Quick Links:

SWOP-USA

Desiree Alliance

Best Practices
Policy Project

Bayswan

Sin City Chamber
of Commerce

Attack on Las Vegas Sex Industry

Recently, Bob Herbert wrote an opinion piece in the NYT about a new self-published book by Melissa Farley entitled, "Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections." Herbert and Farley claim that not only is all prostitution bad for women, but that Nevada's sex industry is degrading and demeaning to all women in Nevada, and that somehow women here are worse off because of it.

We have collected all the articles on this we could find, and you can see them all here.

First, here is the nonprofit coalition set up with Melissa Farley, and the rest are articles and blog entries.

The Nevada Coalition Against Sex Trafficking
(NCAST)

The Nevada Coalition Against Sex Trafficking (NCAST) is a non-governmental, nonprofit organization. NCAST's mission includes educating Nevadans and other concerned citizens about the harms of prostitution, including the underlying and fundamental human rights violations of prostitution, the link between prostitution (both legal and illegal) and human trafficking, and developing and promoting policy and functional alternatives to current laws and practices within the State of Nevada.

NCAST will build a diverse coalition of organizations and individuals dedicated to achieving progressive reform of Nevada's laws on prostitution and trafficking. NCAST will also establish an education and assistance program for women leaving the sex trade. We will collaborate with survivors of prostitution to determine what programs currently exist and then evaluate those programs to determine gaps in service. Once the gaps have been identified, we will work collaboratively with our partners to develop innovative solutions that would assist women in transitioning out of the sex industry and also discourage others from entering prostitution.

Addressing men’s demand for prostitution is also critical. We seek to reduce the demand for sexual exploitation by developing educational programs and campaigns aimed at men and boys and by supporting the enforcement of existing laws against solicitation.

The work of NCAST will be a multi-year project.  We hope to establish some best practices to dealing with these egregious forms of sexual exploitation that can be replicated elsewhere.

Candice Trummell serves as the executive director of NCAST. Trummell is the former chairman of the Nye County Commission. We welcome members and partners committed to the mission of NCAST. Please contact us at web@nevadacoalition.org. Our first event will take place later this year. Time and location are to be announced.

Here is a snapshot of our action plan in Nevada:

Build a strong coalition of survivors, organizations with similar goals and interests in the areas of human trafficking and sexual exploitation, and leaders from Nevada (political, community, church, business, and labor).

NCAST will identify and recruit members from all spectrums who are dedicated to our organization's mission and values. Survivors will be an integral component of the leadership of our organization.

Seek enforcement of existing laws on prostitution and trafficking, especially with respect to arresting men who buy women and children for sex.

NCAST will initially seek enforcement of existing laws related to pimps and johns. This is not a solution to the problems in Nevada as the laws themselves need to be reformed. However, as we work through the political and legal reform movement, this step will serve to help raise the awareness of individuals and leaders regarding the prevalence of prostitution and sex trafficking in Nevada and will start helping hold the perpetrators of these crimes against women accountable.  

Advocate for political reform that replaces Nevada's legalized prostitution laws with progressive laws such as those in Sweden that address men’s demand.

NCAST has learned via research and via the experience of other countries that the problem of prostitution and sex trafficking is best addressed not through legalization or decriminalization but through establishing and vigorously enforcing laws that hold perpetrators - johns and pimps - accountable with felony-level charges while at the same time provide safe housing and long term services for the victims. Prostitution and others who benefit from sex trafficking in Nevada are well entrenched in the political system. Many of the local citizenry have been programmed to believe that prostitution is a victimless crime. Achieving reform in Nevada will be a major campaign against much better funded and sometimes dangerous opponents.

Educate women and youth alternatives to prostitution and assist them in transitioning out of prostitution.

NCAST will work with survivors, service providers and other partners to develop an education and assistance program for women and youth in prostitution. Those involved in this industry will have a wide range of needs that must be met in order for them to escape this life including, but not limited to the following types of services:

Basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter

Health services such as drug and alcohol addiction treatment, psychological counseling, treatment of violence-and-trauma-related injuries

Job training and placement

Educate the general public on the harms of prostitution and trafficking 

By and large, the citizens of the State of Nevada see prostitution as either a victimless crime or a legitimate industry in which women are paid and treated well and brothel owners give back to the communities. One tenth of one percent (0.1%) is an extremely conservative estimate of the number of citizens who know what women and girls in prostitution, even in legal brothels, endure. Educating the Nevada public in a way that makes them care about those in prostitution will be a challenging process.

Work in collaboration with survivors of prostitution to develop educational and outreach programs for women considering entering the business of sexual exploitation.

Develop a campaign to end men's demand for prostitution.

There are a number of campaigns that confront men's demand for prostitution as the driver of the sex industry.  We will explore the use of educational and legal approaches.

Educate the general public and key policy makers on the link between prostitution and trafficking.

Currently, the general public and key policy makers seem willing to take on the challenge of human trafficking. In order to successfully reform Nevada's legal system, we will need to educate Nevadans on the inextricable links between prostitution and human trafficking.

http://www.nevadacoalition.org/

City as Predator

September 4, 2007

OP-ED COLUMNIST

By BOB HERBERT

Las Vegas

There is probably no city in America where women are treated worse than in Las Vegas.

The tone of systematic, institutionalized degradation is set by the mayor, Oscar Goodman, who told me in an interview that the city would reap “tremendous” benefits if a series of “magnificent brothels” could be established to cater to johns from across the country and around the world.

“I’ve said there should be the beginning of a discussion of that,” said Mr. Goodman, a former defense lawyer for mobsters who unabashedly describes his city as an adult playground where “anything goes — as long as you don’t go over the line.”

Most of the lines in Vegas have long since been erased. It is without a doubt, as the psychologist and researcher Melissa Farley, says, “the epicenter of North American prostitution and sex trafficking.”

Vegas is a place where women and girls by the tens of thousands are chewed up by the vast and astonishingly open sex trade. You can be sitting at a traffic light and a huge mobile billboard will drive past, promising, “Hot Babes — Direct to Your Room.”

I was drawn to this story by an advance copy of Ms. Farley’s book-length report, “Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections.” It’s being published online today.

The report explores what Oscar Goodman doesn’t appear to understand: the horrendous toll that prostitution, legal or illegal, takes on the women and girls involved. If you peel back the thin, supposedly sexy veneer of the commercial sex trade, you’ll quickly see the rotten inside, where females are bought, sold, raped, beaten, shamed and in many, many cases, physically and emotionally wrecked 

Start with the fact that so many of those who are pulled into the trade are so young — early-20s, late-teens and younger. Child prostitutes by the hundreds pass through the Family Division courtroom of Judge William Voy, who views the hapless, vulnerable girls as victims and tries to help them. The girls he sees are as young as 12, with the average age being 14.

He told me about a 14-year-old who was seven months pregnant by her pimp. She was suffering from a sexually transmitted disease, had a drug problem, was undernourished and still craved a relationship with the pimp. “These cases will tear your heart out,” the judge said.

Ms. Farley was asked to study the Nevada sex trade and its consequences 2 ½ years ago by John Miller, who at the time headed the U.S. State Department’s effort to fight human trafficking around the world. Prostitution is legal in some parts of Nevada but not in Vegas, where 90 percent of the state’s prostitution occurs. Vegas is a world-class embarrassment to any U.S. official attempting to reduce prostitution and trafficking in foreign countries.

“We did surveys of people on the street,” said Ms. Farley, “and nearly half thought prostitution was legal in Las Vegas. Guess why that is? Massive advertising.”

There are more than 150 pages of ads in the Las Vegas yellow pages for “college teens,” “mature women,” “mothers and daughters,” “petite Japanese women,” “Chinese teens in short skirts” and every other variation imaginable. I asked Mayor Goodman about that, and he said: “We’ve changed that a little bit. They used to have pictures.”

Sex clubs with teenage girls dancing nude and offering lap dances to johns are legal, ubiquitous and widely advertised. Many of those girls are either prostitutes or one short step away.

What is not widely understood is how coercive all aspects of the sex trade are. The average age of entry into prostitution is extremely young. The prostitutes are ruthlessly controlled by pimps, club owners and traffickers. In the case of legal prostitution, they are controlled by their own pimps and the brothel owners — pimps who have been legalized by the state.

The women are exploited in every way. Most of the money they receive from johns goes to the pimps, the brothel owners, the escort service managers and so forth. Strippers and lap dancers have to pay for the right to dance in the clubs, and the money they get in tips has to be shared with the club owners, bartenders, bouncers, etc.

Huge numbers of foreign women are trafficked into Vegas. The legions of Asian women in the massage parlors and escort services did not come flocking to Vegas from suburban U.S.A.

Mayor Goodman said that he is no fan of illegal prostitution, but is convinced the legal variety could be a boon. He is proud of his city’s tourist slogan: “What happens here, stays here.”

Back in the ’90s, Las Vegas tried hard to promote a family-friendly image.

“That ended when I became mayor,” said Mr. Goodman.

-----

This article was originally published in the NYT. It is viewable here also:

http://screwsubwalls.blogspot.com/2007/09/city-as-predator.html

http://greenpagan.blogspot.com/2007/09/city-as-predator.html

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/09/bob-herbert-city-as-predator.html

http://www.ohio.com/editorial/commentary/9579667.html

www.pasadenastarnews.com/opinions/ci_6840160

http://www.franklinnow.com/blog/index.aspx?blogid=296&month=09&year=2007&entryid=42973

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1891045/posts (partial story, with comments and link to NYT)

John Ralston's Face to Face

Link to videos in which Farley and Barb Brents appeared**:

http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=1560638

**When you click on link above, scroll to bottom and look for these titles, and pay particular attention to "Demeaning City?":

And it won't get you tossed from the Senate either...

.. 09/04/2007

..so long as it's with a girl.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert takes a wide-ranging swat at a staple of our local economy: whoring. No, not political whoring. The real whoring.

Herbert draws on the work of Melissa Farley, whose career has focused on researching prostitution the world over and who finally turns an eye toward Nevada. Yes, you'd think she would have started here.

If there's one way to make a column about prostitution in Nevada even more offensive and outrageous to people around the country living and working under the blissfully mistaken impression that the economics of sexual oppression and exploitation isn't happening in their town, it's including a substantial number of brain-dead quotes from Las Vegas' ass clown of a town drunk, Oscar Goodman. So of course that's exactly what Herbert did.

Thanks to Goodman's customary wallowing-in-sin schtick, hizzoner finds himself joking about how he's presiding over a market in human rights violations — seriously, he can't be this much of a moron so he must have been hammered when he gave the interview. But Goodman in performance mode should not detract from the more significant concerns in Herbert's column, concerns that don't get enough attention 'round here.

The column is hidden by the New York Times' ridiculous firewall, almost as if the paper deliberately wants to make sure that nobody ever sees it. So we posted it after the jump — courtesy of somebody who would probably prefer not to be mentioned because spreading the Times' firewall-secure copy around on the internets for free is illegal or some crap like that.

Comments

*sigh*...but, this is who the small minority of populace, those who bothered to go vote, selected, with the help of donors who have given hundreds of thousands of dollars in reported and non-reported contributions.

