I’m a business person and have seen that it takes a sound financial model, commitment by a dedicated team that can work together, and being on the side of justice to truly overcome strong odds. I believe there may be some groups who know how to work within the law yet apply their skills very effectively in this area.

I’m not looking to debate – I want to know if any of you have seen a direct effort of this style yet and; if so, what the outcome has been?

Well when you give as much lip service to our right to work, the ‘tiny minority’, as you do to the cause of those you perceive as forced, then you might be some what creditable.

Where’s the documentation for this statement? How may prostitutes are working and how many are ‘choosing’ what?

“A traveling circus known only to the the owners of the circus and those who pay to see the performance is, by definiton, isolated.”

This comment is plain daft, that isn’t the way travelling circuses operate in the real world. It’s not the way hospitals or call-centres or airports operate in the real world either. It is, however, the way mobile brothels operate, for real, in the real world.

This discussion did not start over whether or not those women were isolated or vulnerable in those mobile brothels, because patently they are. This discussion started about the amount of ‘choice’ and ‘agency’ those women have exercised in being there.

The ‘agency’ argument says that the most harm those women can suffer is for us to assume that they didn’t fully exercise a ‘free choice’ by being there; by suggesting that those conditions of ‘work’ may be abusive, we, apparently, are doing them more harm than the johns and pimps ever could.

The ‘agency’ argument, taken to its logical conclusions, means that any amount of physical or psychological harm can be suffered by those women, but they still have ‘agency’ and made a ‘free choice’ being there. Under the ‘agency’ argument, even if they WERE trafficked, even if they are being held in debt bondage and have no ability to negotiate for safe sex, or to refuse johns, or were penetrated until their vaginas bled, they still have ‘agency’, because it hasn’t killed them. If they survive it, they have ‘agency’.

The ‘agency’ argument, taken to its logical conclusion, means children pimped out by their families have ‘agency’ since it doesn’t kill them and it means their family can eat. A starving woman prostituting herself for scraps of food has ‘agency’ because it means she doesn’t starve, and we are not allowed to even recognise it as abuse or do anything about it because the abuse is what allows them to survive.

“If women (as well as men and children) are smuggled anywhere, it’s because of war, poverty, or oppression. Smuggling isn’t going to stop unless those problems are dealt with.”

Yes, there are push factors, and poverty is the main one, but there are also pull factors, nobody is trafficked anywhere for any reason if there is no demand for them there. The other thing we are not allowed to see or try to do anything about is the demand side of prostitution.

““Deregulated” and “decriminalized” are two different things. The term “deregulated”, as you are using it, is a euphemism.”

Decriminalisation means the removal of punitive measures across all parts of the sex industry: buying, selling, facilitating or controlling commercial sex acts. That sounds like deregulation to me.

If it is a euphemism, then describing submitting to unwanted sex in order to survive as ‘agency’, is also a euphemism.

“It’s a lot more difficult to scare or control a sex worker if he or she knows that the work they are doing is allowed by law. I think Jill Brenneman made that clear. How many times must this be said?”

It would also be harder to scare or control them if they knew that what was being done to them was a crime against them, and that the police would give a damn and treat it seriously.

“Why bother operating an underground business when you can do it above ground and not have to constantly look over your shoulder worrying about getting caught? In a decriminalized system, an “underground” sex work business is one that refuses to pay it’s taxes, or does not obey zoning laws, or does not obey the other laws and regulations that businesses in that particular country have to follow. And obviously someone who is coercing another into sex work is operating an underground business, but it’s also quite likely that a trafficker is not paying his taxes or not following other laws. You can catch a trafficker by noticing these other, trivial violations.”

Prostitution is a massive business making a huge amount of money, and the infrastructure for it is already there. If all a pimp has to do to go ‘legitimate’ is start paying taxes then that’s what they’ll do. There are cases from Australia of women being trafficked into legal brothels, the tax-paying status is just a way to put up a good front. If the main concern of law enforcement is collecting taxes, then who’s going to look too closely at what’s actually going on?

Strip clubs have been legal for a long time, but they are still entwined with organised crime and the women who work there are still, on the whole, treated like dirt, have to put up with all kinds of violence, make very little money, and are under pressure to engage in prostitution. Being above ground and taxed hasn’t stopped it being a shitty job (although, for the sake of ‘agency’ we are not allowed to see that), and the men controlling the industry do their best to keep things that way because it maximises profits for them.

“But really, Anti-P, there is no use arguing with you, because the basis of your argument is that every sex worker is coerced, every client is a rapist, and every manager is a slave-owner. Even when there are so many examples to the contrary if you just take the time to look for them.”

I accept that there are a number of men and women in prostitution who choose to be there, but globally they are a tiny minority. Really, the experiences of a high-class escort who can charge hundreds of dollars an hour and choose her clients has practically nothing to do with those women in that mobile brothel.

If you refuse to see any abuse in prostitution, then you won’t see any abuse; if you insist that johns are just ‘clients’ then you won’t see any rapists.

Doesn’t it concern you at all that the organisations that claim to speak on behalf of prostituted women are so much in bed with the pimps and the traffickers and the brothel keepers? COYOTE in the US has, by it’s own admission, only 3% former or current prostituted women, the IUSW in the UK is completely open about accepting pimps, brothel keepers and pornographers as members.

Maxine Doogan, who fronts the ESPU and is a convicted pimp, acted in this thread like it was an affront to her for me to ask what her union actually plans to do to organise workers – she didn’t even bother making shit up about it!

