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2007-02-12 Home Front: Culture Wars

Hawaii bill would decriminalize prostitution

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Posted by Anonymoose 2007-02-12 09:34|| || Front Page|| [11134 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Get your Woody. Surf's up!!!!

Posted by Danking70 2007-02-12 12:28|| 2007-02-12 12:28|| Front Page Top

#2 What is the fascination the left has with slavery and death? Prostitution is one of the most incidious forms of slavery we have left on the planet and yet everywhere you go, it seems the leftists are all for it being allowed. They even have the sheer gall to claim that this will help lift the women forced into this life into something better? What they really mean is, they won't feel guilty about buying their pound of flesh anymore.

I'm seriouly reaching the point where I don't believe the left has any humanity left at all.

Posted by Silentbrick">Silentbrick 2007-02-12 12:45|| 2007-02-12 12:45|| Front Page Top

#3 Prostitution is not slavery. Prostitution is not drug addiction. Prostitution is not alcoholism.

Prostitution is exchanging something of value, usually money, for sex.

This is why most prostitutes are never arrested, or even charged with a crime. And the only prostitutes the public sees are slaves, drug addicts and alcoholics. The dregs of the street.

Most of the real objection to prostitution was based in the belief that women (not men, I might add), should only be permitted monogamous sex after marriage. And while there might be something said for this idea (and for men, too), it is not as popularly held an idea as it once was.

And, to turn the argument on its head, what but a kind of slavery uses the law to keep women from having sex outside of marriage? By doing so, you equate women and their sexuality with property.

The vast majority of women, when they marry, are provided the equivalent of money in exchange for sex. But that is not an inherently sordid relationship.

In the US, the majority of prostitutes are middle class, live in the suburbs, hold a "day job" doing something else, and limit their services to perhaps three to six men, over the course of years.

Payment is often in the form of gifts, travel, fine dining and other entertainment, and anything else of value. It is none the less prostitution that it is expensive jewelry given in exchange for many sex acts.

Prostitution pays for many a woman's rent, gets her a car, an education, career advancement, etc. It usually ends with marriage, but not always.

Slavery should be prosecuted and stopped for being slavery. But though prostitutes may be slaves, it is slavery that is the real crime.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-02-12 13:49|| 2007-02-12 13:49|| Front Page Top

#4 Prostitutes are some of the least enslaved people!

Why? Simply because they are able to dodge a large amount of income tax.

Posted by Bright Pebbles in Blairistan 2007-02-12 14:20|| 2007-02-12 14:20|| Front Page Top

#5 It sounds like by Anonymoose's standards I'm a prostitute, even if with only one customer. Really, sir, not everything actually is an economic transaction, even if it could be analyzed that way. Sometimes a banana is, after all, really just a banana.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-02-12 14:59|| 2007-02-12 14:59|| Front Page Top

#6 Sounds like Hawaii is trying to get Japanese business men to visit in increasingly larger numbers.

Posted by rjschwarz 2007-02-12 15:42|| 2007-02-12 15:42|| Front Page Top

#7 Saw where New Zealand government posted ergonomic guidelines for sex workers.

Posted by JohnQC 2007-02-12 16:08|| 2007-02-12 16:08|| Front Page Top

#8 legalize it, regulate it a little, and tax it....let the local private market run it. There should be enough room in certain parts of Hawaii, where the clientele & worker traffic won't infringe too much on the locals going about their daily business. Maintain all the common sense rules - no sex workers or clients under the age of 18 and strict disease tests, shouldn't be a big deal.

and after you've maid your payment you can say - wham, bam, thank you ma'am.......for fixing my roads.....

Posted by Broadhead6 2007-02-12 16:27|| 2007-02-12 16:27|| Front Page Top

#9 The one thing left out of a lot of these discussions about prostitution being a victimless crime or a free-market transaction is the source of the girls themselves, who are often imported from Eastern Europe or other places with few economic opportunities. They are smuggled in and kept as chattel.

If a bored housewife wants to turn tricks in her spare time, fine. But I would hate to see ideas like this turn into de facto approval of human trafficking rings.

Posted by Dreadnought 2007-02-12 16:40|| 2007-02-12 16:40|| Front Page Top

#10 Most of the real objection to prostitution was based in the belief that women (not men, I might add), should only be permitted monogamous sex after marriage.

WTF?

Youre an idiot.

The real objection to prostitution is that it leads to victimization and degradation of women, children, and yes . . .men. The sex trade is rife with misery and abuse, nimrod.

And, to turn the argument on its head, what but a kind of slavery uses the law to keep women from having sex outside of marriage? By doing so, you equate women and their sexuality with property.

You are not turning any argument on its head. Through prostitution, women and their sexuality BECOME THE PROPERTY OF THE BUYER. It that a difficult connection for you to make?

The vast majority of women, when they marry, are provided the equivalent of money in exchange for sex.

If my husband could get to you . . . hell, if I could get to you . . . You are truly pathetic. Equivalent of a jihad non-man. Are we going to be privy to your research on the vast majority of women?

What a loser you must be. Incapable of understanding mature, mutually committed relationships.