I didn't know there were "sex clubs" in LV and I never bothered to look at the yellkow pages for escort service, let alone know there are 150 pages of advertising broken down into perversions. Maybe there are so many unseemly billboards on the roadside (and Reid had an ammendment to keep them there), that many of us don't even look at them anymore.....

Wonder if the MSM will comment on this book?

Posted by: What?! | 09/04/2007 at 11:09 AM

Unquestionably, prostitution in Las Vegas is legitimized by the mainstream corporate media here. Pick up a copy of the Greenspun newspaper "Las Vegas Weekly" or the magazine "944" and check out all the legitimite full-page glossy ads featuring near-naked young women in seductive "come-f*ck-me" poses. There is no difference between advertisements for strip joints or casino nightclubs. The unmistakable message goes out to girls in this community that their worth will be based on how much they doll themselves up to look like big-breasted Tijuana hookers.

Posted by: RussBBinVegas@aol.com | 09/04/2007 at 12:00 PM

Thing is, it just ain't for locals anymore. Wait at the airport for arriving relatives sometime and observe how many of our nubile young visitors enter baggage claim dressed like hookers. Vegas = getting laid no matter what. Except for us locals, of course.

Posted by: The Penguin | 09/04/2007 at 01:17 PM

I'm not here to defend Las Vegas. But I do feel better knowing that prostitution and sex clubs and advertising for them have totally disappeared from the rest of the country.

Posted by: Keeping Them Honest | 09/04/2007 at 02:32 PM

Those poor, exploited strippers, forced to drive Lexuses and carry Bulova. Those poor Pahrump prostitutes, dragged -- er, I mean, emotionally coerced -- into a life of selling their bodies. Herbert's moral indignation only clouds his inability to paint Nevada with anything other than a mile-wide brush. I don't know what's worse: his creeping paternalism or his strident condescension. Guess what? There's underage drinking, too. Close all the bars! Close all the bars! And underage gambling. Close the casinos! Close the casinos!

I think the working arrangement he describes in brothels could fit the model of any functioning office. Like, say, the New York Times.

Posted by: whore | 09/05/2007 at 01:41 PM

Herbert couldn't have hit the nail any straighter! To reiterate, "There is probably no city in America where women are treated worse than in Las Vegas." THAT folks is the pure, unadulterated truth. It is not just about the prostitution. It is the male attitudes all over this town. From the police, to the DA, to the Judges. VERY unfriendly to women overall. And, women, if you divorce in this town, RUN! Don't live here! Get out of this cesspool of slime.

Posted by: sanctity | 09/05/2007 at 09:05 PM

It is about time someone took on the thugs and pimps who run Vegas. Almost everyone has their hand in the cookie jar. Girls of 17 and 18 years old are seduced in with the promises of fancy cars and big houses. Once they discover they are expected to service a quota of at least 5 men a day, give them whatever they want, and split the money with pimps and cabdrivers and bartenders, the reality sets in. And once you're in, it is very difficult to get out. And if you have a violent pimp or work for a violent strip club owner you can just forget it, you are theirs. And can you call the police for help? NO! There need to be some services for women in Vegas who are trying to escape prostitution. Vegas has to stop using women like this. It is not right.

Posted by: Jason | 09/10/2007 at 02:49 PM

http://www.lasvegasgleaner.com/las_vegas_gleaner/2007/09/and-it-wont-get.html
 

City as Predator

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

An article about Las Vegas appeared in today’s New York Times. Online, the story is available only to those who subscribe to “Times Select,” but that didn’t prevent its immediate appearance in toto on a numbers of blogs (like this one). I received the story by email last night. My first thought after reading “City as Predator” was that it was another annoying rant against Las Vegas by a parachute journalist on an expense account. Now, in the harsh light of a hot Vegas day, I still think that, but I also feel inspired to tap out a comment or two.

“City as Predator” is the work of columnist Bob Herbert. To be fair, he did drop in on Las Vegas long enough to flip through a Yellow Pages, interview the mayor, talk to a judge, and notice that rolling billboard that says “Hot Babes -- Direct to Your Room.” Which of these pieces of research led him to open his article with “There is probably no city in America where women are treated worse than in Las Vegas,” I don’t know. He also gives no evidence for this statement: “Vegas is a place where women and girls by the tens of thousands are chewed up by the vast and astonishingly open sex trade.” Both sentences are charmingly sensationalistic, but without something more than a New York Times byline to support them, they’re – well, I guess the traditional term for such declarations is “yellow.”

Herbert’s underlying thesis is that all prostitution – legal or not – hurts all women, and prostitution includes not only the sale of sex acts, but also exotic dancing. Okay, it’s an op-ed piece, and that’s his “op.” It’s still an unusual definition, almost as odd as when he refers to patrons of gentlemen’s clubs as “johns.” It’s a designation I think would surprise the men and women who frequent them, and I certainly didn’t consider myself a “john” the time I went to the Olympic Garden.

Perhaps the most disheartening feature of Mr. Herbert’s piece is the troubling story provided by Judge William Voy of a 14-year-old girl who was seven months pregnant by her pimp. “These cases will tear your heart out,” Herbert quoted the judge as saying. Well, yes, and well they should. Which is why it isn’t helpful to lump them together with activities that don’t involve the abuse and exploitation of children.

I suppose by now it seems like I’m a big fan of the Nevada sex industry. Well, I’m not. I’ve toured a legal brothel or two, and I’ve gotten a feel for the challenges facing sex workers, and they’re as varied as they are in any other industry. Is there exploitation? Of course. Because it exists in a shadow world, caught between legal and illegal and naughty and proper, there’s ample opportunity for bad behavior.

Herbert writes, again in enchantingly provocative prose, “If you peel back the thin, supposedly sexy veneer of the commercial sex trade, you’ll quickly see the rotten inside, where females are bought, sold, raped, beaten, shamed and in many, many cases, physically and emotionally wrecked.” Is he right? I’m sure plenty of people reading his article will instantly agree, ignoring the obvious fact that Herbert didn’t do what he suggests. Looking at the Yellow Pages, observing a billboard, chatting with a judge, and interviewing our happily garrulous mayor does not constitute peeling back the veneer, especially since he obviously arrived with his mind made up. I can’t help seeing him in my mind’s eye, jumping out of a plane. A bright yellow parachute billows above him, and when he lands, I see his matching goggles.

Bob Herbert has a way with words. Maybe someday he’ll spend long enough in Las Vegas to shed the ‘tude, peel the veneer, and actually take a look at what’s here. Maybe then his observations would be worth pondering.

posted by Megan Edwards @ Tuesday, September 04, 2007   3 Comments Links to this post   

3 Comments:

At 4:08 PM , Mark Sedenquist said...

I think the most outrageous and asine comment he makes is this one:
"...“ Vegas is a place where women and girls by the tens of thousands are chewed up by the vast and astonishingly open sex trade...” Let's see I haved lived and worked in Las Vegas for nearly eight years which is a little longer than this columnist and somehow I have missed meeting any of these "tens of thousands" of women. Maybe they are simply incognito -- but I see mothers, daughters and other family members every day on my appointed rounds and I really don't think ANY of them are engaged in the sex trade. I think this writer is a disgrace to the journalism community and his rants should be recoginized for what they are. I find it especially bizarre that he never seemed to have interviewed any women. Great work, guy.

At 7:21 AM , Andre said...

To Megan and Mark: I don't know what kind of research Mr. Herbert did regarding Vegas. If he did none does that mean that the exploitation of Women in Las Vegas does not go on? I don't care if Mr. Herbert is "Yellow" - I've never been to L.V. yet I've no doubt the sex trade is alive and well there, as it is in New York City - that is the real issue. Now, Mark: It's quite possible for a person to live in NYC for 100 years and claim to have never seen a drug dealer, gang-banger, prostitute or a hungry/sick/homeless child. I wouldn't doubt that person's veracity just there powers of perception. Now, I love NY (BKLYN!)but I'm not in denial. If a writer hasn't done his research yet writes about the tens of thousands of sick people that are here I'm not down on attacking the writer. Because I recognize - NY is what it is - "Good" and "Bad". Just like Las Vegas. Whether you notice the sickness or not depends on your level of consciousness. So, focus on the messenger if you want to. Me, I think there is a lot of "good" in L.V. AND, a lot of "Bad".

At 6:29 PM , GeoTrix said...

As for me, my favorite part is, "The legions of Asian women in the massage parlors and escort services did not come flocking to Vegas from suburban U.S.A." !!! I agree with Megan that the author lumps too much into the category of "sex work." He doesn't mention that a lot of the sex ads promise a payoff that never comes. I think that the tease of sex is often presented as a way to bilk more money out of the tourists. Sure, the sex workers are out there, but I think many of his "tens of thousands" are employed at making people THINK they're going to get sex, when in reality, they are not.

 http://www.meganedw ards.com/ blog/2007/ 09/city-as- predator. html  

Vegas the epicenter of North American prostitution?

Sep 5, 2007 05:50 PM PDT

Prostitution is illegal in Las Vegas, but a new book says Las Vegas is a magnet for human trafficking for prostitution.

The book, released Wednesday, says women and children are brought here from other states, as well as, from all over the world for legal and illegal prostitution.

"Women are moved for sale to buyers in Las Vegas."

Dr. Melissa Farley says Las Vegas is the epicenter of North American prostitution and human trafficking. Farley spent two years researching and writing her new book: Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections.

She says her research dispels myths that legalizing prostitution decreases organized crime, rape rates, sex trafficking, or disease. And she doesn't see a difference between legal or illegal prostitution.

"Legal prostitution does not protect women from the violence, the verbal abuse, physical injury or diseases, such as HIV, that occur in illegal prostitution," Dr. Farley says.  

"People want to limit to thinking that strip dancing is not prostitution, yes it is, most of the women are being forced to do things, they're not there because they're great dancers, they're there to provide a service in the backroom," says Olivia Howard who knows about the grim reality of selling her body.

Howard was a heroin addict and a prostitute for 19 years. "I was in prostitution from the whole gamut from strip dancing, escort service, massage parlors to street prostitution."Howard now helps women in Chicago get out of prostitution.

Both Farley and Howard say the buying, selling, and trading of women for sex is what makes prostitution a human rights violation. "It's no different if it's legal or illegal prostitution, women are being abused and victimized and no one has the right to sell another human being," Howard said.

Dr. Farley says more money needs to be spent on services to help women get out of prostitution, including more drug and alcohol treatment programs specifically for prostitutes, as well as tougher laws against men who pay for sex.

http://www.kvbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=7032570

Former Prostitutes Wage War Against Prostitution

Sep 5, 2007 09:49 PM PDT

Edward Lawrence, Reporter

A new non-profit group, made up of former prostitutes, is going after the legal and illegal prostitution industry in Nevada. 

The group, Nevada Coalition Against Sex Trafficking, is headed up by former Nye County Commissioner Candice Trummell, who says a brothel owner tried to bribe her. Another member of the group, Kathleen Mitchell, was a prostitute for 21 years.

"I left that business with nothing but rage and anger. I could have hurt someone at the drop of a hat. I ended up going to jail," Mitchell said.

Mitchell was arrested in Las Vegas and decided to call it quits. She quickly found out that there are few services for prostitutes who want to leave their lifestyle behind.

Although prostitution is not legal in Clark County, that doesn't stop it from happening. According to a recently released report by the U.S. State Department, there is nine times more illegal prostitution in Nevada than where prostitution is legal in the state. It also says 90-percent of prostitution in the state is happening in Las Vegas whether it's in illegal brothels or private homes. 

