The relevant question here is “Can she stop working without violence or the threat of violence?” I don’t care if she’s an addict or hates puppies or loves her pimp. Trafficking is a question of freedom to choose who you work for, regardless of the circumstances.
Yeah, there’s a lot of glamorization of pimps & pimping, particularly in the African-American community. Trying to redefine them as “sex traffickers” is probably entirely appropriate and necessary.
You have responded to this topic at length in past threads and you seem to be knowledgeable and familiar with a fairly wide range of sex worker demographics so I am interested in your thoughts.
1: Per my OP to the best of your knowledge is the pimp-subservient prostitute model still the main sex worker / prostitute employment model or has it been eclipsed by online freelancers and agency sites?
2: Is working for pimps usually volitional or not? The charge in the “trafficking” article is that prostitutes are being coerced (often violently) to do sex work and are exploited directly against their. Is this your real world observation?
I just don’t see it. Something like trafficking is both super illegal and can’t make enough money. I could see it happening in foreign countries with a weak police force, but in a country with one of the most vigorous police forces in the world? (the U.S. criminal justice system is an easy target to criticize…but they lock up more than anyone else, and probably most of them were guilty of something. Dollars to donuts, the sex trafficking business is a quick way to get sent to jail)
Frankly, I’ve always assumed that “sex trafficking” is a codeword for police departments to inflame the public when they do a bust on the town’s favorite hookers. I suspect that when they do “sex trafficking” investigations, they find lots of women, and some gay men, selling their bodies for cash and not really any trafficking victims…
I understand quite a few prostitutes are victims of childhood abuse and therefore prone to drug addiction to numb the emotional pain, or come from homes so broken they never really had a chance to build a normal life. Or are in horrible spots and dependent on pimps or boyfriends and then have drug addiction added into the mix.
I get that, and I am sympathetic and I make no moral judgements or think they should suffer due to their choices. But they still made those choices, they are adults and not children.
This isn’t a defense of exploitative pimps, I don’t give a shit about pimps.
The solution to this issue is NOT trying to classify prostitution as slavery, or to crack down on johns as if they are international criminals but to legalize prostitution so prostitutes can access the legal system if they are victims of violence or intimidation from pimps or johns. If my boss tells me if I quit he is going to beat me so badly I will no longer get work, I tell him to BEEP off and quit. And if he tries to follow through I legally defend myself or call the police if I am able without fear of dismissal by the cops or arrest.
-
I can tell you without a doubt where I live among white prostitutes it is not the main model. I can’t say as much about black street workers/prostitutes - as I don’t know hardly any, but the white prostitutes/escorts/street workers knew some - and I don’t think there was that many. Some may be lying to me, and some do pass off their “pimps” as boyfriends, but I know some of them very well, their friends, their mothers, their kids, and in some cases their boyfriends.
-
I know some that work with a pimp, but only know two very well. One I’m not sure how they met - I’ve never met her pimp, but they “break up” and she doesn’t describe him as her pimp. He runs other girls on backpage - and she travels without him sometimes. She has a kid with him. I get the impression she can leave - now I have no/little doubt that he might hit her, but it isn’t cause she’s his ho and he wants her money.
The other was the third guy she had sex with. She is a really sweet girl. You would never guess what she does. She is in her Church Choir. She looks like - and was a college student when I met her. She is white and he is black.
I’ve asked her extensively about why she uses him - as she does all the work (and I don’t mean just the putting out part - he isn’t even there often for protection). She quit working once (she has conflicted feeling about what she does, but there is a lot of shame there) and he basically begged her to come back cause he needed the money. I asked her why that is her responsibility and she said well he has no other job skills and he needs her. This is not a stupid woman. I mention that as obviously that doesn’t make much sense to me. I get the sense that she doesn’t truly understand it either, but I guess she likes feeling needed. I am 90% sure he didn’t/doesn’t hit her. I have no doubt she was telling the truth that he was begging her to come back - as she wanted to quit due to her desire to fit in better with her church friends, but she feels an obligation to this guy for reasons that are beyond me.
I mention race - not to be racist, but the first girl (who isn’t from my area) talked about pimps a decent amount. The will actually call girls on Backpage and try to get them to work for them (I’ve heard this from other girls as well). When I asked in passing how she knew XYZ wasn’t a pimp (long story and not worth getting into the background) - she laughed and said “well I’ve never seen a White Pimp before”. As both guys were black - and I don’t know that much about the black sex worker environment - other than what I’ve read from others - I can’t say for sure how that works.