In the US, the majority of prostitutes are middle class, live in the suburbs, hold a "day job" doing something else, and limit their services to perhaps three to six men, over the course of years.

Oh really? Information provided courtesy of the sex trade profiteers.

Payment is often in the form of gifts, travel, fine dining and other entertainment, and anything else of value. It is none the less prostitution that it is expensive jewelry given in exchange for many sex acts. Prostitution pays for many a woman's rent, gets her a car, an education, career advancement, etc. It usually ends with marriage, but not always.

HEAR THAT, GUYS? Dont be buying your wife or girlfriend anything for Valentines Day, you bunch of low-down, good for nothing, whore mongers. Hey, how many guys here married a prostitute, or, the equivalent of a prostitute?

Slavery should be prosecuted and stopped for being slavery. But though prostitutes may be slaves, it is slavery that is the real crime.

First its okay. Then its not slavery. Then it is. Then only slavery is bad. Then, well maybe prostitutes who are slaves are victims of crimes. But its not a crime. Everyone who is married or not is a prostitute after all.

THIS INDIVIDUAL IS WHACKED. STUPID. BOTH.

The purveyors of human misery in the sex trade would be all to happy to see it legalized. Then they could really get down to bid-ness.

Posted by ex-lib 2007-02-12 17:25|| 2007-02-12 17:25|| Front Page Top

#11 Positively brilliant rebuttal, there. Hope you didn't choke too much on your own spittle.

Think about how complex your argument has to be.

Sex is okay, sex is fine. Giving women money is fine, too, or so most women think. But put them together and all of a sudden it is endless descriptions of evil incarnate.

Sorry. I'm not buying it. If women want to have sex with a bunch of men, fine by me. Even if they feel they have to do it, or starve, fine again. It is indeed better than starving. But don't tell me that it is the cause of their starvation.

If women don't want to have sex with a bunch of men, but are forced to because they are slaves, that is NOT okay. Not because of the sex, but because they are slaves. It is also NOT okay to make they sew sweatshop clothes, either. Or haul mud to make bricks. But it is the SLAVERY that is the bad part. Not sewing, not brick making, and not sex.

So please tell me, what part of prostitution is slavery, that is not slavery first?

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-02-12 17:49|| 2007-02-12 17:49|| Front Page Top

#12 EL: The sex trade is rife with misery and abuse, nimrod.

Misery is part and parcel of every occupation. As to abuse, the abusers can be made criminally liable. How about mandatory 10-year jail sentences for pimps convicted of taking more than a certain percentage of a prostitute's earnings? And multi-year jail sentences for johns or pimps who beat prostitutes?

Note that there are drug and alcohol abusers in every profession. And in many cases, the cause of those addictions is the fact that these individuals are engaged in professions to which they are not temperamentally-suited. But we don't make those professions illegal simply because a number of the workers are driven to substance abuse.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2007-02-12 17:56|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2007-02-12 17:56|| Front Page Top

#13 Well, ZF, your boss chewing you out because you didn't get something filed in time, or your didn't refill the toner is not equivalent to the abuse in certain other "professions" (as if it's profession).

"As to abuse, the abusers can be made criminally liable. How about mandatory 10-year jail sentences for pimps ~~convicted of taking more than a certain percentage of a prostitute's earnings?"~~

With my correction, that would solve much of the problem. There will always be sexual dysfunction. And there will always be those who prey on the weak and force them into prostitution, and those prostitutes, who are not forced, but who prey on stupid customers.

You guys REALLY need to research the horrors associated with human trafficking. The ignorance level here is just too much.

Posted by ex-lib 2007-02-12 18:03|| 2007-02-12 18:03|| Front Page Top

#14 The U.S. Government adopted a strong position against legalized prostitution in a December 2002 National Security Presidential Directive based on evidence that prostitution is inherently harmful and dehumanizing, and fuels trafficking in persons, a form of modern-day slavery.

Prostitution and related activitiesincluding pimping and patronizing or maintaining brothelsfuel the growth of modern-day slavery by providing a façade behind which traffickers for sexual exploitation operate.

Where prostitution is legalized or tolerated, there is a greater demand for human trafficking victims and nearly always an increase in the number of women and children trafficked into commercial sex slavery.

Of the estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people trafficked across international borders annually, 80 percent of victims are female, and up to 50 percent are minors. Hundreds of thousands of these women and children are used in prostitution each year.

Women and children want to escape prostitution
The vast majority of women in prostitution dont want to be there. Few seek it out or choose it, and most are desperate to leave it. A 2003 study first published in the scientific Journal of Trauma Practice found that 89 percent of women in prostitution want to escape.[1] And children are also trapped in prostitutiondespite the fact that international covenants and protocols impose upon state parties an obligation to criminalize the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

Prostitution is inherently harmful
Few activities are as brutal and damaging to people as prostitution. Field research in nine countries concluded that 60-75 percent of women in prostitution were raped, 70-95 percent were physically assaulted, and 68 percent met the criteria for post traumatic stress disorder in the same range as treatment-seeking combat veterans[2] and victims of state-organized torture.[3] Beyond this shocking abuse, the public health implications of prostitution are devastating and include a myriad of serious and fatal diseases, including HIV/AIDS.