According to Melissa Farley who has written a book based on the report says she found that  there's $24 million worth of advertising in Las Vegas where prostitution is illegal. In addition,  the local phone book has 173 pages of advertising for the sex industry alone.

"There is a lot of prostitution in Las Vegas because there is a lot of advertising for prostitution in Las Vegas."

Farley says the report estimated that the sex industry in Las Vegas generates between $1 billion and $6 billion a year.

Last August, prostitutes were bussed in from all over the United States and seen parading down West Tropicana. The U.S. State Department report shows that they have quotas amounting to more than 1,800 customers a year. That money gets split between taxi drivers, pimps and bell hops at casinos, leaving very little for the prostitutes.

Farley's book, Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections, is being used as a launching pad for the coalition's efforts raise awareness about prostitution in Nevada. What they would really like to see is some help for prostitutes who want to get out of the business. They would also like tougher penalties against people who pay for prostitutes.

http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7029088&nav=menu102_9_2_3

Prostitution in Nevada Panel Discussion Held at UNLV

Sep 6, 2007 09:41 PM PDT

Edward Lawrence, Reporter

Legalizing prostitution in Nevada has now become a national debate.

Thursday afternoon, former prostitutes, UNLV professors and other interested parties held panel discussions about the sex industry at the UNLV campus.

The UNLV professor holding the discussion invited Las Vegas Metro Sheriff Doug Gillespie. He told some of his officers to attend the discussion.

"I don't think the convention goers who are going to the big casinos are being arrested for buying women," said Melissa Farley, author of Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections.

Farley researched prostitution for the past few years before writing her book. She and a group of former prostitutes contend that police officers look the other way in Las Vegas.

Metro's vice unit says that's not true, and they will be working casinos this weekend because of the MTV Video Music Awards.

The former prostitutes and Farley belong to the new non-profit group called The Nevada Coalition Against Sex Trafficking.

The police officers who conduct the sting operations are listening to their comments.

The group, who is opposed to legal and illegal prostitution, has sparked debate on the controversial issue. Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman says he does not oppose legal prostitution, but says the city will not push for it.

"My constituents are not ready for it," he said. "They are always ready to have a good discussion because they are smart people, but they are not ready to legalize prostitution because they have moral objections."

But he did say having a sort of red light district for the legal sex industry in Las Vegas may be a way to keep from having children see revealing advertising that can currently be found all over the valley.

"I often said that maybe we should have a red light district. A zone where people who didn't want to see this kind of nonsense, they don't have to see it," Goodman said.

The mayor says if women are not forced into prostitution they should be allowed to make their own choices.

The former prostitutes say even legal brothels victimize women. They say selling your body like that takes away your soul and causes physical problems.

The non-profit plans to get aggressive in banning all prostitution in Nevada.

A new book about the sex trade in Las Vegas says our city have more advertisements for illegal prostitution than any other major city.

http://www.lasvegasnow.com/global/story.asp?s=7038035

Outlaw industry, ex-prostitutes say
Sep. 06, 2007
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Researcher spotlights human trafficking

By LYNNETTE CURTIS
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Kathleen Mitchell worked as a prostitute for more than two decades before her pimp was finally sent to jail.

"I wasn't a drug addict; I was addicted to a man," Mitchell, now 64, said. "That's the worst drug there is."

Mitchell, who often saw her boyfriend pimp beat up other prostitutes, escaped prostitution 18 years ago. But its effects are lasting.

"If I have a relationship, it's probably going to be a bad one," she said.

Her story was one of several shared by former prostitutes Wednesday morning at a Sawyer Building news conference to announce the release of researcher Melissa Farley's book, "Prostitution & Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections," published by the San Francisco-based nonprofit Prostitution Research and Education

The event also served as the introduction of a new local anti-trafficking organization, Nevada Coalition Against Sex Trafficking.

The women joined Farley, former Nye County Commissioner Candice Trummell and Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Henderson, in attacking prostitution in all its forms and calling for it to be outlawed in all of Nevada, not just in certain counties such as Clark and Washoe.

"Prostitution is not work," said Farley, a psychologist who has spent years researching prostitution and its psychological effects. "Rather, it's a human rights violation."

The group argued that legal prostitution can be just as harmful to women as illegal prostitution because both involve kinds of abuse and cause long-lasting psychological damage.

"What happens in legal brothels is sexual harassment, sexual exploitation and sometimes rape," Farley said. "Despite the claims to the contrary, legal prostitution does not protect women from the violence, verbal abuse, physical injury or diseases such as HIV that occur in illegal prostitution."

Brothel industry lobbyist George Flint later attacked the idea that women who work as legal prostitutes are abused.

"Anybody that has an ounce of brain or intelligence has to know they (legal and illegal prostitution) are two different things," he said. "We don't traffic women. We don't hire trafficked women. We don't work with pimps. We treat the girls with respect and dignity and we take care of them."

Kate Hausbeck, senior associate dean of UNLV's graduate college and an associate professor of sociology, also differed with some of Farley's conclusions.

Hausbeck said she supports an adult woman's right to "choose how they want to use their bodies in the marketplace."

"My goal is to always protect the rights of women," she said. "We have to ask the women involved and take their answers seriously."

But Farley said prostitution is "not a freely made choice."

"When women say, 'I'm happy. I'm making money,' that's just the tiniest bit of the surface," she said. "Under duress from legal and illegal pimps, women hide their coerced status in prostitution. Many people refuse to believe just how bad it is for women."

Hausbeck said disbelieving women who say they are happy in prostitution is "really condescending."

"It's frankly dismissive of women as uninformed, silly children, which is exactly the perspective we should have moved far beyond."

She said the word "trafficking" is often misused to indicate anyone who is involved in prostitution, instead of only those who are forced into sex work against their wills.

If an adult "is walked across the state line or a national border intending to do sex work of their own free will, without any force, they are making this decision, and to me that's very different," she said.

But Farley and others argue a clear link exists between legal and illegal prostitution and sex trafficking.

"Sex trafficking happens when men demand the right to buy women," Farley said.

Terri Miller, director of the Anti-Trafficking League Against Slavery, which formed last year within the Metropolitan Police Department, said that Nevada is a ripe environment for human trafficking because it is the only state that has legalized prostitution.

"I don't believe all prostitution is sex trafficking, but I believe the majority of women who are prostitutes have been the victim of sex trafficking at some point in their lives."

Miller said each time a prostitute engages in a sex act, "it is very much victimizing."

"The reality is that they are having to engage in a sex act with a complete stranger as many times as 30 times a day. It is not a victimless crime."

Those who want to leave prostitution have a difficult time finding help, especially in Nevada, Farley said.

"Most women in prostitution want to escape it," she said. "In prostitution, the conditions that make choice possible are absent. If we really want to say it's a choice, women need a range of options."

Jody Williams, a former prostitute and member of the Nevada Coalition Against Sex Trafficking, agreed.

"When women quit prostitution, they ... suffer from a broad range of physical and emotional disorders," she said. "Women in prostitution suffer from the same combat stress that Vietnam and combat vets do, but they have fewer services than vets do."

Former prostitutes "wind up on welfare, disability, public housing and on the street," Williams said.

She joined Farley and others in calling for harsher penalties against those who hire prostitutes, instead of arresting the prostitutes themselves.

Farley's book is based on a U.S. State Department-sponsored study of prostitution and trafficking in Nevada.

The U.S. Department of Justice has recognized Las Vegas as one of 17 cities where human trafficking is a concern.

The book includes interviews with and demographics of women working in legal Nevada brothels. It explores the link between legal brothels and psychological distress and disease, the trafficking of legal and illegal prostitutes in Nevada, escort and strip club prostitution in Las Vegas, advertising for prostitution and barriers to escaping prostitution.

The Nevada Coalition Against Sex Trafficking will work to educate people about trafficking, identify services for victims and change Nevada laws related to prostitution, said Trummell, the organization's director.

"It is way past time for Nevada to become the last state in the United States of America to finally stand against all forms of slavery," Trummell said. "It is time for Nevada to start adhering to the U.S. government's own official and very strong stance against legalized prostitution."

Attempts to outlaw prostitution in all of Nevada have cropped up but have not gotten far in the Legislature, which has shown a preference for letting rural communities handle the issue themselves.

Beers said he would support making prostitution illegal in all of Nevada.

A brothel owner, he said, is "somebody who, when it gets down to the very essence, is nothing more than a slave-owner."

Find this article at:
http://www.lvrj.com/news/9612332.html  

Let's talk about prostitution

By Steve Sebelius, City Life
September 6, 2007

Mayor Oscar Goodman says we should be able to have a conversation about legalizing prostitution in Las Vegas. We happen to agree. So let's do it.

First, let us make one observation: While we suspect Goodman's heart may be inclined in the direction of legalized brothels in Sin City, it's clear he's not going to put his money where his mouth is on the issue. Goodman said at his regular news conference today that Las Vegans have too many moral or religious objections to prostitution to legalize the practice, which is legal in certain counties in Nevada, including nearby Nye County. (In order to be legalized in Las Vegas, the state Legislature would have to approve it.)

"It's a legitimate topic to be discussed," Goodman says, noting that illegal prostitution is going on all around us every day. "To pretend that it doesn't exist is to be an ostrich," he added.

OK, fine. We're perfectly willing to admit that there's as much prostitution going on inside high-class hotels on the Strip as there is on Fremont Street. It's just that Fremont Street gets more police attention, one of many myriad hypocrisies that attend this issue in Las Vegas.

After going through some of the benefits of legalized prostitution (we'll go into more detail below), Goodman concluded "My constituents aren't ready for it, though. … Rational people could conclude that legalization is fine, except for the religious and moral aspects."

OK, fine. We can deal with that right now: If you have religious objections to prostitution, don't visit prostitutes. Discourage your friends and associates from visiting prostitutes, too, if you'd like. Protest on the sidewalk out in front of a brothel, if you feel very strongly about it. Ditto for those with non-religious moral objections.

So, what's the problem?

Our take on the mayor's stance is this: He's right in saying the issue should be discussed. But if he's already decided that religious and moral objections are too great to allow for the legalization of prostitution in town, why should we have a discussion about it? It's a waste of time, unless that discussion is going to lead to more education, more enlightenment and the possibility of eventually legalizing brothels in Clark County.

And here's why we think we should do that. (Call us a misogynist if you will; we'll deal with that later.)

1.) Ending exploitation. Anti-prostitution advocates are swift to note that women — especially underage women — are often exploited by human traffickers and sexual slave traders. Far from choosing to use their bodies to make money, these women are exploited and used by others for profit. But the reason is that prostitution is illegal; if it were a legal, licensed and regulated business — as it is in some other counties in Nevada — there would be far less profit in sexual slavery. Moreover, violence against women by pimps would be eliminated.

2.) Public health and safety. Currently, if a man wants to use the services of a prostitute, he cruises down to a stroll, pulls over, negotiates a deal and trades money for a sex act. (This is what we hear, you understand, and see on TV. With our incredible good looks and sexy bald head, we've no need of prostitutes. Not that we're condemning it or anything.)

In this process, the customer risks catching a sexually transmitted disease, getting robbed by either the prostitute or her pimp, being extorted for even more cash, not to mention being arrested and having his name and booking photo become a public record.