Some of the girls also use drivers. Many do have boyfriends. Some act as pimps (most only for them) - but any violence that occurs would be more of a domestic violence thing than a pimp/ho thing.
There is another class of sex worker (if you want to call them that) which is more like a con artist type thing. They do ads on backpage and the like - and grab your cash - have guys hide in the shower - rob you either by maxing you and running for the door, just run for the door, saying they need to give money to the driver or whatever. I don’t know these types of sex workers - and the sex workers I do know don’t associate with them. Now it wouldn’t surprise me if sometimes these girls do perform sex acts for money, but mainly they are just going to steal your money. They might be have “pimps” - they certainly have security for obvious reasons. There are plenty of stories about these types of women in the forums (there is a whole - relatively small network of sites for reviewing and talking about sex workers).
I know that is a long answer to your second question. Short answer - I’ve never heard of a white American born sex worker in my area that either works the streets or is on a site like backpage being forced against her will to do what she is doing (I’ve seen raids on massage parlors that said this was happening - and I suspect it is true).
Plenty don’t want to - but their addiction doesn’t leave them much choice - they will literally charge whatever it costs them to get high - go get high - then go back and rinse, repeat. The ones that aren’t addicts can be much more choosy.
I’m not saying it doesn’t happen - but it isn’t like the media makes it out to be. And there are also ones that travel a lot - sometimes with other females/males - you see these on the news some times. I don’t know those types of people as they don’t stay around long enough for anyone I know to get to know them, I’m talking about people that stay in one general area.
Right, there’s a difference between economic and social pressure (which happens all the time in every field) and slavery through violence or threats of violence. If you are a just-below full time, no benefits minimum wage worker at Exploit-O-Mart and one day decide to tell your boss that you’ve had it and are going to go back and live in your parents’ basement, he isn’t likely to block you physically. He might say a few things about the economy, etc., but if you insist he will just tell you to turn in your badge and uniform and get lost. Doing this, however, would commonly be considered a social mark of failure on your part. But those things are not enforced with beatings.
Thank you for your insight and real world observations.
I have posted in threads that pimps and sex trafficking is far below what’s cited in the sort of inflammatory trash cited in the OP. I base my statements on studies and debunkings cited by and conducted by Maggie McNeill, aka the Honest Courtesan, a prostitute and blogger.
Here she cites a study by the National Institute of Justice showing that the real figure for prostitutes coerced by pimps is much lower than the crappy alarmist trash cited in the OP:
There’s a reason for all this pimp bullshit being so prevalent in the media: a number of NGOs and individuals are making good bank by promoting the notion that America is full of sex slaves who need to be rescued and studied. That’s the reason for the wildly overestimated number of children “at risk” for sex trafficking in the US cited in post #8. Do you know how they got the estimate of 100,000-300,000? They included as “at risk” children living near the Mexican and Canadian borders! No kidding, THEY REALLY DID THAT. That’s how bogus some of these numbers are.
In addition to people making money by inflating the numbers in human trafficking (one anti-trafficking activist cited millions of people being trafficked around the world was found to have actually based his estimate on the total amount of smuggling OF ANY KIND going on in the world) there are also groups that are using trafficking as a way to advance their political agendas. Conservatives use trafficking and pimping to advance their general anti-sex agenda. Second-wave feminists have actually allied with conservatives in this respect. And government officials find it a handy way to gain popular support, especially now that organized feminism have betrayed the sex-positive community.
Maggie McNeill, Dr. Laura Augustin and others have been struggling against this juggernaut with Doper-like citing of studies and stats and using logic and math to debunk the lies spread willy-nilly by NGOs ("but I lied for a good cause!) but they have a lot of trouble gaining traction against lurid stories that are half-fueled by sexual fantasies and rabid lies with such dull fare as studies and logic and math. A shame.
In the Bay Area there are a lot of Asian prostitutes who don’t speak any English. How do they get here if not for trafficking?
Well I don’t have any explanations based on actual data, but I would ask:
- How do you know there are lots of Asian prostitutes in the Bay Area? Is it a matter of public record, have you met them personally, etc.? And how do we know they don’t speak English?
- How much is 'lots"? In England there was
- Is it possible that these women came to the Bay Area of their own accord in order to engage in prostitution?
