NEWSBYMICHELE CLARK

First, before you balk at the headline, please read the post.  Guest blogger Michele Clark has a powerful conversation with her friend "Kathy", who was trafficked as a child and is still in the commercial sex industry.  Kathy wants to leave, but she can't find another job because of her criminal record, despite having two Magna Cum Laude undergraduate degrees and a graduate certificate (making her much better educated than me).  And yet, she also doesn't want the industry to be legalized.  This conversation is a reminder of how deeply complex these issues are, especially for the women facing them on a daily basis.

As the debate on sex worker's rights unfolds across this very site, I've followed much of it with interest.  But, I wondered, was I seeing the whole picture?  So I got in touch with a friend of mine who remains in the life, and asked her opinion.  Because her words are so powerful, I asked her if I could quote her and she said yes. She also said that we could call her Kathy. Without mincing words, she jumped right in and told me how she felt about her circumstances.

Kathy: My life has totally been destroyed by American traffickers. Because of my legal issues I am not able to license in anything or find a job that will hire me.  I am now only able to remain in the industry that I was forced into.

I asked if she thought that rights for sex workers would improve her situation.

Kathy: I live each day with the threat of rape, murder, abuse, robbery, and social shunning that no woman should have to endure.  Not because I chose to go into it like these women wanting rights.  I want rights so that I can get out of it.  Before I get killed.

But what about those sex workers who claim that rights would make their lives better?

Kathy: So far as women getting any rights so far as the sex industry I think these people need to get a grip on reality.  There are the few who get into the business because they are sex addicts or because they think money will be good.  And it can be... I have also  known women robbed every time they turned a date and beaten so badly that they had to turn to a pimp to protect them out there.  That is the law of the streets.  You will be harassed, beaten, robbed, even killed if you refuse to get with someone because you are considered a street renegade and the men are protecting their investments and their business.  What rights are these women talking about?

There is no easy way in life.  There is no fast way to money.  It all takes hard work.  These women asking for rights want an easy way out.  They want to justify doing something illegal and have it legalized so that they can claim legitimate taxes and not have property confiscated when they are arrested.  These are the same women that would open an agency and gain money from another's sexual work.  That is called pimping and pandering.  And whether they want to admit it or not that is illegal.  That is what the men go to jail for when they are caught.  Why should it be different for women abusing women?

And those that just want their cake and eat it too?  Shame on them for capitalizing on the millions of women that are suffering out there in the industry and trying to make it through another day.  Shame on them for not having the common decency and respect for women that would mean they want to stop this type of activity at any cost.  Shame on them for being so self absorbed and greedy that they can push society into accepting their warped viewpoint only because they are self indulgent and not willing to get an education and a regular job.  I have no compassion for them.  I have nothing in common with them.

Kathy has raised a child who is going to graduate school and takes care of an elderly parent.  She put herself through college and then a certificate program at a major university, to find that doors are slammed in her face. She has a record.  The charges are for "moral turpitude."  She has turned to women's advocacy groups to help her but her e-mails have remained unanswered.  What about Kathy's rights?  To leave a life she hates?  To work in a field she is interested in? To use her good mind and her street smarts for the common good? Those are the rights we should be talking about.

Image from illegaleconomy.com

To offset its $2.8 billion shortfall, some Nevada state legislators want to tax brothels.  The state has not collected a dollar from prostitution since brothels were legalized in rural counties more than 30 years ago - a strange fact in a state that has not had a problem imposing a "sin tax" on other forms of adult entertainment.  Now, a few legislators are proposing a new tax amounting to $5.00 per sex act (legal or not). The brothel owners don't mind; neither do many of the women providing the services.  And yet, notwithstanding the possible $2 Million/year revenue, Nevada State Governor Jim Gibbons has said, "No thanks."  Rather than attempting to close down the state's brothels, which would admittedly be an uphill battle, the governor is turning his back on their money.  Why?  In the governor's eyes, taxes make a business legitimate.  Yes, brothels are legal in parts of Nevada, but are they main stream?  To put it another way, are parents clamoring to include prostitution in their daughters' middle school career days' agenda?  I don't think so. Sen. Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, agrees with the governor.

"It's tough enough raising teenage daughters without adding this to the mix," she said.

The brothels themselves recognize the respectability issue.  Women check into work not for a day but for a week or two or even a month and, while there, they usually can't leave their compounds.  The reason?  To keep them safe from hostile townies who do not like running into brothel residents at the supermarket or on a park bench.

It is a new twist on an old debate. Dutch prostitutes already discovered that legalizing brothels did not make their jobs respectable in the public's eyes. They still had to deal with the social stigma attached to prostitution and eventually turned their back on legal employment. They continued their professional activities not in legal brothel windows but as high-end under-the-radar call girls.

There is a lot of talk about legalizing prostitution and brothels these days.  But, if brothels are made legal, pimps will still control the majority of prostituted women in the streets.  Women will not find the empowerment or the legitimacy they seek.  And Main Street will keep the welcome wagon in the garage.  Nevada's governor may be making a few tactical errors, but his strategy is spot on.  Brothels are not legitimate businesses.

Image from statesman.com

A couple weeks ago, in response to my post questioning whether or not it's still hard out there for a pimp, some commenters claimed that the answer to the problem of trafficking was the legalization of prostitution since, after all, it was "the world's oldest profession."

First of all who started that rumor?  I would like to nominate the fashion industry as the world's oldest profession, since someone had to make those fig leaf threads sported by Adam and Eve on their way out of Eden. But the question at hand is: will legalizing prostitution work?

