Think About Who Gets To Have Sex
Men with disabilities are a hugely important group served by sex workers. https://t.co/IXZgDqmejK
— Amy Alkon (@amyalkon) October 10, 2017
Check out the, paternalism, uh, maternalism here, from social psychologist Dina McMillan (who swiftly blocked me for my polite disagreement with her viewpoint). In case it gets deleted, here's a screenshot of the convo (which took me all of five seconds to pick up on a browser not signed in to Twitter):
And the last bits from last night:
As I later tweeted:
@amyalkon
Sex work isn't for me -- nor is being a lawyer, an accountant, or an actress. But if these jobs work for others, their biz, not mine.
And finally:
@amyalkon
Frankly, from talking to various men who've seen sex workers, sex wkrs provide some pretty essential emotional/sexual help.
For example, one friend of mine, who'd just gone through a painful divorce, wanted touch and sex and companionship but wasn't emotionally ready to date. So he did the ethical thing -- yes, ethical: He hired escorts.
Uh oh. Liberal women's cat flight. hope they both lose.
Sexual toilet sounds like a pretty apt description. You can call a garbage collector a *sanitation engineer* all day but it doesnt change the nature of the job.
First they will scream for legalization and then for social approval and laws requiring everyone to to call you by your *preferred identifier*. Next they will be forcing you to bake a cake and establish national sex workers day.
Isab at October 9, 2017 11:17 PM
McMillan: "And why am I responsible for men exploiting women?"
Men exploiting women? That's a pretty sexist assumption. If there's exploitation going on I'd say it's just as likely to be the other way around.
Ken R at October 10, 2017 12:04 AM
Prostitutes are also useful for the unfortunate sub-category of men who, as writer Kevin Willimson might put it, couldn't get laid in a sex doll factory. #incel
mpetrie98 at October 10, 2017 3:52 AM
Williamson, not Willimson
mpetrie98 at October 10, 2017 3:53 AM
It goes back to the post-modern feminist conceit that heterosexual sex is so disgusting and distasteful that no woman in her right mind would consent to it. Therefore, it follows that women who engage in prostitution can't possibly be doing so voluntarily; somehow, they are being forced or compelled, even if there's no pimp or madam anywhere in sight. The conceit goes that if the government would just support all women and pay for whatever they want, and make sure that no woman anywhere is economically wanting for anything, then there would be no prostitution.
I don't know how much I buy the happy hooker thing. From reading about it and the documentaries I've seen, it seems to me that a lot of prostitutes, although they are doing it voluntarily, are messed up in the head, and they see charging for sex as a means of getting revenge on men in some fashion. But still, it's voluntary, and if we went around questioning everyone's motives for doing what they do, we'll all be in either prison or an asylum.
Cousin Dave at October 10, 2017 5:36 AM
I follow a number of sex workers on Twitter -- @Maggie_McNeill for example -- and they don't seem damaged, etc. She seems quite happy. There are very sweet pix all the time of her and her girlfriend, Lorelei. (She sees men for work -- and probably women.)
Amy Alkon at October 10, 2017 5:57 AM
The question Cousin Dave is did the hooking make them unhappy. From what you've written they were already messed up and hooking was incidental. But I don't doubt you that most regular sex workers have issues. But that applies to most jobs. There are a lot of people who work for walmart who aren't doing that well. People who work for high end stores are usually much happier. Same thing with hookers vs. escort workers.
Ben at October 10, 2017 6:21 AM
"I don't know how much I buy the happy hooker thing. From reading about it and the documentaries I've seen,"
One also has to wonder if those writing or making documentaries had biases to push. Especially with it being an illegal activity in most places. One could easily find in any job a hand-full of people who like it and a hand-full of people who hate it.
To me the view of many feminists towards sex workers and men who hire them pretty much mirrors Union workers views of scabs and 'exploiter' businesses. A scab wants to do your job at a lower price or less benefits, they are therefore evil and every bad word you can think of. So is any business who wants to hire one. And the Union view of themselves is we are nobly protecting them from being exploited and their own foolish actions.
Freakenomics did an interesting write up on one of the few people who did a major study of prostitution.
