"End Demand" - has hit another absurd low!

English: New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg with Spider-Man at Midtown Comics Downtown. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Anti-Human Trafficking campaign - aka "End Demand" - has hit another absurd low in New York City. Mayor Bloomberg has now declared that New York Cabbies can refuse rides to any woman who "dresses like a prostitute.." and can be fined if they do, on the grounds that they are aiding the "trafficking of human beings.." Needless to say, all the working girls in the City will thank the mayor for further marginalizing them from the rest of society and making a dangerous job all the more insecure.

We're told that being a prostitute will mark a woman for life. Yet after several millennia of practice, lawmakers and social reformers still struggle to identify what a sex worker looks like.

You know,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said (in a June 15 appearance on WOR's perfectly named "The John Gambling Show") when asked what might go wrong with a bill that could penalize taxi drivers who knowingly transport people in the sex trade, “if I were a young lady and I dressed in a ‘sporty way’ -- or however you want to phrase it, and there's nothing wrong with that -- I would not want somebody thinking that I’m a prostitute.”

Has Mayor Stop-and-Frisk given pause on an issue of criminal profiling? Even the reliably hooker-baiting New York Post came out swinging against the bill, citing a protest held by women bartenders, who “aren't hookers – they just look like they can be!” concerned that cab drivers would leave them stranded for fear of getting stung.

The intention of this bill, according to proponents like New York City Council Speaker (and mayoral hopeful) Christine Quinn, is to make it undesirable for taxi and livery drivers in the city to risk any involvement in what they call “sex trafficking.” But the bill doesn't actually say that: it hits taxi and livery drivers with a $10,000 fine and the revocation of their license if they “knowingly allow” their vehicle to be “used for the purpose of promoting prostitution.”

Attorneys at the Sex Workers Project (SWP) have argued that language like “promoting prostitution” is too vague. “It could include anyone who knowingly aids another person to commit prostitution and anyone who receives money from someone else, knowing it came from prostitution,” SWP co-director Sienna Baskin said in testimony to the city council. No matter what the bill's intentions, cab drivers could end up passing up fares from sex workers – or people they think might be sex workers.

Bloomberg is overstating the issue a bit: no matter how they are dressed, it's unlikely his daughters would be profiled as prostitutes. But he's not wrong: there's simply no way taxi drivers can tell if the woman riding in their backseat is doing sex work, and whether or not she has been compelled or forced to, just by picking her up as a fare.

Putting such a law into practice in a culture that harbors intense myths and fears about what a “prostitute” looks like only ends up perpetuating dated and sexist notions of how women ought to conduct themselves in public, which in turn can put women in danger. In this regard, 21st-century anti-prostitution politics are not so different from their counterpart a century ago. There might be one difference: while today's anti-prostitution advocates will at least cop to it not being easy to tell if someone is a sex worker just by looking at them, that doesn't actually stop them from trying.

Not all that long ago, any unaccompanied woman on an American street could be considered a prostitute. At the turn of the last century, the phrase “public woman” was still synonymous with a woman in the sex trade, based on the notion that women's work was to be confined within the home, and besides, wasn't really work. The low-wage jobs available to working-class and some immigrant women took them outside the domestic sphere, and offered them a measure of freedom, and for the first time, their own money. That mobility, as much as their growing financial independence, made those young women suspect in the eyes of social reformers.

As Elizabeth Alice Clement documents in her book Love For Sale, these working young women of the Progressive Era faced intense scrutiny from social reformers, for how they made their money and how they spent it. The social welfare reformer Jane Addams warned that girls who took jobs in department stores might be especially likely to become prostitutes. “It is perhaps in the department store more than anywhere else,” Addams wrote in her 1912 treatise A New Conscience and An Ancient Evil, “that every possible weakness in a girl is detected and traded upon. It is not surprising that so many of these young, inexperienced girls are either deceived or yield to temptation in spite of the efforts made to protect them.”