If prostitution were legal, the sex workers at brothels would be regularly tested by the state for STDs, and would be required to practice safe sex. Customers would feel much more comfortable in legal, regulate brothels, which would have special privileged licenses granted by the state. License holders (similar to gambling license holders) would have a built-in incentive to avoid any kind of crime in their establishments, including drug use by sex workers, lest they lose a lucrative license. And underage prostitution, like underage gambling, would be virtually wiped out.

3.) Tax revenue. It's guaranteed that all the money changing hands between illegal prostitutes and customers is untaxed revenue; licensing brothels would eliminate that problem. Goodman said at his news conference that he's had casino owners tell him that, if prostitution were legalized, they'd build nice brothels. If you gaze at some of the nicer strip clubs around town (which we never do; we're off the market, ladies!) we totally believe that's true.

4.) Hooker "strolls." There would be no need for prostitutes to congregate on street corners or in certain areas of town, dragging down redevelopment efforts and property values. Business would be conducted in legal, licensed establishments, the way gambling and drinking is conducted now. How many illegal craps games or moonshine operations did police have to investigate this year? Not a lot, we'd guess, when you can legally gamble and drink inside places built for those purposes.

5.) Proven track record. Everything we've said up until now isn't just us popping off, as usual. We have a real-life, American example of these things at work, in Nevada's legal brothels. The model used there could easily be expanded to other counties, with similar results.

6.) Elimination of a fiat crime. Ever notice that neither person involved in a prostitution transaction calls the cops? That's because there's no direct "victim" in this crime, save for the peace, dignity and morals of the state. That's why cops have to do "stings" to catch the perpetrators, who are consenting adults who've come to a mutually agreeable business transaction. There's no real victim here.

(Some will argue that wives who are cheated on and families that disintegrate because of prostitution are victims, and that's true in a moral sense, if not a legal one. But by that standard, we should also outlaw adultery, since it has the same effects.)

7.) Philosophical consistency. If you say you're "pro-choice," you have to mean more than just "in favor of abortion rights." You have to mean that you believe a woman (or a man, for that matter) should be able to do with her body what she wishes. If that means being a homemaker and stay-at-home mom, fine. If that means posing for Playboy, fine. So long as the choice is free and not coerced, then being pro-choice means respecting the choices that women make. Goodman said as much when he noted that "I believe a woman has a right to choose."

So, what to make then of New York Times columnist Bob Herbert's column slamming Goodman and Las Vegas for mistreating women? (Our hearty thanks to the Las Vegas Gleaner for posting the text which is ordinarily available only to rich Times subscribers.)

"There is probably no city in America where women are treated worse than Las Vegas," Herbert begins. "The tone of systematic, institutionalized degradation is set by the mayor, Oscar Goodman, who told me in an interview that the city would reap 'tremendous' benefits if a series of 'magnificent brothels' could be established to cater to johns from across the country and around the world."

Now, we've had our differences with Goodman, but not on this issue. Here, we must ask: What degradation? Unless, of course, you believe that all prostitution is de facto degrading to women. Some people believe that. (We suspect that a bill to legalize the practice in Nevada would not get the votes of several prominent female, pro-choice, pro-women lawmakers for that very reason.)

The other side of the coin may just as easily be argued: Prostitution, along with stripping, posing for Playboy or other work in the sex trade, is empowering to women, so long as the choice is truly theirs. It's when the choice is not entirely voluntary that demoralization sets in. As Goodman said at his news conference: "If a woman is forced into it, psychologically or otherwise, it would be degrading." But if not? Then why not?

It's true that Las Vegas tends to objectify women, turning them into sex objects. It's true that many men come here for cheap, meaningless sex with anonymous strangers, knowing (or hoping) that what happens here stays here. But that won't change with the legalization of prostitution, and it won't change if prostitution remains illegal. And we think it's simply wrong to accuse Goodman of misogyny just because he thinks it might be better if prostitution were legal.

Part of the debate should have to do with the city's image, but we'd be remiss if we didn't note that the city's advertising campaigns virtually promise sex to every visitor, male or female. Otherwise, why would anybody care if what happened here went elsewhere? Would some visitors not come (or be banned by their wives or girlfriends from coming) if prostitution were legal? Perhaps. But a person inclined to cheat will find a partner and a place to cheat, whether prostitution is legal or not. Conversely, a faithful person wouldn't cheat even if lodged in a legal brothel.

Now, we must say we don't agree with the mayor's rhetorical excesses in the wake of Herbert's column, such as threatening (in a sidebar in today's Review-Journal) to break Herbert's head with a baseball bat. NRS 170.060, in fact, provides for a complaint and warrant of arrest to issue against "…any person who has threated to commit an offense against the person or property of another." While Goodman may argue, as outlined in NRS 170.080 that there is "no just reason to fear the commission of the offense," it's still not a good idea to go around threatening people, especially if by "people" you mean, "New York Times op-ed columnists with millions of readers."

In explanation, Goodman could only offer "If I really meant it, I wouldn't have said it," and added, "baseball bats aren't used on people's heads, let's put it that way." We suppose that might be an attempt at an apology, but we can't be sure.

Anyway, Goodman has (had?) nothing to apologize for with respect to his views on prostitution. It may seem wrong to Herbert, and to anti-prostitution researcher Melissa Farley, who has a new book examining the issue (in a bad way) in Las Vegas, whom Herbert referred to in his piece. But that doesn't mean it is bad. It just means there's another side to the discussion that Goodman says should happen. To that end, we've ordered Farley's book, and will examine that as well as talk to local researchers and advocates for their views. We'll report back what we find.

Because if nothing else, Goodman's right about one thing: This is worth discussing seriously. Anybody else have a view to share? 

8 Responses to “Let's talk about prostitution”

http://www.valleyblogs.com/sebelius/2007-09-06/id_2454

Las Vegas mayor threatens to murder N.Y. Times columnist after anti-sex-trade column
| posted by Wolfrum | Thursday, September 06, 2007 | permalink |

Remember the scene in the movie "The Untouchables" where Al Capone, as played by Robert DeNiro, brutally murders a lackey with a baseball bat in order to prove a point?

For Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, the scene was obviously how he views the real world.

"I have no use for him. I'll take a baseball bat and break his head if he ever comes here," Goodman said of New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, after Herbert's column "City as Predator."

The point the mayor wanted to prove? That if some N.Y. columnist wanted to shine a light on the sex trade and prostitution business of Las Vegas, he'd murder them with a baseball bat.

But the sex trade and prostitution business of Las Vegas desperately needs a light shined on it, and Herbert did a fine job of doing just that.

"City as Predator"

There is probably no city in America where women are treated worse than in Las Vegas.

The tone of systematic, institutionalized degradation is set by the mayor, Oscar Goodman, who told me in an interview that the city would reap "tremendous" benefits if a series of "magnificent brothels" could be established to cater to johns from across the country and around the world.

"I've said there should be the beginning of a discussion of that," said Mr. Goodman, a former defense lawyer for mobsters who unabashedly describes his city as an adult playground where "anything goes — as long as you don’t go over the line."

Most of the lines in Vegas have long since been erased. It is without a doubt, as the psychologist and researcher Melissa Farley, says, “the epicenter of North American prostitution and sex trafficking.”

Make no mistake about it, Goodman is a mobbed-up thug. Take a look at Inside Vegas at AmericanMafia.com for any further proof you need. There, former Las Vegas Councilman Steve Miller has a seemingly endless amount of stories highlighting the Vegas-Mob connection, and Goodman's secure place in it.

Think about it, what major American city would have a mayor that defends - with threats of violence - a system that has created this:

Start with the fact that so many of those who are pulled into the trade are so young — early-20s, late-teens and younger. Child prostitutes by the hundreds pass through the Family Division courtroom of Judge William Voy, who views the hapless, vulnerable girls as victims and tries to help them. The girls he sees are as young as 12, with the average age being 14.

He told me about a 14-year-old who was seven months pregnant by her pimp. She was suffering from a sexually transmitted disease, had a drug problem, was undernourished and still craved a relationship with the pimp. "These cases will tear your heart out," the judge said.

Does the Sin City catchphrase of "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" still sound like an invitation to harmless decadence?

There are those fighting to bring Las Vegas into civilized times, but with mafia wannabes like Goodman holding sway, it is by no means an easy battle. Still, those like Miller - long a thorn in the side of the Vegas political establishment - former prostitutes and others are trying to clean up what is now a despicable mess.

"Researcher spotlights human trafficking"

Kathleen Mitchell worked as a prostitute for more than two decades before her pimp was finally sent to jail.

"I wasn't a drug addict; I was addicted to a man," Mitchell, now 64, said. "That's the worst drug there is."

Mitchell, who often saw her boyfriend pimp beat up other prostitutes, escaped prostitution 18 years ago. But its effects are lasting.

"If I have a relationship, it's probably going to be a bad one," she said.

Her story was one of several shared by former prostitutes Wednesday morning at a Sawyer Building news conference to announce the release of researcher Melissa Farley's book, "Prostitution & Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections," published by the San Francisco-based nonprofit Prostitution Research and Education.

The event also served as the introduction of a new local anti-trafficking organization, Nevada Coalition Against Sex Trafficking.

According to Miller: What effect does Nevada 's prostitution culture have on all women in the state? A Nevada rape crisis counselor explained, "Men think they can get away with rape here." According to an FBI Uniform Crime report, women are 3 times as likely to be raped in Las Vegas as they are in New York City.

The reputation of Las Vegas as a city where anything goes is legendary, and generally looked at with a wink. But it is an American city. An American city where women are treated as property, and where the sex-trade business is booming. And a city where the Mayor thinks he can threaten to murder those who question any of it.

And the simple fact is Herbert's words are absolutely true: "There is probably no city in America where women are treated worse than in Las Vegas."

For more information:

The Nevada Coalition Against Sex Trafficking

Prostitution Research & Education

--WKW

Comments (35)

Consenting Adults and a Conservative-Liberal-Libertarian Split

Thursday, September 06, 2007

The New York Times ran two op-eds this past week with rather different views about consensual sexual activity. Sunday's piece by nonfiction author Laura M. MacDonald summarized a 1970 dissertation by Laud Humphreys called "Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places." It criticizes the use of law enforcement resources to arrest and prosecute men who solicit other men for sex in public places, and is similar to the argument made by Aaron Belkin in the previous day's Washington Post.

The recurring weakness in such criticism is that it ignores the genuine, non-homophobic concern that underlies such police action. After all, police have limited resources and must respond to constituencies. If they waste resources in an area that most citizens consider unimportant -- for example, arresting people for adulterery and other fornication, which in some states remains illegal -- they will be criticized for not spending them on problems that people do care about, such as violent crime. But citizens care about more than just direct crime against themselves or their neighbors; they also care about living in an orderly environment.

At least on this narrow issue, McArthur, Humphreys and Belkin sound like libertarians. Libertarians tend to fall into the camp of believing that police action against public solicitation of sex, or even public sex itself, is improper because it is a "victimless crime," and thus probably not ought be a crime at all.