Joe J at October 10, 2017 7:35 AM
For women who have a big problem with drugs or booze, hooking is an easy way to make money. Doing the drugs doesn't interfere with the job and you show up when you feel like it. In this sense they have a safer out than men do. Beautiful women who are lazy and have no standards may find stripping to be a great job. The problem is that in neither case are they being "exploited" even if we don't approve. The whole current thing with calling it "sex trafficking" as if it was slavery is simply a clever word trick to make it sound bad. People who insist on the exploitation angle also insist workers are "exploited". Frankly, many workers who are barely doing their job are exploiting their employers. If you don't have a religion that sets standards, what is your basis for objecting to prostitution? The old fall-back, Marxist "exploitation of the workers". Please.
cc at October 10, 2017 9:29 AM
The whole current thing with calling it "sex trafficking" as if it was slavery is simply a clever word trick to make it sound bad.
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I trust you know that it's not a new term and that forced prostitution DOES exist? Not just with underage girls? Just as illegal slavery exists in pretty much every country and major city in the world? (Of course, many - most? - of those slaves are illegal aliens - but they didn't necessarily agree to work without pay indefinitely, when they had nowhere to go.)
I'll admit, though, that as a kid, I refused to believe that slavery, legal or illegal, still existed (in the 1958 novel I'm thinking of, it WAS legal in Saudi Arabia at that time, but that wasn't clear, so I thought it was illegal slavery). If someone had asked me why I didn't believe, I would have said "well, no one talks about it in real life, and since slavery is so horrible, why WOULDN'T they talk about it? Therefore, it can't exist any more."
lenona at October 10, 2017 10:20 AM
Joe J: "To me the view of many feminists towards sex workers and men who hire them pretty much mirrors Union workers views of scabs and 'exploiter' businesses. A scab wants to do your job at a lower price or less benefits, they are therefore evil and every bad word you can think of."
That's a really good way to explain it.
By offering services at a competitive price hookers diminish the economic and relationship power of women over men. That really pisses a lot of women off; especially wives, girlfriends and feminists. Like businesses (including prostitution) wives and girlfriends can up their game by becoming more competitive (seduction) or appealing to the government to destroy their competition and punish men who seek alternatives (subjugation)
Feminists can go jump off a cliff.
Ken R at October 10, 2017 10:53 AM
The sexbots will be here in 10 years, and then feminists will be worry about exploitation of robots...
Snoopy at October 10, 2017 11:46 AM
It's not the sex for hire I have a problem with, it's the seediness that comes with it. I don't want a brothel, or a strip club, or a pay-by-the-hour motel moving into MY neighborhood.
ahw at October 10, 2017 11:48 AM
Snoopy: "The sexbots will be here in 10 years, and then feminists will be worry about exploitation of robots..."
It'll be interesting to see what feminists' reaction will be to sex robots. Now they're all about fighting against the exploitation of women; but their concern for women is all pretext - political power is their real goal. Life-like sex robots will take women out of the equation all together. I suspect this will displease feminists even more, especially when they're told that only men are involved and no women are exploited so it's none of their business and their opinions are irrelevant (his body his choice, right?)
Ken R at October 10, 2017 12:48 PM
Lenona,
We have billboards around Houston talking about all the 'sex trafficking' around here. The problem is for the very vast majority the people enslaving those sex workers are themselves. Yes slaves do exist in the US. But almost all sex workers are not being exploited by anyone other than themselves.
Lying about things is popular but at some point people just stop paying attention after being lied to over and over. The gun debates are another good example. There was piece on NPR a few days ago that brought up all the 'children' who are shot in the US. It was a horrifying and unbelievable number. Emphasis on unbelievable. The trick was that anyone under 30 was classified as a child. Of course under that definition the US mainly uses child soldier in our military.
Ben at October 10, 2017 12:48 PM
But almost all sex workers are not being exploited by anyone other than themselves.
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Got a source on that? I notice you didn't say "sex workers who are adults." Even 80% of adults wouldn't be "almost all."
