When celebrities take on humans rights issues, eyes will roll. Demi and Ashton should have taken note. Moore and Kutcher’s DNA project has been criticized for being insensitive, with it’s videos of celebs like Justin Timberlake comically shaving with a saw beneath the message “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls”. And I agree, it’s hard to take anything Justin Timberlake does as genuine or important. Can a man who once wore a suit made entirely of denim be sincere? But I think these celebs have hearts in the right place, trafficking is a real and monstrous issue. I applaud anyone trying to take it on. Yet too often, when we talk about trafficking the agenda gets confused.
The image of trafficking concocted by the media is often of foreign women and girls forced into another country as sex slaves–often not the case. Women can be trafficked in their own homes. Serpent Libertine of the The Sex Workers Outreach Project explains: “When we talk about trafficking, we need to remember the difference between choice, circumstance and coercion. Trafficking is any form of coercion into the industry Most sex work does not involve trafficking.”
Trafficking outreach programs and charities are often run by anti prostitution groups– who tend to paint all sex work as trafficking. Further, these groups are often behind the stats in the media, which may not be as high as previously reported. Some news sources have cracked these studies as “junk science”.
In my interviews with sex buyers for my series The Secret Life of Johns the trafficking question inevitably arose. Jacob was on vacation in the Netherlands, when he scheduled a date with a sex worker he’d never met before. “At some point she broke, tears in her eyes. I had been nice to her, it’s not that I was trying to harm her in any way,” he says. The woman hardly spoke anything but Spanish, so when he tried to ask what was wrong, she didn’t understand.
“She clearly didn’t want to be on the job. She was probably a genuine trafficking victim.” Not knowing what to do, he gave her a good luck charm from his pocket. “I felt completely helpless afterward. At the time, sex work was still illegal in the Netherlands, so had I reported the case to the police, I would have been in trouble myself.”
Serpent has heard many stories from clients who desperately wants to help, but fear they can’t. “This is a complicated situation as clients need to assess whether they may be endangering the trafficked person in other ways if police or a national hotline are called. I know the simple answer is “call the police” but that’s not always the best idea. Police could arrest the client and the sex worker–never getting them to services at all,” she explains.
The street is notoriously the most dangerous place a sex worker can operate, often home to marginalized or drug addicted workers. But according to Serpent, what sometimes looks like trafficking, isn’t: ”I help street workers during my volunteer work and many of them are not trafficked. They are doing this with their own consent, but under less than desirable situations. Many are drug users, but that doesn’t mean they are trafficked either. Circumstance becomes trafficking when a person willingly answers an ad or goes to work for an agency, but then are tricked into situations that they don’t consent to or are not paid for their work.”
Stephen, another buyer, has thought a lot about the morality of circumstance. He solely sees transgender women — a part of the population that is discriminated against (in the workplace and otherwise) and therefore often reported to be pushed into sex work.
I ask how he handles this, ethically: “If I’m going to a sex worker— even someone in it for difficult reasons— I’m gonna treat them well. Most people probably don’t like the work that they do. Like, guys working in factories 40 hours a week. It’s bad for your health, bad for your mind. Why do they do it? They need to pay the bills. Sex work is another job. It’s a hard job. I know a lot of people who are major advocates on how sex work can be a great job. But I also know it can eat you alive. I don’t think it’s a moral issue. I think that it’s a logistical issue.”
Sexuality educator, Charlie Glickman recently wrote a blogpost with this analogy: “sex work is to trafficking as sex is to rape.” And it’s interesting; because with sex and rape, we understand there is gray-rape, fuzzy areas of consent. Perhaps this too is how we should look at sex work and trafficking.
Ron, a sex buyer I interviewed over email said: “I sometimes think that when I am forced to confront the discomfort of a sex worker face to face, there is more value there than when I buy a DVD player, not knowing the conditions the worker in China was operating under.”
Glickman goes onto point out: “I would LOVE to live in a world in which nobody was forced, coerced, or tricked into sexual slavery. For that matter, I would LOVE to live in a world in which there were no sweatshops or agricultural and domestic trafficking, although to make that happen, we (as a society) would need to be willing to pay people a fair wage for their labor. Instead, we’d rather give huge amounts of money to the CEOs and stockholders and get cheap sneakers.”
But back to Demi and Ashton and their assertion about real men and sex buying. Real men (and women because they buy sex too) make conscious choices when it comes to buying sex. They research the person they are employing as a sex worker. They contact SWOP or other organizations designed to protect sex workers when they come across possible trafficking. It’s true real men don’t buy girls, but what can we do to help?
