This guest post is a part of the Feministe series on Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Hexy is an Australian sex worker and sex worker activist who blogs at hexpletive.com, a blog composed largely of rants.
Trigger Warning
You’ll all have to forgive me if this post is a little rambling. It’s taken a long time to write, and it’s changed form two or three times in the process.
Cara approached me to write a post for SAAM on sexual assault and sex workers. And my brain went “Whoaaa… ” and blanked on me a little. It’s hardly a simple subject, and there’s so many inter-related facets to approach. It’s not that the subject itself is difficult to write on; on the contrary, I could write for days and produce dozens of posts and never get off topic for longer than one of my characteristic segues. It’s that the subject is so huge, and I’ve been asked to write one post. ONE. A single post on a topic that affects (infects?) all levels of discourse and experience for sex workers, that’s more loaded with myths and misconceptions than any other facet of our lives and work, and that a LOT of non sex workers seem to have some firmly entrenched not-necessarily-accurate-but-difficult-to-change opinions on.
In fact, I’ve probably stepped on a few buttons and gotten a few people utilising their opinions. At least one person is probably thinking that I meant that the topic affects all level of experience for sex workers because we’ve all been sexually assaulted (NO!) or that it’s such a big issue because it happens all the time (NO!). And here I am all tied up in my previously mentioned problem: If I include all the things I want to mention and all the things I want to make sure I’ll clarify, this post will reach such new levels of TL;DR that anyone actually reaching the end will have a long wispy beard by the time they do so. I originally thought I’d do some sex worker sexual assault myth busting… you know, get a little snarky, bust out a few links, challenge some preconceptions and inevitably get into an argument with someone in the comment thread. I even surveyed some other sex workers to see what their most despised myths and misconceptions about sex work and sexual assault were, and let me tell you there is most definitely a rant or nine in there. The same bullshit myths kept coming up again and again, and a lot of sex workers are pissed off about them.
But as I tried to write the post, my brain kept veering away from the format I was trying to write in and towards Personal Narrative Land. The responses to so many of the myths kept bringing my brain back to a some personal experiences I had recently, and I realised that part of my writer’s block was my inability to view this topic without thinking about that experience and the issues surrounding it. So here goes. Personal Narrative Time.
I am a sex worker. I have been sexually assaulted, twice. The latter time was relatively recently, and during the period I have been doing sex work. It did not happen at work, and I was not raped by a client. Rather, the person who assaulted me was someone who had been a friend and consensual lover for quite some time. It’s something that should have been completely divorced from my work, and in my mind it was. While it was an incredibly traumatic event from which I have still not healed, the impact it had on my work, my feelings about my work, and my capacity to do my job was exactly the same for my sex work job and my non sex work job, and exactly the same as any other traumatic event would have had on my work. The summary? I was pretty fucked up. Sexual assault will do that to you. But not about my work.
You know what did connect the assault and my work for me? The response of my friends when I told them I had been assaulted. Every time a sympathetic face and a hand on my shoulder turned into the same damn question: “Did it happen at work?” The assumption, even coming from those who should know better, that I had been assaulted because I was a whore. That the person most likely to do that to me would of course be one of my clients, even though many of these people were otherwise extremely aware that most perpetrators are someone known to the victim and target them at a time of vulnerability. That time is not when I am working, in an environment with established boundaries, in a brothel with other workers around and aware of each other’s movements.
It was confronting, and awful, to realise that people I consider to be generally whore-friendly and specifically hexy-supportive had the same rubbish in their heads as everyone else. That those who could give the sex workers rights 101 Sex Work is Real Work spiel with the best of them and would leap into a raging bar argument with anyone who dared to spit out Sex Workers Expect To Be Raped or It’s Really Theft Of Services Hur Hur Hur would still leap to the conclusion that A Sex Worker Who Says They Have Been Raped Is Probably Talking About Work and/or a Client. Myths and misconceptions are us, yo.
Yeah, yeah, I know. We’ve all been here. The dude who ticks all the pro-feminist boxes but says something misogynistic one day that makes your jaw drop. The white anti-racist who still holds some pretty messed up views they don’t realise they haven’t questioned. The straight friend, or the non-disabled friend, or the cis* friend, or the… blah blah blah. I shouldn’t be so surprised by “non sex worker friend who thinks that a sex worker who has been raped was probably raped at work and/or by a client”. But I was, and those responses were a major factor in how I reacted to the assault, who I decided to tell about it from that point on and, yes, my feeling that I could not go to the police.
It’s hardly a secret that sex workers have a shitty time of it reporting sexual assault to the police. People in general have a shitty time of it reporting sexual assault to the police, for a range of reasons. And while I’ll keep most of my rant about the police out of this entry, the people making up the judicial system have (at best!) the same prejudices and bullshit ideas about sex workers as everyone else. Even if you’re lucky enough to be a sex worker working where I work (in NSW, Australia) where sex work is decriminalised and we do not the same fear of legal persecution for our work if we attempt to go to the police for help as those working where exchanging sex for money is a crime, that’s no guarantee of being treated well and taken seriously by the people who make up the legal system even when you DON’T add in whorephobia and stigmatising beliefs about sex workers.
And when you do?
Short version: Sex worker sees client, client could not come, client freaked out, ripped off condom and forces unprotected sex on worker.
From the linked article:
In his evidence, the sailor – who agreed his weight was more than double the woman’s – admitted using a “lock down manoeuvre” to pin her down to the bed when she said she wanted to stop.
He said he told her he was going to “finish”, but when she kicked him away, he backed off with his hands in the air.
When he demanded his money back, he said she started stomping and kicking like “a rodeo”.
“After so much of her screaming, I did muffle her mouth with my hand – I said, ‘Stop yelling,’” he told the court, adding he used “attitude” and raised his voice at her.
But after she started shouting ‘Stop!” and “Help!” he had realised what he was doing was wrong, and had later told police he thought his behaviour was “outrageous”.
… so of course he got off scot free.
You might not be able to see the connection between the first part of this entry and the second. You might be thinking “But hexy… I thought your point was that sex workers who are sexually assaulted AREN’T generally assaulted by clients?” And you’d be right. It was. It was also that when we’re sexually assaulted at all, it’s not taken seriously. It was that people who assault sex workers believe that sex workers are assaulted all the time. It was that the issue is so complex that I barely knew where to start this entry, and I certainly don’t know where to finish it.
It was that when I was assaulted, the factors that affected me most were the responses of my friends and this case. They were the factors that made my sex work status relevant to my assault in a way it should not have been.
It was about, at its heart, the fact that my only consistent response to Cara’s request to write a post about sexual assault awareness and sex workers was “Fuck. It’s FUCKED.” My capacity to write a witty, insightful, educational post deserted me, and that was all I could think of.
So here it is. Personal Narrative and all. And I suppose I can add a moral at the end: that if someone you know is a sex worker, and they tell you they’ve been sexually assaulted, don’t assume anything. Don’t say anything that rests on assumptions about how or why it might have happened. Don’t ask them to confirm anything… let them tell you what they want. Just like you would (and should) with a non sex worker.
