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  • Prohibiting Sex Purchasing and Ending Trafficking: The Swedish Prostitution Law (2011)

    December, 2011

    The Swedish prostitution law from 1999, now followed by Norway and Iceland, criminalized the purchaser and decriminalized the prostituted person. This is analyzed as a cogent state response under international trafficking law, particularly to the obligations set forth in the United Nation's Trafficking Protocol from 2000. The Protocol states that a person is regarded a trafficking victim when, e.g., someone abuses her "position of vulnerability" in order to exploit her. International jurisprudence and social evidence strongly suggest that prostitution, as practiced in the world, usually satisfies this definition. Further, the Protocol urges states to reduce the demand for prostitution and to protect and assist victims, for instance by adopting laws deterring purchasers of sex, and by supporting those exploited in prostitution. Policy makers, such as the U.S. Department of State, are criticized for taking an inadequate position in face of the growing evidence from the Swedish law's impact.

    The article shows that Sweden has significantly reduced the occurrence of trafficking in Sweden compared to neighboring countries. It also scrutinizes some misinformation of the law's impact, showing for instance that claims alleging a more dangerous situation for those still in prostitution after 1999 were unfounded. In addition, the article addresses remaining obstacles to the law's effective implementation, arguing that in order to realize the law's full potential to support escape from trafficking, the civil rights of prostituted persons under current law should be strengthened to enable them to claim damages directly from the purchasers for the harm to which they have contributed, and for the violation of the prostituted persons' equality and dignity - a position now recognized by the government to some extent by clarifying amendments made in 2011.

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  • Comparing Sex Buyers and Non-Sex Buyers July 2011

    Melissa Farley, Emily Schuckman, Jacqueline M. Golding, Kristen Houser, Laura Jarrett, Peter Qualliotine, Michele Decker (2011)
    Comparing Sex Buyers with Men Who Don't Buy Sex: "You can have a good time with the servitude" vs. "You're supporting a system of degradation"
    Paper presented at Psychologists for Social Responsibility Annual Meeting July 15, 2011, Boston.

    This research study compared 101 men who buy sex with 100 men who did not buy sex, matched by age, ethnicity, and education level. Most had a wife or girlfriend at the time of the study. Sex buyers had many more sex partners in their lifetime (prostituted as well as non-prostituted) than non-sex buyers.

    Sex buyers were far more likely than non-sex buyers to commit felonies, misdemeanors, crimes related to violence against women, substance abuse-related crimes, assaults, crimes with weapons, and crimes against authority. All of the crimes known to be associated with violence against women were reported by sex buyers; none were reported by non-sex buyers.

    Sex buyers acknowledged having committed significantly more sexually coercive acts against women than non-sex buyers.

    Sex buyers had significantly less empathy for prostituted women than did non-sex buyers and they acknowledged fewer harmful effects of prostitution on the women in it and on the community. Non-sex buyers more often saw prostitution as harmful to both the woman herself and to the community as a whole.

    The sex buyers masturbated to pornography more often than non-sex buyers, imitated it with partners more often, and had more often received their sex education from pornography than the non-sex buyers. Significantly more of the sex buyers compared learned about sex from pornography compared to the non-sex buyers.

    Both sex buyers and non-sex buyers evidenced extensive knowledge of the physical and psychological harms of prostitution. Two thirds of both the sex buyers and the non-sex buyers observed that a majority of women are lured, tricked, or trafficked into prostitution. Many of the men had an awareness of the economic coercion and the lack of alternatives in women's entry into prostitution. Almost all of the sex buyers and non-sex buyers shared the opinion that minor children are almost always available for prostitution in bars, massage parlors, escort and other prostitution in Boston.

    The knowledge that the women have been exploited, coerced, pimped, or trafficked failed to deter sex buyers from buying sex. Many of the sex buyers had used women who were controlled by pimps at the time they used her for sex.

    Both sex buyers and non-sex buyers agreed that the most effective deterrent to buying sex would be to be placed on a registry of sex offenders. Other effective deterrents included public exposure techniques such as having their name or photo publicized on a billboard, newspaper, or the Internet. Spending time in jail was considered an effective deterrent by 80% of sex buyers and 83% of non-sex buyers. Educational programs were considered the least effective deterrent by both groups of men.

    Taken together, these findings - a range of criminal activity in addition to prostitution, nonrelational sexual preference, a high number of sex partners, extensive pornography use - interact and increase the likelihood of future violence against women, according to other studies cited in this report.

