He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words. – Elbert Hubbard
I already had a column written for today, but a few hours ago I received this long, angry comment on yesterday’s column. Since it’s my first hate mail I thought it important to feature it, because it gives me the opportunity to make a few points both about how I run my blog and about our opponents. For those who don’t have WordPress blogs themselves a few words of explanation are in order; when a comment from a new respondent is submitted, I get an email asking me to moderate it. I can read the comment before deciding to let it actually appear on my blog and even edit it if I choose (for example, I’ve corrected typos at the respondent’s request before). But once I approve someone’s reply, his future ones are automatically posted. So it’s important to be selective about replies; if one of my regular readers went mad and started posting ads for penis enlargement pills I would have to laboriously remove all of them and then figure out how to ban him in the future. I am NOT going to approve this comment for the simple reason that prohibitionists and “human trafficking” alarmists already have thousands of venues to spread their propaganda without me giving them another one. This post, by a woman calling herself “Jenn”, is here reprinted IN ITS ENTIRETY with neither correction nor addition; my replies to her statements are interpolated between her paragraphs for ease of reading.
Wow, I don’t know who you’re trying harder to fool your readers or yourself. Your argument seems to be that a prostitute is either an honest business person *OR* a victim and, since you know/are an honest sex workers, trafficking must be a lie. (selfcentrism much?)
Notice the hostility of the “true believer”; her very first statement is to accuse me of lying. Jenn, I’m not trying to “fool” anyone; my readers are intelligent people who can do research for themselves to prove me wrong, and in addition you will note a number of links to the right which make it convenient for readers to consult other authorities on sex work, many of them far more knowledgeable than I. Your entire letter reeks of such ignorance of my blog; you have clearly never read it before today, yet you feel at liberty to make unsupported statements and wild assumptions about what I’ve been saying for months without even bothering to look at any of my previous columns, and that destroys what little credibility you might otherwise have. In this paragraph, for example, you accuse me of a Cartesian fallacy which my regular readers all know to be untrue; I’ve written on more than one occasion of dishonest whores. And I did NOT say in yesterday’s column or at any other time that there was no such thing as a sex slave trade; what I said was that authorities in many Western countries have fomented a moral panic by exaggerating the extent of the sex slave trade in those countries. We are not talking about third-world countries here; it is precisely because the authorities in those countries turn a blind eye that the business thrives there. What I am talking about is the way authorities in Western nations like the US and UK pretend there is a vast and busy slave trade in those countries despite their inability to produce more than a handful of “trafficked” victims.
The sale of human beings is the second largest black market money maker in the world.
Really? Statistics, please. Reputable ones. But you can’t produce them any more than Senator McCarthy could produce his list of “known communists”, and for the same reason. Like all conscientious sex workers I oppose the forcing of anyone into prostitution; obviously you did not bother to read my review of a book on the “comfort women” of World War II or you would have already known that.
Half of known prostitutes are minors and therefore unable to legally consent OR operate a business as an individual. Federal law states that a minor may not legally be charged with prostitution and the fact that it happens *all the time* is a failing of this law to be publicized (to law enforcement and to the public). The existence of this law is a large part of what traffick NGO’s are trying to get out there.
So right there you’ve eliminated half of prostitutes as legitimate business people.
Half, huh? Next week it’ll be two-thirds. Such “magic numbers” are pulled out of thin air and have absolutely nothing to do with reality. Since agencies will not hire minors and websites will not accept their ads, most underage prostitutes are streetwalkers and the rest operate in clandestine brothels. It’s difficult to estimate the number of such brothels, but by criminalizing sex work the police cut off a valuable source of inside information, the sex workers themselves. As for streetwalkers, the National Taskforce on Prostitution estimates they make up roughly 15% of all prostitutes; since not all of them are underage, your “half of all known prostitutes” claim is shown up for the nonsense it is. Even if I charitably allow that half of all streetwalkers are underage (which they aren’t) and that 10% of all prostitutes (also a generous estimate) operate in clandestine brothels whose population is 75% underage, that generates a liberal estimate of 15% of all prostitutes who are too young. That’s certainly a tragedy, but it’s also a far cry from half, and if our trade were decriminalized we could reduce that number dramatically within months. That is exactly the point of this petition, which I urge my readers to sign.