18 Comments
Nobody should be forced to do something that degrades them as much as this, but this would only happen in a perfect world, and we don’t live in a perfect world.
“Sexual fulfillment occurs when the experience comes from playfulness instead of need. Frequently people bring their conflicts and needs into the sexual experience. When sex is used to fulfill needs, it leads to addiction. When sex comes from playfulness, the result is ecstasy.
Each situation that has sexual energy in it, involves the whole human being and their entire value system. My values may be different from yours, and I have no right to be the moral judge of anyone’s values. It is important, however, to have core values, and respect them. Without values, we become spiritually bankrupt. Sexual experience will never cause problems and will always be joyful, if lovers share the same values.
True intimacy is union between flesh and flesh, between subtle body and subtle body, between soul and soul. Sexual energy is sacred energy. When we have restored the sexual experience to the realm of the sacred, our world will be chaste and divine, holy and healed.”
All I feel is, women (and all humans, for that matter) are meant to be loved for who they are, not what they can offer (sexually or not)…. but I know that all life experiences happen for a reason. For ones own evolvement, I guess. But either way…
Prostitution sucks.
Sex trafficking sucks.
At the end of the day, it makes no difference. It’s all just a shitty.
meant to say, *it’s all just a shitty way to live
I actually raise issue with the assertion that “real men don’t buy girls”. For some people that is a part of their kink; to pay someone might be arousing. And if you are a man paying a willing sex worker – particularly if she likes her job – then there is really no reason to state that he is less of a man because of it. HOWEVER, I do understand their point; I just think it needs some re-evaluation.
I love what Stephen says, above. Looking at it from the point of view that many jobs are difficult, many jobs are jobs you don’t want to do brings the whole issue into a human space, rather than just sexual space, which I feel is important.
Zeus, so as long as we live in an imperfect world, you think people will be forced into sexual slavery? I’m not sure…curious what the other commenter’s think on this one. The question I like to pose is: in a sex positive world, would there still be sex work? Anyone?
Nameless, I do disagree that prostitutes are values for their sex only. Many men report buying sex for company, for intimacy, for conversation, for touch, for many reasons beyond sex. While sex can be a beautiful unifying and soulful experience, I don’t think sex that isn’t = sex addiction. In fact, I wonder if the word ‘addiction’ should be left to substances. But again, I think what you are saying goes back to that above question I posed…in a sex positive world would there be sex work? It seems your answer is no. I’m not so sure.
LGS, Interesting, what I thought “Real men don’t buy Girls” meant was that they don’t buy underage girls. Or rather in my mind it meant, Real men don’y buy boys and girls, they buy men and women. And yes, I think Stephen is right. So often in the feminist dialogs we either erase the experiences of women who enjoy sex work and fully focus on trafficking and marginalized street workers, or we squash those out in order to prove that sex work can be good. I want to hold both, I want to find a way that we can understand both. I do believe those sex workers who are doing it with consent truly want to help those that aren’t.
You mention ‘gray rape’ and needing to bring this attitude of the morally ambiguous into how we look at sex work. So it’s probably worth mentioning that trafficking (which I’d defined as being tricked or kidnapped and forced into prostitution) is only one form of exploitation– there’s also the problem of ‘false choice’. I think that’s an equally big, if not *bigger* problem, the fact that so many sex workers– due to the pressures of poverty, mental illness, and/or addiction– have not freely chosen what they do. It seems like this is so much more likely to be the case in prostitution than in other forms of sex work, but I don’t know.
Oh, and I really hate this attitude: ““If I’m going to a sex worker— even someone in it for difficult reasons— I’m gonna treat them well. Most people probably don’t like the work that they do. Like, guys working in factories 40 hours a week. It’s bad for your health, bad for your mind. Why do they do it? They need to pay the bills. Sex work is another job. It’s a hard job. ” Sex is not like any other activity that humans do. It cannot be compared to laborious chores, unless we’re going to argue that cleaning your room when you don’t feel like it is just like having sex when you don’t feel like it, and that would be minimizing rape in the extreme. If you can’t tell if a sex worker has been forced or coerced, *DO. NOT.* patronize hir.
@zeus Sex work is not inherently degrading, but being forced into it most certainly is.
@Nameless You assume that sex workers don’t want to be having the sex they’re getting paid for. As someone who does porn, let me assure you that this is not always the case.