A path-breaking, five-country academic study concluded that research on prostitution has overlooked "[t]he burden of physical injuries and illnesses that women in the sex industry sustain from the violence inflicted on them, or from their significantly higher rates of hepatitis B, higher risks of cervical cancer, fertility complications, and psychological trauma."[4]

State attempts to regulate prostitution by introducing medical check-ups or licenses dont address the core problem: the routine abuse and violence that form the prostitution experience and brutally victimize those caught in its netherworld. Prostitution leaves women and children physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually devastated. Recovery takes years, even decadesoften, the damage can never be undone.

Prostitution creates a safe haven for criminals
Legalization of prostitution expands the market for commercial sex, opening markets for criminal enterprises and creating a safe haven for criminals who traffic people into prostitution. Organized crime networks do not register with the government, do not pay taxes, and do not protect prostitutes. Legalization simply makes it easier for them to blend in with a purportedly regulated sex sector and makes it more difficult for prosecutors to identify and punish those who are trafficking people.

The Swedish Government has found that much of the vast profit generated by the global prostitution industry goes into the pockets of human traffickers. The Swedish Government said, "International trafficking in human beings could not flourish but for the existence of local prostitution markets where men are willing and able to buy and sell women and children for sexual exploitation."[5]

To fight human trafficking and promote equality for women, Sweden has aggressively prosecuted customers, pimps, and brothel owners since 1999. As a result, two years after the new policy, there was a 50 percent decrease in women prostituting and a 75 percent decrease in men buying sex. Trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation decreased as well.[6] In contrast, where prostitution has been legalized or tolerated, there is an increase in the demand for sex slaves[7] and the number of victimized foreign womenmany likely victims of human trafficking.[8]

Grant-making implications of the U.S. government policy
As a result of the prostitution-trafficking link, the U.S. government concluded that no U.S. grant funds should be awarded to foreign non-governmental organizations that support legal state-regulated prostitution. Prostitution is not the oldest profession, but the oldest form of oppression.

at this link

Posted by ex-lib 2007-02-12 18:07|| 2007-02-12 18:07|| Front Page Top

#15 TESTIMONY OF ROSA, AGE 14

When I was fourteen, a man came to my parents' house in Veracruz, Mexico and asked me if I was interested in making money in the United States. He said I could make many times as much money doing the same things that I was doing in Mexico. At the time, I was working in a hotel cleaning rooms and I also helped around my house by watching my brothers and sisters. He said I would be in good hands, and would meet many other Mexican girls who had taken advantage of this great opportunity. My parents didn't want me to go, but I persuaded them.

A week later, I was smuggled into the United States through Texas to Orlando, Florida. It was then the men told me that my employment would consist of having sex with men for money. I had never had sex before, and I had never imagined selling my body.

And so my nightmare began. Because I was a virgin, the men decided to initiate me by raping me again and again, to teach me how to have sex. Over the next three months, I was taken to a different trailer every 15 days. Every night I had to sleep in the same bed in which I had been forced to service customers all day.

I couldn't do anything to stop it. I wasn't allowed to go outside without a guard. Many of the bosses had guns. I was constantly afraid. One of the bosses carried me off to a hotel one night, where he raped me. I could do nothing to stop him.

Because I was so young, I was always in demand with the customers. It was awful. Although the men were supposed to wear condoms, some didn't, so eventually I became pregnant and was forced to have an abortion. They sent me back to the brothel almost immediately.

I cannot forget what has happened. I can't put it behind me. I find it nearly impossible to trust people. I still feel shame. I was a decent girl in Mexico. I used to go to church with my family. I only wish none of this had ever happened.

- Rosa, Testimony before U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee

more testimonials

www.polarisproject.org

Posted by ex-lib 2007-02-12 18:27|| 2007-02-12 18:27|| Front Page Top

#16 "If women want to have sex with a bunch of men, fine by me. Even if they feel they have to do it, or starve, fine again. It is indeed better than starving."

Well, at least we know where you stand. Spoken like a true human trafficking profiteer.

Hope you never have a daughter

BTW, if you think the women involved have complete freedom and are "just having sex" you're an uneducated idiot.

Posted by ex-lib 2007-02-12 18:32|| 2007-02-12 18:32|| Front Page Top

#17 And while we're on the subject of the "fineness" of women having to prostitute to survive, here's something you might like. Guess your thinking, values, and "logic" is right in line with the mullahs. Congratulations.

WORSE THAN HELL

Iranian women live in misery under mullahs' rule

link

Monthly Bulletin of the Women's Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
NOVEMBER 2000

Twenty years after the mullahs seized power in Iran and established a merciless reign of terror under the name of God, the country has been plagued with a variety of social ills. Poverty, destitution, theft, prostitution, runaway girls, street children and addiction have become so prevalent, that the clerical regime can no longer conceal them.

Officials admit that the average age of prostitution has dropped from 27 to 20. Addiction has spread to high schools as the government's harsh anti-drug policy which has resulted in thousands of executions, has failed to alleviate the problem.

This is nothing short of a disaster for a country, like Iran, with its rich cultural heritage and ancient traditions, that made it a standard-bearer of moral and ethical principles in the region.