Plus, male or female, if one has kids and is living on the edge of homelessness, it can be pretty easy to fall into an exploitation situation, sexual or not. Not to mention that being a plain, uneducated hooker, if you can't be a glamorous high-class escort, can easily get you killed. I assume most sex workers don't get to be escorts. So how many cheap hookers really "choose" that life?
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Ken R. said:
Life-like sex robots will take women out of the equation all together.
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Blow-up dolls didn't do that. Neither did Fleshlights. Men who can't afford a long-term relationship or who just plain don't WANT women around would not be good candidates for marriage anyway. So sexbots will not change things much (besides, most men could only afford to rent them, not buy them) and if feminists aren't talking about them very much at the moment, it's likely because they sense that.
(In the same vein, since Parsemus is still struggling with money problems when it comes to Vasalgel, even though human trials are scheduled for 2018, that would suggest that even rich men with golddigging groupies are not eager to invest in male contraception and that the people who kept predicting that V. will not turn a real profit were probably right.)
lenona at October 10, 2017 1:10 PM
It's not the sex for hire I have a problem with, it's the seediness that comes with it. I don't want a brothel, or a strip club, or a pay-by-the-hour motel moving into MY neighborhood.
Send them my way — at least the brothels. The "Asian massage parlors" near me keep a deliberately low-drama, low-crime profile in order to keep from being raided or drawing neighborhood complaints. They create much less fuss than does your average elementary school.
Kevin at October 10, 2017 2:42 PM
Calling another woman, who one claims is being exploited, a nasty name like "sexual toilet" says more about the speaker than the woman being exploited.
Most likely she is jealous because no one is willing to pay HER for sex; so she has to bash those who can "sell it" better than she ever could.
Or is she jealous because she thinks everyone with "problems" should be handing over their hard-earned money to people like here - a "therapist."
So, I'll lower to her standards and call her "frigid."
charles at October 10, 2017 3:59 PM
"That's a really good way to explain it. "
Thanks
"It'll be interesting to see what feminists' reaction will be to sex robots."
Much of the same, calling any who would use one creep, guys who couldn't get a real woman.
I also saw an odd headline on line once something like: 'Hacking a sex robot to kill you.'
As to the sex trafficking: Does it happen? sure. How often? Answers and estimates vary widely. A lot of that boils down to definitions and what is being counted/measured vs what people assume when hearing the term. Kind of like mass shooting meaning 3 people. Or rape definition changing from saying no and being forced to, to she wasn't screaming yes he should read body language in the dark: therefore rape. Also add in "potential" or "at-risk" to increase any number by a factor of 100.
It is rather politicized and has odd incentives attached. i.e. An illegal immigrant who claims to have been sex trafficked may jump to the head of the line for citizenship. Becomes an incentive to lie or exaggerate.
Joe j at October 10, 2017 4:27 PM
Leona asks
"Got a source on that?"
I'll see that and raise you "how many people are actually sex trafficked in the USofA?"
Order of magnitude will be an acceptable answer. And a solid source.
I R A Darth Aggie at October 10, 2017 5:01 PM
Through my job over the past 22 years I’ve had the opportunity to engage in conversations with a few hundred prostitutes.
About a dozen of them were “escorts” or “massage therapists”. They proactively engaged in selling sex, made decent money, and were greatly annoyed by people who interfered with their enterprise, like police, prosecutors and judges. One example was a 52-year-old Korean woman who owned at least two massage parlors and employed a few dozen other women and a few young men. Another, an “escort”, was a 22-year-old, attractive, articulate, charming, college educated sociopath who would have sex however her client wanted it for $400 an hour plus whatever else she could charm, steal or blackmail from him. She must have had some influential clients because though she was arrested many times she never spent the night in jail and never paid bail to get out. An alternative newspaper in this big city published a black and white photo of her posing seductively on the hood of a police car with four of the city’s finest, in uniform, posing around her and grinning like idiots.
Almost all of the prostitutes I encountered (not including the two above) were drug addicts, homeless, or desperately poor, many with children, needing money to get drugs, food, shelter or pay debts. Though they all admitted that they sold sex for money, almost none considered themselves to be prostitutes, and I don't think they would have sold sex if they could have quickly gotten a few dollars some other way. They didn’t make very much money at it; if they’d done it every day I doubt they could have made a living. They were not pretty, though some of them might have been at one time.