Then you have to look at the number of people who are prostitutes simply from need. In New York City 70% of prostitutes are selling sex as a manner of meeting a basic physical need like shelter or food. More than half are male. More than 95% of them say they want out. In Chicago 86% of prostitutes have a pimp (which personally I interpret as a removal of personal agency and a factor of unacceptable sex work).
More numbers pulled out of thin air. Even if I give you that 70% of streetwalkers are at a subsistence level, that gives us a figure of 10.5% of all prostitutes. I’m totally unsurprised that 95% of such individuals want out; wouldn’t you? Living on the street can’t be a rewarding lifestyle. But it has nothing to do with either “human trafficking” or voluntary prostitution. As for your figure on pimps in Chicago, I direct you to my column on pimps; even if the percentage of pimps in Chicago exceeds the national average by over 36% as you propose, you are once again committing the tired old Hollywood errors (as you do several times in your letter) of A) assuming all prostitutes are streetwalkers and B) assuming all pimps control the hookers, when more than half the time it’s the other way around.
Trafficking refers to labor as well. In fact 60% of traffick victims are coming from labor rather than sex, an issue which you fail to address in your post.
I don’t “fail to address it”, it’s simply immaterial to a discussion of sex work. Politicians don’t use the existence of agricultural slaves as an excuse to persecute escort services.
I could also throw out there that 86% of known prostitutes were sexually or physically abused as children. This is often used to make prostitution look like the act of a broken individual, but I wont do that. Just because someones relationship with sex started as “dysfunctional” doesn’t necessarily mean that it remains dysfunctional.
Yawn. I’ve written about this bogus statistic many times before, which you would’ve known had you read this column.
You use the term “white slavery” but I’m not sure anyone out there would deny that victims are foreign, domestic, white, black, mexican, asian, ect. Trafficking occurs across all nations, “races”, genders, and socio-economic classes.
If you had studied history rather than politically correct propaganda you would know that “white slavery” was the original term for what is now called “human trafficking”. It has nothing to do with the victims being of white race, though that may have been the intent of those who first coined the term in the late 19th century. You could even have discovered it by reading my columns of August 9th and 26th, but I realize it’s easier just to go off half-cocked and make an incompetent attempt to imply your opponent is either ignorant or racist.
It seems to me you have a chip on your shoulder.
Your perception is highly suspect.
If you would like sources or specific case files for trafficked persons I would be happy to provide them. Links to Internet forums where the girls are obviously too young, near tears, and all photographed in the same hotel room can also be provided.
I can do without your child porn links, thank you very much. Once again you imply that I don’t believe “human trafficking” exists, when in fact all I and other sex workers dispute is the number of cases and the way authorities equate it with voluntary adult prostitution.
You throw around the term NeoFeminist in a way that alludes to todays feminists as butch Freudians and yet many (I’ll go ahead and call them third wave) feminists feel very strongly that we need to recognize both legitimate and illegitimate forms of sex work.
Butch Freudians? Who said any such thing? I define my term “neofeminist” in a box right there in the right column for all to see; it has nothing to do with true feminists of either the second or third waves, but rather with power-hungry Neomarxist man-haters who dominated all mainstream feminist discourse in the ’80s and ’90s and still make up the majority of academic and politically-connected “feminists”. In fact, in tomorrow’s column (which you pre-empted with your attack) I reproduce a statement from the Third Wave Foundation; there is a link to it in the “resources” box at right, which you of course didn’t bother to look at.
A persons agency in the choice to become a sex worker should be the sole deciding factor in whether a sex worker is a business person or a victim. For you to announce to the victims of the sex trade that they are not real is appalling. It’s like when politicians say there are no homeless people. You sound ridiculous.
Services and justice should be provided for those who took part in the sex trade because they had no choice and those who have choice and find it fulfilling and lucrative (which studies show *is* a majority of prostitutes) should be allowed to practice their trade in safety and security.
Wait, so now you admit that a majority of us are voluntary? Does that include at least part of the half who are underage? And what about the 95% who want out, or the 86% in Chicago who have pimps? And you claim I sound ridiculous? You need to look at that link to the article on projection again.
