Reason Magazine
- reason.com
- reason.tv
- reason.org
- Donate
- Site Search:
Reason on Facebook
Reason on Twitter
Reason on YouTube
Reason RSSGet Reason E-mail Updates!
Manage your Reason e-mail list subscriptionsadvertisements
Sex, Soccer, and New Words for Hooker
The Independent Women's Forum discovers sex work:
The new politically correct word for prostitute is "sex worker" -- on the theory that prostitution is a job just like any other job, so let's make it legal. Indeed, in "The Vagina Monologues," the "sex work" profession is presented as downright empowering in the feminist sense.
Sorry, but count me out on that one. Everything I've read of (and seen, via ho's [sic] on the street) suggests that unless you look like a supermodel and can command an exclusive, expensive clientele, it's nasty, exploitative, and dangerous. And if you look like a supermodel, why not be a supermodel and earn your money legitimately?
It's hard to know where to start here; let's try the second word. Via Nexis, the first reference I found to "sex work" was dated 1984, courtesy of some loony left, alterno-outfit called the "Associated Press." And here is a recent reference by the P.C. police over at National Review. We'll ignore the Vagina Monologues bit, since it is house style over at IWF to include a mention of said play in every post. And so the analysis we are left with: Legalization advocates think prostitution is "just like any other job." But it's not like any other job! In fact, it's "nasty, exploitative, and dangerous." Take that, legalizers!
Now, I don't actually know any pro-legalizing types who think prostitution is a job "just like any other job." Most people who support the legalization of commercial sex in the U.S. will have noted that the practice is, in fact, illegal. That obviously limits the access prostitutes have to law enforcement. And being cut off from legal recourse might have something to do with the "nasty, exploitative, and dangerous" side of hooking.
That's news like "sex work" is news, but it bears repeating given recent talk about human trafficking at the World Cup. Prostitution is regulated in Germany, and the authors of this Wash Post piece blame a suspected surge in trafficking on tolerance for sex work:
The traffickers support legalization because they know that "regulation" has, in practice, meant a thin layer of regulated commercial sex businesses that have opted into the system, resting on top of a far larger group of illegal operations. The underground dealers have correctly calculated that greater profits can be generated through not paying taxes, ignoring basic safety standards for women and engaging in trafficking of children. Without a commensurately large, and politically unrealistic, apparatus to meaningfully monitor and police the thousands of underground operations, the increase in demand under a legalized system dramatically drives the expansion of this sector of sex trafficking.
I have no idea whether legalized prostitution drives demand for enslaved women, and I don't know how the authors know, given that numbers on trafficking are fantastically unreliable. But they have a point about Germany's system: It sucks. The regulatory scheme includes zoning, high income taxes for hookers (relative to other occupations), advertising prohibitions, etc. The costs of going legit are way too high. That's not a critique of sex work; it's a critique of a moronic regulatory structure coupled with half-hearted law enforcement.
Most disturbingly, the authors casually conflate the consensual and the coerced, commercial sex between adults and child slavery. Is it really "politically unrealistic" to crack down on child slavery? Is it really impossible for Germans (or Americans) to fight the buying and selling of human beings while permitting adults to compensate one another for blow jobs? Apparently so. So here are your two options, Independent Women of America: Either let the traffickers tell you when to put out, or have the government do it. And then blame The Vagina Monologues.
|6.13.06 @ 9:09PM|#
Whether legal access changes things can be looked at quite
easily in many places...
Ask the Dutch
Ask Nevada.
Probably one of the few topics that has real-world contrasts around
to test your theory.
I'd do it for free|6.13.06 @ 9:48PM|#
It's not the prostitutes I don't like; it's the pimps. The
hooker should get every cent she earns. Get rid of pimps, and I
pretty much have no problem with it being legal.
Great point about cutting them off from law enforcement assistance,
too. Sorta like what happens to illegal immigrants--too afraid to
call the police, even after witnessing something horrific.
No pimps, no beating up, then no problem here. And a feminist to
boot.
|6.13.06 @ 10:00PM|#
I find myself in agreement with libertarians almost all the time with respect to the position that many fewer things should be against the law. drugs, smoking, prostitution, gambling, painting your house purple, riding a motorcycle without a helmet. let's all hum a few bars of Peter Tosh's "Legalize It".
|6.13.06 @ 10:14PM|#
Yeah but how many kind gents are gonna pay a hooker if theres
force behind the pimp? Not that I'm pro pimp, or street
prostitution.
If it was legal, the government and the courts become the pimps.
Hooray for all!
Warren|6.13.06 @ 10:29PM|#
The affect the internet has had on revolutionizing the sex trade
would make a great Reason article. The industry has created a of
self regulating network where both prostitutes and johns are
registered and evaluated.