    Our finding that the sex buyers are involved in these criminal activities suggests that sex buying should be considered in that context. State and federal laws against prostitution and trafficking should be enforced against johns. Sex buyers hold extensive information about pimps, coercion, trafficking, and the harms of prostitution to the women in it. This information is not yet fully used by law enforcement and could be useful.

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  • The John Next Door

    Newsweek, 7/17/2011
    http://www.newsweek.com/2011/07/17/the-growing-demand-for-prostitution.html

    The men who buy sex are your neighbors and colleagues. A new study reveals how the burgeoning demand for porn and prostitutes is warping personal relationships and endangering women and girls.

    Men of all ages, races, religions, and backgrounds do it. Rich men do it, and poor men do it, in forms so varied and ubiquitous that they can be summoned at a moment's notice.

    And yet surprisingly little is known about the age-old practice of buying sex, long assumed to be inevitable. No one even knows what proportion of the male population does it; estimates range from 16 percent to 80 percent. "Ninety-nine percent of the research in this field has been done on prostitutes, and 1 percent has been done on johns," says Melissa Farley, director of Prostitution Research and Education, a nonprofit organization that is a project of San Francisco Women's Centers.

    A clinical psychologist, Farley studies prostitution, trafficking, and sexual violence, but even she wasn't sure how representative her results were. "The question has always remained: are all our findings true of just sex buyers, or are they true of men in general?" she says.

    In a new study released exclusively to NEWSWEEK, "Comparing Sex Buyers With Men Who Don't Buy Sex," Farley provides some startling answers. Although the two groups share many attitudes about women and sex, they differ in significant ways illustrated by two quotes that serve as the report's subtitle.

    One man in the study explained why he likes to buy prostitutes: "You can have a good time with the servitude," he said. A contrasting view was expressed by another man as the reason he doesn't buy sex: "You're supporting a system of degradation," he said.

    And yet buying sex is so pervasive that Farley's team had a shockingly difficult time locating men who really don't do it. The use of pornography, phone sex, lap dances, and other services has become so widespread that the researchers were forced to loosen their definition in order to assemble a 100-person control group.

    "We had big, big trouble finding nonusers," Farley says. "We finally had to settle on a definition of non-sex-buyers as men who have not been to a strip club more than two times in the past year, have not purchased a lap dance, have not used pornography more than one time in the last month, and have not purchased phone sex or the services of a sex worker, escort, erotic masseuse, or prostitute."

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  • Attitudes and Social Characteristics of Men Who Buy Sex in Scotland

    May, 2011

    Melissa Farley, Jan Macleod, Lynn Anderson, & Jacqueline M. Golding (2011)
    in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy

    Public awareness about prostitution has grown in recent years, along with an understanding of the psychological trauma resulting from sexual exploitation as commercial enterprise, regardless of its legal status.

    Mainstreamed and normalized prostitution is an example of a social ecology that offers men "the opportunity to aggress and force women to accept their aggression."

    Historically, discussions about prostitution have centered on prostitution as a problem of women or as a problem of HIV transmission from prostituted person to john to the rest of the community. Just as a shift in awareness and research moved from battered woman to batterer, there is today an interest in the prostitutor in addition to the prostituted.

    To have an understanding of prostitution, it is necessary to learn more about the perpetrators of the traumatic stress caused by prostitution. We found that those men who most frequently used women in prostitution were most likely to have committed sexually aggressive acts against nonprostituting women.

    High-frequency users of women in prostitution used pornography more frequently than men who used women in prostitution less frequently.

    The men's perceptions of prostituted women's experiences of prostitution tended to differ from the actual perceptions of prostituted women in other studies.

    Deterrents to prostitution include public exposure or jail time if the men were convinced that laws would be enforced. Throughout our interviews with these men, we noted contradictions, inconsistencies, and ambivalence in their thinking about prostitution.

    These cognitive and emotional lacunae may suggest possibilities for development of prostitution prevention programs.

    Nearly all said that they saw prostitution as occurring between two consenting adults, yet at the same time, large majorities believed that women prostitute strictly out of economic necessity and that women do not enjoy the sex of prostitution.

    Most said that prostitution should be treated like any other business, yet 4 in 10 believed that prostitution lowers the moral standards of the community.

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  • Senator Harry Reid's Call to Outlaw Legal Prostitution in his Address to the Nevada Legislature
    February 22, 2011

    "I recently met with a group of businessmen who run data centers for technology companies. They visited Storey County to see about opening a facility there, a move that would have created desperately needed jobs.

