home or a hotel room and engage in prostitution. . . So they should be prepared that if they’re going to continue that they may get arrested.” But he added that he doesn’t see this new law as the most important issue on the agenda of his Narcotics and Organized Crime unit. “It’ll be our responsibility to enforce it, but no we’re not getting any more manpower or working more hours. If we were to have any reason to believe that there’s human trafficking involved certainly we’ll move it up the priority scale, but the reduction of violent crime and gun violence specifically will always be our number one priority.”

. . . “If you’re looking at this crime, it’s a misdemeanor. I mean you’re not going to see a lot of people going to jail for prostitution. We’ll never rid the city of prostitution.”

With that knowledge in hand, one can’t help but wonder the same thing as our single mother of two: “I just didn’t see how it was necessary because I didn’t see how it was harming anyone. I thought there were bigger issues that needed to be tackled in the state like the unemployment rate and the crime. But I guess this was something they thought was necessary.”

The antithesis of love? Dan Allman reviews Sex at the Margins

Sex at the Margins has now been reviewed 17 times in academic journals! And those journals focus on many different fields: sociology, anthropology, migration, feminism, gender, geography – here’s a full list. I marvel especially when someone I admire admires my book. Dan Allman, who wrote M is for mutual, A is for acts, has published a review of Sex at the Margins for the journal Sexualities. To be compared to Clifford Geertz means being understood, and what is better than that? And how about a comparison with Camille Paglia? Here’s Dan’s review.

Laura María Agustín, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry. London and New York: Zed Books, 2007.

Some books about prostitution and sex trafficking can make for challenging reading. Not because of the subject matter necessarily, but because of the ways contemporary politics and voice give rise to a kind of morally-charged discourse.

What makes Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry so enlightening, is that while it is very much a book about prostitution and sex trafficking and the ways in which societies have evolved to culturally construct the regulation of sex work within free labour market practices, on another level it is a book about how history, modern migration patterns and the marginality of the ‘other’, and the rise of the social have come together to shape European and global sex markets.

For the book’s author, Laura María Agustín, much earlier writings evade ‘experiences and points of view that do not fit, silencing difference and producing unease in those who do not see themselves as included’ (p. 9).

The observations that ground Agustín’s study of sex at the margins began during the 1990s while she worked along the US/Mexican border with those seeking asylum in the USA. Such experiences are supplemented with work to document NGO activities in the Caribbean, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Spain – all of which provide rich loam for Agustín’s analytic replanting of tourism, migration and how women within different sectors of the labour market are routinely conceptualized by a variety of helping social sectors.

Throughout her journeys, Agustín’s ‘position in the field was a mix of insider, outsider, stakeholder, political actor and researcher’ which ‘shifted according to the conditions of the moment’ (p. 141).

In the book, such multifaceted positioning is complimented by an approach to fieldwork which is anthropological in theory and methodology. This is primarily because of the ability of this disciplinary lens to avoid the moralizing frameworks and the labelling of the buying and selling of sex as ‘deviance, victimisation or violence’ (p. 137).

Embracing an ambiguity somewhere between participant, observer and informant such as that promoted by Clifford Geertz as at the heart of successful anthropological research, Agustín describes and justifies her shifting roles and the perspectives they allow as a form of multi-sited ethnography. Part of the work’s success is due to the author’s ability to weave both first and third person narratives in such a way as to maintain the reader’s interest without diverging from the intrinsically academic nature of an argument which positions social programming aimed at helping migrants as a form of social control.

The book succeeds also in its contribution of an outstandingly detailed and researched history of prostitution, which is used to lay the groundwork for a nod to the governmentality school of Michel Foucault and Nikolas Rose, and an emphasis on how the helping professions have developed beyond charitable foundations to a form of bonded solidarity, and in the process have come to label and marginalize the very women they seek to help.

At its core, Agustín’s work takes on the polemic of prostitution and contextualizes it relative to three kinds of professions: domestic work, caring activities and sex services. It then applies changing theories of tourism and migration to help explain how sex work has come to be uniquely positioned at the margins. It describes how rescue industries’ tactics and practices reproduce a prostitute discourse, essentially perpetuating the divide between the morally-sound helpers and the morally-corrupt helped, suggesting that ‘if the definition of the “prostitute” was to change to describe only suffering victims, perhaps the conflict over terms could be resolved’ (p. 181).