I'd like to know more about the ins and outs (npi) of how the
business functions in the information age. Purely from a
socio-political perspective you understand. My days of paying for
sex ended sometime before I got my DD-214.
|6.13.06 @ 10:38PM|#
There's a lot of myths about prostitution...okay, sex work, most
of it perpetrated by people who have never worked in the business
or paid for the services of a sex worker. There's a kernel of truth
to some of the horror stories; but the problem is is like so many
other things, because the dramatic, horrific episodes get played
out in the press, everyone just assumes that's the norm. Or
everything gets thrown under one blanket - no pun intended; street
walking and free agent sex work get mixed up together when in
reality the latter is so different from the former they don't even
really belong in the same category. Or child prostitution and sex
slavery (which really should be pursued and prosecuted - the
perpetrators of it locked away for good) gets confused with an
ordinary sex worker cruising the bars looking for possible clients
who she is free to approach or decline if she doesn't find the
client suitable. And then there's the sex workers who have found
there clients by word of mouth or some other go-between which is
also vastly different and much safer from street walking, which
probably would mostly disappear if legalized as there would be more
attractive venues most people would want to go to.
If we want to talk about 'exploitive' let's start with American
football - those guys suffer physical pain for the rest of their
lives and many die young.
|6.13.06 @ 10:55PM|#
Oh, let me reassure you, ma'am. I can assure you professional hygeine, discretion, and animal gratification.
Tim Cavanaugh|6.13.06 @ 11:00PM|#
Can we at least agree that "sex worker" is an unbelievably drab and boring job title? The only way to put some pizzazz into "sex worker" would be to expand the insect-hierarchy nomenclature, with Sex Drones, Sex Warriors, Sex Foragers, Sex Armies, etc., all of them in the service of the Sex Queen.
|6.13.06 @ 11:05PM|#
Jared: There's a reason prostitution is the worlds oldest
profession, and that's because it involves a trade, even apparant
in the lower primates: Girl lets guy have it, guy is gratified,
girl gets banana/food for the young.
A lot of jobs are comparable to prostitution, but if you're not
paid for the work you do, even if you sign a contract you can
pursue them legally. The court system would be your pimp, because
they would eventually be paid in your tax money anyway.
I think you're being a little too cynical.
|6.13.06 @ 11:07PM|#
Great blog post Kerry.
Another aspect of sex work that has developed are cam girls in
eastern europe and elsewhere -- they never have to touch or see
their clients, avoid possibly sucky jobs like factory work or
actual prostitution, make some extra money for school or drugs, set
their own schedule and if they don't like the 'yuck' factor of the
client request they can turn the screen off...never hear that
discussed in chats about globalization -- and best of all to piss
off Lou Dobbs, eastern european cam girls have driven american
girls largely out of the market -- a dollar a minute or so after
expenses, etc. just isn't worth it to most american girls, but that
buys a lot of nylon stockings in Kiev...
|6.13.06 @ 11:11PM|#
nasty, exploitative, and dangerous.
I would use those word to describe a job as a sewer worker or
garbage collector.
|6.13.06 @ 11:42PM|#
Prostitution is legal in lots of countries (Germany, the
Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland) and in parts of
others (Turkey, Australia, United States) and it's de
facto legal is most others (here in San Francisco, brothels
have neon signs, so they must not be too worried about the police
cracking down on them). Apparently, there hasn't been any huge
crisis. On a practical level, the situation seems like the status
of gambling 20 years ago. I wonder if there could be an analogous
solution, the sex equivalent of Indian casinos...
BTW, in doing research for this post, I discovered something very
odd. "In
Japan [...] vaginal prostitution is against the law and fellatio
prostitution is legal." Japan is a very strange place.
|6.14.06 @ 12:16AM|#
Strictly speaking, isn't 'Marriage' a form of prostitution? I mean, it is a 'contract' exchanging sex (hey, c'mon, I AM a guy) for renumeration! Regards.
|6.14.06 @ 12:19AM|#
Where are these brothels with neon signs in San Francisco? I
live there and demand to know.
Or are you talking about the massage parlors? Those do get cracked
down on from time to time. About year ago the SFPD did a major
sweep and many were shut down for weeks. Of course there's always
craigslist...
|6.14.06 @ 12:31AM|#
like pot, prostitution is defacto legal in parts of the US,
mainly big cities and Alaska, or at least represents a legal risk
so low many are willing to take part in it and oddly don't consder
it prostitution, i.e. the john doesn't.
In SF most of the non-chain locally owned strip clubs are defacto
brothels (in addition to the massage palours) and are rarely
cracked down on...
|6.14.06 @ 12:47AM|#
It IS, but it's religiously sanctioned, so it
doesn't count. Evolution is only possible if breeding happens. So
somewhere along the line, the priestly control freaks figured out
that stopping reproduction altogether will result in
extinction.