    Storey County does a lot of things right. It's the home of the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, which is the largest of its kind in the country. But one of the businessmen in that meeting told me he simply couldn't believe that one of the biggest businesses in the county he was considering for his new home is legal prostitution. I've talked to families who feel the same way - parents who don't want their children to look out of a school bus and see a brothel. Or to live in a state with the wrong kind of red lights.

    So let's have an adult conversation about an adult subject. Nevada needs to be known as the first place for innovation and investment - not as the last place where prostitution is still legal. When the nation thinks about Nevada, it should think about the world's newest ideas and newest careers - not about its oldest profession.

    We should do everything we can to make sure the world holds Nevada in the same high regard you and I do. If we want to attract business to Nevada that puts people back to work, the time has come for us to outlaw prostitution."

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  • King of the Creeps: Hugh Hefner

    Film Review by Helen Redmond
    Nov 18, 2010

    "To make a documentary about Hugh Hefner--indisputably the world's most famous pornographer and unrepentant chauvinist--and omit his enormously influential role in negatively shaping ideas about female sexuality is sophistry. Berman's documentary is an attempt to "get beyond the bunny," but there is no getting beyond the bunny because the bunny made the man.

    Hefner's success was built on the exploitation of women's nude bodies for the pleasure of men. Every aspect of Playboy, Inc. was consciously designed as "Entertainment for Men." Hefner was one of the first capitalists to commodify women's sexuality for mass consumption (by men). The profits from selling pornography made him a millionaire."

    "Hefner currently stars in the reality TV show The Girls Next Door, but this is another chapter of Hefner's life completely left out of Berman's documentary. The reality show is set in the Playboy mansion in Los Angeles. It's the successor to Penthouse After Dark, with the jiggling, female flesh of Hefner's numerous live-in girlfriends on display. In each episode, we see the pajama-wearing, Viagra-fueled geriatric rutting of the 84-year-old Hefner. It is vomitous.

    Hefner picks his girlfriends by looking at photos, pointing to them and shouting out to assistants, "Her, I want her!" His girlfriends are poorly paid prostitutes. Kendra Wilkinson, a former lover, reported that she was paid $1,000 a week, a pittance for a professional pimp like Hefner whose personal wealth is estimated to be over $50 million. Kendra admitted, "I hate putting my hand out, but we couldn't have jobs other than getting appearance fees...Hef was kind of like my best friend but a Sugar Daddy at the same time.""

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  • Sexpo and the Death of Sex

    by Melinda Tankard Reist
    21 October 2010
    http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/40310.html

    The space was filled with pumping, grinding, crotch grabbing and female porn stars 'presenting', as they say in baboon studies. Cosmetically enhanced bodies waxed to within an inch of their lives, a landfill's worth of plastic toys, dildos, whirling vibrators, penis rings and fake vaginas.Billed as the world's biggest health, sexuality and lifestyle exhibition, Sexpo came to Sydney's Hordern Pavilion last weekend.

    According to its website, "This show will increase your attractiveness and sexual drive. It contains beautiful women, hunky men, nudity and crackin' entertainment."

    Call me fussy. Say I'm hard to please. But if what I witnessed is supposed to promote a healthy, happy sex life, then I think I just saw the death of sex.

    Sexpo sex is formulaic, conveyor belt, plastic, industrialised, peep show porn sex.

    There were faux lesbian threesomes in hardcore acts of nastiness. Pole-dancers, strippers, bondage mistresses and men in little aprons with their bums showing. Audience members were hypnotised on stage into believing they were receiving oral sex.

    Male show-goers pulled their pants down on stage and played with their penises. An artist known as Pricasso slathered his in paint, ready to capture your likeness.

    Men practised their anal prowess on stage with lifeless blow-up dolls. Others paid a porn star $40 to pose topless with them. Many visited the laporium for paid personalised lap dances. At times it felt like you were walking through one giant erection.

    All of it captured by men with video cameras, for a longer lasting Sexpo.

    Designed to turn us all on were a man in a suit covered in fake penises, giant characters depicting male and female sexual parts, a sex sideshow alley including moving clowns with heads as genitals, the gerbil sex train advertised with giant breasts and a penis in between.

    A celebration of the vandalism of the human body.

    Ex-footballer now porn film maker Warwick Capper in his Hustler T-shirt? Sorry, just not doing it for me. Ex-Hey Hey it's Saturday's Russell Gilbert as 'crackin' entertainer and MC. Define crackin?