STD’s are a given. I don’t know about the Korean massage therapist or the young escort, but every prostitute I did a health assessment on had at least one STD, many had two or more. Some of them had HIV and knew it, and were still hooking.
This is from my experience and not based on any scientific research.
Ken R at October 10, 2017 6:51 PM
So to reiterate what I said above, I do think that some (a lot?) of prostitutes have issues. That said, they are still engaging in a voluntary activity. Not knowing any myself, I won't question their motives.
"I trust you know that it's not a new term and that forced prostitution DOES exist?"
Bank robbery exists too. Is everyone who walks into a bank a robber?
And along these lines: I don't buy that a woman who goes into prostitution because she's in dire economic straits is being "trafficked" or exploited. She chose that job, just like a guy who is in dire straits might choose to get a job as a recycled-garbage sorter or a septic tank cleaner. Is he being "trafficked" too? If we follow that line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, then no on ever does anything voluntarily. We are all marionettes, having our strings pulled by invisible puppeteers. That way nihilism and hopelessness lies.
Cousin Dave at October 11, 2017 5:37 AM
I think prostitution, much like polygamy, sounds like it could be good for women but in practice almost never is. Sure, some women make great money, are their own boss, etc. The vast majority are dirt poor, addicted, stupid, and choiceless. I dont want anything to do with a guy who would be with the later. Even most of the former find they need a man or madam for safety.
But few things in life make me angrier than those stings you see on Cops, where a guy cop picks up a hooker then arrests her. Youre telling me a department has nothing better to do than harass a poor woman with few choices in life? Maybe just decriminalize it, along with drugs, and let communities set their own regulations.
Momof4 at October 11, 2017 7:12 AM
Darth: I'll see that and raise you "how many people are actually sex trafficked in the USofA?"
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In other words, you don't know any more than I do.
Just because slave owners can be very good at hiding what they're doing is not an excuse for refusing to work as much as possible to find and rescue prisoners when they exist. Take Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Georgina "Gina" DeJesus - held prisoner by a sold-called human being in Cleveland. No one suspected anything for over ten years.
While it's not the same thing, think of any number of poor immigrants who thought they were going to get legal paying jobs with work visas and so entered a new country and their places of employment willingly, only to find they were going to be held prisoner, without pay - or at least not enough to flee their situations, which may or may not include sex work they didn't plan to do.
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Cousin Dave: Bank robbery exists too. Is everyone who walks into a bank a robber?
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What's your point? My point was that no one here seems to care about those women who ARE forced into it, once the pimp has her isolated on some pretense, she has nowhere to go and no money, and he threatens to beat her up or worse. If legalization could magically protect all adults who did or didn't want to do sex work, great. But I doubt it. Refugees are especially vulnerable, and too many people can't even be bothered to care about refugee CHILDREN getting trafficked into one kind of slavery or another, so it stands to reason that young adult refugees would get even less protection or sympathy. They don't even speak the language, after all.
Of COURSE it's not slavery - initially - if she KNOWS what sort of work she's expected to do. But everyone says that prostitution is very difficult to get out of, especially while the woman is still young and the pimp doesn't want her to leave. Same goes for domestic slaves. I don't know of too many legal jobs where you're likely to get seriously hurt by your boss if you want to quit.
lenona at October 11, 2017 7:31 AM
Lenona,
Read the freakenomics book. It has a section on prostitution. Actual stats and not your lifetime movie stuff. Yes there are sex slaves in the US. But no they very much are not common. The very vast majority of pimps work for the hooker, not the other way around. Pimps hitting hookers to keep them in line is a movie thing. Just like chalk outlines for dead bodies. Ken R's experiences match most unbiased stats. Virtually all habitual hookers have drug problems. And STDs. If men with drug problems could sell themselves for sex you would see the same thing on the male side. But nobody is buying. Another interesting tidbit, a lot of sex work is seasonal. Santa say 'Ho Ho Ho' for a reason. There are a lot of part timers who only work the holiday season and have normal jobs. They tend not to have drug problems but STDs are always an issue.