—————————————————-
I couldn’t find a way to fit it into my rant, but we marked December 17th, International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, with a protest against this decision. Sex workers and supporters. It rocked my world.
I think that comes from the same mentality that thinks girls dressing provocatively is an excuse for rape: “Well, you work as a whore; obviously you deserve to be raped~!” I wonder in how many places prostitution would need to be legal for the stigma of being a prostitute to go away. Probably a great many.
‘At least one person is probably thinking that I meant that the topic affects all level of experience for sex workers because we’ve all been sexually assaulted (NO!) or that it’s such a big issue because it happens all the time (NO!).’
This was the part of the post that struck me most, as I’ve never thought about it in this way before – that it’s important not to overestimate the levels of sexual assault on sex workers, because it leads to the assumption that all sex workers are assaulted, know what they’re getting into and are thus partially to blame if they do get assaulted. I think this applies to all women, not just sex workers, especially in terms of the stranger-rape scenario. We’re told that it’s dangerous for us to walk home alone at night, go down dark alleys, wear short skirts etc. because it’s hugely likely that we’ll be sexually assaulted. Actually, it’s not very likely at all, but it means that on the rare occasions when it DOES happen, we can be told ‘well, you knew it was dangerous and that it happens all the time, therefore you should have taken steps to prevent it (by dressing ‘modestly’, curtailing your own freedom etc.), so it’s partially (or totally) your fault’.
We have a chat show here in the UK hosted by a guy called Jeremy Kyle. Every now and then he drags a sex worker onto the show and then confronts her with the family of a raped / murdered sex worker and basically says ‘if you carry on doing sex work, you WILL end up dead / raped like this person because that happens to all sex workers’. The implication being, of course, that because the sex worker ‘knew’ this, it will then be her fault if it does happen, rather than the fault of her attacker. And, consequently, the victim is blamed and the attacker is given an environment where his abnormal behaviour is normalised, even seen as expected.
/rant.
I’m so sorry about the sexual assault.
And actually I don’t blame you for being surprised about your sex-worker supporting friends assuming it happened during your sex-work job. I haven’t been through that experience – as a person who is in sex work and has been sexually assaulted who turns to her friends, but what you wrote about other people’s reactions just made so much sense.
Thanks for sharing it.
“that it’s important not to overestimate the levels of sexual assault on sex workers, because it leads to the assumption that all sex workers are assaulted, know what they’re getting into and are thus partially to blame if they do get assaulted”
Okay, okay, wait a minute.
If overestimating the levels of assault against sex workers lead to victim-blaming, then the problem is the VICTIM-BLAMING MENTALITY ITSELF.
Hexy works in a situation where her work is legalized, and she can call the police; we probably have a pretty good idea of how many legal sex workers in her area are assaulted by clients.
Conversely, for those in her area who are NOT working legally or who work in areas where sex work isn’t legalized, we have VERY LITTLE idea of how common sexual assault is from clients. The most we have for many geographic areas are compiled anecdotes from (usually former) sex workers and a few surveys which include social workers/psychologists/etc and former sex workers, and all of those tend to show that sexual assault from clients can range from rare to extremely common depending on the place and the type of sex work involved.
There are situations where, in order to address the needs of the population, rates of sexual assault might be overemphasized. If I’m dealing with a young woman who I know had a pimp, I’m going to automatically assume she has suffered repeated sexual assault and proceed accordingly. Period.
But it should not matter if there is a 100% association between being a “street-walker” in a bad neighborhood and being raped – the attitude that says “you should not have done that because it caused the rape” is WRONG and HATEFUL.
It’s not the statistics – whether accurate or pulled out of the ether – which are to blame. It’s the way that people use those statistics in order to justify their rape apologies which are the problem.
I don’t really have anything to add to the conversation, but I just really want to thank you for writing this, hexy. It made me challenge my assumptions about sex workers. So thankyou.
Thank you for sharing, Cara. It is generous of you.
I agree with the distinction Sarah makes, though. Nothing, for me, would justify victim blaming, even if the risks encured were *really* high and not just an overestimation.
And I must admit I would have been inclined to think it was probable that a sexual assault happened during sex work – but not ruled out that it may have happened out of work. That is because I presume a sex worker has more sex at work than not. I may be mistaken on that, though.
I do know that there is more risk of being assaulted by a non-stranger than a stranger, but from what I understand of the definition we often give of «strangers», they are only people we do not know *at all* (the night stalker scenario). Whereas non-strangers encompass the friend of a friend we met at a party. And I would think, clients as well.
Well as a reminder, this is actually Hexy’s post, not mine. But, not wanting to put words in her mouth — and Hexy, please do correct me if I’m wrong — I think that what she’s saying is not that victim-blaming is somehow justified if the risks are really high. I think she was rather arguing that this is one of the tropes that our society uses to prop up victim-blaming: “you should have known better.” And what I gathered isn’t that Hexy thinks that “you should have known better” is a good reason to victim blame, and that’s why we should get rid of the idea that sex work is very, very dangerous, so that sex worker specifically won’t be blamed, but rather than while we live in a victim-blaming world, we have to work with it and fight it on both fronts — getting through to the culture that victim-blaming is always wrong, and in the meantime doing the best we can to take away the tools used to support a culture of victim-blaming. And if that is what Hexy meant, then I absolutely agree with her.
“Every time a sympathetic face and a hand on my shoulder turned into the same damn question: “Did it happen at work?” ”
I can’t read minds, but maybe people ask that because they figure the kinds of men you encounter at work are somewhat shady? Not that I agree; I’m just grasping for a reason why they would say that.
I think hexy wasn’t asking you to explain to her why someone would say that. She is probably quite capable of imagining the same explanations you are, and probably has a better chance of coming up with a good explanation given that she, yknow, lives as a sex worker and all. Given that, it’s doubtful she needed your help on that matter. More likely she would appreciate support and self-challenging on the part of non-sex-worker readers than have them give her a Perfectly Logical Explanation for why something would happen, with the implication (intended or not) that excuses whatever is being explained away.
hexy – thank you for the post, because yes. I do have a lot of the same bullshit ideas/assumptions in my head I am trying to challenge. I’m sorry the weight of those ideas came down on you when you were most needing support.
Hexy – I am sorry people made assumptions about your assault.
I would also remind you to please keep in mind a little better the circumstances you are working under (a system of decriminalization, you enjoy what you do, you have I believe never been coerced or doing sex work homeless and/or in severe poverty, etc.). Like it or not those circumstances make you privileged relative to many of the rest of us.