While Sex at the Margins is not politically neutral, it does pay homage to its politic through evidence, analysis and canny interpretation. This is in large part why the book manages to triumph over the intelligent but often-lacking literature which has preceded it.

As one might say of the scholarly writings of Geertz or Goffman, were Agustín’s new book to be expanded or elaborated at all, it could well be through further detail of the successes and also challenges of combining a historian’s reading with an objectivist’s ethnography and a participant’s observation.

Yet at the same time, it is through an attention to multiple perspectives and diverse sources that makes Agustín a scholarly storyteller of the best kind. Well travelled, observant, erudite and extremely knowledgeable, she reminds one of Camille Paglia at her most formidable – only dare say sexier, and a touch more caustic.

Sure to be interrogated for her perspective while respected for her scholarship, Agustín and her new work promise to contribute new thoughts to the contentious debates between the growing minority who see migrant sex work as a contextually viable migrant labour practice, and the steadfast majority who declare that prostitution is always, in all situations, the antithesis of love.

Dan Allman
The University of Edinburgh, UK and University of Toronto, Canada

Migrants, favours, protection, sex: examples from Embracing the Infidel

In Embracing the Infidel Behzad Yaghmaian narrates his journey to record the stories of migrants trying to find a place to settle in Europe. There are women in the book, but the majority of detailed stories are told by men and boys. Many of the plots are about physical hardships encountered whilst being smuggled across borders: Afghanistan to Iran, Iran to Turkey, Turkey to Greece and Bulgaria, France to England. Long scenes are set in Istanbul, Sofia, Athens, Paris, Calais. Contradictory, arbitrary, frustrating, paper-oriented refugee policy is arguably the book’s main villain, though the sadism of border guards and swindles by smugglers are more dramatic. I especially appreciate Yaghmaian’s ability to tell terrible stories without falling into a victimising, maudlin tone (the subject of Forget Victimisation).

The sex industry is seldom mentioned, but here are a couple of excerpts that show how some migrants find temporary relief through supplying sexual services. The first excerpt tells about men who find male sexual protectors; in the second the protectors are women. In the latter description, you may detect some ambiguity: is this ‘pure business’ or is love and affection involved, too?

The boys with a baba were sheltered. They were paid good pocket money, wined and dined, and dressed in nice outfits. They were young Iranians and Kurds from northern Iraq, men in their early or late twenties. The Kurds came from the villages, the rugged mountains of northern Iraq. The Iranians arrived from small towns, ghettos of big cities, and poor neighborhoods of the capital. They came with a dream. Many failed. They remained in Athens and became the ‘bar kids’ of Victoria Square. Dressing up in their best, they would frequent the gay bars around the square looking for a baba or a customer in search of sexual pleasure. [p 203]

[In Calais] a few fared better than the rest. In their teens or early twenties, some found love in the arms of older French women, some in their sixties. The women had kind and motherly looks, gave the men love and attention, tucked them in their beds, and slept with them. The young men had the comfort of a home and all that came with it. Sex was the central part of the agreement. There was no shower or clean bed for those failing to deliver. This was a strict business deal, with its own rules and codes of conduct. [p 307]

Embracing the Infidel, Stories of Muslim Migrants on the Journey West, New York: Bantam Dell, 2005.

There is a large literature on inter-generational relationships involving exchanges of sex and protection that are considered traditional and conventional in many parts of the world. One example is Enjo Kosai: Compensated Dating.

Jesus loves strippers: Christian outreach

In campaigns protesting raids and other drastic actions against prostitutes and sex workers, Christianity is often slagged off. That’s not fair; it’s how people interpret their duty as Christians that can lead to abuse. Here’s an example of Christian outreach, carried out in the same sort of way that civilian harm-reduction projects are done. Note that this helper ‘won’t apply for federal funds because she doesn’t want anything to interfere with “preaching the Word,”’and doesn’t see her role as trying to get women out of the industry Excerpts only – click on the title for the complete story.

Jesus & strippers

Emily Belz, WorldMag.com

Los Angeles. Near midnight. Industrial buildings. Empty streets. Full parking lot. Men wander into a nondescript building, “Fantasy Castle.” Bouncers stand at the door. Inside, on stage. women dance to earn their rent. Men watch in the dark. Booze, perfume, and loneliness.