I'd like to believe that someday humans will view sex as something
as biologically ingrained as pissing. Most of the time I'm
disappointed, but I keep holding out hope. If not, we might lead to
our own demise before the global warming can get us. (Either by
lack of following generations, or by sex starved religious lunatics
that trigger a doomsday device.)
|6.14.06 @ 1:50AM|#
Warren, I can tell you from personal, er, from the experience of
a certain friend that in addition the old reliable massage parlors,
escort services and strip clubs, prostitution is pretty active
through online classified forums like craigslist. The ads usually
convey that sex is for sale without explicitly stating it and there
is some type of screening process where the customer calls a number
and is then called back with specific details. Some of the women
operate out of their own homes, sometimes groups of women operate
out of discreet apartment locations in residential areas, other
times the services are "outcall" and the girl comes to you (often
with a body guard you may or may not ever see).
It would be interesting to discuss the issues this presents with
any future legalization effort. Often the argument for legalization
is that brothels can be regulated and taxed and girls can be given
health exams. Street walkers or massage parlor type operations may
have an incentive to go legit as it is probably less risky and may
increase business and because their public locations would make a
crackdown by police relatively easy. But someone freelancing
through classified ads might not feel the need to pay taxes and
submit to regulations. And unless law enforcement wants to send
undercover cops to bust these providers one girl at a time, it
would be pretty difficult to make them.
|6.14.06 @ 2:28AM|#
I'm curious about these classified services. I wonder how often the police try sting operations on these outfits. Doesn't anyone know. I've seen them in the papers in the States but it seems like it would be so easy for the police to raid one of those places, or even someone's home. Or they could pose as a client, set up an apartment for such purposes, and then trap them there.
|6.14.06 @ 2:32AM|#
Oh, I goofed. I was going to type "does anyone know" but it came out,"doesn't anyone know?" didn't mean to sound petulant.
|6.14.06 @ 2:34AM|#
Pepe,
They may not need to. Unless a great deal of the savings is passed
onto the customer, a lot of people that buy such service on
craigslist would rather go legit. There's a value to the john in
knowing the sex worker he hires is tested regularly. Obviously,
there will be exceptions, but having a safe alternative will reduce
the demand for this.
|6.14.06 @ 2:37AM|#
Russell Shorto, in The Island at the Center of the
World (pg. 214), discussing the sale of sex in 17th century
Amsterdam:
Sex, of course, was another product arrayed in plenitude -
tourists could obtain a map of the city's red-light district, which
featured women whose whispered sighs came with French, Swedish, and
German accents. If they weren't put off by the charming nicknames
of some of the girls (e.g., Krentecut: "Currant Cunt"), the new
arrivals might have found the sheer variety hard to pass
up.
|6.14.06 @ 2:45AM|#
OH MY GOD! The Evangalist, fascist, Rapture Ready, Straussian NeoCons just found out I am a WANKER, so they CUT OF MY HANDS!!!!!!!!! Oh Mighty Onan, I beseech thee!!! Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I am attempting to lengthen my neck, a la Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, so I can BLOW ME!
|6.14.06 @ 2:47AM|#
Chin:
If we knew, we wouldn't be on H&R right now.
Joshua:
Too right man, I bet there isn't a coal miner in the world who
wouldn't trade places with most "sex workers".
|6.14.06 @ 8:41AM|#
I feel misled by the title of this post. The title teases the reader with the suggestion that the post has something to do with soccer, and instead it is just sex, sex, sex.
|6.14.06 @ 8:59AM|#
Germany's got some nice brothels that don't sound exploitive
based on what I've read.
Basically the sex workers rent rooms from the brothel, and
negotiate their rates directly with clients. Clients, for their
part, pay a cover charge to access the brothel and it's facilities
(like showers, food, drink, etc).
It provides a safe and clean environment for the sex workers, and a
relaxing and pleasant experience for the clients.
|6.14.06 @ 9:26AM|#
This post reminded me of an interesting NYT
article about teaching monkeys about money and captitalism. It
eventually led to buying sex:
"Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of money, after
all, is its fungibility, the fact that it can be used to buy not
just food but anything. During the chaos in the monkey cage, Chen
saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try
to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he
witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex
in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly
understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately
traded the token in for a grape.)"
|6.14.06 @ 9:26AM|#
It's always messed with my sense of logic that
- if you a pay a woman to have sex with you, it's prostitution and
you're both breaking the law
BUT
- if you pay a woman to have sex with you, TAKE PICTURES or VIDEO,
and then post it on the internet or make them available in the back
room of the old video stores, it's perfectly legal.