I was also recently sexually assaulted. It was not by a client, but I HAVE been sexually assaulted by a client (woke up to being fucked with no condom), and by a pimp (earlier in my life). As well as by others. The recent assault was by a guy subletting to a former friend who would let me rent his place for work by the hour and who I know from rights organizing. Anyway the guy subletting his apartment to this former friend raped me. He wanted to see my body under the pretext of getting me work and then raped me, and for the first time ever (despite a lot of violence in my past) I got a rape kit and reported it to the police. I wanted to make this one pay (a friend offered to rough him but I was worried about her and that plan fell through anyway). I tried to leave the sex work part out of it but that didn’t work with the detectives. I didn’t get arrested but I did get yelled at and told what happened wasn’t a crime, and I now have a written statement in their records I’ve done sex work.
I’ve heard that before from a psychiatrist – that I was causing myself to be victimized over and over and that doing prostitution was an example of that. That’s bullshit.
Anyway, what I really should have (and DID) know better than to do was go to the fucking police. Fucking stupid.
I think most of the people who you talk to who have issues with these “misconceptions” are working under the same circumstances you are that I listed earlier.
Speaking in the general, I don’t think sexual assault in sex work is overestimated. I just think most people don’t realize it is mostly pimps, bosses, and cops, and only sometimes clients.
The fuck keeps happening to my comments? It will only let me post one?
Ama: It doesn’t just come down to decriminalisation, although that is vital. There is also a need for anti-discrimination legislation, and social change.
Agnes: I’ve seen a little of Jeremy Kyle. He revolts me. And I’m glad I could get you thinking about the issue a little differently!
Sarah: No, over-estimating levels of sexual assault against sex workers is a problem in itself. Even without the victim-blaming mentality (which, yes, is extremely fucked no matter where it comes from) spreading what are essentially lies about our lives and profession contributes to stigma about sex work and sex workers and makes our lives harder. Do you think it’s easier to get people to treat you like an autonomous, intelligent human when they think you’re staying in a situation where you are regularly raped? People viewing us as all victims is a HUGE problem for sex workers.
I could, but as I mentioned in my post I’d expect to deal with a lot of whorephobic crap and be treated as a second class citizen. Our best understanding of numbers of assaults by clients come from peer run sex worker organisations, not the police.
Actually, the best data is still collected by autonomous peer run sex worker organisations around Australia.
Much like rates of any sexual assault by anyone range from rare to extremely common depending on the environment and various other factors. Sex work is not a special case here.
aislingtheach:
Firstly, that depends entirely on the worker and the kind of sex work.
Secondly, what does that have to do with a person’s probability of being assaulted?
RD:
You know what they say about assumptions. Perhaps you should ask about my past circumstances before speculating on them?
And yes, I am very aware of the benefits of the system I work under. I referred to them in this exact post, since you mention it. There’s a reason I’m pro decriminalisation… I get to see the benefits of it every day for myself and other workers.
A fair few things do. A fair few other things do not.
I’m extremely sorry to hear that, and in no way intended to imply that situations like yours never occur.
That’s fucked. I’m so sorry. They’re supposed to help, but yours is far from the first story I’ve heard of them doing everything but.
I’m glad you recognise that! That kind of bullshit coming from people who are supposed to support mental health is disgusting.
I think most of the people who you talk to who have issues with these “misconceptions” are working under the same circumstances you are that I listed earlier.
Nope. Really, really, really far from it. My network of sex worker contacts and friends is extremely diverse (as I also mentioned in the post) and includes people working under different legislative systems, people of varying genders, ages and races, people of different disability status… etc and so forth. We are certainly not all high functioning happy never-been-in-shitty-situations sex workers benefiting from decriminalisation, as much as I wish we all were!
The issues raised, though? Really consistent.
Definitely with you on bosses and cops. Can’t really speak to pimps, as the pimping phenomena isn’t all that well known in Australia.
And thanks, Cara, for posting this for me, and everyone for your supportive comments.
I’m sorry that happened to you. :( And thank you for sharing this — I’m glad to recognize the messed-up privileged ideas I have now, instead of when a friend is confiding in me.
Hexy I’ve read your blog and comments you have written elsewhere (and we’ve interacted before). I actually usually enjoy reading your perspective on things even tho I don’t *always* agree (I often do agree with you, for example I’m against criminalizing HIV transmission, pro-decrim for sex work, etc.). You’ve definitely talked about loving your job before, entering it relatively late in life, etc. If you were homeless/in extreme poverty when you did then I apologize for the assumption that you were not.
As an aside about that psychiatrist. He’s an arrogant pig and he works at Gracie Square Hospital. Gracie Square is one of those places in NYC where you don’t want to get sent if you get hospitalized, especially if you have a dual-diagnosis with mental health and substance abuse and therefore get put on the third floor. I was given such a diagnosis but luckily only spent a little time on the third floor, most of the time I was on the fourth floor because of issues of where they had space. The third floor is basically like a co-ed jail. Physical fights breaking out all the time, communal showers, really really thick glass between the nurses station and the hallway (and you’re not allowed to hang out there), super-restricted and highly-watched visitation (and visitors can’t bring you food), basically the third floor is in all ways not a safe place. The fourth floor is quieter, no fights breaking out, but is basically like a warehouse where people eat, sleep, and take their meds, and every once in a while they have art. A girl I met there had been there two weeks and hadn’t seen her doctor yet. There were a few people who’d been there for years.
That’s not the worst thing a psychiatrist has said to me though. Avoid Metropolitan Hospital also. I was set up there for an outpatient appointment coming out of St. Vincent’s, waited 4-5 hours in their clinic even though I had an appointment, and then saw a doctor who was a total ass. He questioned me about why I’m estranged from my family and when I said, you know, for one thing my mother kicked me out, he said, “Yeah, that happens, sometimes people just get fed up.” My offense? Not getting out of bed for four days. I was not on drugs. I was just depressed. He also tried, without knowing anything about my partner at all, to guilt trip me about what I’m “doing to” her by ending up inpatient in hospitals. When she heard about the things he said she was pissed as all hell. Which, you know, it makes sense that after close to three years in an intimate relationship with her, I know her better than some asshole doctor who has never met her.
Where do you want to end up in NY? Columbia Presbyterian at 168th St. Best.Hospital.Ever.
In Colorado I’ve only been in one but it wasn’t great.
Hexy,
“Actually, the best data is still collected by autonomous peer run sex worker organisations around Australia.”
Which is primarily limited to women who are in the profession by choice, and is therefore not even close to a representative sample of all sex workers…I’m not sure it’s the “best data” out there. Women who are sex workers by choice are also those least likely to face assault.
“spreading what are essentially lies about our lives and profession contributes to stigma about sex work and sex workers and makes our lives harder. Do you think it’s easier to get people to treat you like an autonomous, intelligent human when they think you’re staying in a situation where you are regularly raped? People viewing us as all victims is a HUGE problem for sex workers.”
Hell, I think it’s hard for any woman to be treated as an autonomous, intelligent human no matter WHAT she’s doing.
So here’s the rub: we can’t get good statistics. I think it’s fair to say that given the controversy around the topic, most people who talk about assault rates in sex work have an agenda, anyway. So, what are the dangers of overestimating, and what are the dangers of underestimating?