Families enjoyed solid foundations and parents diligently looked after the welfare of their children until they got a job or formed families of their own. Few, if any, people were seen begging in streets. Drug addiction was limited and prostitution was never sanctioned by the people.

Today, citizens who have left Iran speak of shocking stories that are no longer isolated cases, but rather are becoming more and more prevalent. Without doubt, the mullahs' regime cannot and does not want to stop this trend; it is itself the source of these calamities. By funding, spreading and promoting addiction and prostitution in society, it aims to drain the potential of young people and prevent them from actively opposing the regime.

The following is an excerpt from a report by the Women's Committee of the National Council of Resistance, compiled on the basis of eyewitness reports by people who left the country recently to join the Resistance movement.

A social worker: "During the inspection of one elementary school in uptown Tehran, it was reported to me that a few students were not doing well and usually fell asleep in the classes. When I discussed with their mother about the cause of this problem, she gave me a chilling answer. 'We cannot pay for our expenses. Life is very expensive. I have three daughters, all above 9 years of age, so I rent them to men for 50,000 rials ($4.25) a night. If you have any clients, please send them to me,' she said bluntly."

Female college students are forced into prostitution in order to earn their tuition. Most of them have respectable families who cannot afford to pay their daughters' tuition. So the girls engage in prostitution to earn enough money for their tuition. One such girl says, "I am only 21. It is not easy for me to do this. If my father found out, he would die from agony. I wish I could do something else to earn a living, but there are no jobs for women."

In Boroujerd University (western Iran) and Azad University in north Tehran, officials take advantage of the students' difficult economic conditions and lure them into prostitution, addiction and drug trafficking, as a way of distracting the young and energetic girls from getting involved in political activism.

A young woman said: "A friend of mine had difficulty paying for her tuition. She acted through the university's department of education to find a solution. Officials invited her to corrupt parties. She could not protest because the officials could use this against her and send her before the courts for illicit relationships."

Responding to the question why she had become a call girl, another one of these girls said: "I do not have any money even for food. My boyfriend pays for my food only once or twice. The next time, he wants something from me. There are no jobs. My parents are so poor that they cannot earn their own living, let alone pay for my college expenses... I either have to starve to death or somehow survive to see what would happen next."

This situation is said to be common to all universities and not an isolated case.

A shocking report from one girls' high school in a southern district of Tehran, indicated that out of every 100 students, 25 are dismissed from school for unwanted pregnancy. One gynecologist says, "I have been in this profession for years. Unwanted pregnancy in teenagers used to happen once in ten years. Such high rate of young girls having unwanted pregnancies, however, is truly incredible and unfortunately involves many families."

Other reports explain why: "A girl student was raped at school in the gendarmarie township. Her family filed a complaint. In a follow-up it was discovered that 80% of the students in that school had been sexually abused. Further investigations revealed that the staff and faculty had raped the girls."

A young high school teacher adds: "Girls run away from school because of many restrictions imposed on them. Many of them escape and no one bothers to notice their absence. This group of students are rapidly driven into prostitution, and soon, they cannot go back to school or to their families. They have to join the multitudes of runaway girls who either commit suicide or are gang raped, mutilated and their bodies dumped by the side of the road."

When the mullahs came to power, one of the first things they did was to burn down the brothels in Tehran. Then they made it compulsory for women to cover their hair. Government-backed hoodlums roamed the streets and beat up and arrested women who did not observe the compulsory dress code. They splashed acid on the face of any woman who wore make-up. They beat up and arrested young couples who could not prove that they were married. Women and men were stoned to death for illicit relationships.

Twenty years later, the clerical regime's draconian laws and harsh measures have backfired and the mullahs have failed to address the underlying causes of these problems, namely a terrible economic situation with 80% of Iranian families living below the poverty line. The multitude of problems plaguing the country are the direct result of the mullahs' despotic and misogynous rule, from which women have suffered the most.

Posted by ex-lib 2007-02-12 18:42|| 2007-02-12 18:42|| Front Page Top

#18 From a former "whore"--thoughts and insights on starving and prostitution:

Prostitution and AIDS

Suki Falconberg

Suki Falconberg Ph.D.
November 4, 2006

AIDS coverage in the media pays little or no attention to the prostituted women, girls, and children who suffer greatly from this diseases impact. Frontlines two-part series, The Age of AIDS (May 2006), is a good example. The shows point of view is relentlessly male, even though one of the co-producers and writers is a woman, Renata Simone.

The show praises the condom king of Thailand for slowing the spread of AIDS, but fails to note that the policy of putting 100 condoms by every brothel bed continues to enslave women, girls, and children in that countrys multi-billion-dollar sex industry. (The selling of young bodies generates 25% of that countrys income, according to the PBS series, The New Heroes.) Frontline also fails to note that the Thai military are heavy consumers of trafficked girls and that the soldiers high AIDS rate spurred the campaign, not any concern for the prostitutes themselves. Frontline totally overlooked the fact that handing out condoms will not relieve these victims of the misery of prostitution and the ongoing rape of their bodies, not just by their own military, but by local men, by sex tourists, and by militaries from around the world who continue a precedent set by US servicemen during Vietnam with their sex junkets to Bangkok. (Our boys are still banging away with every shore leave: roughly 1/3 of the girls who serve them are under age 15, and half of them have AIDS--Stats from PBSs New Heroes.)