Readers, I certainly encourage any one of you who discovers a mistake in my column to point it out to me, and if I check your posted source and discover you’re right I’ll be the first to admit my error. But please don’t waste my time and yours by spouting the same old tired propaganda, bogus statistics and unsupported allegations.
First observation is that you have mentioned penis enlargement pills a few different times. Do they play the commercials that often where you live, or is there some backstory to it?
As far as your commenter, she may just see things differently because of where she lives or has seen. If i had only ever been in nyc on the west side highway between 20&32nd, i might believe that every prostitute was a runaway under 16 and being pimped.
I don’t watch TV, but such ads make up a large percentage of spam and some of the spam comments people try to post on my blog. I guess they strike me as particularly absurd because I’m a woman, just as you might notice if you were repeatedly sent breast enlargement spam.
That’s as may be, but one’s own casual outsider observations do not constitute statistics, nor do they give one an excuse for numerous ignorant accusations which could have been avoided simply by reading my blog before firing off an email which makes her look like a total ass.
Actually i’d find the breast enlargement spam being sent to me a bit funny, although i guess it could get boring at some point.
Not defending the person, and although i have no idea what the actual numbers or percentages are, we all agree that ‘real’ human trafficking and forcing people to become prostitutes is wrong.
What drives some of the hysteria is the media, which only shows the worst of the worst and hypes everything. I can’t really blame your poster for having the opinion she does because of how things are portrayed on tv etc. She may have quoting stats thay she heard on tv or elsewhere. Did you know that 85.13% of people will do the same this month! Lol 🙂
I don’t blame anyone for being ignorant or gullible. What I do take issue with is being so convinced that one’s own ignorant opinions are factual that she attacks someone else without even bothering to ascertain either the facts or her target’s actual position on the issue!
Jenn just attempted to make a response, which I will post in its entirety:
Obviously, she hasn’t bothered to read the report on New Zealand’s Prostitution Reform Act (also conveniently located in the resource box at the right) which exactly disproves her initial statement. Note also the hints of her true prohibitionist agenda in this reply. 😦
I’ve also heard about similar statistics about the increase of prostitution. What I usually don’t see them talking about is that, in the same periods, prostitution increased (and usually by comparable, if not higher, amounts) in countries in which it is illegal, which suggests that criminalization is not really a factor. Other possible factors are usually also left out:
(a) the fact that prostitution is moving online (via craigslist, etc.) streamlines the process, makes it easier, and therefore increases the business;
(b) the ease of transportation, plus the removal of older barriers (like the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 80’s and early 90’s), implies that a larger number of people are moving around today than ever before; therefore, the number of people (including prostitutes) moving to other countries has increased. (In the Netherlands, they talked about a ‘wave’ of Eastern European women who came to work as prostitutes. The same happened in other countries, regardless of whether prostitution was legal there or not.)
Alcohol and cigarettes are legal, yet there are still people running them illegally across state lines to avoid taxes. Oxycotin is legal yet people are still getting it and using it illegally. Cocaine is illegal yet people are still getting it.
People will still do illegal stuff. Is it worth the time and effort to keep criminalized the most basic of human functions between consenting adults?
Obviously not, but I wouldn’t expect prohibitionists and alarmists to understand that if I were you. I honestly suspect Jenn’s heart is in the right place, but she needs to educate herself by reading the facts about sex work; the links to SWOP, Desiree Alliance and IPC in my resources box are a good place to start.
Well its not always easy to see things from a different perspective when you havent been exposed to that environment. And after hearing one point of view repeated over and over for so long, hearing or reading something different on a couple of web pages may not make a difference.
Intellectually i can see why someone might choose this line of work, emotionally it isn’t as clear.
And most people go on emotions.
Here’s another reply I just got, and obviously will not allow to post himself; I’ve included his information because, unlike Jenn, this man is pure trash and deserves any harassment he gets.
E-mail : jonolan@jonolan.net
URL : http://blog.jonolan.net
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=65.223.178.126
Comment:
Surprise, Jonolan! Yes, I posted it; I just won’t give you free access to post your filth at will. I get to control what goes on my blog, not you. However, I wonder if your web host would take kindly to your implied death threat?
Anyone referring to a person as “it” has, in my opinion, psychopathic tendencies.
Or is a one of those “Intarweb Trollz”. 😉
You go gett’m, Maggie!