The danger of overestimating is that women consensually in sex work are infantilized, perceived as victims, assumed to have psychological/sexual/confidence problems, assumed to be “damaged goods”, arguments against legalization which aren’t appropriately rooted in fact, and so forth.
The danger of underestimating is a reinforcement of the “Happy Hooker” myth and the harmful, misogynistic bullshit that accompanies it, as well as an underestimation of sex trafficking and coerced prostitution, and an argument that enough money is going to help women who DO have PTSD or suffered serious assaults because, after all, it’s not that common.
I think it’s obvious that, regardless, people should be using reliable statistics wherever available. But we don’t typically have that. We have anecdotes, for the most part, or relatively small sample studies often of self-selected groups. Both overestimating AND underestimating can result in serious, serious problems, and both are GOING to occur given the lack of reliable statistics and the fights which surround prostitution. I’m unconvinced that overestimating is innately more harmful than underestimating.
But, again, it really comes back to a misogynistic culture and victim-blaming. We recently had a large mine accident in the United States, and I didn’t hear too many people saying the workers who died should have expected it since it’s such a dangerous job. Few people question the psychological competency of a man who volunteers to go to the front lines in armed combat. If society wasn’t fundamentally sexist, then we wouldn’t have this discussion; this is still a symptom of a society which assumes that our little lady brains just can’t handle stressful situations or we get “hysterical” or go “crazy”. I know that sex workers are uniquely impacted by this, but it’s definitely a larger problem than people who misunderstand the nature of the job.
“We recently had a large mine accident in the United States, and I didn’t hear too many people saying the workers who died should have expected it since it’s such a dangerous job.”
Yes, because it’s seen as OK for men to not only do dangerous jobs but also for them to die as a result. In fact, not just that but they’re often expected to get dangerous jobs: if you refuse to go down the mines or off to war, you’re not a real man and there’s something wrong with you. (Men are disposable. Women aren’t.) If it’s necessary to pay child support, men can even be arrested and imprisoned for failing to get jobs that put their lives in danger.
If the issue of women going into prostitution were treated the same way as men becoming miners or soldiers, there’d be a huge uproar. Probably rightly so; no-one should be forced into selling their body in that way. In fact, I’m not convinced the two are really comparable at all.
I agree with softestbullet. Thanks for writing this and making me, as a privileged person, aware of the huge misconceptions I had about sexual assault and sex work.
But, again, it really comes back to a misogynistic culture and victim-blaming. We recently had a large mine accident in the United States, and I didn’t hear too many people saying the workers who died should have expected it since it’s such a dangerous job.
I’ve lived in appalachian Ohio and I LOVE old coal mining songs for largely this reason (and because they are big on worker solidarity).
But also please don’t be dismissive of the fact that some of us (even many of us) ARE crazy and have serious post-traumatic issues Sarah.
Hexy can you be clearer on what the misconceptions you think are, aside from sexual assault of sex workers is overestimated (I disagree), and sexual assault of sex workers is often perpetrated by people who are not clients, but not always – sometimes they are clients (I agree).
I would say people who murder sex workers are usually either clients or pose as clients. And there are clients who perpetrate other violence (i.e. physical) on sex workers.
RD, I’m so sorry. Thanks for pointing out that I did that.
I know that many, many women who are or were in sex work have PTSD – IIRC, the biggest study of current/former sex workers in the US indicated the study participants had PTSD at about twice the rate of Vietnam vets, right? I was trying to make a point that it’s assumed from the get-go that women can’t “handle it” but that men can and that women’s choices are questioned whereas men’s aren’t… even though members of EITHER sex have psychological problems when dealing with trauma and we don’t typically blame men for trauma which occurs to them even if they choose to be in professions where trauma would be likely.
Again, thanks for pointing out my craptastic wording.
I’m not familiar with that study but I agree with your point, and thanks for the apology.
RD:
I DO love my job. That doesn’t say anything about the circumstances under which I entered it, whether or not I’ve done other forms of sex work or survival sex work in the past, or anything else. But a lot of people sure leap to a lot of conclusions about me based on that one piece of information!
I began formally working in my early twenties, btw. Not exactly later in life.
I’m sorry you had such shitty experiences with pshrinks! I’ve been really lucky and had only good experiences with hospitalisation, but I know a lot of people for whom that isn’t the case.
Sarah:
What are you basing that on, and where on earth are you getting the idea that this divide between “women who are sex workers by choice” and “everyone else” exists anywhere except certain feminist discourses?
With you on that one. Misogyny doesn’t need help from whorephobia.
I think the “so forth” is pretty significant there.
Sorry, Sarah, but the combination of the words “Happy Hooker” and “myth” always makes me roll my eyes and lose interest in the conversation.
as well as an underestimation of sex trafficking and coerced prostitution, and an argument that enough money is going to help women who DO have PTSD or suffered serious assaults because, after all, it’s not that common.
There is absolutely no danger of sex trafficking being underestimated around here any time soon, I can assure you of that. It gets a ridiculously disproportionate amount of hype and hysteria as it is.
People with mental illness or who have been the victims of assault should be supported and have access to services anyway. There is no need for sex worker specific funding here… mental health and assault recovery services should have their funding dramatically increased anyway.
I think that people should be treating sex workers as people and respond to them as individuals, rather than basing their responses on what they think happens to sex workers as a group, statistics or no. That was the point of my post.
Yet you still cite one of these studies further down this thread.
There’s a lot of them! I didn’t actually write the mythbusting post, as you may have noticed from the fact that you are commenting on the post I did write. I’m certainly happy to have that conversation another time, but I think it’s a bit of a derail here.
I would be one of those sex workers who has PTSD. It sure as fuck isn’t from working. These studies are inherently flawed.
Arg this bit:
should be quoted.
Also I am in mod on my own post. Sigh.
Hi Hexy. Well not all my experiences with hospitalization have been bad. Like I said Columbia Presbyterian is an awesome hospital and my favorite and it was the one I was in most recently. Remember when I told you (I won’t be offended if you don’t) that medications don’t work for me? Well it turned out they just hadn’t found the right ones. A psychiatrist put me on a high dose of Zoloft and a medium dose of Seroquel and it actually worked, and I was a lot less depressed etc. until this recent rape happened, and the police response, and I wound up in Columbia Pres. Now I am on this insane number of medications – Zoloft 200mg, Seroquel 300mg, Propanolol 20mg 3x/day, risperidone 0.5mg as needed 3x/day, Seroquel 50mg as needed 3x/day, Klonopin 1mg, Lithium 750mg (to boost the Zoloft apparently since 200 is the maximum dose, not for bipolar). I seems to be working ok with anxiety, somewhat ok with ptsd, and somewhat ok with depression but not as good as before.
Sorry if that was too much info.
I would be one of those sex workers who has PTSD. It sure as fuck isn’t from working. These studies are inherently flawed.