Although Frontline is often to be commended for its thoroughness, its gender attitude is usually as patriarchal and narrow as that of the mainstream media: the world only exists from the male point of view. Its women writers and producers are no different from men.

The episode gives us a few glimpses of Patpong bargirls, all looking about twelve years old, pathetically thin, scantily clad and painted up like sextoys. But why no interview with one of these girls? Why no mention that these are, sadly, the lucky ones in the Thai sex tradefree to move around, with some choice of customers. Why didnt the camera crew go into the brothels, where, hidden from view, are the trafficked, the ones sold by their parents who went through harsh trainingbeatings, rape--to make them compliant. As if the twenty or thirty men they must service a night are not rape enough. Some of these girls are never allowed outside. Why didnt Ms. Simone even bother to interview a brothelized Thai prostitute? Well, I have seen them and their eyes are full of desperate sadness. No condom will protect them from the serial rape that is their lives.

Simone does not mention the Rwandan mass rape in the mid-1990s which led to roughly a quarter of a million women now finding themselves HIV-positive. As co-writer/producer, why would she leave out such an enormous event?

Maybe because she and her cohorts chose to endlessly interview older gay males from the San Francisco bathhouse culture that initially spread the disease among that community, I suppose in reparation for so heavily stigmatizing them before AIDS became acceptable, a fashionable cause, via Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. (As an ex-prostitute, I can tell you that gay males dont even rate on the stigmatization meter when it comes to the opprobrium, scorn, disgust, hatred that is heaped upon us. We are regarded as filth, disposable bodies.)

And why didnt the Frontline crew interview the prostitute in the Bombay brothel who said she was forced to be there? Why didnt they take her out of that sex hellhole? As privileged Westerners, they have enough money to do so. They could have bought her out of her debt bondage. I wonder, would Renata Simone want to be left in that brothel, forced to service dozens of brutal men every night? (As an ex-prostitute, and I know that customers are not careful with our bodies.) Wouldnt she beg for someone to help her? If she were in a Bombay brothel bed, she wouldnt be making any more documentaries. She would be too rape traumatized to do much beyond barely survive.
In the filthy sweatshop stew of this brothel, there was a child beside one of the prostituted women. She, too, will likely end up in the trade. When her mother is too sick to work, she will be forced to sell her. Its called intergenerational prostitution. (You see it in Thailand as wellgrandchildren of girls forced to serve our military during the Vietnam era are now themselves prostituted.) I wonder why the camera crew did not take the child out of there?

The episode also left out trafficking, and the connection with AIDS. Trafficked girls--broken through beatings, burning, starvation, and collective rape--are often forced to have unprotected anal sex (a prime recipe for contracting AIDS) with customers because they have no choice and because independent prostitutes wont. Trafficked girls cannot negotiate condom use because they are slaves.
Also ignored was child prostitution and the inevitable connection with AIDS. Part of the explosion in this trade worldwide is the result of the mistaken idea that a child will not have AIDS because she is fresh. Mistaken because girl children have more fragile vaginal membranes than do adult women. And they are smallerfor these two reasons they tear more easily and become infected more easily. Also, the myth that having sex with a child virgin will cure AIDS has increased the procuring of girl child bodies. All this female misery and not one whisper about it from Frontline and its woman co-writer/producer.

Outside of South Africa s goldmine barracks, prostitutes ply their sad trade on pieces of cardboard in the surrounding woods. Many are women with children, and no husbands, forced into this degradation. Frontlines camera followed a few shy ones into their retreat, carrying their pieces of cardboard. Such sadness and hope in those shy faces, knowing they were being filmed. But no effort to help them on the part of these privileged Westerners with their cameras. Or to talk to them. Apparently, these women are not high enough on the scale of AIDS sufferers to merit a voice. (There is something despicably unethical about the ethics of objectivity in filming the suffering of othersand not helping.)
Frontline, instead, asks us to feel sorry for the miner, the man who buys the prostituted body, and then spreads the AIDS. Frontline shows us a specimen of this rapist, with his important AIDS case, filming him as if he were some victim. Victim of what? His own raping lust?

It is a terrible truth, and almost completely unacknowledged by AIDS media coverage: Men spread AIDS through rape and the use of prostituted bodies. Consider: If there were never any women or girls or children forced into prostitution due to hunger, poverty, parental coercion, grasping procurers and greedy pimps, not to mention the biggest 'force,' customer demand for flesh, there would be no AIDS explosion. In Africa and India and Southeast Asia, men spread the disease among the sexually enslaved, since transmission usually goes from male to female. Then other men use these infected bodies and carry AIDS out into the general population--taking it home to their wives and girlfriends.

