Investors and sex workers already know each other…frequently intimately. – Bardot Smith
It seems to me that these women knew exactly what they were doing:
Members of a U.N. peacekeeping mission engaged in “transactional sex” with more than 225 Haitian women who said they needed to do so to obtain things like food and medication, a sign that sexual exploitation remains significantly underreported in such missions…About a third of alleged sexual abuse involves minors under 18…And widespread confusion remains on the ground about consensual sex and exploitation…For rural women, hunger, lack of shelter, baby care items, medication and household items were frequently cited as the “triggering need”…urban and suburban women received “church shoes”, cell phones, laptops and perfume, as well as money. In cases of non-payment, some women withheld the badges of peacekeepers and threatened to reveal their infidelity via social media…
Setting Women’s Rights Back a Century
Amherst says even unconscious men are morally superior to women:
An Amherst College student…accompanied a fellow student back to her dorm room after drinking in February 2012. While he was blacked out, she performed oral sex on him. Nearly two years later, she would accuse him of sexual assault. And under Amherst’s guilty-until-proven-innocent…hearing standards, the accused student was expelled…John Doe — is suing the college for denying him due process. His lawyer had discovered text messages that prove the accused student did not initiate the encounter and in no way sexually assaulted the accuser. Despite this evidence, the college refused to reopen Doe’s case…Doe was not allowed to directly cross-examine his accuser and could only write down questions for the panel to ask her, leaving no room for follow-ups…the accuser said during her hearing that she only texted one friend to help her handle the assault as she felt “very alone and confused”…Rather, the accuser texted her friend “Ohmygod I jus did something so fuckig stupid” [sic throughout]. She then proceeded to fret that she had done something wrong and her roommate would never talk to her again, because “it’s pretty obvi I wasn’t an innocent bystander”…
J’accuse (#42)
Was this outcome ever in doubt?
Former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is not guilty of “aggravated pimping”, a French court has ruled. A judge in Lille described…DSK…as a “libertine” and a “customer”, but said he was not a pimp…
Under Every Bed
I wonder sometimes if the reporters who write pap like this realize how ridiculous they sound:
A message to those who would traffic in human life: A crackdown is coming. New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas plans to sharpen the state’s focus on investigating and prosecuting human trafficking crimes – and has requested a $750,000 federal grant to roughly double the number of personnel dedicated to such cases…Human trafficking is an underreported crime that too frequently goes uninvestigated…New Mexico…has prosecuted fewer than two dozen cases since an anti-human-trafficking law went into effect in 2008. But that number belies the real extent of the crimes committed…[Balderas’ toady] said “The numbers don’t really reflect the human trafficking that is happening in New Mexico…we know this is a rampant, billion-dollar industry.”
Skin To Skin (#315)
…criminalisation of clients has negative effects on the safety, wellbeing and health of sex workers. Yet there is another side to the problem – the sexual fulfilment of vulnerable clients, such as those with a disability…Clients are often portrayed as men who enjoy degrading women and even violent characters who like to abuse them. But…research…contradicts this view…Tuppy Owens, sex therapist and founder of the TLC Trust, which connects people with disability with sex workers, argues the effects of criminalising clients would be tragic for people with disability…while many clients will simply go underground to avoid being caught if criminalisation becomes a reality, this is less of an option for people with disabilities. Many rely on a third party to help them access sex services…We should promote rather than restrict initiatives that allow them to explore their sexuality in a safe and mutually respectful way with a…sex worker.
Pimping the Pimp
If Patricia Spencer doesn’t pace herself, she’ll burn out her Hitachi in no time:
…we’re pretty fortunate in Las Vegas because we have a full-time unit dedicated to vice and sex trafficking-related activities. That’s why we’re unique, and that’s why we get so much exposure to everything going on, because we see it every day…If you publish an article…about a prostitution-related incident, and you read the comments at the bottom, it’s very discouraging because the comments…are almost always negative towards the police doing this type of investigation…the public does not understand…that 99.9% of the women are trafficked. They’re beaten. They don’t keep the money, and they are in a life that they can’t escape from. The amount of juveniles that are being trafficked is astronomical…People are getting annihilated, and all for money…they’re enslaved into this life…It’s almost like addiction for these women. They need treatment programs, just like addicts…Their kids are kidnapped and held from the victim a lot…My love and passion has always been chasing and going after gang members, and I can see that gang members have now evolved into pimping…we’re seeing a great deal of these girls turning into trick-rollers…if they have a quota to meet, they would much rather meet that quota by stealing than having to turn tricks all night. I mean, who wants to do that? It’s much easier, and there’s more money…
A woman who’s never done sex work (or any other useful labor) stating that theft is easier than fucking is a perfect example of the warped police mentality.