    Two older long-bearded men sold T-shirts with slogans like 'Wipe ya eyes princess and harden the f*ck up' and offered to sign ladies underwear. Another T-shirt depicted a woman bound, with a red ball stuffed in her mouth and the slogan 'Silence is golden'. "I look at that and see fun!" said the cheery saleswoman.

    I look at that and see the objectification and subordination of women.

    My friend and I could 'enhance our assets' for a mere $7,000 each for boobs and 'tush'. Photos of pumped up breasts and tight bums adorned the stand. We were invited to handle the silicone implants.

    There were also before-and-after photos of labia subjected to a scalpel for a bit of tidying up. And would we like to know more about the G-spot enhancement? Women are not good enough as they are. We must be sexually modified.

    The enthusiastic staff testified to the skill of the boss. He's operated on all of them. One showed me the bandages around her mid section: pre-wedding liposuction. Hymen repair was also on the menu of services offered. They were seeing one to two Middle Eastern girls a week seeking the procedure to 'prove' their virginity.

    Genital repair of another kind was being offered by a charity called Clitoraid. A devastating human rights violation against a woman's bodily integrity is made sexy. They were raising money for female genital mutilation repair in Africa, with slogans such as "Give a Stranger an Orgasm", "Help Build a Pleasure Hospital" and "Adopt a Clitoris".

    There were photos of smiling African women and a baby mid mutilation. A staffer told me they stopped showing a film of a child being cut as too many men stood around laughing.

    I wondered what African women would think of the pornification of their suffering?

    And, this, my last encounter as I was leaving.

    A shivering young Thai woman in a wet T-shirt, sitting in a cage waiting for someone to strike the 'bang me' target on the image of a woman bent over.

    Freezing, soaked, alone, disconnected, in an enclosure, to be ogled by men.

    In the end, Sexpo is anti-intimacy, anti-connection and anti-warmth. It just leaves you feeling cold.

    Melinda Tankard Reist is a Canberra author, blogger, commentator and advocate for women and girls. www.melindatankardreist.com

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  • Working Paper on the Swedish Prostitution Law (2010)


    Max Waltman
    2010
    Prohibiting Purchase of Sex in Sweden: Impact, Obstacles, Potential, and Supporting Escape. Working Papers 2010:3 (Dept. of Political Science, Stockholm University)

    This paper analyzes the core reasons for the Swedish law from 1999 which criminalizes purchase of sex and decriminalizes the prostituted person. Sweden's law was passed as part of an omnibus bill against violence against women and recognized prostitution as a form of it. The paper documents this law's impact by comparing data from several recent Swedish studies with the situation in other relevant countries. It finds that the law has significantly reduced the occurrence of prostitution manifolds compared to its neighboring countries. Crucial obstacles to effective implementation are also addressed, particularly in present case law. Some of the critique against the law and disinformation about the law's effects are also commented. Finally, to realize its full potential to support escape from prostitution more efficiently, it is argued that the civil rights of prostituted persons under current law should be strengthened to get damages paid for directly by the tricks/johns for the harm they have contributed to.

    Waltman_Stockholm_University_Working_Paper_3_2010.pdf

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  • Washington Post Rejects Massage Prostitution Advertising


    As of September 29, 2010 the Washington Post newspaper, following a national trend to stop advertising prostitution - is now rejecting advertising that previously ran in the Post as "massage."

    In a blog last year, the Polaris Project, which combats international trafficking in women, wrote:

    "Ever wonder where traffickers advertise their victims? Turns out it's in one of the nation's most prestigious newspapers -- The Washington Post. Advertisements for massage parlors that are often front for brothels selling trafficked women are run in The Post every day, despite the fact that the publication has reported on human trafficking in massage parlors."

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  • On the Wrong Side of a Craigslist Ad

    I think there's a common assumption -- at least it was an assumption I had made -- that women in the sex-work industry are there by choice or because they like it. Maybe that's true for some women, but I can't imagine enduring the whole thing unless I really had run out of options. Yes, it got me through a rough patch.... I'm sure I'm not the only young woman on Craigslist dazzled by the false promises of the adult-services gigs.

    When I heard Craigslist had shut down its erotic service ads, I'll be honest: I was relieved. It won't stop Internet ads offering sex for money -- a simple Google search proves that... But I know it would prevent someone like me from going down this path. The Craigslist ads were just right there in front of my face each day; one simple click took me from legitimate job ads into the escort work.