Interestingly, the pattern seems to be the same as it was with syphilis: destitute camp followers infected by soldiers during all those endless wars raging across Europe in the Middle Ages; diseased soldiers taking the 'pox' home to their wives. Even the male rhetoric was the same: the whore is blamed for her filthy ways; the man is the victim, like those poor South African goldminers away from their homes, lonely, having to buy a whore body to keep them company. Poor guys. And, of course, its all those dirty little Thai girls, more-than-willing to sell their bodies for Yankee dollars, who are the real demons in the AIDS scourgenot the tourists and sailors and soldiers who purchase them. Never mind that the young Thai prostitute is sold by her parents, seasoned by her procurers and pimps, raped every day by her customers, and sees little of the money herself. She is still the archetypal brown submissive femme fatale, the little willing brown sex machine, as the US Marines call her. (The men substitute a less-polite word for the sex part.)

Even the origins of syphilis and AIDS are similar: transmission from animal to human. There is strong evidence that AIDS was passed from chimps to humans. Some accounts of syphilis Ive read say it was likely that human males acquired it from sex with animals. The role of the military is the same: Sailors spread syphilis worldwide by using women forced into prostitution in foreign ports. It may have entered Japan , for example, as the result of infected European sailors using girls sold into the sex trade. (These girls didnt leap into the chance to have sex with thousands of rough, large, terrifying foreign sailors on their ownunlike all those mythical accounts of the willing, subservient Asian female.)

Soldiers and sailors taking AIDS from infected prostitutes back to their families has a scary sound when you consider the way American servicemen frequent prostitutes all over the world. And there is strong evidence that US servicemen carried AIDS from infected prostitutes in the port city of Mombasa to the women forced to sexually serve them in the Philippines (and perhaps into Thailand and other Asian countries where they use prostituted bodies). How much have they brought home with them?
No notice taken by Frontline of any of this military connection. And nothing about the role of UN Peacekeepers raping sexually enslaved prostitutes and spreading the disease. The presence of 100,000 of these men in Cambodia in the early 1990s caused a massive explosion in the sex trade, and in AIDS. Wherever they go, these Peace Keepers are Violence-Bringers to the bodies of women: they have money, pimps cultivate them, young girls serve them.
So, how do we solve this problem? Its simple, really. We eliminate, completely, customer demand? No men anywhere ever buy prostituted bodies ever again? As if that would ever happen. And, its too late, boys. Youve already given the women of the world AIDS.

A Newsweek issue (May 15, 2006) devoted to AIDS is not quite as remorselessly sexist as the above Frontline show. It at least carries some small sympathy for the prostitute in an article about African ones refused medical treatment for gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes, and AIDS, due to their being considered such filth.
Melinda Gates actually mentions sex workers in this Newsweek issue, acknowledges they are part of the AIDS picture, although it is in the context of focusing on the decent women of Africa, the ones she apparently thinks are worth saving from AIDS.

During the recent AIDS conference in Toronto , Melinda Gates pointed out that the ABC approach which stands for Abstinence, Be faithful and use Condoms does not always work.

"Abstinence is often not an option for poor women and girls who have no choice but to marry at an early age, she said.

"Being faithful will not protect a woman whose partner is not faithful. And using condoms is not a decision that a woman can make by herself; it depends on a man.

Melinda Gates said condoms do not encourage promiscuity, and she said people have to get over their embarrassment about helping sex workers, who are key to fighting the pandemic. (Quoted material from Reuters News Service, 2006, and ABC News Internet Ventures, 2006.)

For all that she and her husband, Bill, are trying to help in the war on AIDS, note that Melinda Gates promotes the very attitudes that have allowed heterosexual men to widely infect hetero women. Promiscuity is based on that most pernicious of sexual notions, the virgin/whore split: some of us on the side of damaged goods, the sluts, the others all sweet and pure with that strip of pink tissue intact. (Damaged by whom? Men make sluts by screwing women, and then blaming them for being screwed? ) And she uses that equally damaging phrase, sex worker. I shudder every time I hear it. I shuddered when I saw a Western woman reporter for Frontline applying it to a tiny painted-harlot four-year-old in a Bombay brothel. How what that little girl does could be considered work, by any stretch of the word, is beyond me. Is a pension plan in the works for her, that trusty 401K, and maybe shes lined up a plush job as a Starbucks barista after she gets done with her fun sex work stint. (When I write, I use prostituted woman, girl, or child, as most accurately reflecting the sale of bodies; I use whore, unabashedly, in an attempt to defuse the male-derived negativity it carries---scorn, hatred of us, etc.)

In her tour of Africa , Gates focused on the normal, non-whore women as being important. Did she even visit a brothel? Did she talk to the open-air rape-camp whores on their strips of cardboard?
Why does Gates see the sex workers as key to fighting the pandemic, when it is the millions of men who rape them who are the true key, blind as we may be to this?
Even though she mentions the helplessness of the adolescent girl forced into marriage, why does she not mention the far worse enslavement and rape of the prostituted one?
Blindness. As if whore bodies, needs, lives, are invisible, totally marginal to the concerns of respectable women.