@LadyGrinningSoul Pay attention to the choice of the word ‘girls’– the PSA is talking about children, underage sex workers. At least, that’s how I read it.
Here is the PSA in case anyone is curious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIIYf_ZOCfM
I think that this is a really interesting spot. The end copy does say “Take A Stand Against Child Sex Slavery.” I think that most of us would agree that “child sex slavery” is wrong. Although, something about the wording of this is what struck me: Real men don’t buy girls. While the ultimate message at the end is child-specific, the word “buy” is what really struck me. In my own mind, the big difference between sex trafficking and consenting sex work is what is being sold. It seems to me (with no first hand experience of the world of sex trade) sex workers sell sex, where as in the cases of sex trafficking, the workers are being sold. Is there an actual difference there, or am I just talking in circles?
Lori, yes thank you for making this clear –this is exactly what I was thinking when I mentioned gray consent. This to me is SO worth exploring, while these people may not be *trafficked* we cannot write them off as the same as the sex workers working with consent.
Also, you bring up a great point about Stephen’s attitude. In the studies and essays prostitution abolitionists like Melissa Farley, this is often her take away when talking with clients. So often, it seems that the pro sex work activists and the anti sex work activists get pinned against each other, but I’ve found there is a lot to learn from people like the Farleys of the world, as long as you can still hold onto the truth that sex work is not bad.
Lori, you also mention you are a sex worker as well, as a porn performer. I am so curious about your ideas of coercion and circumstance in the porn industry, you say that you think it happens *more* in prostitution, any elaboration on that? Thanks for the juicy ideas.
Emily, I think you are really, really onto something here. So last week, I was writing about the Long Island Serial Killer and how he should not be referred to as a buyer or client because his intention was never to pay a cent, his intention was to harm. Almost similarly, can you buy from a woman who is not actually selling? It seems you can only rape/harm/take advantage of her– not “buy”. However, with that I would also like to add that these interactions with trafficking victims from the buyers perspective (at least from my interviews) can be harrowing and psychologically scarring. Also, I wonder how often buyers can really *know*? Is it one of those things where you know if when you see it?
Just like pollution, sex slavery will most likely never stop. Me personally, I’d never pay for sex and would never want it to happen to anybody that I love. In fact I’d never want this to happen to any woman, period.
Zeus, I wonder if this is one of these “is man inherently good or inherently bad?” arguments. I tend to fall on the side of, man is inherently good, and wants to do good. Therefore, I just, I’m not sure that sex slavery has to always exist. Of course no one wants this to happen to anyone! But I think it’s important here to draw a line between sex trafficking and sex work. Because I’m not sure if only trafficking if what you meant by your comment. I wouldn’t mind anyone I know getting into sex work if they were doing it with consent and making healthy choices around it– (in fact I would probably support them!)
What profession people choose to get into is their choice, totally.
I do not accept the notion of “grey rape”. It’s a false premise set up by those who seek to justify rape with crap like “well, she didn’t exactly SAY no” or “well, she WAS wearing a short skirt” or “well, she’s had A LOT of sex in her life” or “well, this that or the other”/
Lucy, Hm. While I agree that things like that are awful and no one is EVER asking for it and no victim of sexual assault should be made responsible for their assault, I think that conversations about gray areas of consent are super, super important.
From a previous article of mine: “Rape is an unwieldy word. It is pointed, weighty, the air of a threat seems inherent. Images of back alleys and shadowy figures are inevitably conjured. Date rape has it’s own precise picture as well, the backseat of a car with a nice looking guy — crying, “no.” So when I gritted my teeth and barred sex because I feared saying no, when I dissociated because I silently didn’t want it, or when I drunkenly stopped saying no because just letting it happen in that hazy sloppy moment seemed easier, in my mind I was not exactly raped…or date-raped.
These are gray-areas of consent–they are instances that a lot of women I know have had but it seems they don’t get addressed, or re-visited and processed. Often chalked up to simply having a bad night. There is no reason that these should be gray, the yellow and red-lights were on, but in those moments I had no way of communicating this. I didn’t have the tools, the language or the self care and respect. In those gray-moments there was a mumbled or nodded consent, but I don’t think consent is actually the opposite of rape, enthusiastic consent is.”
Maybe we had different ideas of what gray areas of consent means?