Yeah I’ve definitely had traumatic experiences that weren’t from working too. A number of them. :( But, some of the ones from working (and from coercion in sex work) were some of the worst for me.
Do you think it’s easier to get people to treat you like an autonomous, intelligent human when they think you’re staying in a situation where you are regularly raped?
Hexy someone can be an autonomous, intelligent human being who stays in a situation where they are regularly raped. It may be the best option of a limited set. It may be in the context of an abusive relationship, or a young person being abused by someone in their family. I’ve been wanting to address what you said there this whole thread but it is SO upsetting and hard that I haven’t managed it until now.
The danger of overestimating is that women consensually in sex work are infantilized, perceived as victims, assumed to have psychological/sexual/confidence problems, assumed to be “damaged goods”, arguments against legalization which aren’t appropriately rooted in fact, and so forth.
None of these things SHOULD be dangers of overestimating sexual assault of sex workers. Especially not the arguments against legalization. SO MUCH sexual assault happens *because* sex work is illegal (like sexually violent cops) and stigmatized (rapists know they can get away with it). Victims in general, even genuine victims, should not be infantalized. Psychological problems are not a problem with someone’s character. Etc.
I think that people should be treating sex workers as people and respond to them as individuals, rather than basing their responses on what they think happens to sex workers as a group, statistics or no. That was the point of my post.
This I agree with.
If the issue of women going into prostitution were treated the same way as men becoming miners or soldiers, there’d be a huge uproar.
In mainstream politics, nobody gives a rat’s ass about the women who go into prostitution. They just don’t want to be exposed to us, if it happens at all they want it to happen where they can’t see it, because we are public nuisances and need to be off everyone else’s Craigslist and street corners.
There is absolutely no danger of sex trafficking being underestimated around here any time soon, I can assure you of that. It gets a ridiculously disproportionate amount of hype and hysteria as it is.
In certain circles it does get underestimated. I got into a very heated argument with someone at a SWOP-NYC meeting (an “ally” even!) after he said, among other things, that trafficking doesn’t exist and we shouldn’t be supporting ANY anti-trafficking work (even stuff that would actually do good not harm, like the proposed law to expunge the records of trafficking victims) because “this anti-trafficking thing has been nothing but a wrench thrown in sex workers rights.” You can guess what I thought about that. He hasn’t been back since our argument over that and I hope he doesn’t come back. Other sex workers rights activists, like Laura Agustin, apparently also believe that trafficking is not an issue at all, and she disagrees with the “violence frame.” As a very good friend of mine (and awesome sex worker rights activist) said, most of the sex workers [she] has known have experienced violence, and an attack from a client (physical) changed her life forever, so she just can’t get on board with that. I can’t either.
People with mental illness or who have been the victims of assault should be supported and have access to services anyway. There is no need for sex worker specific funding here… mental health and assault recovery services should have their funding dramatically increased anyway.
I disagree. I think there is a need for sex worker-specific funding. The social services I have got through the Sex Workers Project have been some of the best I’ve ever had anywhere.
Hexy,
When I say that most studies aren’t great, I mean that they can’t paint a full picture of an industry in which – even in legal areas – most of it remains underground.
See how these stack up against your experiences, since this group is based in your neck of the woods:
http://www.law.uq.edu.au/humantrafficking
http://www.law.uq.edu.au/documents/humantraffic/news/2009/2009-Aug-15-Prostitution-laws-failing-sex-workers.pdf
That doesn’t mean that studies are wholly useless, or that we can’t use them in a discussion. Instead, it means we have to look for patterns across multiple studies as whole and not rely on simply one or two to give us an idea of what’s going on.
Same thing with the experiences of individual sex workers. Many will have wonderful experiences; many, many, many more will not. You “roll your eyes” at the idea of a Happy Hooker myth? Fine. That’s your prerogative. Your one little section of the sex industry is awesome and you love your job? Fine. Again, your experience.
But your experience does not automatically trump the experiences of thousands and millions of other women. Each experience has to be taken and then, if we’re going to make large-scale statements about prostitution, analyzed as a whole.
You say that sex workers should be viewed as individuals. Okay, fine. You, an individual, has made your point. Nobody should make assumptions about others’ lives; I get that.
But beyond that point, you are not the embodiment of all sex workers, or all legal sex workers, or all legal sex workers working at a licensed brothel in Queensland. You cannot speak for anyone else, and you cannot denigrate another person’s experience simply because it doesn’t fit yours.
The fact that you talk about sex trafficking “hype” and “hysteria” and that there’s “no danger” of it being underestimated bothers me a great deal. I have to assume that you don’t have any personal familiarity with that aspect of sex work.
That info on Laura Agustin doesn’t come from anything I’ve seen her write, but from things she said in a lecture here in NY and then something she told a sex worker activist friend of mine after the lecture (my friend doesn’t agree with Laura, and does think trafficking is an issue).
Susan, at the same time that I think trafficking and coerced prostitution are serious, serious issues, I have little trust in most “anti-trafficking” organizations and coalitions. They tend to support and fund policies that harm sex workers and trafficked people, and they to do silly things like protesting TV shows for showing prostitution. I’m not familiar with that organization in Queensland, but I would be wary of it.
That “organization” is an academic group which studies various forms of human trafficking at the University of Queensland.
I don’t understand the attitude – which I’m not saying is present here, but which I’ve heard elsewhere – that anti-human trafficking studies or organizations are automatically suspect, regardless of how carefully the available data was collected. Yes, it’s true that people in the anti-trafficking movement only have jobs because trafficking exists, but I don’t know that so many people would be willing to outright lie or fudge data just to keep thier jobs; besides which, it’s not as if the services that these organizations offer aren’t being used by people who need them. Why would they need to inflate numbers when the problem is already so much larger than they can handle?
Besides which, the converse, obviously, is that sex workers depend on johns in order to keep their job, but rarely do those same people who question trafficking statistics ever suggest that sex workers en masse deliberately downplay the violence or trafficking in the industry because they don’t want the industry harmed.
Why the double standard, is what I’d like to know? Again, if anybody here has any insight.
I’m not saying they inflate numbers! Or anything about that. You must have seriously misunderstood me or something. Look, I’m all for organizations that provide good services to victims of trafficking. The Sex Workers Project in NYC is one such organization. (I doubt a research project at a university is.)
But in the U.S. and places the U.S. has tried to make “crack down” on trafficking, anti-trafficking groups have caused some really horrific things to happen to both sex workers and trafficked people. I feel like I’m repeating myself for about the billionth time but do you know where anti-trafficking money goes? Raids. Raids lead to human rights abuses, arrests, and deportations. Sex workers AND trafficked people suffer these consequences of raids, and trafficked people are almost never identified. They can rack up conviction after conviction (hence the need to expunge their records) without anyone identifying them as trafficked. Trafficked people usually get away on their own or through peer support networks if they have them or sometimes social service agencies. They can then be saddled with convictions, just like sex workers, that can affect jobs, housing, custody, etc. This happens in the U.S. and in places where the U.S. is imperialistic in its “anti-trafficking” and anti-prostitution stances, like in Cambodia. And you know what? This shit is on the shoulders of the mainstream ANTI-TRAFFICKING MOVEMENT.