It isn't that we don't care about people who are enslaved or exploited. But most sensational stats about sex workers are lies. Complete fabrications. In the US actual slavery is very small and very well hidden. It is also usually supported by the higher ups in it's location. Crooked judges and bought politicians. Where it is found I say string em up. But street walkers are not slaves. Don't lie about it.
Ben at October 11, 2017 9:50 AM
Pimps hitting hookers to keep them in line is a movie thing.
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I don't get my information on crime from movies or TV, thanks - or tabloids, for that matter. (I got tired of most current movies and TV years ago and stopped watching.) I don't doubt that the majority of ADULT hookers - even minus the escorts - know what they're expected to do. Plenty of them didn't start as adults, however. One benefit for a pimp, after all, in choosing runaways over semi-experienced adult hookers is that the runaways are more likely to be naive, dumb, and scared into submission.
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Just like chalk outlines for dead bodies.
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How do you KNOW how common/uncommon those are? How many dead bodies do you get to see if you don't live in a bad neighborhood or work in law enforcement?
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If men with drug problems could sell themselves for sex you would see the same thing on the male side. But nobody is buying.
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Huh? Male hookers have been around for ages. Oscar Wilde knew plenty of them (though his whitewashing fans like to make it sound as though he sacrificed all solely for the love of Bosie - hah). There are plenty today in Hollywood, for one. They just make up a smaller percentage, that's all. Why do you say "nobody is buying"?
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It isn't that we don't care about people who are enslaved or exploited. But most sensational stats about sex workers are lies. Complete fabrications. In the US actual slavery is very small and very well hidden.
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I don't call THIS very small. Newsweek in 2000:
http://www.newsweek.com/slaverys-new-face-156143
From a "program at Johns Hopkins University, estimate that 1 million undocumented immigrants are currently trapped here in slavelike conditions. (By way of comparison, perhaps 6 million Africans were shipped here between 1502 and 1808, when Congress outlawed the Atlantic slave trade.) 'These are huge numbers, given the fact that people don't think this is going on,' Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told NBC News earlier this year."
What makes you think they're lying? That doesn't even include slaves who aren't immigrants.
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But street walkers are not slaves. Don't lie about it.
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See above. I never said "streetwalkers," btw. I don't know how those pimps who essentially kidnap young women tend to operate - I would think they use outcall services much of the time so the women would be mostly under their eyes.
Even if only 5% of the young women don't know a pimp when they meet one - and get trapped as a result - it's still too much.
What does anyone here propose to do about runaway teens who get enslaved? Many of them are fleeing abusive homes and likely don't consider prostitution to be any better. Not to mention that many of them are underage. Most johns would prefer teens if they didn't think they'd be more likely to get arrested when they show up. (Which would help to explain why so many johns go to Thailand.)
lenona at October 11, 2017 11:44 AM
Seriously Lenona? You didn't know that police have never used chalk outlines? Not in this nation and not in any other nation. It is 100% pure Hollywood. Never happened in real life.
Essentially you couldn't show dead bodies on TV at the time. It was considered inappropriate and would have gotten your station kicked off of the public airwaves. And considering there was no cable alternative at the time that would be that for your station. So they did chalk outlines instead. But no, no police force ever did chalk outlines. An x mark with tape sometimes but no chalk outlines.
"What makes you think they're lying? That doesn't even include slaves who aren't immigrants."
This is an estimate from a group that profits from the estimate being high. Yes, they are lying. Give me a real source based on real numbers. After all 50% of men are rapists. And all men are pedophiles. Of course you have to bend the words rapist and pedophile into a pretzel to make those numbers work. Just like they do with the word slave in your case.
Ben at October 11, 2017 4:12 PM
"What's your point? "
My point was self-evident in what I said. That you chose to ignore it is not my problem.
Cousin Dave at October 12, 2017 6:26 AM
Amy said, I follow a number of sex workers on Twitter -- Maggie_McNeill for example -- and they don't seem damaged, etc. She seems quite happy.
