As I’ve repeatedly explained, “pimping” laws are popular among prohibitionists who pretend to be “progressive” or “feminist” because they allow cops and prosecutors to target sex workers and our friends, families and associates while pretending they want to “help” us. Both the law and prohibitionists in general adhere to the completely absurd notion that those who do sex work and those who perform management duties of one kind or another are as separate as feudal lords and serfs, and that there is no overlap between management (“pimps”, “madams”, “sex traffickers”, “exploiters”) and sex workers (“prostituted women”, “sex slaves”, “trafficking victims”). The former are painted as powerful international gangsters with magical powers (including mind control and the ability to pass through walls), and the latter passive, vegetable-like organisms more like bottles of laundry detergent than human beings. In reality, pure managers who do no sex work themselves are uncommon, and managers who resemble the “pimp” stereotype are rarer still. Most owners or managers of escort services and massage parlors are either current or former sex workers themselves (I certainly worked when I had my agency), and in the world of independent escorts, activities that cops, prosecutors and other purveyors of tragedy porn call “pimping” are nigh-universal. Don’t believe me? Well, let’s test it. Have you ever…
- Given a reference?
- Participated in a duo?
- Given another escort a ride?
- Given another escort advice?
- Given another escort condoms?
- Let someone else use your incall?
- Helped someone else with her ads?
- Acted as another escort’s safety call?
- Shared legal or illegal drugs with another escort?
- Let any sex worker stay or clean up in your home?
- Had an amateur friend who later became an escort?
- Referred a good client to another escort or vice versa?
- Told another escort about a good website, service, etc?
If you answered “yes” to even one of the above questions, you are a pimp in the eyes of cops and prosecutors in all criminalization regimes (including Swedish criminalization) and the great majority of legalization regimes. This is how criminalization is intended to work, no matter what “progressives” may tell you; laws are drawn so as to cast as wide a net as possible, and criminalize as many people as possible, using the bogus rationalization that prosecutors would never intentionally misuse a law to persecute someone who doesn’t fit the bogeyman picture used to sell the law to the Great Unwashed (despite the obvious fact that prosecutors do exactly that on a regular basis). This is what politicians actually mean when they claim they’re “going after the pimps“; this is what it means when you hear that a woman has been charged with “pimping” or “sex trafficking”; this is what advocates of Swedish criminalization mean when they call their scheme “decriminalization of the seller”. It’s just another way for the brutal machinery of the state to destroy the lives of real women trying to make a living, while pretending to “rescue” them from racist caricatures, James-Bondian gangsters or mustache-twirling silent-movie Svengalis.