Addams' remedy to such a threat? Educating young women and their caretakers on how essential it is that they must remain chaste. Women, in Addams' estimation, could bring about a world in which they not fear being “despoiled” if they abstain not just from sex but from public amusements – rather than fighting to ensure their right to work and take up space in the public sphere without fear of rape or violence.

With the agitation of Addams and other reformers of her time, laws against prostitution and “white slavery” swept the states. While some reformers meant for the laws to allow them to separate “innocent” victims from those “fallen women” who chose prostitution, the result was the closure of red-light districts in American cities, including raids on businesses that allowed prostitutes to patronize them and rooming houses that allowed prostitutes to live and work there.

All this was done in the name of “protecting” women, and yet prostitutes found themselves out in the cold, or pushed to work for managers who could act as go-betweens with customers and landlords, protecting the prostitutes from being known as prostitutes or discriminated against. The laws that were supposed to protect them ended up pushing prostitutes to the margins of cities and the social order itself.

Such attitudes – vintage victim-blaming or slut-shaming, meant to “save women” from themselves – shifted only slightly at the dawn of women's liberation and the sexual revolution.

When a young San Franciscan named Margot St. James was arrested and charged with prostitution in 1962, she attempted to defend herself to the judge, saying, “Your honor, I've never turned a trick in my life.” According to St. James, the judge replied that he knew she must be a prostitute because “anyone who knows the language is obviously a professional." St. James concluded, “My crime was I knew too much to be a nice girl.”

It was only after this encounter with the law that St. James became a prostitute, going on to found one of the first organizations in the United States to organize for sex workers' rights, COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics). By the 1970s, COYOTE had succeeded in getting the National Organization for Women to adopt the decriminalization of prostitution as a policy platform.

Even as some corners of the feminist movement reconsidered prostitution laws and the damage done, a national backlash was on against gains made by the women's and gay liberation movements. City governments moved to “clean up” neighborhoods that mixed porn theaters and gay bars with entertainment and tourism, like Boston's Combat Zone and New York's Times Square.

In 1976, New York state passed a law criminalizing “loitering for the purposes of prostitution.” How were cops to identify “intent” to commit prostitution? In reality, the law gave them the power to stop and question women walking in neighborhoods known for prostitution, or for “looking like” a prostitute in a neighborhood she “shouldn't” be in. In a report evaluating the law a few years after its passage, New York Women in Criminal Justice argued that the anti-loitering statute violated the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution, as it was overwhelmingly used to target women.

Loitering-with-intent charges are still brought against women today, and against women of color and trans women far more often than white women and cisgender women. Women also rarely fight these charges, as St. James did. The rise of “anti-prostitution zones” in cities like Washington, DC means that women can face arrest simply for entering one of these areas, declared at the discretion of the police. In practice, cops rely on racial and gender profiling in enforcement, a feminized version of “stop and frisk.”

You could be forgiven for mistaking 2012 for 1912. Jane Addams' philosophy is still alive, too, only with a pseudo-feminist twist. In a training for Georgia law enforcement offered by the anti-prostitution campaign “A Future, Not A Past” (AFNAP), they suggest ways that cops can identify young women in the sex trade. A few of the warning signs? “Inappropriate dress, including oversized clothing or overtly sexy clothing.” “Poor personal hygiene.” “Older boyfriend.” Acting “angry” and “tearful.” They also warn parents of daughters to be wary of “rumors among students regarding sexual activity – which your child may not necessarily deny.”

They say they just want to give cops and parents tools to help girls. But stoking fears that their daughters could be victims of trafficking if they're having sex, or expressing completely average feelings for a teenager? Likewise, instructing cops that it's okay to profile young women based on their dress, in order to stop and question them? Groups like AFNAP don't call it searching girls for evidence of “shame” or “ruin” anymore. Now they call it “empowerment.”