Jenn,
Would you please share where you got the numbers or percentages you cite? I am not looking to challange them, just see where they come from so i can try to see from what perspective they are derived from.
Ant, if Jenn gives permission I will provide you with her email address so you can correspond with her privately. As angry as she is, she’s obviously a normal (if misguided) person and deserves her privacy, unlike Jonolan above.
I thought youd be interested in her source and post it. Sorry. 😦
There’s no need to apologize, Ant; the reason I won’t post it is simply because, as I said in the first paragraph of today’s column, trafficking alarmists already have thousands of outlets without my giving them one more. I’m sure a quick Google search will reveal many such sites, but I warn you that their “statistics” will vary wildly from one to the next.
Hmmm… I wonder if that’s the same Jenn who posted on my site a few days ago. She didn’t like what I had to say about a claim that “the average age of entry into prostitution in the United States is 12.”
She didn’t call me a whore, but she strongly implied that I might be an asshole.
One thing I noticed about the sex slave rescue groups. When they come to visit your site, they bring their friends.
Did yours have the word “princess” as part of her email address? This one does.
Funny, but I ran into that same inane claim very recently myself, though I can’t recall where. I guess we can look forward to its being repeated over and over just like the bogus statistic about most female emergency room visits being due to injuries inflicted by husbands/boyfriends used to be in the early ’90s.
I wonder if Jonolan knows her? I did think it was rather odd that I got my first two pieces of hate mail only a couple of hours apart.
Jonolan is probably a troll. The kind of guy who goes to an atheist site and posts “your all going to hell without JESUS!” and, when they quit yelling at him, go to a Christian site and posts “you dumbasses need to grow up and stop believing stoopid fairy tales!”
He may not believe a thing he says, but likes getting a rise out of others.
You made money giving people pleasure. He so enjoys being mean that he does it for free and unrequested.
Now, which of you is the immoral one again?
Well, I posted the link to his website right there above all that shit he vomited up; if you like you could go and see how much of it he actually eats. Personally, I’m not going to waste my time. 😦
Well, I’ve got time to waste, so I checked it out. It’s a political blog. He doesn’t like Obama. I’m not sure what he thinks of the Republicans, but I got the impression it was only a little better than what he thinks of Obama.
I only skimmed it, real quick like. So if there’s anything there about prostitution, I missed it. If I’d spent a little more time, I might have been able to say “yes there is” or “no there isn’t” and might know if he likes the Republicans or if it’s a case of a pox on both your houses.
Strangely enough, it’s much better written and not nearly as violent as what he posted here. The phrase that comes to mind is “down on whores.”
As in, “I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them…” Yes, I thought of that as well. 😦
A recent publication has shown that Germany has had a decrease in trafficking since the decriminalised and having read the most recent police reports in Sweden they have increased investigations by over 500% on trafficked sex workers. Admittedly they had no real figures on trafficking before and it could be due to ploughing more money into trafficking, but the fact is there definitely has not been a decrease in the time it has been active legislation to crimanlise the purchaser.
Criminalisation only acts to increase demand, as it goes underground and it is only men who are willing to take a risk that continue, as with the Sex workers. This also means more risk to health and safety to all concerned.
More information you might find interesting. Awful for the poor children, but how exactly had criminalising the purchaser helped them? http://www.thelocal.se/44408/20121114/#.UTTFT1fRK_I
This “Human Trafficking” nonsense sets my bullshit detector off the same way as all that psychic power and Sasquatch paranormal stuff. No way could anybody get away with this on a mass scale. Rather than being “underage” from personal experience I find prostitutes in the US are usually “overage” ie 51 years old pretending to be in their 30s. Where does all the money come from to fund such an extended “conspiracy” of “slave trading” surely I would have stumbled upon it by now if it is so “vast.” This also assumes men are monsters and vast numbers must know all about this and not care. However very few men would want anything to do with underage girls, nor some abducted woman not doing her job willingly. A good number would report such inhumane behavior making the activity way too risky for any “slave trader” to engage in. There simply aren’t enough Jeffry Dahmer types out there to frequent such businesses to make such an audacious operation economically feasible. This is simply prudish squares with no street smarts who want to be fooled into believing the most outlandish horror stories to make themselves feel morally superior.