Conservatives, however, see Law as a handmaiden of Order. Even if conservatives believed that there was no moral problem with homosexual sex between strangers, they still would worry that allowing public restrooms to become open grounds for finding and servicing sexual partners would create a problem of Disorder. Such men would be bringing a private activity into public space, and the presence of solicitation and sex would increase the probability of other ills: prostitution, the use of drugs that lower inhibitions or heighten sensation, violence from inevitable disagreements, etc. Moreover, such activity is an unfair and selfish use of a public space. Two people keeping their stall doors locked while they negotiate or engage in sex are reducing the number of stalls available to those who are in the bathroom for its intended purpose. That we cannot identify a specific "victim," a person who has been significantly harm, does not matter; society as a whole is harmed by Disorder.

The liberal perspective does feel a greater need for a specific victim, but sets the bar for what constitutes a victim lower. Where conservatives may see all the participating individuals in the Tearoom Trade as necessarily consensual, and thus only the large, diffuse group of non-participants as having been vaguely harmed, liberals are more likely to question the genuineness of the participants' consent.

This brings me to the second Times op-ed, columnist Bob Herbert's diatribe against Las Vegas, which is titled "City as Predator." ($elect) Women are the passive victims of this predator, a passivity reflected in Herbert's verbs.

"There is probably no city in America where women are treated worse than in Las Vegas."
"Vegas is a place where women and girls by the tens of thousands are chewed up by the vast and astonishingly open sex trade."

"The report explores what [mayor] Oscar Goodman doesn't appear to understand: the horrendous toll that prostitution, legal or illegal, takes on the women and girls involved. If you peel back the thin, supposedly sexy veneer of the commercial sex trade, you'll quickly see the rotten inside, where females are bought, sold, raped, beaten, shamed and in many, many cases, physically and emotionally wrecked."

"Start with the fact that so many of those who are pulled into the trade are so young — early-20s, late-teens and younger."

There's more, but you get the idea. Herbert doesn't try to argue that sex work is a sin against God, nor does he make an argument about its secondary effects in sowing general disorder to the detriment of society. Instead, he stakes his position on the claim that sex work harms the workers. His only example of a damaged individual is from a Family Division judge:

He told me about a 14-year-old who was seven months pregnant by her pimp. She was suffering from a sexually transmitted disease, had a drug problem, was undernourished and still craved a relationship with the pimp. "These cases will tear your heart out," the judge said.

Indeed they will, but they also are cases that a) occur in cities that are not contemplating the legalization of prostitution, and b) would be prosecuted against johns even if Mayor Goodman did pass his proposal, because sex with a 14-year-old would remain illegal.

Yet Herbert doesn't restrict his point to underage sex workers; even adult sex workers, in his view, are victims. "What is not widely understood is how coercive all aspects of the sex trade are." He's also annoyingly imprecise, referring to "sex clubs" with lapdances, when he most likely actually means strip clubs, which are legal to some extent in almost every state and not peculiar to Las Vegas. If the women are not victimized in a fashion that the criminal law would recognize anyway -- statutory rape, sexual assault, battery -- Herbert still declares them victims of economic exploitation: "Most of the money they receive from johns goes to the pimps, the brothel owners, the escort service managers and so forth. Strippers and lap dancers have to pay for the right to dance in the clubs, and the money they get in tips has to be shared with the club owners, bartenders, bouncers, etc."

In all honesty, I probably would have agreed with Herbert's column had he stuck to prostitution, because I am very doubtful that legalizing brothels and pimping activity is a good idea. However, the notion that strippers necessarily are victimized because they have to pay for the right to dance in clubs and have to share their tips with their employer and fellow employees is slightly ludicrous. Waitstaff, particularly in expensive restaurants, are paid below the minimum wage and expected to share tips, yet I have not heard of Herbert's wanting to ban waiting on tables. And at least in NYC, there's probably some overlap between the women in high-end strip clubs and those at fashionable bars and restaurants: struggling models and actresses who use their attractiveness in order to pay the bills. Certainly some of the drink-mixing and table-waiting skills on offer at certain Manhattan establishments lend credence to the theory that employees were hired for their appearance and charm rather than their ability to get an order right.

The average American probably doesn't fall entirely into any of the three camps. In some situations, she will be loath to prosecute apparently victimless crimes; in others she will be willing to punish infractions that violate Order; in still others she will be convinced that someone who supposedly consented is actually being coerced. I identify predominately as a liberal, yet I'm sympathetic to the conservative argument for enforcing the law against public sex, because I value Order. (Indeed, I think living in New York has increased my appreciation for doing certain things only in certain designated places; having witnessed someone urinating on a street corner helps one imagine how unpleasant it might be to use a restroom stall right after someone has had sex in it.)

Incidentally, does anyone have a theory as to why the editorials like McArthur's and Belkin's -- i.e., sympathetic to the person caught soliciting in a bathroom -- seem to have come out only in response to the news of Sen. Craig's arrest, rather than earlier when Flordia state representative Bob Allen had a similar problem? Is it because Allen's "I'm afraid of the Big Black Wolf" defense for his actions rendered him too unsympathetic?

UPDATE: Sex advice columnist Dan Savage takes a similar view that Sen. Craig is not being unfairly persecuted in having been arrested for his toe-tapping (emphasis added):

However, CASH, as I'm sure you and others involved in the homosexual lifestyle are aware, the kind of man that plays footsie in an airport toilet fully intends to have sex in that same toilet, and a public toilet is a public place -- and public sex is illegal for gay people like you, CASH, and for straight people like me and Senator Craig.

And while I would be the first to argue that most of the men looking to get it on in toilets and other public sex environments are discreet and don't bother anyone -- and I argued just that on CNN last week—some are not discreet and some do bother people. (I also argued that most of the men getting it on in toilets are straight-identified, just like me and Senator Craig.) There were complaints about that particular bathroom at the Minneapolis airport, and the police did what the police are supposed to do when there are complaints -- they responded.

posted by PG at 7:46 PM

http://expost.blogspot.com/2007/09/consenting-adults-and-conservative.html

Panel: Brothels aid sex trafficking

TRUMMELL DESIRES A BASIC CHANGE IN LAW

By MARK WAITE
Sep. 07, 2007

PVT

LAS VEGAS -- "Pretty Woman is only a movie. Ain't no Richard Gere running out there trying to pick up your body," said Brenda Myers Powell, a founding member of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation.

Powell was one of seven women describing the evils of prostitution, both legal and illegal, during a press conference on a report about sex trafficking and prostitution in Nevada Wednesday.

Former Nye County Commissioner Candice Trummell, who heads a new group called the Nevada Coalition Against Sex Trafficking, was one of the speakers.

She talked about slavery and human rights violations involved in prostitution.

Trummell said the three goals of her organization are to educate the public, identify needed services for victims of prostitution and "affect a fundamental change in Nevada's law concerning prostitution, sex trafficking and related matters."

"It is way past time for Nevada to be the last state in the United States of America to finally stand against all forms of slavery," she said. "It is time for Nevada to start hearings in the U.S. government on a crucial and very strong stance against legalized prostitution. The Nevada Coalition Against Sex Trafficking aims to replace the validity of Nevada as the safe haven for modern day slave traders with the legacy of Nevada having the most effective and complete programs."

The panel lobbied for state funding for support services for prostitutes who want to leave the business and felony penalties against their patrons as a way to crack down on illegal prostitution. None of the speakers, when questioned, said they specifically wanted to abolish legal prostitution in Nevada.

Nevada Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, said under his bill draft in the 2009 session, "It will be illegal to force women into prostitution in Nevada, that's what you have to look at.

"Now if you have somebody who actually wants to engage in that as a lifestyle, I believe we should have avenues for that, but it should also be controlled," he said. "If there is the slightest hint of coercion, then that has to be dealt with very severely."

The conference chairwoman, clinical psychologist Melissa Farley, author and executive director of the San Francisco-based organization Prostitute Research and Education, released statistics of a two-year report funded by the Trafficking in Persons Office of the State Department.

"A key finding on Nevada prostitution is first, most prostitution in Nevada is illegal, about 90 percent," Farley said. "A second key finding is, despite claims to the contrary, legal prostitution does not protect women from the violence, verbal abuse, physical injury or the diseases."

Farley charged many women in the legal brothels are under intense emotional stress. She said many prostitutes may say they're happy in the business, but she added, "Under duress from legal and illegal pimps, women hide their coerced status in prostitution."

Farley saved most of her criticism for illegal prostitution in Las Vegas, which she called, "the epicenter of North American trafficking for prostitution" with girls coming from every major city on the West Coast and other parts of America.

There's an awareness of human rights violations in sex trafficking in Nevada, but mainly for women who crossed an international border, she said. Authorities should be concerned about women who've been trafficked from Minneapolis as well as from Mexico, Farley said.

"We interviewed 45 women in the legal brothels -- 81 percent of them wanted to get out. Many of them were physically restrained, there was no way for them to get out," Farley said at the conclusion of the press conference. "Domestic violence shelters would be a great place to send them, outreach advertising to any of the brothels, 'If you want to get out, Nye County is willing to help you.'"

Copies of the Las Vegas yellow pages were prominent in front of the speakers. Farley said there were 173 pages in the directory explicitly advertising prostitution. Overall, Farley claimed prostitution was a $6 billion per year operation in Clark County with $24 million spent on advertising.

Legal brothels in Nye County are doing nothing to stop illegal prostitution in Clark County, she said.

"Also, we have an exchange of women from the legal brothels into illegal Las Vegas prostitution and back again," Farley said.

Many Pahrump residents commented that brothels have the advantage of keeping illegal prostitutes off the streets when Nye County commissioners decided against allowing a ballot question on the issue in 2004.

Trummell said she couldn't foresee prostitutes standing out on street corners in Pahrump -- even less so in other small Nye County towns -- soliciting sex in the event prostitution were made illegal.

But Trummell admitted if state legislators wanted to crack down on illegal streetwalkers, "The logical thing would be to allow it (prostitution) in places where you're going to have illegal prostitution." She admitted that comment wouldn't be popular with the panel.

Many prostitutes are told lies by pimps about the money, but much of it crosses hands to pimps as well as valets, taxi drivers, disc jockeys and others, Farley said. Myers Powell said legal brothels as well get 50 to 60 percent of a prostitutes earnings, and then the employees also have to pay rent.

"Nevada's rape rate is higher than the U.S. average and way higher than the rape rate in California, New York and New Jersey. Why is this? Legal prostitution creates an atmosphere in this state in which women are not humans equal to them, are disrespected by men, and which then sets the stage of increased violence against women," Farley said.

"I cringe when I hear it said that prostitution is a victimless crime," said Olivia Howard, another member of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation. She said people have a popular myth about "ladies of the night" who disappear in the daytime, unaware of the harsh reality and horrendous abuse.

"Prostituted women are no safer in indoor venues than they are on the street corner, jumping from car to car," Howard said.

Myers Powell said if an average prostitute has an average of five tricks per day, that's over 1,800 customers per year. "Men are in and out of her body, using her body like a toilet," she said.

At the end of the press conference, she angrily shouted at the audience, "They say, oh, c'est la vie, this is what they want to do. It's not happening like that, ladies and gentlemen. I want to see you turn 1,800 tricks a year, and over 10 years you might have 1 million sold, you could open up your own franchise."

Kathleen Mitchell, an ex-prostitute who founded a support group for prostitutes called Dignity, said, "Women are bought and sold on an auction block in any city in any state of the United States and also internationally. Sexual trafficking is one of the most inhumane forms of human slavery that there is."