Another practice, dry sex, also receives no coverage anywhere. Turning the vagina into parchment with hot peppers, so the male will have a tight fit, is widely practiced in Africa And, of course, the more the vagina bleeds, the more likely the male is likely to inflict his STDs on the woman. Both wives and whores practice dry sex because of the demands of the male. (I cannot even imagine one act of dry intercourse forced into me, let alone the thousands the whores must endure. When I whored, I used lubelots of it. Even at my lowly rung of existence, no customer dared tell me to dry out my vagina for his pleasure. He took his pleasure in a lubed tunnel, or not at all. Those poor African whores really make me see how fortunate I was to have mildly enlightened, only semi-barbaric American male soldiers for customers.)

In the eyes of the world, it would seem, the normal/decent women, the good wives and good mothers, those upholding family values, have merit, and we abject whore outcasts are lesser beings. Are the whores of Africa receiving any AIDS drugs, I would ask. Frontline only spotlighted decent non-whore women taking the drugs.

In my eyes, I find the whore has far more value than the decent woman since she has suffered the lowest degradation men can inflict on her, and somehow survived. But where is her monument? All our magazines (Cosmo, Time, Essence, etc.) carry stories about the 25 Strongest Women, all those business corporate types, all those successful tough, independent sorts, as if they were the heroines of our civilization. No, the 15-year-old whore, still alive despite the torture of her vagina, and the death of her spirit, she is the only heroine I recognize. But I stand little chance of anyone listening to my own whore voice. Even worse, I may be labeled a sex worker, consigned to the same tier of labor as the little painted four-year-old harlot. Her AIDS body will not make a ripple in anyones mind.

link

Posted by ex-lib 2007-02-12 18:52|| 2007-02-12 18:52|| Front Page Top

#19 It is a sad thing to witness the author struggling for a sense of self, of self-determination and worth in this valuable article, let alone the "misery" she is reporting.

So you have to ask yourself if exchanging sex for anything other than love is, in actuality, a form of slavery.

And if so, why not be opposed to all forms of slavery?

If not, you must conclude that slavery is also "fine" with you.

Posted by ex-lib 2007-02-12 18:55|| 2007-02-12 18:55|| Front Page Top

#20 Ex-lib must be opposed to all forms of work.

Posted by Bright Pebbles in Blairistan 2007-02-12 19:55|| 2007-02-12 19:55|| Front Page Top

#21 ex-lib says it all.

Posted by Deacon Blues">Deacon Blues 2007-02-12 20:02|| 2007-02-12 20:02|| Front Page Top

#22 Ex-lib obviously has some deep issues, here.

But none of that serves as refutation to the basic situation. Most of the horrific things attributed to prostitution would exist, and do exist *anyway*, even when prostitution is not involved.

Child slave labor, and child labor are widespread in the world. It is horrible, damaging, cruel and inhumane. And yes, some of those children are sexually abused, too.

How was life like under the Taliban, or in Somalia, where prostitution was one of a thousand death penalty offenses? In how many other nations full of persecution and government caused famine is prostitution seen as such an insignificant evil compared to everything else, that it is ignored?

In southern Africa, random small children are often raped in the belief that men can cure themselves of AIDS by doing so. No money changes hands at all.

Yes, ex-lib, we live on a horrible, evil planet. But just combining sex and money is not evil--it is the vast number of evil people out there that make it, or anything else they touch, evil.

They make government evil, religion evil, they subvert progress and economic development, they suck the life out of millions of people every day, to death, slow and quick.

Sex does not make them evil, though the evil use sex to their own ends. And money does not make them evil, though they use it, too, to their own ends.

And their countless victims will continue to be victimized until the evil people are stopped. And even then, prostitution will thrive.

As long as there is sex, and money, prostitution will thrive.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-02-12 20:17|| 2007-02-12 20:17|| Front Page Top

#23 ex-lib, all due respect, but most of your examples come out of some already pretty f'd up countries even w/out the prostitution angle. Your example of an underage "forced" hooker in the U.S. is tragic, but usually in immigrant communities where the authorities may not be privvy to such abuses. Even here in the U.S. look at how the porn industry has to be enforced - but we still have it & it's legal. I'd submit that there's a thin dime diff between hooking and porn. I'd even say the same for stripping.

Overall, in your posts you're comparing crazy-ass Thailand, South Africa, & Iran to the U.S.? I think you may want to check how Nevada does things before using other countries who already have asymetrical & polar opposite differences to our own country (i.e. corruption as a day-to-day deal). Prostitution is already legal in NV. If there has been widespread abuse or human trafficking w/respects to Nevada cat-houses it might give your argument more creedence imo. Otherwise, I think your off. I think if the gov set strict perameters like they do w/the strip clubs & porn industry here the private sector could make this work pretty well w/out the abuses you mentioned - just imo. Most business folks do not want to get arrested w/minors in the equation. Will there still be laws broken - sure, I just it would be a fraction of what you're thinking.

Again, coming from a man who knows many cops (and exotic dancers :) ) and is friends w/many cops - local law enforcement & local politicos would be more than happy to take down cat-houses using under-age girls in this country.

Posted by Broadhead6 2007-02-12 20:46|| 2007-02-12 20:46|| Front Page Top

#24 Please, Anonymoose. I prefer the term "courtesan" for what I'm doing, IYHO.

I can only imagine what you think of me after learning that, upon mutual agreement, I produced a scion for the Tsar....and have no immediate plans to return to regular paid employment....