I was born and raised in Detroit where prostitution and sex trafficking (I will clarify what I mean by that) are extremely frequent. I have known many girls and boys, as well as women and men who for various reasons have become sex workers of all different sorts and I am hard pressed to find an example of one who did not have some sort of reservation about their lifestyle. There were people who would become prostitutes for money, but it was often because, in a place where poverty is so widespread, they found that using their body would make them more money. Often they had psychological issues stemming from family problems or other past experiences. Drug was also a significant motivation for many of the sex workers I knew. Many of these people did “choose” the lifestyle, but there are often many other less superficial factors that one must consider when one uses the term choice, because any choice may involve many considerations that often stem from experiences that were out of control of the one making the choice. This is the reason that many sex workers, or at least the ones I knew, were often victims of sexual abuse or had self-esteem issues.
I had mentioned that I have seen cases of what I had termed “human trafficking”. In Detroit, this can come in two forms. There are those workers that are forced into the business from foreign nations, most often Mexico or Asia in the case of Detroit. They are illegal immigrants who were promised jobs in the U.S. and then forced to work as prostitutes once they were brought across the borders. This is the case that the media often portrays. There is, however, a form of what I will call “domestic trafficking”. I had a friend who was involved in various criminal activities, and for a time he was drug dealer. Some years ago, he was delivering some marijuana to a couple of crack dealers/pimps. Upon delivery of his product, the crack dealers offered him a girl, whom they described as “fresh”. They opened the door to a room in the crack house and showed him a young women who they had been there for three days. She was not an immigrant, but a native of Detroit who had been forced to work in the crack house. My friend (I use the term lightly) explained to me one of the ways the pimps get these women. He said that what would happed was that a boy from the area would want to show his girlfriend a “good time”, so he would drive her down to one of these crack houses. Once he would get there, he would buy a few rocks for the two of them to smoke. When they ran out of rock and money, the dealers would make them some sort of deal. In one case, the crack dealers said they would give the couple a few more rocks if the boyfriend would lone the dealers his car for a little, say 45 minutes, while with the intention of “picking up a friend”. The dealers would take the car out and do everything from rob liquor stores to commit murder. They would call the house every once in a while and tell the boyfriend that they needed the car for a little longer, and say that he could have a few more rocks while they were gone. The dealers would return hours later and then the couple, having no more money and be extremely strung out, would get ready to leave. Then the dealers would demand payment for the rock they had given the couple while they were out. An argument would ensue over how much was owed, but the dealers would pull guns and intimidate the boyfriend. At this point, the dealers offer to make a deal. They say that the debt can be paid off if the girlfriend does a little work for them. At this point, they may let the boyfriend go, or they may kill him. I a city like Detroit where the crime is so high, murder cases are hardly ever solved. Either way, if they do let the man go, he is often too scared to report what has happened and tries to pretend as if the whole thing never happened. As for the girlfriend, she is forced to work in the house a prostitute, having to perform in order to get more drugs and avoid being beaten. After a few years, drug abuse and beating leave here useless to the pimps, so they just get rid of her. This is only one story I know of, but “domestic” trafficking happens in many ways.
What was the point of this long story? To answer the initial question “what is sex trafficking?” Often media and movies portray an scene of third-world mafia style organisations shipping girls across borders to work on the streets in a foreign country. This is just not always the case. As to the analysis of why people become sex workers, although this is an important question, I ask the question “how can a human justify forcing another human to work as any sort of slave?” I find sex trafficking one of the most repulsive phenomena on earth and I could never imagine being able to treat another human being is such a manner. For a period of time, there was one of these houses just across the street from where I lived. They often do not last long, as they are shut down frequently. It seems, though, that as soon as one is shut down, another pops up. People need to realize that this is not just happening in other countries, as is often portrayed in films, but also on the streets of more “developed” nations such as the U.S., U.K., and all over continental Europe. Also, people need to find out how a human could justify to themselves being so cruel.
Michael,
I’m sorta speechless after this one. Thanks for sharing.
@Rachel
I’m only involved in alt and indie porn, and from what I see here, everyone is *very* into it. I mean that in the sense that they’re enthusiastically consenting and in the sense that they participate in alt porn communities that ensure they’re represented as whole human beings and not just anonymous pieces of meat. I can’t speak for the mainstream porn industry. What I do know, though, is that even they have certain standards, whereas a woman out walking the street as a prostitute doesn’t have to meet any standards. She can be strung out on drugs, underage, or otherwise unable to legally consent to sex, and a john may not know.
@Lucy
There is no such thing as grey rape legally speaking, and probably not ethically speaking, but emotionally? I’ve had experiences I can only define emotionally as ‘gray rape’, and I think I reserve the right to say that.