If this group of researchers tries to influence legislation, if they push for more anti-trafficking funding for raids, if they are trying to make prostitution illegal, the shit I mentioned and a lot of other shit is on their shoulders too.
This was never about numbers to me and frankly I’m offended you thought I was talking about something so relatively trivial.
We were discussing numbers and statistics, so if somebody questions a link I put up in that context and suggests the authors of the study can’t be “trusted”, then it’s entirely reasonable to assume they’re suggesting the results of the study are somehow bogus. Really, I don’t know how I was supposed to get out of your comment that “raids are bad.”
You’re painting the anti-trafficking campaign with an awfully broad brush.
I know that raids are probably the most publicly visible part of the anti-trafficking movement especially at the international level, and you’re right – they often don’t work. Sometimes they do work, and law enforcement will be seen carrying numb-looking or hysterical girls out of basements into the arms of waiting social workers, but those are few and far between. Raids are also usually precipitated by, and coordinated by, law enforcement, without any information or training from anti-trafficking organizations about how to identify likely trafficking victims. The anti-trafficking organizations are called, if at all, after the fact. But you’re blaming the anti-trafficking movement for what is essentially a problem on the law enforcement/anti-prostitution end (in other words, the same folks who will go out and arrest a dozen underage girls working on a street, arrest them, book them, treat them like garbage, and not even consider for one moment that they’re almost assuredly being pimped). Those people don’t seriously care about trafficking; they’re doing raids for other reasons – a community mad about a local strip club, or an election year, or to cover up police involvement (as in the case of raids recently on some local strip clubs in my area – a recent scandal had erupted with on-duty cops buying heroin out of the clubs). They are NOT typically anti-trafficking people.
But if you seriously think that’s what most anti-trafficking organizations do in the US, then I encourage you to look at groups like the Polaris Project and GEMS. They’re support-oriented organizations, and they’re doing good work.
Whether somebody is pushing for prostitution being legal/illegal is another matter. There are feminist arguments on both sides. I think most people who pay attention to the subject agree that women who prostitute themselves should not be harassed or given a criminal record, but there are some good, feminist arguments for making it illegal to pay for sex (so, criminalizing the johns). It seems a bit ridiculous – since there are very reasonable arguments both for and against the legalization of prostitution – to make where an organization comes down on that to be the litmus test for whether they’re helping the situation or not.
GEMS and Polaris – oh, I am familiar with both.
I mentioned a good support-oriented organization. The Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center has wonderful legal and social services, and they have helped a huge number of trafficking victims.
I’ve been through this a number of times here on GEMS. There’s a much better organization in Chicago by and for girls and young women, including trans girls and young women, in the sex trades and street economies. It’s called the Young Women’s Empowerment Project. They have also helped trafficking victims. GEMS gets clientele by court mandate. It is based around religion and convincing girls that what they did was shameful. I have many issues with them (and I’ve been in the sex trade during the age range they serve), but basically I think a program should only be judged successful by VOLUNTARY participation. GEMS is not that. Other organizations besides the Sex Workers Project that provide services are Streetworks, Washington Heights CORNER Project, FROST’D, Safe Space, Positive Health Project, and other members of the PROS network. The Sex Workers Project is the only one I know for sure provides services specifically for trafficking victims, but many or all of those other organizations offer services to, for example, youth (including trans youth). Which is really all GEMS does too, offer services to (cis) female youth.
The Polaris Project could be a case study in what I talked about in my last post, based on what they lobby for, even if they do provide some social services also.
I think criminalizing sex work is responsible for some really horrific things, so yes, I will morally judge an organization for their stance on that.
Also real nice that you think sex workers shouldn’t be “harrassed.” Way to minimize right in a thread that already talks about RAPIST AND PHYSICALLY VIOLENT COPS.
Law enforcement are not “anti-trafficking people,” but *they receive anti-trafficking funds*, that organizations like the above lobby for, and use them to carry out raids. Really, this is not so difficult.
By “organizations like the above” I didn’t mean the ones I mentioned – I meant like the Polaris Project.
“I think criminalizing sex work is responsible for some really horrific things, so yes, I will morally judge an organization for their stance on that.”
And legalizing prostitution hasn’t ever done that? It hasn’t ever, say, led to an increase in trafficking because legalization normalized procuring prostitutes, which increased demand, which was met via trafficking? (short answer: it has) As I said, there are feminist arguments on both sides. It’s ridiculous to pretend like the arguments against legalization simply aren’t there, or that they’re based on ignorance or a lack of concern about sex workers.
But I suspect that my statements on this is what has led to you treating me this way:
“Also real nice that you think sex workers shouldn’t be “harrassed.” Way to minimize right in a thread that already talks about RAPIST AND PHYSICALLY VIOLENT COPS.”
“Really, this is not so difficult.”
You know what? If a discussion gets to this point, where you find yourself -deliberately- making pedantic little attacks in order to make somebody else look uncaring or stupid, then it’s not a discussion any more.
Ok next in our lesson for today we are going to talk about what U.S. policies about trafficking and prostitution have done abroad.
But there’s more…the U.S. ranks how “good” other countries are on trafficking. Legal prostitution, somehow, counts against them. This leads to a situation where in order to avoid sanctions, countries start violating their citizens’ and residents’ human rights.
This is something I wrote on the topic a while ago:
Dear Rachel Maddow,
I would like to respond to Barbara Boxer’s appearance on your Tuesday, January 13th show and on her line of questioning during Clinton’s confirmation hearings. Boxer cited some of Nicholas Kristof”s recent columns in the New York Times, especially the columns on forced prostitution in Cambodia. I feel very strongly that those columns have painted a false portrait of some very misguided U.S. policy and pressures. Some policy makers, I believe, Democrats and Republicans, have very knee-jerk reactions to the issue of sex trafficking, and respond in ways that actually make the situation worse for both trafficked women and other women in prostitution (in the US and Cambodia, as well as elsewhere abroad).
In response to U.S. pressure, Cambodia outlawed prostitution last February, which has had some horrible and disastrous consequences. To quote Melissa Ditmore, former Executive Director of the Sex Workers Project (SWP) at the Urban Justice Center in New York City, “The [Cambodian] government’s promotion of a “no condoms, no sex” program in legal brothels there had succeeded in reducing HIV infection rates, but now those brothels have closed or gone underground, along with bars, karaoke clubs and street areas. Hundreds of women have been arrested, jailed or displaced, while dozens have been raped and beaten by police and prison guards. The HIV prevention and care programs that were working have collapsed” (http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/06/23/sex-workers-grateful-banki-moon).