She said the movie industry should stop glamorizing prostitution.

Ex-prostitute Jody Williams, founder of Sex Workers Anonymous, compared the promotion of prostitution with the way the tobacco companies marketed cigarettes. "They're taking advantage of your ignorance of the industry," she said.

Williams said ex-prostitutes came to her organization suffering from a variety of physical and emotional disorders. "Women in prostitution suffer from the same combat stress that Vietnam and combat vets do, but they have fewer services than vets do," she said.

The illegal pimps are replaced by "the legal pimps" in the brothels, Williams charged.

"The current law in Nevada which allows legal prostitution and talks about wanting them to use their earnings to generate tax dollars for the state of Nevada actually makes the state of Nevada a third pimp for these women," Williams said.

Find this article at:
http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2007/Sep-07-Fri-2007/news/16519321.html

Prostitution
Friday, September 07, 2007

- posted by Jim @ 9:33 AM

The (imminent?) release of a new book, Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada, by controversial anti-prostitution scholar Melissa Farley, has occasioned lots of high-profile commentary. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert seems to wholeheartedly endorse the Farley approach, seeing coercion throughout the sex industry. An intemperate but effective rejoinder is provided by Mark Kernes of Adult Video News.com. Farley, who supports the Swedish approach of making the purchase but not the sale of sex illegal, can be viewed talking about her new book in a video (available here) from a Las Vegas tv news program. The Guardian provides an article that is quite informative, focusing on Farley's characterization of the legal brothels in Nevada.

I support some forms of legal prostitution, and I do not endorse the Swedish model. I believe that it is important to separate coercive from non-coercive prostitution in terms of appropriate public policy (as well as separating adult from underage prostitution), while recognizing that coercion resides along a continuum. Nevertheless, some of the issues raised by Farley do not simply disappear through legalization -- they require active policy responses. First, I think that she is right in pointing out that legalization of some forms of prostitution in itself is not effective at undermining illegal or informal prostitution. (This is unlike the situation with alcohol, for instance, in the US, where the legal market, despite specific taxation, comes close to wiping out the illegal market.) Second, the conditions under which legal prostitution takes place, such as the sort of extra-legal constraints on the movement of prostitutes that are applied as informal conditions of licensing, need to be addressed. Third, drug, alcohol, and financial counseling, as well as ongoing efforts to ensure that coercion is not being applied, should be part of a robust regulatory regime. Fourth, protections for the privacy of licensed prostitutes are required, in part to ease exit from the sex industry, and in part to provide incentives for choosing the formal market over the much more dangerous informal alternative.

I hope to return to this topic soon -- a promise or a threat?

Labels: Nevada, prostitution, robustness, Sweden

http://vicesquad.blogspot.com/

Is Las Vegas really so bad?

Column saying it's the city most degrading to women sparks varied reactions

September 08, 2007

By Abigail Goldman, Las Vegas Sun
Las Vegas Sun

A Las Vegas phone book, flipped to page 862, features an advertisement for a "SMALL PETITE & VERY PRETTY" 18-year-old Korean girl who promises "NO HAPPY, NO PAY."

The ad was propped open before a panel of speakers to serve as a symbol of all that is exploitative and degrading to women in Clark County's "culture of prostitution." It was the centerpiece of last week's news conference called by researcher Melissa Farley to release her self-published study , "Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections."

Farley told the gathered media that prostitution creates an "atmosphere in the state where women are not seen as equal to men."

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert drew from Farley's study to conclude: "There is probably no city in America where women are treated worse than in Las Vegas."

Farley and Herbert are the latest entries into the ongoing debate over morality and civil liberty in Nevada.

For some Las Vegans, sizing up the city by its sins - the strip clubs, the explicit advertisements, the promise of girls direct to your room, the ubiquitous illegal prostitution - is too simple.

UNLV sociologist Barbara Brents said the notion that prostitution in Las Vegas degrades all the women who live here is wrong.

"The whole idea that just because prostitution exists here means that all women are sexually powerless and victimized is ridiculous," Brents said. "It's as if people are afraid of women's sexuality."

But UNLV communication professor Erika Engstrom said Las Vegas' hyper-sexualized environment - its advertising in particular - normalizes a dangerous vision of a woman as no more than her body, as if a cocktail waitress in heels and a low-cut leotard becomes her cleavage.

Farley and Herbert made much of the mobile billboards that roll up and down the Strip depicting a half-dressed woman begging to come to your room. Las Vegas residents are all too used to this cheap marketing, Engstrom said, and that's disturbing.

"The very fact that people think it's not a big deal tells you something," she said.

Selling sex is nothing new, but the line between what is and isn't acceptable is always moving in Las Vegas. Sometimes, MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman said, the line is hard to identify.

"There are a lot of things that we do very badly here when it comes to the images of women," Feldman said. "But there are a lot of things that we do well, like giving women really extraordinary opportunities in the workplace, by which I don't mean strippers."

Strippers are a delicate subject.

Herbert wrote , " Many of those girls are either prostitutes or one short step away."

That's a dangerous assumption, one that's out of date with feminists who see empowerment in the sex industry, said Brents, who studies prostitution in the state.

"Just because a woman works in the sex industry doesn't mean she's victimized," she said. "There are women who don't feel victimized at all , but they have a stronger sense of their own sexuality," she said.

That's the sort of statement that makes Farley and other activists who see all prostitution as exploitation cringe.

Dehumanizing women is excused by the cliche that anything goes in Sin City, Farley said, and that encourages sex traffickers to capitalize.

"Sex trafficking happens where men demand to buy women and where there is a context of impunity for buyers," she said. "It takes a village to build a prostitute."

Family Court Judge William Voy spends several hours a week reviewing the cases of juvenile prostitutes who are caught in Las Vegas. He told Herbert: "These cases will tear your heart out."

But he told the Sun he doesn't think that Las Vegas alone is creating these victims. Seventy percent of Voy's juvenile prostitution cases involve minors who come from out of state, from cities where they already worked as prostitutes. Voy noted that most jurisdictions practice a "catch and release" policy when it comes to child prostitutes.

"We're trying to help these kids," he said. "We're trying to make a concerted effort."

Terri Miller, civilian director of Metro's Anti - Trafficking League Against Slavery, said the shadow of the sex industry is cast on every woman who walks the Strip.

"It sets up women to be looked at in a dehumanizing way," Miller said. "Even women who might be just dressed in club attire, cocktail attire, are looked at askew."

Las Vegas, so often marketed as a place to do anything, is what you make of it.

"We build Las Vegas on the concept of adult freedom," Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority spokesman Vince Alberta said. "And that is defined by each individual."

Herbert singled out Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman for his notion that a legal red light district of "magnificent brothels" could eliminate the ills of illegal prostitution in the city.

At a news conference Thursday, Goodman explained there was more to the quote, that he couched his statement with the acknowledgement that his constituents were not ready for legal prostitution in Las Vegas. At least not yet.

"Smart people shouldn't be ostriches," he said. "They should recognize that prostitution takes place throughout the land."

Abigail Goldman can be reached at 259-8806 or at abigail.goldman@lasvegassun.com

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2007/sep/08/566640489.html

Are rampant gambling, prostitution part of the image Las Vegans want to create?

By Jon Ralston, Sun Columnist
Published in the Sun on September 9, 2007

After a week of talking about sex, we should not get too hot and bothered debating whether Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman is a tiresome buffoon or whether prostitution will be legalized. One question is settled; the other is moot.

But a discussion, maybe even an argument worth having, is what kind of community we strive to be and whether we are content to tell a tale of two cities. One is where Goodman, a Dickensian character if ever there were one, sets the tone, a place where anything that’s legal is just fine, where taste is optional, where no sin is too sinful. The other is a wholly different venue, one where parents are proud to raise their children, where culture, sophistication and erudition are prized, where family values refer to something other than mob mores.

Or, perhaps, there is a third way, where these two places co-exist, uneasily but peacefully, separately but equally. Sin City and Sun City, Spearmint Rhino and the Springs Preserve, the mob museum and The Meadows.

The valley’s schizophrenia has grown more and more acute as the area has sprawled, bringing with it not just metropolitan challenges — buckling infrastructures of all kinds — but also big-city trappings — high-quality medical, educational and recreational facilities. The schizophrenia, though, isn’t just between the Industrial Road strip club sleaze and the Summerlin or Green Valley verdant beauty. Even within neighborhoods far from the Strip or Glitter Gulch, residents are riven about what they want the city to be.

As beautiful as you may think the Green Valley Ranch or Red Rock might be as resort complexes, they are gaming establishments. And some people — myself among them — have argued for decades that once casinos were allowed to migrate beyond downtown and Las Vegas Boulevard South, any chance that Las Vegas could become a great, soulful city instead of a caricatured, soulless one vanished.

It’s not that I am anti-gaming — I’ve played a hand or hundred thousand of poker — or that I buy into every cliche about the social ills of gambling. But it is a different kind of business with a different kind of effect on communities.

Consider how this dovetails with the past week’s debate about sex for sale and the harrowing stories of women working in legal brothels told in Melissa Farley’s “Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connection.”

Whores are not Jane Fonda in “Klute,” supremely in control and empowered by their job, but more like the girls of “Deadwood,” sad-faced and haggard. But, Goodman and libertarians argue, women have a right to choose, as if most prostitutes choose a life on their backs the way a woman chooses to have an abortion.

It is this same right-to-choose, anything-goes view that creates a community ethos that cannot be contained — even mobile billboards now sell sex. There is no escape.

Just as — here’s the connection — there is no escape from gaming, the industry that fosters a Zeitgeist that cannot be seen as anything but inhibiting for the city’s maturity. The gamers have shown a ruthlessness that would make any brothel owner or pimp shudder. They supposedly don’t condone prostitution, which flourishes through strip clubs and outcall services — and in a casino or two. But, as Jack Sheehan reported, if the opportunity arises for them to go into the business, the gamers will leap at it. Just as they leapt at opportunities in New Jersey, on Indian reservations, and around the globe — in most cases, shortly after fretting about the threat to their bottom lines and stifling any talk of taxation.

The Stripcentric gamers may ensure we don’t pay an income tax, but they also gave us Gov. Jim Gibbons, who ensures no one will pay any taxes to pay for roads, schools, health care and so on. Others have culpability here, too, especially a business community that has had a free ride, with many getting rich quickly and then pulling up the drawbridge. But Las Vegas is inextricably linked with gaming and all it implies, including the prospect for illicit sex even as the industry itself has become schizophrenic, catering to a more upscale clientele while relying on slot players who look as sad and haggard as any exhausted hooker.

This is about preying on human weakness, selling with sizzle something that too often leaves you feeling empty, wondering if it was worth the cost. Sounds like prostitution, but the same goes for the industry that encourages this environment to exist.

That’s hardly debatable. And that’s Las Vegas. If we let it be.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program “Face to Face With Jon Ralston” on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the daily e-mail newsletter “RalstonFlash.com.” His column for the Las Vegas Sun appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or at ralston@vegas.com.

Posted at 02:33 AM in Jon Ralston | Permalink

http://politics.lasvegassun.com/2007/09/are-rampant-gam.html

Las Vegas Sun Letter: Mayor's leadership is ahead of its time

September 09, 2007

It is unfortunate that Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, an all too rare political leader who actually leads by expressing a vision for positive change, is so unfairly attacked by your paper and columnists Bob Herbert of the New York Times and Jon Ralston.