A group of young women with fistfuls of flamingo pink gift bags approach the bouncer and offer him cookies—yes, cookies. This is the second strip club they have visited, pulling up in a church minibus: They have five more on their list as they canvass neighborhoods north of Long Beach, south of Compton. The bouncer takes the cookies and lets them inside to the bar, the customers, and the dancers, who are all lined up on the stage.

“I hated lining up—like a cattle call,” remarks Harmony Dust outside the club. Dust, a former stripper, started slipping notes on the windshields of dancers six years ago telling them “you are loved”—and her ministry, I Am a Treasure, was born. Along with other women including former strippers, she lavishes love on women in the sex industry and teaches that Jesus loves them too. On this night, several of the dancers turn away from customers to give the gift-baggers bear hugs and tell them their real names.

Treasures—that’s what most people call the ministry—has a simple recipe: Bring gifts of lip gloss, jewelry, and handwritten cards into dressing rooms in strip clubs. Wait for phone calls, texts, or emails from the women that often come in just hours after the visit. “This is largely a seed-sowing ministry,” said Dust—and when sprouts appear, volunteers help with childcare and rides to church. They listen, talk, mentor, wait, and hope.

. . . 70 percent of Christians admitted to struggling with porn in their daily lives. Another poll by Rick Warren’s pastors.com in 2002 showed 54 percent of pastors had viewed pornography within the last year. . . . Dust started stripping under the name Monique at a club by the airport and managed to complete her undergraduate degree even while she was working in the sex industry at night. . . .

In 2003, while driving to the airport to pick John up, she drove by the same club where she used to strip—but she couldn’t pass it by. Filled with emotion and conviction, she pulled into the parking lot, and the security guard let her put notes on the women’s windshields telling them that they are loved. Then she couldn’t pass by clubs anymore, and she and others who joined her work began building relationships with dancers. She saw women eagerly reach for that same love she found in Jesus.

Dust doesn’t see her role as trying to get women out of the industry or tell them that their jobs are sinful. No one needs to tell them, she said—anyone in the industry feels a certain sickness in her soul. What they need is someone to extend the gospel through love. But she’s quick to say that Treasures volunteers don’t see themselves as strippers’ “saviors.” “I have nothing—I have lip gloss,” Dust said, laughing. “And I probably only have that because of Jesus.” The organization functions off a skeleton of a budget—under $100,000 a year—and Dust won’t apply for federal funds because she doesn’t want anything to interfere with “preaching the Word.”

West Africa’s children: are they trafficked? What are child rights?

Young girl in Benin’s largest market in Cotonou. Whether she is an economic migrant or victim of trafficking is central to a study of children’s migration in West Africa. Photo Phuong Tran/IRIN

Research into how ‘child trafficking’ works is revealing the flaws inherent in this notion. Recently I published a post on some of the cultural contradictions that impede research with migrant children in the US. The following article confirms problems in West Africa. I’ve highlighted significant new ideas from people questioning issues in the region.

WEST AFRICA: But is it really trafficking?

Lomé, Togo, 6 January 2009 (IRIN) – For years children’s rights groups have been fighting child trafficking in West Africa. Now, some of those groups are questioning how children have benefited from anti-trafficking interventions as they launch a project to understand children’s perilous migration throughout West Africa.

The nearly one-million dollar initiative led by UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), International Organization for Migration (IOM), and NGOs Plan International, Save the Children Sweden, and Terre des Hommes will conduct national and regional workshops and focus groups to produce a 2010 report on the reasons behind children’s regional migration. Terre des Hommes’ Olivier Feneyrol told IRIN assigning blame for children’s exploitation on rogue traffickers is misdirected.

Mobility

Largely absent from the planning documents of the project, “Mobility of children and youth in West Africa,” is the word trafficking. Rather, partners undertaking the study in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea and Togo speak of regional mobility.

“Children have been moving around the region for centuries and working just as long. That is the cultural reality here,” said Feneyrol, regional adviser for the West Africa office of non-profit organisation Terre des Hommes. “Some of that movement and work is dangerous. For years, we have approached this problem as a fight against trafficking, but this has not really benefited children. We have to move beyond focusing exclusively on trafficking to a more global strategy where we take into account children’s reality.”