A hundred years of incoherent law has delivered us to a point in history where prostitution is as illegal as it ever has been, and yet politicians demand more laws against it. Contemporary anti-prostitution activists claim more women than ever before are trapped in what they have begun to call “modern-day slavery,” and yet, these advocates tell us they are hard to find. Yet neither prong of the anti-prostitution cause seems to consider how these laws against sex work drive its invisibility, and can turn any woman deemed to be doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time into a suspect or a criminal.

Related articles

• Do You Look Like a Prostitute? (Whatever That Means): It Might Mean No Taxi Cabs (alternet.org)
• Bill Would Fine Taxis for Carrying Sex Workers (theepochtimes.com)
• City Room: On Radio, Mayor Signs Taxi Sex-Trafficking Bill (cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Sex buyer ban 'hasn't had desired effect' (thelocal.no)
• Hey Ho! Backpage Protesters Hit Village Voice on the Hottest Day of the Year (betabeat.com)

18 Things that Every Sex Worker Should Know

This is from Mistress Matisse’s May 18th Stranger column…there’s a lot that’s valuable here for both the new and seasoned escort.

1. Yes, there are ready-made jobs in sex work, like massage studios and escort services, where all you have to do is show up. But the people who run them take a cut of your money, so you wind up paying just as much for convenience as you would to have your own business, and you sacrifice some control.

2. Greed and not thinking clearly is how most women get into trouble. Don’t work stoned or drunk, and don’t get so hungry for money that you ignore warning signals.

3. Not many people do sex work for a short while and then quit. It is very hard to give up the money and the free time.

4. Most clients are just regular guys like you’d meet anywhere. You probably aren’t going to get a call from Charlie Sheen, but you’re also statistically unlikely to meet the next Green River Killer.

5. You will not get a pension, and if you don’t pay your taxes, you won’t even be eligible for social security. You are going to get old, so either provide for yourself or plan on having a shopping cart as your retirement home.

6. Don’t trash other girls to your clients. Those tactics were unbecoming even in junior high school and they’re contemptible now.

7. If your doctor or your dentist or your cleaning lady or your auto mechanic gives you any shit about how you earned the cash you’re paying them, take your oh-so-dirty money somewhere else.

8. If either a potential client or an employer offers you a deal that sounds too good to be true, assume that it is, and ask yourself why he might be lying and what you’ll do if he is. If you’re okay with all possible outcomes, then try it, but if any of them are unacceptable, walk away.

9. You’re likely to be making more money than your lover or your friends, so it’s nice to buy dinner or a round of drinks sometimes. But if you spent more on your Fendi sunglasses than your best friend spends on her rent, keep quiet about it.

10. It’s less work to keep a good regular client happy and calling back than to short them on service and have to keep attracting and processing new guys.

11. Pissing off the neighbors or landlord of your workspace always leads to trouble. Pay the rent on time and strive to be as pleasantly invisible (and inaudible) as you can.

12. E-mail is a boon to unhappy losers who bolster their egos by sending snarky anonymous notes. Amusingly, they often make their place on the evolutionary scale quite clear in doing so. “Yuor a whoore and yu’ll birn in hell for all eternitee!” However tempting it is to deliver an electronic riposte, such people are unworthy of your attention. Don’t respond, just delete.

13. On the subject of photographs: It is accepted practice to remove a few lines or a few pounds through the magic of photo editing. But those fuzzy, extreme-angle photos on your website are unworthy of you. If you’re a voluptuous woman, or a mature woman, show it clearly, and get clients who want that. It’s better for your self-esteem than having guys show up and be obviously disappointed.

14. Clients often prefer someone who is warm and friendly to a chilly bitch who can get that extra inch down her throat.

15. You’re likely to get stiffed for a fee at some point during your career. Vent, be pissed about it for an hour, and then let it go. Don’t seethe about it for days, and don’t take it out on your good clients.

16. Yes, buying your own health insurance is expensive. But unless you’re disciplined enough to put money away every month in case you get sick, you better get it.