- Is it possible that they came to the Bay Area for other kinds of jobs, found few or none for unskilled workers who can’t speak English, and turned to prostitution to support themselves?
It can be argued that a woman who engages in prostitution out of sheer economic desperation is being forced into it as surely as woman who has a stereotypical pimp who addicts her to drugs and beats her is she doesn’t bring enough sugar home to her “daddy” is being forced into it. I agree with that argument. But there your argument is with our society’s weak and tattered social safety net. Have at it, if you like.
I’m not arguing that some sort of unwilling prostitute pipeline from Asia to the US cannot or does not exist, but I think you need something more concrete than a general notion that “there are a lot of non-English speaking prostitutes in the Bay Area” to establish the presence of a lot of white slavers and/or pimps there.
Tried to finish out point 2 before the 5 minute time came up and didn’t quite make it. Allow me to amend it thusly:
- How much is 'lots"? In England there was a media flurry of reportsthat there were over 100,000 Vietnamese manicurists working in English nail salons who were part of a huge sex slavery ring. Then some wiseacre pointed out that according to the most recent census, there were only 29,000 Vietnamese living in England, period. When the sources that came up with these numbers were questioned, you know what was heard? Crickets!
Point 2 again. Farther down in the article, they note that not only is the figure for the number of Vietnamese living in England wildly inflated, but that the source appears to have conflated that number with the number of Vietnamese prostitutes in nail salons in England. That’s right, the claim was that every Vietnamese person in England was a prostitute working in a nail salon.
But it gets better! The Gaurdian’s fact checkers decided to see how many Vietnamese were trafficked for sex slavery. Seems there is an English government agency dedicated to keeping tracks of how many immigrants are “potential trafficking victims.” Their number for potential Vietnamese trafficking victims: 32.
Now look, one trafficking victim is one too many, there’s no doubt about that. But in the UK and in the US these pathetically unreal statistics are being bandied about everywhere, and used as the basis for social policy. We need to look at claims about human trafficking with the understandings that there is a network of NGOs and individuals who have a strong interest in misleading us. (This is probably the source of the spurious English trafficking figured about Vietnamese prostitution.)
I can sling a dead cat in my neighborhood and hit an Asian massage parlor. And I live right smack in the middle of Whitey McWhitey town.
Heck, just the other day I went to my favorite Gyro shop for lunch. The place was so busy, I had to park around the corner of the shopping strip. When I did, I discovered yet another Asian massage parlor.
So that makes three that I know of. Two of which are located in affluent shopping centers.
Considering that Chinese restaurant workers have been held in slave-like conditions (see link below-- I am very familiar with the parent company), it’s hard to believe that the same thing isn’t happening with sex workers in some cases. If you really don’t think these exist, check out rubmap or any of the other “erotic massage” review sites.
That said, this kind of trafficking has been around a while and I’m sure most of the women know what kind of work they are getting in to. What they probably don’t realize is the actual working conditions (volume, can’t choose clients, etc.) and the difficulty of leaving due to debt bondage, retention of passports, or violence and threats.
It’s not a matter of news reports. There are dozens and dozens of ads for Asian prostitutes on the Internet in my neighborhood, many specifically say things like “freshly arrived to America”. There are Asian massage parlors all over town. Everyone knows they are fronts for prostitution.
“Everyone knows” a lot of things that are not so. My wife has gone to an Asian nail salon regularly for years. She is friends with the owners. They’re not a front for prostitution.
Plus, just because an Asian person is engaging in prostitution it does not mean they were coerced. Asians come to America all the time to find a better life, often accepting contract deals that leaves them essentially indentured laborers for a number of years. How is it any worse than working in a laundry or wherever?
I cannot now find it, but some days ago I read an article which stated that a significant proportion of female students in the UK funded their studies by working as escorts or prostitutes.
Please check out Rubmap and then tell us if it’s rare for massage parlors to be prostitution fronts.
The problem with debt bondage is that it is not legal in our country. If you want to change that, change that. But until then, every worker on our soil is legally entitled to the rights and protections that our country fought long and hard for. And when those labor violations can easily be “getting raped” rather than “being forced to work extra hours in the laundry”, then yeah, the stakes are higher.
I’m open to legalizing prostitution. I’m not open to overlooking gross labor violations the occasional rape just because you don’t think their work should be illegal.