I've followed Maggie for awhile and she seems to be getting more bitter and sharp - but not because of the life she's chosen, more because of the persecution she's suffered. She's spent years debunking the myths spread by people like momof4 and Isab and lenona above, and to almost no avail. It's got to be aggravating.
Meanwhile, adult women who freely choose to participate in an exchange of value for service are labeled "victims," and then almost unfailingly arrested and ruined for allegedly being "victims." Gives the lie to the whole damned Puritan crusade.
Grey Ghost at October 12, 2017 8:33 AM
Cousin Dave: Call me slow, then. I don't get it.
To put it another way: Bank robbers definitely victimize people, but even THEY rarely take hostages. We're talking about hostages. Even 5% - or whatever it is - is too much. That includes those who entered the business willingly only to find they are not free to leave if they don't want to suffer serious harm.
If legalizing prostitution helps women leave or stay as they please, without harassment, I'm all for it.
lenona at October 12, 2017 9:02 AM
I work with adolescents, age 13 to 17, occasionally a 12-year-old. In a year's time I have about 650 patients. About 475 of them are girls. Of those 475 girls, about 90 of them have been involved in prostitution in some way, maybe 10 of them willingly. The numbers vary a little from year to year, but that's the ballpark in my job.
Some of them are runaways. All of them who ended up out on the street had sex unwillingly with two or more men (usually many more) by their first or second night out. Someone who was "helping" them got all of the money, and they weren't free to leave.
Some of them were lured or outright kidnapped by someone they trusted. Teenage girls are really naive.
More than half of those 90 girls were pimped out by their mothers, for drugs or money or amusement, to perverts, pedophiles, pornographers and sadists. I think this is the biggest part of child prostitution. For some of them it started before they were old enough to remember. When I first got into this work it kind of surprised me how many of them didn't know it was wrong until they were 10 or 12 and maybe they talked about it to friends or classmates. Some thought they were helping their mothers pay bills. The mistreatment and abuse that can be portrayed in movies and documentaries I've seen about child prostitution and trafficking doesn't even come close to the sick things that have been done to some kids in real life.
I don't know how big the problem of sex slavery, sex trafficking or child prostitution is. I don't think it's rare. This is just an example of what I encounter in the one place where I work. The company I work for owns more than 200 similar places. I don't know if this can be extrapolated to the population of a state or the country.
I spent about half an hour playing cards with a girl who told me that from age 6 to 12 her mother's boyfriends (plural) came over several times a week to watch her while her mother went somewhere, and while her mother was gone they had sex with her. She said she told her mother but her mother didn't believe her. She said her mother is addicted to drugs and she wants to stop trying to kill herself and get better so she can help her mother and be less of a burden. She's 14 and she still doesn't get what her mother was doing to her.
This shit happens in the world. Sometimes I don't know if I want to cry or kill somebody.
Ken R at October 12, 2017 2:16 PM
I find it unlikely that legalizing prostitution would help with sex slavery or human slavery in general Lenona. What it would do is help to separate those who truly are being exploited from those who are willfully working an illegal job. Take that for what it is worth. There are certainly many downsides to legalizing prostitution as well.
From what I can tell actual human slave situations in the US are mostly illegal immigrants. They can't tell people what is going on because they will be deported if their situation is revealed. Without that kind of power over the person it is far too easy for them to run away and tell the authorities. The next largest group (though much smaller than illegal immigrants) are abusive spouse style. You have one partner (typically male) who socially and financially isolates the other partner. We had someone on this board who went through such a situation. Vastly smaller than that are people who kidnap and lockup people. There are very few situations like this as far as I can tell. And almost never does the victim survive. You are in serial killer territory here.
As for sex slavery, I don't know if I fit teen runaways in that category. Rape victims definitely. And if you can find the monsters who do this I say kill them. But it doesn't look like sex slavery to me. Same with drug addicts who trade sex for drugs. Not good but not sex slavery. And good solutions are hard to find. As for actual sex slavery as far as I can tell you are once again looking at illegal immigrants and the situation Ken mentions evil parents. I really don't have a good solution for the evil parent scenario. It is the same cause for child hunger in the US. Essentially there is zero unintended child hunger here. There are a few cases but almost all cases are where the parent is refusing to feed child. The parent may be crazy. They may have drug problems. They may be plain evil. But at the end of the day food was available and they decided not to provide it.