It should also be noted that Bush’s anti-prostitution pledge, which is tied to PEPFAR funding, has also had adverse impacts around the world. Many important harm reduction groups have lost funding. See especially the video “Taking the Pledge” by the Network of Sex Work Projects (http://www.sexworkersproject.org/media-toolkit/TakingThePledgeVideo.html).
As a former AIDS activist, I’m sure you appreciate the fact that harm reduction is a better approach toward preventing the spread of HIV than punitive measures for groups such as intravenous drug users, sex workers, and others. Of course, the collapse of AIDS prevention programs isn’t the only reason women are suffering from this new criminalization in Cambodia; as Melissa Ditmore said, women are now routinely rounded up and jailed (in “rehabilitation centers”), and raped and beaten by police and guards. Any woman carrying condoms is assumed to be a sex worker and can be arrested (which, by the way, is also the case in much of the U.S.), and women are routinely denied anti-retroviral drugs in detention. You can see a video of Cambodian women protesting the MTV Exit Campaign against trafficking and exploitation here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=c35ZXL_2oNc. You can also read a letter by Cambodian sex workers to the prime minister here: http://www.sexworkeurope.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=217&Itemid=217. Finally, you can read a news story about Cambodian prostitutes protesting police treatment and alledging physical and sexual abuse in custody here: http://a.abcnews.com/International/comments?type=story&id=4996865.
Although in my opinion no prostitute deserves such treatment, it is important to note that trafficked women/sex slaves are most likely among those women rounded up in raids. This is certainly the case in the United States, where trafficked women (now federally recognized as trafficked) say they have been rounded up by local vice raids and arrested many times without ever being identified as coerced or trafficked. The U.S. raids are traumatizing for all the women arrested and can be accompanied by human rights abuses. For more on trafficking raids in the U.S., please see the Sex Workers Project’s new report, which was just released last Friday, “Kicking Down the Door: The Use of Raids to Fight Trafficking in Persons” (http://www.sexworkersproject.org/publications/KickingDownTheDoor.html).
I would like to encourage you to discuss this issue more thoroughly on your show. As a woman who has experienced coercion in the sex industry, I feel very strongly that any solution to sex trafficking must be victim-centered (the SWP report lays out some very good ideas) and that the criminalization of sex work, such as that seen in the U.S., does great harm. Many women who work as prostitutes are raped by the police, and pimps, traffickers, and abusive clients (not to imply that all clients are abusive) are able to use the threat of arrest or deportation to prevent prostitutes and trafficked women from reporting crimes against them.
If you are looking for guests who could discuss these issues cogently, I would suggest Sienna Baskin, a staff attorney with the Sex Workers Project. She helped author the report I mentioned earlier, “Kicking Down the Door,” and works regularly with sex workers of all types in New York City, including trafficked women.
I wish you all the best and am a huge fan of the Rachel Maddow Show.
How about pedantic little attacks like “we were discussing numbers and statistics.” Maybe you were. I wasn’t.
RD :
I’m really glad to hear you’re doing better, and that you found some meds that work! I’ve been on Seroquel for seven years and am just coming off it now. It’s been a literal lifesaver and the step down has been difficult. Hope your new cocktail keeps helping!
I agree with you completely, and that was perhaps badly phrased. My point was that people are fucking jerks, and tend to infantalise anyone they see as staying in a hurtful situation. Engaging in healthy, safe sex work of one’s own volition is nothing like being in an abusive relationship, and your comparison kinda proves what I tried (and perhaps failed) to convey.
SWOP project support services are brilliant. But all mental health support services should be sex work aware and stigma free, not just those we set up ourselves.
Sarah:
I roll my eyes at the idea of a dialogue with someone who has already decided that happy sex workers can only exist in myth form. It’s a bit rich to use a term that implies that, and then to lecture me about not taking every experience into account.
Good thing I’m doing exactly none of that.
You don’t HAVE to assume anything. Through my work and activism, I’m quite familiar with the local issues surrounding migrant sex work and sex trafficking, and I stand by my quoted terms.
Sarah:
Nope. Not that we’ve seen in NSW or New Zealand, which are the two models of DECRIMINALISATION advocated by local sex workers rights advocates.
RD
How about everyone stop centering the US in the comments responding to an Australian sex worker talking about her experiences in Australia?
And if anyone’s going to decide what’s on topic and what isn’t on this thread, it’s going to be me. I wasn’t after a discussion focussing on numbers and statistics eiher, thanks, Sarah.
Oh the Sex Workers Project is part of the Urban Justice Center in NYC. They are service providers, and they are not part of SWOP.
I’m sorry, it’s what I know. That comment wasn’t directed at you, it was directed at the conversation me and Susan were having that may have been off-topic in parts.
The conversation went from anti-trafficking movement to the anti-trafficking movement in the US and I brought up the effects abroad. But GEMS and Polaris which Susan mentioned are both US organizations (as are all the orgs I mentioned yes) but I’m pretty sure it was Susan who brought up the topic of the anti-trafficking movement in the first place.
It’s all good, I’m not rousing on anyone. Just saying… can we avoid going down the “let’s talk about anti-trafficking in the US” path?
And ahhhh I thought you meant a SWOP… it’s a generic name, we have four or five unrelated SWOPs in Oz :) I’ve never heard of the SWP you mention.
Yeah I guess that argument gets to be pretty boilerplate and is not really what your post was about.
I didn’t know that about the SWOPs! Pretty sure there’s only one in the US, with different, very individual local chapters.
Also thank you for your comments RE: drugs.
Sarah: On this piece that you linked to http://www.law.uq.edu.au/documents/humantraffic/news/2009/2009-Aug-15-Prostitution-laws-failing-sex-workers.pdf
I agree entirely that the Queensland system is not the best model for sex workers, migrant or otherwise. I advocate decriminalisation, not legalisation. I have sex working friends in all areas of the industry around the country, and connections with a lot more people in the sex industry in various states. The regulatory models in Aussie states with “legalised” systems never benefit the workers, and are often incredibly discriminatory. I’ll hopefully be presenting a piece in August at an Indigenous Women’s conference on how the regulatory system in the Northern Territory specifically discriminates against Indigenous women. You’re not going to find an advocate for the Queensland system here.
Candi Forrest is brilliant, and her quotes in that piece sum up a few of my thoughts on the matter.
I’m not 100% sure of what the model is in the US regarding the interaction between SWOP chapters. Ours are really different state to state.
And no worries… the psychiatric guinea pig ride can be an awful one, and I’m glad you’re having a bit of success with it.
RE: success…well I did just quit the program the hospital released me to, so not perfect.
Yeah the US is like that too, loosely connected but basically individual chapters.
I wondering how much the myth of the stranger rapist affected hexy’s friends thinking. We know that a woman is most likely to be raped by someone she knows, and that rape is about power and control: and yet we are still wedded to the notion that rape is something Other Blokes We Don’t Know do, and the motivation is fulfillment of sexual desire.
Eilish: People tend to have that view about clients in general, as well… that they’re Other Men We Don’t Know.