Your paper, and Messrs. Ralston and Herbert, cite the detestable exploitation of women, abuse of minors and human trafficking associated with the sex trade in lambasting Mayor Goodman's proposal to have legal brothels in Las Vegas.

Neither Mayor Goodman nor any other advocate (or person open to the idea) of legalizing the sex trade supports such atrocities. Yet it is precisely because such conduct occurs, and is not going to be stopped by the continued criminalization of the sex trade, that Mayor Goodman's proposal is so worthy of consideration.

Taking the sex trade out of the shadows, having it safely regulated, and having law enforcement root out the exploitation of minors and human trafficking, would do far more to champion and advance the rights of women (and eliminate the pimps and predators who prey on sex workers).

Taking issue with the mayor's taste (his repeated public displays of affection for gin, his appearances with showgirls, etc.) should not distract from serious consideration of his most intelligent proposal. His vision is like that of Nevada itself when it acquired an almost pariah status by legalizing gambling in the 1930s, an activity now viewed as perfectly acceptable (and legal) in almost every community in the United States.

Leon Greenberg, Las Vegas

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/debate/2007/sep/09/566621735.html

Jeff Simpson on the recent attention to the local sex trade

September 09, 2007

As often happens in Las Vegas, the most interesting news story of the week involved an outsider taking a shot at Sin City.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert sharply criticized Mayor Oscar Goodman for suggesting that legalized brothels might be a good idea in Las Vegas, which Herbert said set a tone of "systematic, institutionalized degradation" of women.

Oscar being Oscar, he swung back, threatening Herbert with a baseball bat and calling him a clown.

TV news broadcasts eagerly jumped into the fray, airing reports on the subject of prostitution, a ratings bonanza fueled by a few oft-repeated video loops of streetwalkers and interviews with former prostitutes.

Although I disagree with Goodman's tough talk, I think that his philosophical and pragmatic support of legalized prostitution makes sense, but I don't think that giant brothels are a good idea.

Just as the rest of the country does, we keep our heads in the sand in Las Vegas when it comes to the pervasiveness of the sex business.

We really don't pay much attention to our 10,000-plus streetwalkers, escorts, massage-parlor workers and exotic dancers unless there is violence at a strip club or a bust at a residential brothel or massage parlor.

Or when strip club kingpins use their abundance of cash to make politicians dance.

The convention and casino businesses make the city a natural host for strip clubs and for prostitution.

It is ridiculous to think that rigorous law enforcement would eliminate prostitution in the city.

When the Clark County sheriff took action 25 years ago to get rid of streetwalkers on the Strip, Metro was largely able to accomplish that goal - by effectively moving prostitutes inside the casinos or into escort work.

The smartest tack that Las Vegas and our law enforcement folks can take on prostitution is the one that we already implicitly follow.

We should crack down on the most egregious elements of the business: pimps and those who coerce women into prostitution; underage prostitutes and their pimps and customers; and streetwalkers.

Escorts and discreet working girls plying their trade in casinos should be the lowest law-enforcement priority, ignored unless they are hurting the casino or tourism businesses in some way.

Although we shouldn't discount the likelihood that some women are forced into prostitution, we shouldn't ignore the reality that many women choose the business.

In economic terms, they make up the supply that meets the demand of their customers, many of them conventioneers and tourists.

Financial and psychological support should be available for women who wish to transition out of the business.

Although many other countries wink at prostitution or allow brothels to operate openly, the Puritan streak in America runs deep.

The public relations backlash that would accompany the establishment of the "magnificant brothels" that Goodman talked about would be powerful. The negative publicity could harm the tourism, gaming and convention businesses, and that is something that we can't afford.

In fact, the brothels sprinkled around rural Nevada already cast our state in a bad light - not the idea that there is prostitution, which exists everywhere, but the fact that we are the only state in the country to so openly house the oldest profession.

I don't think Goodman should be criticized for his philosophical support of legal brothels in Las Vegas. It is a legitimate position to take on what I believe is a legitimate profession.

The time is not yet ripe for Goodman's proposal, but I believe the time has come to decriminalize discreet prostitution conducted behind closed doors, crack down on underage prostitution and pimps, and close down the brothels that Nevada allows outside of Clark and Washoe counties.

Jeff Simpson is business editor of the Las Vegas Sun and executive editor of its sister publication In Business Las Vegas. He can be reached at 259-4083 or at simpson@lasvegassun.com.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/consumer/2007/sep/09/566665623.html

Another irresponsible piece on sex work

Bob Herbert

Melissa Farley

moral panic

New York Times

sex

sex work

trafficking

Submitted by Elizabeth on 9 September 2007 - 7:55am.

I'm trying to decide what makes me maddest about Bob Herbert's recent op-ed pieces about sex work in Las Vegas.

It might be his use of a tug-on-your-heartstrings story and alarmist title in today's piece, "Escape from Las Vegas." In that piece he uses Amber, a 19 year old with a disabled mother and an abusive and drug addicted step father, who finds herself stripping in Las Vegas as representative of all sex workers:

Amber's story is far more typical than many Americans would like to acknowledge. There are many thousands of Ambers across the country, naive kids from dysfunctional homes who are thrown willy-nilly into the adult, take-no-prisoners environment of the sex trade with no preparation, no guidance and no support at all.

They are the prey in the predatory world of pimps, johns and perverts that goes by the euphemism: adult entertainment. (This is a TimesSelect piece which means it requires paid registration for most readers, though I'm told that readers with a ".edu" email address can sign up for TimesSelect for free.)

Herbert is often a strong advocate of the kinds of social changes that would help the poor and reduce the amount of injustice and inequality in the United States. If he were writing about runaways who were seduced or coerced into the drug trade and then exploited and abused, he'd be calling for all kinds of social changes to help support poor families, to help improve education in poor neighborhoods, and to reform the juvenile justice system so that the kids who get caught in it would be truly helped.

But as soon as the exploitation becomes sexual Herbert's solution is no longer to make sure that kids from disadvantaged neighborhoods or troubled homes have the support the need not to end up on the street, but instead seems to be to demonize an entire industry many parts of which don't involve kids and are not more exploitive than lots of other kinds of exploitive work. That kind of irrational panic won't help address the needs of people who are forced into sex work or the needs of people who choose sex work from a list of better and worse options.

Or maybe I'm angry because of his reliance on antipornography and anti-sex-work researcher Melissa Farley, treating her as an expert on the sex industry even though she shows little understanding of its complexities. Melissa Farley has compared Kink.com to Abu Ghraib, has written that there is no such thing as safe, sane and consensual BDSM, and since she believes that all pornography represents abuse and prostitution she recommends that nobody should keep or use any kind of pornography, and that if a person is involved in a relationship with a porn user that relationship should be ended.

Though she is touted as an expert researcher and holds a Ph.D. as a clinical psychologist, her positions are hardly backed up by scientific evidence or reasoning.

Then again, maybe I'm angry about the overgeneralizations and irresponsibly inflammatory and unsupported statements he makes. For example, from "City as Predator," published on the Times op-ed page on September 4, 2007:

What is not widely understood is how coercive all aspects of the sex trade are. The average age of entry into prostitution is extremely young. The prostitutes are ruthlessly controlled by pimps, club owners and traffickers. (This is also a TimesSelect piece. )

Huge numbers of foreign women are trafficked into Vegas. The legions of Asian women in the massage parlors and escort services did not come flocking to Vegas from suburban U.S.A. (Also from the Sept. 4 "City as Predator" piece)

Phrases like "all aspects," "extremely young," "huge numbers" and "legions of Asian women" all keep readers from learning about the complexity of the sex industry while keeping us in a state of moral panic about it. That's not a good way to create a rational solution to a problem.

And then there are passages like this one:

The women are exploited in every way. Most of the money they receive from johns goes to the pimps, the brothel owners, the escort service managers and so forth. Strippers and lap dancers have to pay for the right to dance in the clubs, and the money they get in tips has to be shared with the club owners, bartenders, bouncers, etc. ("City as Predator")

Now, if Herbert were writing about forced labor or exploitive working conditions in any other industry he'd be calling, rightly, for reforms in the industry. He wouldn't be reflexively linking that industry to slavery and then calling for the whole industry to be abolished. If Herbert were writing about the exploitation in agricultural work he wouldn't suggest we stop farming. He'd call for stronger enforcement of workers rights laws. But here he'd prefer to say the work simply can't be done in conditions reasonably free from exploitation.

Had he been talking about any other kind of exploitive work I suspect he'd also have been critical of the cuts in health care, education and job opportunities that produce the kinds of choices with which Amber was faced. But not here. No, because it's sex work we don't have to criticize other policy. We just have to condemn the sex industry.

It's true that sex work is often exploitive and sometimes dangerous. Many kinds of work are exploitive and dangerous. It's also true that within the sex industry the jobs done by the poorest workers are probably the most exploitive and most dangerous. That is also true of many industries. And it's true that we should be fighting exploitation and abuse. It just isn't true that to do so we need to try to eliminate all sex work.

If we want to help people like Amber, the young woman in Herbert's op-ed piece today, we need to stop singling out the sex industry as a monolithic evil and start treating it like an industry. We need to organize workers, we need to fight for reasonable working conditions and we need to be addressing issues of poverty and unequal access to public goods like education and health care so that people are not forced to make brutal choices in the first place.

And if we're serious about combatting trafficking we need to broaden our focus on forced labor to include all the industries where it occurs. (See this piece by Debbie Nathan for a poignant reminder of Trafficking Victims Protection Act often neglects those trafficked for nonsexual purposes.)

Email letters@nytimes.com to send a letter to the editor of the New York Times. Confront the assumptions made by Herbert in his pieces and challenge the use of "experts" like Melissa Farley. Letters are most likely to be published if they keep to about 150 words, are well written, have a clear position, and directly refer to a recent Times article. Click here for the Times's own advice on writing letters to the editor.

Technorati Tags: New York Times, Melissa Farley, sex, moral panic, trafficking, sex work, Bob Herbert

__________________________

...because public space really matters!

Elizabeth

COMMENTS:

Bugs

Submitted by JanieBelle on 9 September 2007 - 7:24pm.

This stuff really bugs me.

I'm about sick to death of the assumption that sex is inherently bad/evil/sinful, which is the obvious root of why sex work is assumed to be inherently bad/evil/sinful.

Ever walked into a McDonald's Mr. Herbert? Why are you not calling for the abolition of fast food restaurants? Why not make sweeping generalizations about the dazed seventeen year old cashiers who dropped out of high school to support their children and drug-addicted, abusive parents and boyfriends?

Oh, that's right. Then there'd be no one to ring up your greasy half-cooked burgers and fries. We couldn't have that, now could we?

I've had a piece on trafficking on the back burner for some time now, hampered by research sources. Unfortunately, every source I can find automatically conflates trafficking with prostitution, without ever making the proper case for a cause-effect relationship. It's just assumed without merit, and every single source I've looked at simply adds in statistics about sex work and then says something like "see how bad trafficking is? Look at all the sex workers!"

Some of them even go to great lengths to denounce the movement to legalize sex work, and accuse those who advocate it of being a causation of trafficking, without ever considering that the two are separate issues, or ever exploring the idea that if sex work were legal, there'd be no reason for trafficking in people for sex work.