17. If a client offends you so deeply that you have to fire him, do not take him back, no matter how much money he offers you. The fantasy is unrecoverable.

18. It’s possible to sustain a long-term lie to friends or family about your job, provided they aren’t too inquisitive. But try to have at least one friend in whom you can confide all the charming, the annoying, and the absurd encounters that you will definitely have.

Should Prostitution Be Legalized? Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5220073

Should prostitution be legalized? In the USA, prostitution is illegal everywhere except for ten counties in Nevada yet sex is on sale from coast to coast. Street prostitutes have a mortality rate forty times higher than the national average. Many individuals who engage in sex work do not survive the streets.

The mortality rate among street walkers has led some to call for legalization or decriminalization of prostitution in the USA. One of the main reasons is for the safety of the sex worker. If the industry goes down that path as it has in other countries, can the street prostitutes really take better care of themselves and would they have the help they need if something went wrong? In other words, would the regulation of the industry offer the necessary protection to the prostitutes or is it to simply legalize violence against the street-walker?

In Australia the states legalized prostitution in an attempt to curb the violence. In the European countries of Norway, Finland and Sweden it appears that the selling of sex is not illegal but it is the purchase of sex that is criminalized. The logic behind these laws is that these European governments want to stamp out sex tourism, street prostitution and human trafficking in an attempt to protect the most vulnerable.

Sex workers in the third world are often sold into prostitution as children. In countries like the USA, many are driven to it by sexual abuse. Authorities have estimated that up to seventy-five percent of street prostitutes are molested or victims of incest. Once on the street it is very difficult or impossible to escape. A street pimp solicits customers for a 'hoochie' in return for a share of their earnings but it is often the street pimps who inflict the most violence. Those selling sex are younger, more than likely victimized or coerced into the trade to have street pimps, be drug addicted and to have miserable lives.

Drugs are sometimes the only way that street prostitutes came cope with work on the streets. Authorities have also estimated that a whopping eighty percent of street walkers are addicted to crack cocaine, heroin, prescription drugs or alcohol. It is probably the only way that they can cope the fear and anxiety that comes with this line of work. What goes through their mind? Will the next trick turn violent if things do not do go right? What are the chances of being raped, beaten up, having bones broken, cut up, maimed or even murdered? While the high-end sex workers or 'escorts' work in relative safety, low-end prostitutes mainly pick up clients off the streets, sex takes place in a car or a back alley and an attack can come at any time and who knows what disease they may contract.

In the United States supporters of legalization are in the minority. They are up against the puritanical religious groups and it is these people who wield the big stick. Rather, the trend has been for greater criminalization with greater penalties against clients and workers. This means that prostitutes are under attack from the street pimps, clients and the law. No doubt there are those on the street who believe that their fate is sealed and written in stone. They probably have few friends or allies, they face discrimination because of the stigma attached to prostitution and the lure of the street is always there... despite the danger. However there is one organization that offers hope or even a way out.

Cyndee Clay is the Executive Director of 'HIPS' - 'Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive'. HIPS mission is to assist female, male, and trans-gender individuals engaging in sex work in Washington DC to lead healthy lives. The program is based on a harm reduction model, Harm Prevention and Support. Those involved with the program strive to address the impact that HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, discrimination, poverty, violence and drug use have on the lives of individuals engaging in sex work. By helping sex industry workers recognize the options that they have and the skills that they need, the organization's goal is to support and assist these people in overcoming the barriers to finding adequate employment and leaving the streets altogether.

This is an almighty challenge. Street prostitutes around the world face similar problems. Many are driven to sell sex against their will and they are rejected by society as a result. Organizations such as this one must be supported and those who participate, applauded.

Stephen lives in the south east corner of Queensland Australia. He enjoys fishing, playing music and learning new languages. He has been writing articles for nearly 3 years. You are welcome to visit one of his websites at Portable Buildings For Sale and School Buildings For Sale.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5220073