To Protect and Serve (#413)
Undercover inspections are one of vice unit’s main tactics in making sure San Diego’s strip clubs adhere to what some consider to be the most restrictive adult-entertainment ordinance on the West Coast…from April 20, 2013, to June 6, 2014, detectives from the vice unit visited Cheetahs on ten occasions…In March 2014, nearly a dozen [of them forced] the dancers to pose for photos in their lingerie…Two lawsuits…were soon filed…and [the city retaliated by revoking] their nude-entertainment business permit…a…former vice detective [says] “Vice unit is a club…detectives…go drinking every night. When they decide to target a place they’ll send in vice cops, narcotics, code compliance to find violations. Once they get a hard-on, they will do whatever they need to do”…
Property of the State
I suspect Georgia politicians will close this loophole almost immediately:
Georgia prosecutors have dropped the murder charges brought against 23-year-old Kenlissa Jones, who attempted to abort her pregnancy at around five months by taking an abortion drug that she ordered online. The drug sent Jones into early labor, delivering a child that allegedly was alive but died soon thereafter. Jones was originally charged with malice murder and possession of a dangerous drug…The…district attorney’s office is still charging Jones with misdemeanor possession of a dangerous drug…(misoprostol). But it dropped the murder charges after District Attorney Greg Edwards realized that…”although third parties could be criminally prosecuted for their actions relating to an illegal abortion…as the law currently stands in Georgia, criminal prosecution of a pregnant woman for her own actions against her unborn child does not seem permitted. Applicable criminal law and statutes provide explicit immunity from prosecution for a pregnant woman”…
Another Fine Mess
Bardot Smith points out that sex workers aren’t only on the forefront of new technologies; we often drive their development:
…while women indirectly control the overwhelming majority of major purchases being made, they have limited exposure and access to the development of these new systems and tools. The adult industry is the exception. [It] and the financial sector…have always been connected…as women are always directly linked to the movement of resources in an economy…Nearly all men enjoy the…commercial sex industry in some way. Venture capitalists are certainly no exception, and the finance industry in general has a long and storied love affair with the working girl…the end goal is always, unapologetically, a direct transfer of wealth to women…sex workers have long driven major revolutions in technology: still photography, video cameras, telephone services, VCR, peer-to-peer computing, phone and video chat, and streaming. They have also been at the forefront of innovating new business models for content, communications, and services themselves…And yet…despite the fact that adult content drives 30% of internet traffic, and the fact that companies are profiting from the traffic, ads and services involved in the industry, the women who power that capital flow are treated like criminals…
Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (#442)
The number of minors working in Cambodia’s sex industry is on the decline…A study by the International Justice Mission, which closely monitors the issue, shows a decline in the prevalence of girls under the age of 17 in brothels and other venues. The IJM report found the prevalence of underage girls declined from around 8 percent to just over 2 percent from 2012 to 2015. Holly Burkhalter, IJM’s vice president of government and advocacy…[said] Cambodia is “no longer the world’s No. 1 destination to buy a child,” though the threat of sex trafficking remains high…
IJM is one of the most notorious of all the “rescue” organizations, so what are they up to?
Soap Opera (#447)
The “trafficking tattoo” trope has taken on a life of its own: “Some have bar codes. Others are marked with their pimp’s name and phone number. Branded like cattle, victims of human trafficking recovered in Pennsylvania could soon apply to the state to have any tattoos from their pimps surgically removed…”
Blunt Instrument (#516)
A 10-month investigation uncovered nearly a dozen Utah massage parlors being used as fronts for sex trafficking…the [allegations] led to the questioning of more than a dozen women and one man…[but] no charges have been filed. “Our hope is to find evidence of trafficking in person [sic],” said Attorney General Sean Reyes…[who also pretended] there is a lead person who moves women around to different fronts, collects money and sends it to the women’s home country. The first words out of one woman’s mouth when investigators arrived was, “Help me. Please, please help me,” he said…
Yes, Mr. Reyes, that’s called “praying”. People often do it in terrifying situations, such as when threatened by thugs waving guns around.
Drawing Lines (#516)
The tax protest angle is interesting, but look more closely at what the brothel owner wants from the “authorities”:
A licensed brothel in…Salzburg has been offering free drinks and free sex in a protest against what its owner says is unfair taxation…the news “has spread like wildfire, with punters lining up to get inside”…Hermann “Pascha” Müller, who owns the…brothel, [said]…he no longer wants to be “the tax office’s pimp”…Müller says that he is paying the prostitutes’ usual hourly rate out of his own pocket. “In the last decade I have paid taxes of almost €5 million…The problem is, the tax office wants more and more, and they are not cracking down on illegal street and apartment prostitution”…