I know. I'm probably thinking about this too hard...
|6.14.06 @ 9:41AM|#
Pi Guy,
It's even worse than that. If you pay a girl money for sex, then
it's prostitution. If you take her out to a fancy restaurant, buy a
nice bottle of wine and go dancing, it's perfectly legal.
Why not skip the middle man, give her the cash, let her buy dinner
and take a dance lesson? It would save both sides a lot of time and
effort.
Sex and organs, the only two things you can give away for free, but
you can't sell directly.
[I have a feeling this comment will be taken far too seriously]
|6.14.06 @ 10:05AM|#
"- if you pay a woman to have sex with you, TAKE PICTURES or
VIDEO, and then post it on the internet or make them available in
the back room of the old video stores, it's perfectly legal."
Actually, that's not strictly true. All of the court cases I know
of which distinguished pornography from prostitution involved a
filmmaker paying other people. The logic of those cases is
that the filmmaker isn't paying for sex, but paying the actors to
allow themselves to be filmed while having sex which they
theoretically are doing for free. I'm not aware of any case in
which a filmmaker beat a prostitution rap that involved having sex
with a performer whom he was also paying.
|6.14.06 @ 10:11AM|#
Sex and organs, the only two things you can give away for
free, but you can't sell directly.
Maybe the thinking is that paying for sex is like renting use of
the organs involved. :)
|6.14.06 @ 10:14AM|#
"nasty, exploitative, and dangerous"
Jason Ligon beat me to it. I roofed for a few summers, and I used
to bring it up and laugh whenever those sorts of words were
mentioned to describe what strippers or prostitutes or "sex
workers" do. Outside of the retarded fundie notion that we should
all have hangups about sex, I don't see any real difference among
these nasty sorts of jobs. They should all be well paid, they
should be legitimized, and people ought to say a kind word to those
folks whenever possible.
|6.14.06 @ 10:25AM|#
SR, so we won't be seeing any porn actor/directors winning Oscars for best director and for best actor any time soon?
|6.14.06 @ 10:35AM|#
BTW, in doing research for this post, I discovered something
very odd. "In Japan [...] vaginal prostitution is against the law
and fellatio prostitution is legal." Japan is a very strange
place.
You mean those Orientals are inscrutable?
|6.14.06 @ 10:45AM|#
"SR, so we won't be seeing any porn actor/directors winning
Oscars for best director and for best actor any time soon?"
Well, I can't completely rule it out. I'm just saying that the guys
who announce, "Oh, I'll just take my camera with me while I cruise
the boulevard so I can claim I'm recruiting talent for a
pornographic movie" really shouldn't count on that as a "Get Out of
Jail Free" card.
|6.14.06 @ 10:52AM|#
Strictly speaking, isn't 'Marriage' a form of
prostitution?
Legally speaking, no, because the marriage contract does not have
anything about sex in it, and you can prosecute a spouse for
rape.
|6.14.06 @ 11:04AM|#
"Can we at least agree that "sex worker" is an unbelievably drab
and boring job title?"
I always liked "female pleasure unit."
---------
I, too, have had many "nasty, exploitative, and dangerous" jobs.
And they were all better than wearing a suit and tie and sitting in
a chair for ten hours a day.
|6.14.06 @ 11:22AM|#
On the subject of marriage as prostitution, I feel compelled to
point out that Colorado, at least, has expressly addressed this
issue:
Colo. Rev. Stat. sec. 18-7-201(1): "Any person who performs or
offers or agrees to perform any act of sexual intercourse,
fellatio, cunnilingus, masturbation, or anal intercourse
with any person not his spouse in exchange for
money or other thing of value commits prostitution."
(Emphasis added)
|6.14.06 @ 11:50AM|#
It sounds like in Colorado it's prostitution to get to third base after a date. Must be a bitch to enforce.
|6.14.06 @ 12:29PM|#
"So this doesn't apply to women?"
IIRC, there's another statute that specifically says all uses of
"he" and "him" should be read as gender neutral unless otherwise
stated.
|6.15.06 @ 4:07AM|#
marriage or dating is only like prostitution if:
1. You have little to no rapport or common interests with your wife
or date
2. You pay for everything
Not that you couldn't have common interests or personality rapport
with a hooker, but I doubt that's what people are paying for when
they visit a hooker
|6.15.06 @ 5:08AM|#
Where are these brothels with neon signs in San Francisco? I live there and demand to know.
South of Market, there's Lee's, Lucky Spa, Forever 21, and
Barbary Coast (only that last has true neon signs, the others make
do with painted glass signs, which may be a little cheaper.)
You mean those Orientals are inscrutable?Japan is a very strange place.
Well, I for one am unable to scrute the Japanese policy in this case.
Site comments/questions:
Media Inquiries and Reprint Permissions:
(310) 367-6109
Editorial & Production Offices:
3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd.
Suite 400
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 391-2245