Child rights groups and law enforcement agencies are fighting something they have not truly understood, Feneyrol told IRIN. “Do we really know the varied forms of migration? Who are the intermediaries? How are these voyages financed? What are the conditions that children leave behind? “Why are they taking risks and what are they searching? How can we fight a phenomenon we do not truly understand?” Continue reading →

Is Decriminalization of Prostitution Harm Reduction?

I am in Porto, Portugal’s second-largest city, to give a plenary talk at the opening of a conference on harm reduction called CLAT (Conferência Latina sobre Redução de Riscos in Portugese). I had rather sketchy notions of how harm reduction could be used as a framework for talking about sex work/prostitution, which is most often understood in relation to reducing the harms of injecting drugs. On top of that, the panel I’m speaking on is titled Human Rights and Harm Reduction, which found doubly confusing. So I have been asking around amongst academics and activists and now feel at least capable of describing the complexities. There are five panels addressing sex/sex work and several good activists will speak, mixed with outreach/academic folk.

Some people in the harm-reduction field don’t think sex work should be there; they want policy on drug injection to be the focus. And some people in the sex workers’ rights field don’t think it should be, either. But the conference has six streams:

1 Drugs on the Street
2 Parties: Pleasures Management and Risks Reduction
3 Alcohol and Harm Reduction
4 Sex: Pleasures, Risks and Sexual Work
5 Other addictions
6 Human Rights and Penal Control

So all kinds of ‘addictions’ and ‘excesses’ are potentially included. A broad definition of harm reduction in Wikipedia is as clear as any:

Harm reduction, or harm minimisation, refers to a range of pragmatic and compassionate public health policies designed to reduce the harmful consequences associated with drug use and other high risk activities.

Many advocates argue that prohibitionist laws cause harm, because, for example, they oblige prostitutes to work in dangerous conditions and oblige drug users to obtain their drugs from unreliable criminal sources. This usually involves softening punishments on risky behaviour, assisting people to stop the behaviour and addressing the reasons people engage in such behaviour.

Pragmatic sounds good, but compassionate sounds condescending. The emphasis on the harms caused by laws that prohibit and criminalise activities sounds good, while assisting people to stop is problematic.

It’s also true that some people who want to abolish prostitution and the sex industry hate harm reduction efforts, which they see as conspiracies to continue the enslavement of women. I’m told the term harm reduction is forbidden at some of their conferences. See interesting comments on this issue at Bound Not Gagged.

Both sex work and drug injection are widely criminalised: that’s the most important point to keep in mind. Prohibitions on activities often don’t succeed in stopping people from doing them, which leads to their taking place in hidden, more dangerous ways, including relying on dodgy if not criminal characters (drug/sex traffickers, for example). Decriminalisation is therefore a major demand of harm reduction.

Marcha de trabajador@s sexuales en Perú: un bochinche/Sex workers march in Lima

Mira este video de una marcha en Lima llevada a cabo el 2 de junio, Día Internacional de los/as Trabajadores Sexuales. Here’s a great, colourful video of a pro-rights march held in Lima on 2 June on International Sex Workers Day.

La marcha forma parta de un proyecto de CiudadaniaSx: activismo cultural y derechos humanos, que enfrenta el estigma y la discriminación a través del arte y el activismo cultural. El proyecto sobre el trabajo sexual, llamado Intervención Bochinche, tiene como meta

confrontar el estigma y la discriminación que sufren cotidianamente las trabajadoras sexuales mujeres y trans (travesti, transgénero, transexual) debido a la criminalización del trabajo sexual, motivo por el cual suelen ser víctimas de diversas formas de violencia y violación de sus derechos.

Según donde estés, la palabra bochinche significa jaleo, alboroto (mess, row, racket, upheaval) o chisme (gossip). En el caso de esta inciativia, los dos significados pueden servir. Antes de la marcha, el proyecto colocó por Lima pancartas con interesantes mensajes, jugando con las palabras y las políticas represivas de la municipalidad. Entonces:

Street prostitution is advancing – neat!

Caresses available

Pick them up – We’re not watching you

The city is filling with lust – great!

Operation Sodom is also coming

Hookers’ Summit in Lima

%d bloggers like this: