All too often [statements about the sex trade are] based on flimsyor out-of-date data, leading to estimates that strain…credulity. – Glenn Reynolds
The Red Umbrella 
Rose Moabelo. Shemise Gordon. Sasha Lee Gordon. Thilivhani Mudau. Desiree Murugan. Sinia Pietersen. Anisa Adams. Kleintjie. Thulukanyao. These are the names of local sex workers who have been murdered‚ without their killers ever being found. SWEAT‚ an advocacy group‚ wants you to #saytheirnames. As many of the 18‚000 accredited delegates arrived for their first meeting at the 21st International Aids Conference in Durban…sex workers held placards detailing the stories of murdered colleagues. [They] wanted to highlight what has changed for sex workers since the last international Aids conference was held in Durban in 2000. “Nothing‚” according to Sally Shackelton‚ director of SWEAT…
Where Are the Victims?
Note the bizarre, stilted language used to describe a very ordinary-sounding escort service:
A Topeka woman…Shannon Nelson…pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy…[for a] prostitution business. At times, as many as 20 females were working as prostitutes for the organization. The leader of the organization rented houses where some of the prostitutes were allowed to live. The organization used Web sites, social media and cell phones to advertise sexual services and to keep track of prostitutes. Nelson…posted advertisements for herself and other women on a Web site offering sexual services. She used cell phones to communicate with Boswell and others in the course of operating the prostitution business…
Leaving the Life
Even when Vice isn’t being directly prohibitionist, it’s no ally; just the very fact that this writer refers to sex work as a “game” (read: “scam”, “dodge”, “hobby”) instead of work says a great deal. Yes, I know that’s a street term; using it to apply to all sex workers is even more ignorant, not less. NB: the Gaye Dalton interviewed here is the woman who exposed Rachel Moran’s lies.
Welcome To Our World (#15)
Another rape victim caged to force her participation in the state’s morality play:
A Harris County [Texas] rape victim who was [arrested and jailed]…after she melted down on the witness stand, is suing the prosecutor and the sheriff’s department…Identified as only “Jenny,” the 20-year-old –who has been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder — was a key witness in the trial of Keith Hendricks who was eventually given two life terms for rape. However, on Dec. 8, 2015, she was unable to continue her testimony after breaking down on the stand and running from the courtroom. Prosecutor Nicholas Socias then [threw a tantrum and had her]…locked up for fear that she wouldn’t return to court at a later date to continue…Jenny was held for a close to month, after being placed with the general population where she was assaulted. The suit also contends that jail personnel treated her as if she was a convicted criminal instead of a victim…
Shift in the Wind
You know things have changed since the last AIDS conference when this can appear in the Voice of America:
Prostitution…continues to be regarded as immoral [and/or] illegal in most countries. This has prompted sex workers, activists and lobbyists around the world to intensify their demand for an end to criminalization of their field. Many of them are attending this year’s International AIDS Conference in Durban, where they argue that continued criminalization of sex work could be worsening the spread of HIV…
That Old Black Magic
I don’t approve of referring to young women as “children”, and I recognize that every culture is different. And I still find this pretty appalling, especially given the disease factor:
In some remote southern regions of Malawi, it’s traditional for girls to be made to have sex with a paid sex worker known as a “hyena” once they reach puberty. The act is not seen by village elders as rape, but as a form of ritual “cleansing”…If a man dies, for example, his wife is required by tradition to sleep with [a hyena like Eric] Aniva before she can bury him. If a woman has an abortion, again sexual cleansing is required…teenage girls, after their first menstruation, are made to have sex over a three-day period, to mark their passage from childhood to womanhood. If the girls refuse, it’s believed, disease or some fatal misfortune could befall their families or the village as a whole…several girls I meet…express aversion to the ordeal…According to custom, sex with the hyena must never be protected with the use of condoms. But they say a hyena is hand-picked for his good morals, and therefore cannot be infected with HIV/Aids…The UN estimates that one in 10 of all Malawians carry the virus, so I ask Aniva if he is HIV-positive. He astounds me by saying that he is – and that he doesn’t mention this to a girl’s parents when they hire him…All of those involved in these rituals are aware that these customs are condemned by outsiders – not just by the church, but by NGOs and the government as well, which has launched a campaign against so-called “harmful cultural practices”. “We are not going to condemn these people,” says Dr May Shaba, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Gender and Welfare. “But we are going to give them information that they need to change their rituals”…
Monsters
How about “calling on police” to stop arresting sex workers, period? “The fatal shooting on July 4 of D.C. transgender woman Deeniquia “Dee Dee” Dodds…has prompted a local LGBT-supportive advocacy group to call on police to end their longstanding practice of arresting trans sex workers…” Cops shouldn’t be in the business of assessing people’s gender any more than they should be assessing our motives for consensual acts.
Paint By Numbers
“Anti-trafficking” publicity stunts are growing ever more bizarre:
“Today we’re out here putting the red sand out,” said Jana Grabenstein…who spearheaded the…movement…to bring awareness to human trafficking in Grand Island [Nebraska]…”It’s here. We need to protect our kids, our families, our friends. Anyone can fall victim to it and you know we just need to stop it,” she said. More than 100 bags of red sand were spread around G.I…”When we saw it, the first thing I said was, ‘This has to be something the Salvation Army heavily gets involved in,’” said Deny Cacy…
Another Fine Mess
Why idiocies like “mid-range prostitution is new” and “it used to be hard for whores to find clients” infuriate me so much: they keep getting repeated over and over and over by reporters who can’t be bothered to do proper research:
…Mid-range prostitution is a relatively new market, enabled by technology. Before the internet, it was hard for escorts to find customers: They had to either walk the streets searching for customers (the lower end of the market), rely on word-of-mouth, or work with agencies…“Before the internet, agencies provided the steady flow of clients and screening, but their capacity was capped,” Baylor University economist Scott Cunningham said. Soon after Craigslist launched in 1995, US escorts quickly started marketing directly to customers online. This newfound ability to advertise on the internet grew the market…because more women and men could work independently…
Because obviously, all those ads in the BACK PAGES (see what I did there?) of alternative newspapers didn’t exist. And brothels? Hotel & casino girls? Nope! They didn’t exist at all!
Traffic Circle (#569)
Glenn Kessler does it again:
…a new study, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice…concluded that the total number of juveniles in the sex trade in the United States was about 9,000 to 10,000. To be cautious, given the limitations in the data, the study said that range could be as low as 4,500 or as high as 21,000. The study also found that about 15 percent of the children relied on a pimp and that the average age of entry into the sex trade was 15.8 years. Both figures are in line with other careful studies…
Regular readers may recall that my estimate of the number of underage US sex workers was 16,000, with 10% involved with a pimp; these new figures are not far from those at all.
All-Purpose Excuse (#608)
“Sex trafficking” is a convenient excuse for any tyranny:
…Senator John McCain…equated encryption to child pornography and human trafficking…[and] threatened Apple CEO Tim Cook…McCain…stated that if Congress doesn’t mandate law enforcement access to encrypted communications, lawmakers were “de facto” helping child pornographers and human traffickers…Encryption has been the Senator’s pet obsession for quite some time. Last November, he expressed that he wanted to outlaw any kind of encryption technology that the US government can’t crack…
Bad Fantasy, Good Reality (#616)
Korea is adopting ever-sleazier tactics to please its masters in Washington:
Police…in Korea…have…started targeting landlords…[by charging them with] aiding prostitution. Since last year, police have been making landlords responsible for prostitution venues that operate on their property…Due to this shift in police policy, landlords have been [evicting sex workers from] their buildings…
To Molest and Rape (#643)
A fine example of how the criminalization supported by feminists “protects” sex workers:
There’s a [cop] in Cape Town notorious among the city’s sex workers…he devotes most of his time to making their lives a living hell. Two weeks ago…he and his police pals rounded up a group of eight sex workers and put them in the back of a van. They drove to the city’s main river and…gave them three options: either we throw you in the river, you suck our dicks or we’ll arrest you and bang you up…one of the women pushed into the river made a phone call…to the only people she trusted to get her justice: a team of five former sex workers trained as paralegals…The paralegal team…is lodging a formal complaint about the river incident with the deputy minister of police and the independent police investigation unit. They are pushing for the dismissal of the officer in question, who has a toxic track record of bullying and violence against sex workers going back to 2012, including allegations of rape and attempted murder…