Awesome piece, thanks for this, one SW to another.
Read Sarah’s linked piece. Yeah, sounds like Queensland law is very anti-labor. 30k a year for licensure? Not to recentralize US, but sounds a lot like the law in Nevada here. Ripe for abuse from bosses, and likely to still maintain a serious underground. So not the way to do it, on really any level. Brothels should be co-ops, owned by the workers, and setting the costs that high is ridiculous. Anything else is just asking for abusive, coercive environments to spring up. It’s just too tempting a business for scumbags. And even with police oversight, I can easily imagine bribes being order of the day. In Nevada brothels, labor laws are a joke.
One difficulty with trafficking statistics: One needn’t lie to have overestimations. Thing is, trafficked women almost never admit to being trafficked. Even when they are. There’s no way to get anywhere near an accurate count. Most statistics include any and all women who are in the country illegally, who are involved in sex work, as trafficking victims. So if a woman moves to a new country illegally, and either chooses, or finds nothing better/other then, sex work, she is considered to be a trafficking victim. Granted, there’s certainly a blurred line there, as cartels can and do control access to work for illegals, and can use coercive measures to assure that sex work is all that’s available.
And even then, the estimates are just that: estimates. And they range in size for any area, sometimes by a factor of 100. And the ones that makes the news always seem to be on the high end.
Seems to me that the answer to trafficking is: Immigration reform. Most anti-trafficking raids result in victim incarceration and deportation and few if any arrests of the people responsible. Naturalize them and give them jobs, and they are no longer victims. But that’s a whole other bag of worms.
I sometimes feel, and have heard similar ideas from outreach workers, that to a degree the lives of those women who -are- sold as slaves, and the compassion of those trying desperately to help them, is being -used-. Used to sell to the public ‘morality’/'decency’ based prostitution laws, and public funding of mass deportations.
Not that there aren’t women horribly abused by trafficking, or by pimps and bosses. Nor that those who are involved in anti-trafficking outreach are malicious at all. Just that by the time the message reaches the public, it’s been distorted into a political message and a set of policies that seems to have a fairly ugly agenda. Anti-sex, anti-woman, anti-immigrant.
RE: immigration reform, I agree. In the US there’s the T-visa, but to access it a trafficking victim must first be recognized as a trafficking victim, and then must cooperate with law enforcement, which can put people in really difficult and dangerous situations.
About New Zealand…the decrim laws there sound pretty great, with the exception being they are very anti-immigrant.
Also I am sorry I did not really read Sarah’s linked piece, I just pointed out my suspiciousness of most anti-trafficking orgs and coalitions, with exceptions that I pointed out.
I agree that in Nevada brothels labor laws are a joke. I’ve explained before why and how much I detest the Nevada brothel system. Strip clubs too (and outcall stripping), labor laws are a joke.
Used to sell to the public ‘morality’/’decency’ based prostitution laws, and public funding of mass deportations. (and arrests, and human rights abuses)
Yes.
Hey I just re-read where you said you might write a myth post, get into a fight in the comment thread, and you didn’t write that post and you still got in two arguments in the comment thread with two very different people!!
And the two of us also argued with each other.
And the two of us also argued with each other. (I mean me and Sarah)
What is a T-Visa? They give visas so that people who are shown to be trafficked and cooperate get to stay in the US? And work? If so, that’s really awesome. Although the coercive measures that ‘cooperation’ could entail are worrisome. And, for that matter, this seems like a clear incentive for self-overreporting.
And yeah, I think the meaning of
‘There is absolutely no danger of sex trafficking being underestimated around here any time soon, I can assure you of that. It gets a ridiculously disproportionate amount of hype and hysteria as it is.’
is simply that by the time the info reaches the actual public, it is almost always an over-report. Hype and hysteria -are- dangerous in this context. Because the response is rarely rational. A very few people get helped, thousands are hurt.
I can understand the desire to key into the emotional element of it. First off, if you are on the ground level and -seeing- the harms to trafficked women, it would be inhuman not to want to help in any and every way possible. And I can understand even the argument that such atrocities trump the needs of more privileged sex workers. But we need something that actually works, and what we have now in most countries doesn’t help really anyone.
And the general feminist argument that legalizing normalizes makes some sense. Keep it a shameful thing, and keep sending the message that procuring involves hurting women, and the demand is lowered. Some. But we’ve tried that, and the demand only goes down so far. And the shame element pushes sex in general, and sex work in particular into dark and dingy corners. And that is dangerous.
There is also the idea of the Swedish system. Legalizing selling but not buying. Seems good, from a certain point of view. Certainly far better then the other way around, from a protecting women POV. But so far as I can tell, in Sweden it -hasn’t- been better then decriminilization. Sex trade seems like it might be down some, but it was never that big in Sweden to begin with despite being legal till 1999. And violence in the sex trade is up. And the women still working are more likely to be the most disadvantaged. Pimping was very foreign before in Sweden, but is on the rise.
Decriminalization may normalize sex work. But it will also give those forced into it some chance to come forth without shame. And unions, social services, and instrumental law enforcement against the likes of sex slavery and child prostitution would have much more power to help those who most need it. And it would help those who actually do SW by choice. The mythical happy hookers.
You are not going to get a T-visa if you were not actually trafficked and most trafficked people do not get them.
The federal standard for trafficking is force, fraud or coercion. To get a T-visa you must meet ALL the following conditions:
* came to the United States illegally to engage in commercial sex work, involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery
* committed commercial sex acts, or agreed to come to the US, as a result of force, fraud, or coercion
* would suffer extreme hardship if deported
* report their trafficking crime to federal authorities and, if at least 15 years old, help with investigations and prosecutions
For really obvious reasons, people are often unwilling to report the crime (or don’t know they can), name their traffickers, and/or testify. But if they don’t do those things they are not eligible for the visa.
Aw, dead thread.
Spot on with this article. Thanks for being a voice of reason and sharing it through your experiences.
Yes, I have sex with prostitutes. And no, that doesn’t make me a misogynist that likes to beat up women. In fact, having a first hand idea of how frequently acts of prostitution occur, vs how many incidents of violence are reported, I’d say it’s probably not more frequent than incidents of domestic violence.
Also after years of experience with the institutions of prostitution, I’d say that in most instances, prostitutes still retain the majority of control in the exchange. And that is very contrary to the popular opinion that prostitutes are exploited and powerless victims at the hands of men.
It’s not much different than a regular relationship, except much more short term. If a prostitute tells a client no kissing, or no to any other request, I think it’s a rare man who will force it on her. And at the same time, in any “regular relationship,” where traditional courting requires men to pay for dinner and nights out that culminates in a sexual liason… how is that NOT prostitution?
On another note, I wouldn’t be too hard on the friends who assumed you were assaulted by a client. It’s a somewhat logical assumption. If I knew an electrician who was electrocuted, I’d assume it was during work and not perhaps while tinkering on his own television. It’s just a matter of frequency.