Let's take a look at the Netherlands where the welcome mat to publicly available sex and drugs has been out for the entire world to cross.  The fame of Amsterdam's Red Light District was such that Thomas Cook Tours (that venerable British tour agency) offered a walking tour of the Red Light District, promising "a fascinating insight into the oldest profession in the world."  To woo prospective visitors, Mssrs. Cook offered reduced price tickets to children under 12 years old and free passes for those under three. Following public outcry, the tour is no longer available. 

So what about that Red Light District anyway?  I have news for you, folks.  It didn't work. Several years after lifting the ban on brothels, Amsterdam's Mayor Job Cohen admits that, while the law was created for voluntary prostitution, "these days we see trafficking of women, exploitation and all kinds of criminal activity."  

The majority of the women behind the windows are from foreign countries, brought to the Netherlands under false pretenses, enslaved by their pimps, and subject to acts of violence on a daily basis.  The proliferation of sex trafficking in Amsterdam has made that city's Red Light District into an enclave of organized crime and corruption that has caused even the socially liberal Dutch to say, enough. From occupying a large enclave in the heart of Amsterdam's historic center, the Red Light district is now being limited to two streets.  The numbers of windows are curtailed and the hours of operation are shortened.  Far from enabling safe and consenting sexual encounters to take place, the opening of brothels had the opposite effect, opening the door to heightened organized activity with a related increase in sex slavery.

Anyone still thinking that legalizing prostitution is the answer to sex trafficking ought to take a tour through Amsterdam and pay Mayor Cohen a visit. But hurry. The welcome mat is wearing thin.

Image from slog.thestranger.com

The piece below was written by guest blogger Michele Clarke, reflecting on the 2005 Oscars Best Song Winner "It's Hard Out There for a Pimp", in anticipation of the Oscars this Sunday.  The companion post to this which ties human trafficking into the Oscar's past present and future is available here.

Sympathy for a pimp? Whatever for?

Maybe the sympathy is because on Oscar night three years ago, the performers in the rap group Three 6 Mafia were asked to change the word b*****s to ‘witches' (it's nice to know that the Academy draws the line somewhere). For a moment, I imagined pimps surrounded by a host of raging furies from hell plucking out their facial hair with long skinny fingers -for them, a mild fate.

When Three 6 Mafia's "It's Hard out here for a Pimp" won Best Song of the 2005 Oscar season, I was dumbstruck.  So, I buttonholed a few people on the streets and asked them if they knew what a pimp did. One young man answered, "They wear these fancy hats and drive big cars," and began to giggle. "They manage stables of prostitutes," crisply answered a second, obviously a B-school graduate.   Others simply rolled their eyes.  Pimps are a part of our urban landscape.  We might not love them, but they are out there.  And hey, they can't be all that bad, can they?  Not with colleges sponsoring "Pimp and Ho parties," and Oscar-winning songs written about their lives.

Perception, in this case, is far from reality. Pimps are criminals. They make their living selling girls for money. They beat women, brand them, tattoo their names on arms and legs, spit on them, starve them, whip them and throw them off tall buildings.  The only blood, sweat and tears they encounter belong to the girls in their stables.  If they treated horses with such cruelty, PETA would be all over them in a heartbeat.

Let's put it another way: Pimps are traffickers.  According to U.S. anti-trafficking legislation, pimping of minors in the U.S. is trafficking in human beings.  As middle men in the modern slave trade, pimps keep the supply chain going between the buyers and the suppliers.

Want to stop trafficking?  Stop glorifying pimping.  It SHOULD be hard out there for a pimp, even a pimp with an Oscar.

Julia Ormond and Ashton Kutcher are talking, and so is Emma Thompson.  Angelina Jolie is advocating, Darryl Hannah is chatting and Ricky Martin is belting it out. Justin Dillon brought along a bunch of his friends to help him make the point.  George Bush was the first president to talk about it at the UN and Barack Obama called it a top priority for his administration. What is everyone talking about?  Human Trafficking.

The world agrees. Let's end modern-day slavery and the suffering it brings to over 27 million men, women and children worldwide.

How? Good question.  Get a group of global anti-trafficking activists in the same room and ask them what it will take to stop trafficking. The answers are diverse and often contradictory: Restrict migration.  Open borders.  Legalize Prostitution. Abolish prostitution.  End poverty.  Train cops. Start shelters. The list goes on, but where do we go from here?

In the past few years, elaborate and costly anti-trafficking campaigns have produced some results.  In an informal public awareness survey, students in my class on human trafficking at George Washington University all reported that friends and family know "something" about the issue.  But when students asked the question, "What can you do about it?",  awkward silence and blank stares were the most common response.  I believe their reactions stem more from a lack of information than a lack of good will.  The existing glitzy campaigns rarely ask the public to think about their role in solving the problem. In some of his recent public service announcements, Ricky Martin looks seductively into the camera and encourages us to react.  But he never tells us how.

The Brits put an end to the transatlantic slave trade in the 18^th century and, a hundred years later, the American Civil War abolished slavery in the United States.  And still, slavery exists, only it's much more subversive now.  Developing-world laborers, young girls on street corners and sun-drenched migrant farm workers can no longer be considered mere unfortunate yet familiar fixtures of our social landscape.  They are victims of a crime.

Where do we start? All change, as all politics, begins and ends locally.  Ending slavery won't happen by national decree.  It will come when communities ask themselves two hard questions:  What will our university, our town, our company, our state look like if it is really slave-free?  And what are we willing to do to achieve that?  Some have already asked local newspapers to stop running ads for massage parlors and other establishments which have been identified as human trafficking sites. Others are starting to request pay stubs for all maids, day laborers and construction workers who take care of their homes and offices.  Civil, community and religious leaders are identifying ways to eliminate practices, notably pornography, which perpetuate a climate of human degradation.  The list of tangible actions citizens can take at a local level is long.

We've talked the talk. Now let's walk.