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  • Craigslist Facts


    My first introduction to prostitution was arranged through Craigslist. I answered an ad for online modeling which turned out to be an agency recruiting for "escorts". Escort is a word they use instead of prostitute. First model, then escort and eventually prostitute. After I was eased into prostitution, many of the pimps, massage parlor owners and girls themselves would use Craigslist to post adds for prostitution. They used words like "sensual massage" and "full body massage" to attract johns.

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  • Protest at Craigslist San Francisco Headquarters

    The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) in partnership with Prostitution Research and Education (PRE) and other co-sponsors held a protest in front of Craigslist Headquarters in San Francisco on July 8th to bring attention to Craigslist's facilitation of and profiting from sex trafficking. "Craigslist continues to cynically profit by functioning as an online pimp," says Norma Ramos, Executive Director of CATW. "Craigslist is the new stroll where pimps traffic, johns buy and Craigslist profits," says Melissa Farley, Executive Director, PRE.

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  • Ad Accuses Craigslist of Prostitution

    United Press International
    20 May 2010

    An advertisement placed in a California newspaper said Craiglist's adult services section is "the choice of traffickers" in sex with underage girls. The half-page ad, addressed to Craigslist founder Craig Newmark in Wednesday's San Francisco Chronicle, calls for Craigslist to discontinue its adult services section, which generated $36 million in revenues this year, and included the experiences of two teenage girls who said they were forced into prostitution via Craigslist, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday.

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  • Book Uses SAGE Clients' Stories Without Their Permission

    Dear Colleagues & Allies of The SAGE Project,

    Recently a book titled, Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys was published by Soft Skull Press. This book is being promoted as a “bestseller” in Borders, on the New York Times, Amazon, and on “sex worker” websites as a book supported by SAGE (Standing Against Global Exploitation, www.sagesf.org).

    On August 23rd, the New York Times published a review of the book which states that the editors, David Henry Sterry and R. J. Martin Jr., are currently affiliated with the SAGE Project. We want to share with you a letter that we have sent to the New York Times to address the fact that these two individuals are no longer affiliated with the organization.

    We are outraged by the way this publication has been marketed and the method through which its content was secured; the book does not honor client confidentiality, naming clients currently and formerly engaged in our programs. One individual happened to stumble upon the book in a writing group and was surprised to find stories she had written in the publication. She, like many of our SAGE clients continues to be connected with the organization and her resilience and strength do not appear in the book. No effort was made to contact her prior to publication.

    We are writing to you, our allies and colleagues, to let you know that SAGE’s mission and work have not changed. We stand committed to our goal to bring an end to the trauma, pain, and degradation inflicted by commercial sexual exploitation and human trafficking.

    We will update you as we move forward in addressing this issue.

    The SAGE Project, Inc.

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  • Update on Lydia Cacho, Mexican Feminist

    UM Honors Mexican Who Reported on Child Sex Ring
    Associated Press - October 8, 2009 4:14 AM ET

    ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) - A Mexican journalist who was arrested and threatened with rape after exposing a child prostitution ring in Cancun involving prominent business figures is speaking at the University of Michigan.

    Lydia Cacho is to receive the Wallenberg Medal at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Rackham Auditorium, then deliver the annual Wallenberg Lecture.

    The event honors Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who helped rescue tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis in World War II.

    Cacho was arrested and threatened after publishing a book about the child prostitution ring in 2005. The International Women's Media Foundation awarded her the Courage in Journalism Award in 2007.

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  • Norma Hotaling 1951-2008

    normaphoto-300.jpgNorma Hotaling, founder and Executive Director of the SAGE Project in San Francisco died on December 16, 2008 following a short illness.

    Norma Hotaling transformed her own experiences in prostitution into a mission of social justice for her sisters and brothers who had also been trafficked and exploited in prostitution. As a direct result of Ms. Hotaling’s life work, many now have a profound understanding of the harm of prostitution and the responsibility of buyers for that harm.

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  • Happy Hooker Revisited

    Xaviera Hollander, who wrote the Happy Hooker in the 1970's, glamorized prostitution as empowerment for women. Few know that Hollander was a Holocaust survivor. Playwright and author Carolyn Gage analyzes Hollander's advocacy of prostitution and her pimping in the context of her earlier traumatic life. Gage notes that the sexualized behavior of Hollander, Marilyn Monroe, and many women can be understood as not only "post-traumatic, generalized Stockholm Syndrome" but also as idealized female behavior and as behavior of enslaved children.
    Gage's article, Trivial Lives: the Happy Hooker Revisited is in Trivia, Voices of Feminism, an online journal.

    Don't miss it! Happy Hooker Revisited