Her inability to string a sentence together in English would be amusing if it weren’t for the fact that she has just participated in a very sophisticated campaign in support of Proposition K, a campaign which included “trying to get a judge to block voter information for the ballot pamphlet that would have let people know what Prop. K will do if passed.”

http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/columns/ken_garcia/Keep_trafficking_out_of_city.html

She obviously has some very powerful backers with a lot of resources available to them.

A traveling circus known only to the the owners of the circus and those who pay to see the performance is, by definiton, isolated.

>>Women smuggled into a foreign country (regardless of whether they thought they were getting a job as a waitress, or a high-class escort, or had, out of desperation, accepted that they would have to service ten men a day and hand over all the money for how ever long) are by definition vulnerable.>>

If women (as well as men and children) are smuggled anywhere, it’s because of war, poverty, or oppression. Smuggling isn’t going to stop unless those problems are dealt with.

>>Under a deregulated system you are relying on the johns to police the system, and the johns don’t give a shit.>>

“Deregulated” and “decriminalized” are two different things. The term “deregulated”, as you are using it, is a euphemism.

>>You are also relying on the pimps to be honest, they can tell the women they control anything to scare them and keep them under control.>>

It’s a lot more difficult to scare or control a sex worker if he or she knows that the work they are doing is allowed by law. I think Jill Brenneman made that clear. How many times must this be said?

>>I have never seen a convincing account of how decriminalisation would do anything other than create a two-tier system, the ‘legitimate’ businesses out in the open, and the extensive criminal network carrying on exactly as before.>>

Why bother operating an underground business when you can do it above ground and not have to constantly look over your shoulder worrying about getting caught? In a decriminalized system, an “underground” sex work business is one that refuses to pay it’s taxes, or does not obey zoning laws, or does not obey the other laws and regulations that businesses in that particular country have to follow. And obviously someone who is coercing another into sex work is operating an underground business, but it’s also quite likely that a trafficker is not paying his taxes or not following other laws. You can catch a trafficker by noticing these other, trivial violations.

But really, Anti-P, there is no use arguing with you, because the basis of your argument is that every sex worker is coerced, every client is a rapist, and every manager is a slave-owner. Even when there are so many examples to the contrary if you just take the time to look for them.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/columns/ken_garcia/Keep_trafficking_out_of_city.html

I looked at the ESPU website, they described their members in this way:

“An Erotic Service Provider is anyone who is compensated for his or her erotic services or compensated for their support of someone else’s erotic service”

So the ‘support’ must surely include pimps (sorry, ‘managers’), brothel keepers, people running escort agencies? There’s a lot of money in the industry (although little of it gets to stay with the prostitutes), are you telling me the ESPU has no resources to actually help prostitutes organises? Isn’t unionisation supposed to be what keeps prostitutes safe? Or is it that servicing men out in bamboo and bin-bag brothels simply isn’t ‘erotic’ enough for those women to be eligible?

I have never seen a convincing account of how decriminalisation would do anything other than create a two-tier system, the ‘legitimate’ businesses out in the open, and the extensive criminal network carrying on exactly as before.

The way prostitution is policed needs a radical overhaul so that the victims of trafficking and prostitution are not treated as criminals.

>>how would having a deregulated system of prostitution actually help those specific (trafficked) women?>>

I have a question for those with this question. How many under age, trafficked or slave workers do we run into in legal and non marginalized occupations? If we are working in a call center, on a plane, in a retail job, for instance and we suspect that our co worker is forced, underage, an illegally trafficked slave, what can we do? Umm, report it to the police, report it to deparmtent of labor, to human resources and there is reasonable expectation that the actual crimes will be addressed. Meaning the coercion, minor, trafficking etc. The problem isn’t solved by banning an occupation because abuses happen in it. We don’t close a call center because someone may be trafficked into it. We don’t take away the rights of the workers or criminalize the customers of an airline because someone may coerce a flight attendant or passenger to smuggle drugs……. Yet where there is sex work, the immediate answer of so many is to live in this absurd world believing we can make it all go away through blanket legislation.

If sex work was not illegal, if sex workers had the same rights as others, if it weren’t marginalized, if all weren’t portrayed as either criminals or trafficking victims we could actually focus on the real world.

Again, as a former trafficking victim,,,, I was afraid of the police. Afraid of society not believing, not understanding, afraid of the justice system. And none of those fears were ever allayed by reality. Reality was I had every reason to be afraid of them. I woudn’t and didn’t report criminal actions against me or others because the police, the justice system and society don’t see prostitutes as someone to help.

Why is it so many academics and feminists can’t see the obvious? Predators play on isolation. The actual traffickers, the actual rapists, know that sex work is illegal and that as such anyone that is a prostitute for a variety of reasons that are enforced by criminalization are easy targets. When I as a trafficking victim saw myself as a criminal, which was certainly enforced and reenforced by the trafficker/pimp, I wasn’t going to go to the police for help. One of the first things one is taught by a predator is the many reasons why you can’t get help. And the predator knows how sex workers are oppressed by laws, by society, by discrimination, marginalization, by poverty,,,,,,,,,,, He knows that just as damn well as some college educated professor that happened to study oppression in her undergrad women’s studies class. There is also this assumption by many who study and advocate anti ideology that they by virtue of their studies and feminism are the only ones who understand oppression.

Coercion, trafficking, underage prostitution,,,,,,,,,those are already illegal yet they are still happening. Casting the wide net of criminalizing consenting adults to save those that are neither, that thought process has been tried for a long time and hasn’t worked. Fighting those evils by expending hordes of resources and energy opposing sex worker rights initiatives for consenting adult sex work sure as hell hasn’t and isn’t going to work in saving the actual victims or bringing the actual criminals to justice.