Only solution I have is for courts to take the kids away. And now you've ended up in all kinds of moral and political hot water. You will swiftly find that there are significant racial trends tied to these things. If you enforce things in a race neutral manner you will have all the race baiter trying to take you down. So then people start choosing who to abandon based on skin color so their stats look nice. Which is how Rotherham happened in England. Couldn't arrest the slaving rapists because they had already hit their quota of Muslims.
It isn't that we don't want to help. But there really aren't many good option. As for the percentage of sex workers who are 'hostages' as you put it, 5% is very generous. You are probably looking at under 0.1%. Especially if you count in seasonal workers.
As for why people have reacted strongly to you in this thread, lies are typical on this topic. You've certainly fallen for a number of them. You need to be very careful with your sources and be certain about what their definitions are. The word 'slavelike' is enough to convince me they are lying. I need to know what they ment by 'slavelike'. I sincerely doubt it means anything I would term 'slavelike'. In the desire to raise awareness and promote their cause people love to lie with statistics on topics like this. Of the millions 'trafficked' through Houston over the last decade you will find almost all of them 'trafficked' themselves. They were both their slave and enslaver all at the same time. Tell me how that makes sense. You see the same thing on gun control with the term 'child'. It is common for gun control activists to define 'child' as anyone under 30. Certainly isn't what that term means to me. So too with the term 'rape'. Which has been abused so badly and so blatantly people now ask if you are talking about rape or rape rape. Look at how this thread got started. A woman decided all sex workers were being 'exploited'. And that was clearly a lie.
Ben at October 12, 2017 7:08 PM
"From what I can tell actual human slave situations in the US are mostly illegal immigrants. They can't tell people what is going on because they will be deported if their situation is revealed. "
So they are choosing "slavery" in the US over being in their home country.
Just going with the idea that they are people who crossed countries or oceans to get to the US ignoring or evading various laws and agents. That doesn't sound like the kind of people who are easily scared or held against their will.
Joe j at October 13, 2017 11:53 AM
To be fair Joe j many of them did not choose slavery in America. They thought there would be one outcome and ended up with another. And most illegal immigrants don't end up in actual slave conditions. Being locked in a factory and forced to labor for food is slavery and it does happen in the US. But working as a bus boy for sub minimum wages may suck and it may be illegal but it most definitely isn't slavery. And it often is better than where they came from. Most illegal immigrants don't end up as slaves.
Ben at October 13, 2017 7:39 PM
I'm sorry for the wall'o'text but you've touched on a complicated subject Lenona. If you are willing to offer possible solutions I'm certainly willing to hear you out.
One thing we need are actual definitions of terms. Take this situation. You have a woman who is not and never has been married. She has three kids from two different fathers. She has three other men who used to be boyfriends but no children were created. When one of the ex-boyfriends is in town they will take her out for a few meals, she will sleep with them, and they will help with the rent money. Is she a sex worker? She clearly trades sex for money. But she doesn't take unsolicited business. She doesn't do this full time. How do you classify such a situation?
To me she is a part time sex worker. And her situation is not uncommon. There are probably at least 20 million women like that in the US today. And this becomes more common every day.
Ben at October 13, 2017 7:52 PM
I'm sure they did not expect it when they left. But every day they do not choose to run to the cops is a day they choose staying in slavery over going back. What is exra bad about that is there are laws that would give them a leg up on citizenship for reporting it
Joe J at October 13, 2017 8:51 PM
Joe, some do run to the cops. Sometimes the cops are the ones running security. In uniform. Many assume we have the same traditions as they do. I.e. illegals aren't wanted by any nation so locking them in a cell without food or dumping them in a handy desert to die is a good solution for excess population.
Either way slavery is like pregnancy. You aren't a little bit pregnant. You either are or you aren't. Same with slavery. You either are or you aren't. 'Slavelike' doesn't count.
Ben at October 15, 2017 6:48 PM
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