Posted by Swamp Blondie 2007-02-12 21:51|| http://azjetsetchick.blogspot.com]">[ http://azjetsetchick.blogspot.com] 2007-02-12 21:51|| Front Page Top

#25 Swampy,

& we American gigolos prefer "mercenary of love" - just so you all know....... :)

Posted by Broadhead6 2007-02-12 21:56|| 2007-02-12 21:56|| Front Page Top

#26 Swamp Blondie: I've gotten to know several prostitutes, enough to know that individual motivations are extremely different. It really covers the gamut of personality, both good and bad motivations, some smart and some stupid ideas, and sometimes in sync with the rest of their life, and sometimes a Jekyll and Hyde split personality.

Tons of stories, but the only two things they had in common were sex and money. Things so universal that you can't assign a moral value to them.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-02-12 23:11|| 2007-02-12 23:11|| Front Page Top

#27 shut up

Posted by Thereth Slump3787 2007-02-12 23:17|| 2007-02-12 23:17|| Front Page Top

#28 Y'all are fooling yourselves about American prostitutes--in Nevada or elsewhere.

If you were ever able to actually talk to the girls without them feeling like their livelihoods were threatened, and found out about them--where they grew up, what their dreams were before they began spreading their legs and offering "fantasy experiences" for paying customers, you'd find all kinds of TRUE LIFE stories.

But then, that would ruin the fantasy aspect, now wouldn't it? Just not the same when the woman becomes a real human being with hopes and aspirations, longings (even if forgotten) of true romance and commitment. So I put it to you--you people who are fond of believing the "happy hooker" sell--visit a hooker for a year--no sex, make friends with her, get to know her (if her pimp will allow it--ooops--another one of those "shoot the fantasy" facts) and see what she's really like when she's not presenting her vulva as a higher level masterbatory tool for you as a paying CUSTOMER. (note: objectifiction of a human being for another human being's pleasure)

That said, yes, I listed examples (which I doubt will be explored futher by the prostitution defenders on this site) about immigrant human trafficking here and abroad, because GAWD, people, can't you draw ANY inferences?

Human beings are human beings. Expensive call girls have their own private hell to deal with, just like their impoverished counterparts.

The worst culprits in the entire bid-ness are the paying CUSTOMERS. Without them, the whole sorry mess falls apart.

And Anon--saying I have "issues" is a flimsy smokescreen for your lack of intelligent argumentation. It didn't fly.

Here's the truth. Girls are girls everywhere. They were once little girls. They didn't, and they don't, need you. They don't want you. If they could straighten things out, psychologically, emotionally, and/or economically, they wouldn't do what they do--in Nevada or anywhere else in the world.

Lastly, I find the arguments here in support of the misuse of women through prostitution, to be not at all unlike the "Mormon" (or dismissed from the LDS church--depending on who you want to believe) view on polygamy, and the misery surrounding that nonsense. It is also not unlike the view of Moslem men and the supposed "willingness" to be so, of the multiple women who serve as their "wives."

I'm sure this is falling on deaf ears among those who want pretend sex.

And DUH, sex isn't evil. But prostitution isn't sex. Not real sex between people who have a deeper commitment than "here's some money, now give me you thang . . . " It's farming out women as masterbation tools for hire--"consensual" (what a neat, tidy little word that is in this context) or not consensual.

That's the truth. Deal with it. And the next time you're with a hooker, remember that she was once in elemetary school, junior high, etc. just like you.

If you can't respect your fellow human beings as human beings, what hope is there for your soul? Might as well join the jihadiis.

Posted by ex-lib 2007-02-12 23:23|| 2007-02-12 23:23|| Front Page Top

#29 Interesting that NO ONE wanted to discuss the points raised in post #14.

Hey,we could start with one of the first points:

"Prostitution and related activitiesincluding pimping and patronizing or maintaining brothelsfuel the growth of modern-day slavery by providing a façade behind which traffickers for sexual exploitation operate."

There's a lot there, but of course you'd have to read it and that might challenge your assumptions and/or fantasies about prostitution.

Posted by ex-lib 2007-02-12 23:27|| 2007-02-12 23:27|| Front Page Top

#30 In the post list: "Female Circumcision & Sexual Slavery In Saudi Arabia (MUST read)" it is clear that FGM is a logical end result of the objectification of women. Men who objectify women (whether they pay for it or not) are sadly, and frightenly immature.

Posted by ex-lib 2007-02-12 23:40|| 2007-02-12 23:40|| Front Page Top

09:36 Aris Katsaris
23:59 gromgoru
23:57 whatadeal
23:40 ex-lib
23:35 smn
23:33 ex-lib
23:27 ex-lib
23:23 ex-lib
23:22 Eric Jablow
23:19 Eric Jablow
23:17 Thereth Slump3787
23:11 Anonymoose
23:11 Eric Jablow
22:12 JosephMendiola
22:12 Alaska Paul
22:08 Frank G
22:05 Phineter Thraviger
21:59 Frank G
21:56 Broadhead6
21:53 Omolurt Elmeaper6990
21:51 Swamp Blondie
21:45 Alaska Paul
21:43 gromgoru
21:32 RD