It's all part and parcel of the assumption that sex and sex work are inherently bad/evil/sinful. That just pisses me off.

__________________________

Kisses,

JanieBelle

Dream a little dream of me.

Groups that don't conflate trafficking with prostitution

Submitted by Elizabeth on 9 September 2007 - 8:05pm.

JanieBelle, perhaps these can help you with your reserach: 

GlobalRights.org is a global grass roots human rights organization with a very smart approach to the issue of trafficking. Start with these documents. (You couldn't go wrong by first reading the testimony of Ann Jordon, Director, Initiative Against Trafficking in Persons, Global Rights before the House Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism back in March.)  

International Union of Sex Workers has a page on trafficking too, and their policy statement puts the emphasis on stopping the traffickers, not the sex workers. 

Just two places to start.

__________________________

...because public space really matters!

Elizabeth

Thank you Elizabeth

Submitted by JanieBelle on 10 September 2007 - 1:40pm.

I appreciate the assist.

__________________________

Kisses,

JanieBelle

Legal prostitution doesn't work

Submitted by Shelly (not verified) on 12 September 2007 - 12:41am.

If you don't get the difference between hamburgers and humans, you may need to take a little time out and think about it. Any time you are selling women for sex to men, you will be dealing with crime and violence. No matter how much you try to regulate it, the transaction is inherently about a power imbalance. Those of you who think you are "empowering" yourselves by selling time in your vagina are just kidding yourselves. You are being used. Period. Amsterdam and Germany are getting rid of LEGAL prostitution because it INCREASES trafficking. Wherever prostitution is legal, the illegal trade shows up to undercut the prices and offer the extras (condom-free sex, children, etc.) Buying and selling people is wrong. Johns and pimps should go to jail until they figure that out. I will be very surprised if this comment gets posted. ShellyB

Be Surprised

Submitted by JanieBelle on 12 September 2007 - 12:51am.

The entire point of this site is to discuss.  It'd be kinda dumb to not allow... y'know... discussion. __________________________

Kisses,

JanieBelle

Assertions

Submitted by JanieBelle on 12 September 2007 - 1:10am.

Now, that aside, I'd like to see some evidence for your assertions.

You said:

If you don't get the difference between hamburgers and humans, you may need to take a little time out and think about it.

If you're comparing sex workers to hamburgers, I'd suggest you take your own advice. I was comparing consenting adults exchanging a service for cash to consenting adults exchanging a service for cash.  See how that works?

Any time you are selling women for sex to men, you will be dealing with crime and violence. No matter how much you try to regulate it, the transaction is inherently about a power imbalance.

And this is different from any other type of work, how?  Selling people is itself a crime.  Providing a service in exchange for money occurs millions or billions of times each day.  Each time a woman sells a man a hamburger, is that also inherently about a power imbalance.  Are you advocating that women refuse to do business with men?

Those of you who think you are "empowering" yourselves by selling time in your vagina are just kidding yourselves.

Because you say so?

You are being used. Period.

Yes, and that's why there's an exchange of money, dear.  I'm also being used if I wait a table or change the oil in a car.  It's about exchanging a service I'm happy to provide for money my customer is happy to part with.  Welcome to the world of jobs.

Amsterdam and Germany are getting rid of LEGAL prostitution because it INCREASES trafficking.

I assume you have a source for this statement?  I'd like you to share that. 

Wherever prostitution is legal, the illegal trade shows up to undercut the prices and offer the extras (condom-free sex, children, etc.)

Ditto.  Show me the source. 

Buying and selling people is wrong.

I doubt you'd get any disagreement from anyone here.  Fortunately, we're not talking about buying and selling people.  You're conflating sex work and trafficking. 

Johns and pimps should go to jail until they figure that out.

Well, I would agree that if it's illegal to give, it should be illegal to receive.  I just don't agree that either should be illegal between consenting adults, and you've given me no real reason to change my mind so far. 

I will be very surprised if this comment gets posted.

Well, fortunately this isn't Fundy Central, Fox News, or Bob Jones University.  Interestingly, it's my understanding that we allow disagreement, discussion, and the free exchange of ideas here.  It's sort of the point.

__________________________

Kisses,

JanieBelle

http://sexinthepublicsquare.org/node/379

Book exposes harsh reality of Nevada prostitution

Published on Taipei Times
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/09/10/2003378104

Julie Bindel

THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Monday, Sep 10, 2007, Page 9

There is only one place in the US where brothels are legal, and that's Nevada -- a state in which prostitution has been considered a necessary service industry since the days when the place was populated solely by prospecters. There are at least 20 legal brothels in business now. Not so many, you might think, but these state-sanctioned operations punch above their weight in public relations (PR) terms.

Take HBO's hit documentary series, Cathouse, which features the most famous of the Nevadan brothels, the Moonlight Bunny Ranch. Tune in and you'd be forgiven for thinking that all prostitutes in Nevada are on to a good thing. The women speak coyly about loving their work, their customers, their bosses.

"The series sheds light not only on the numerous joys and challenges of working at a legal brothel," says the HBO Web site, "but on the therapeutic benefits that customers take with them after a stint at the Ranch."

Given such great PR, a new book -- Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections -- makes interesting reading. During a two-year investigation, the author, Melissa Farley, visited eight legal brothels in Nevada, interviewing 45 women and a number of brothel owners. Far from enjoying better conditions than those who work illegally, the prostitutes she spoke to are often subject to slave-like conditions.

Described as "pussy penitentiaries" by one interviewee, the brothels tend to be in the middle of nowhere, out of sight of ordinary Nevadans. (Brothels are officially allowed only in counties with populations of fewer than 400,000, so prostitution remains an illegal -- though vast -- trade in conurbations such as Las Vegas.) The brothel prostitutes often live in prison-like conditions, locked in or forbidden to leave.

"The physical appearance of these buildings is shocking," Farley said. "They look like wide trailers with barbed wire around them -- little jails."

The rooms all have panic buttons, but many women told her that they had experienced violent and sexual abuse from the customers and pimps.

"I saw a grated iron door in one brothel," Farley said. "The women's food was shoved through the door's steel bars between the kitchen and the brothel area. One pimp starved a woman he considered too fat. She made a friend outside the brothel who would throw food over the fence for her."

Another pimp told Farley matter-of-factly that many of the women working for him had histories of sexual abuse and mental ill-health.

"Most," he said, "have been sexually abused as kids. Some are bipolar, some are schizophrenic."

RIGHTS

Then there is the fact that legal prostitutes seem to lose the rights ordinary citizens enjoy. From 1987, prostitutes in Nevada have been legally required to be tested once a week for sexually transmitted diseases and monthly for HIV. Customers are not required to be tested.

The women must present their medical clearance to the police station and be fingerprinted, even though such registration is detrimental: If a woman is known to work as a prostitute, she may be refused health insurance, face discrimination in housing or future employment, or endure accusations of unfit motherhood. In addition, there are countries that will not permit registered prostitutes to settle, so their movement is severely restricted.

Those who support the system claim that the regulations may help prevent pimping, which they see as a worse form of exploitation to that which occurs in brothels. According to Farley's research though, most women in legal brothels have pimps outside anyway, be they husbands or boyfriends. And, as Chong Kim, a survivor of prostitution who has worked with Farley, said, some of the legal brothel owners "are worse than any pimp. They abuse and imprison women and are fully protected by the state."

The women are expected to live in the brothels and to work 12-to 14-hour shifts. Mary, a prostitute in a legal brothel for three years, outlines the restrictions.

"You are not allowed to have your own car," she said. "It's like [the pimp's] own little police state."

When a customer arrives, a bell rings, and the women immediately have to present themselves in a line-up, so he can choose who to buy.

Sheriffs in some counties of Nevada also enforce practices that are illegal. In one city, for example, prostitutes are not allowed to leave the brothel after 5pm, are not permitted in bars, and, if entering a restaurant, must use a back door and be accompanied by a man.

So how did Farley gain access to her interviewees? Those in control of the women were confident that they would not be honest about the conditions, she said.

"Pimps love to brag, and I know how to listen," she said.

Although left alone with the women during interviews, Farley noted that they were all very nervous, constantly looking out for the brothel owners.

Investigating the sex industry -- even the legal part -- can be dangerous. During one visit to a brothel, Farley asked the owner what the women thought of their work.

"I was polite," she wrote in her book, "as he condescendingly explained what a satisfying and lucrative business prostitution was for his `ladies.' I tried to keep my facial muscles expressionless, but I didn't succeed. He whipped a revolver out of his waistband, aimed it at my head and said: `You don't know nothing about Nevada prostitution, lady. You don't even know whether I will kill you in the next five minutes.'"

Farley found that the brothel owners typically pocket half of the women's earnings. Additionally, the women must pay tips and other fees to the staff of the brothel, as well as finders' fees to the cab drivers who bring the customers. They are also expected to pay for their own condoms, wet wipes and use of sheets and towels. It is rare, the women told Farley, to refuse a customer.

One former Nevada brothel worker wrote on a Web site: "After your airline tickets, clothing, full-price drinks and other miscellaneous fees you leave with little. To top it off, you are ... fined for just about everything. Fall asleep on your 14-hour shift and get US$100 fine, late for a line-up, US$100-US$500 in fines." (The women generally negotiate directly with the men over the money; what they get depends on the quality of the brothel. It can be anything from US$50 for oral sex to US$1,000 for the night, but that doesn't take account of the brothel's cut.)

SHOCKING

Farley found a "shocking" lack of services for women in Nevada wishing to leave prostitution.                                                                                                                                             

"When prostitution is considered a legal job instead of a human rights violation," Farley said, "Why should the state offer services for escape?"

More than 80 percent of those interviewed told Farley they wanted to leave prostitution.

The effect of all this on the women in the brothels is "negative and profound," Farley said.

"Many were suffering what I'd describe as the traumatic effects of ongoing sexual assaults and those that had been in the brothels for some time were institutionalized. That is, they were passive, timid, compliant, and deeply resigned," she said.

"No one really enjoys getting sold," said Angie, who Farley interviewed. "It's like you sign a contract to be raped."

Meanwhile, illegal brothels are on the increase in Nevada, as they are in other parts of the world where brothels are legalized.

Nevada's illegal prostitution industry is already nine times greater than the state's legal brothels.

"Legalizing this industry does not result in the closing down of illegal sex establishments," Farley said, "it merely gives them further permission to exist."

Farley found evidence, for example, that the existence of state-sanctioned brothels can have a direct effect on attitudes to women and sexual violence. Her survey of 131 young men at the University of Nevada found the majority viewed prostitution as normal, assumed that it was not possible to rape a prostitute, and were more likely than young men in other states to use women in both legal and illegal prostitution.

The solution, Farley believes, is to educate people about the realities of legalized abuse of women.

"Once the people of Nevada learn of [the prostitutes'] suffering and emotional distress, and their lack of human rights, they, like me, will be persuaded that legal prostitution is an institution that just can't be fixed up or made a little better. It has to be abolished," Farley said.

The prevailing attitude in Nevada remains as it was a few centuries back though -- that men have sexual "needs" that they have a right to fulfil. Outside one of the legal brothels a sign reads: "He who hesitates, masturbates."

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/09/10/2003378104

John Ralston News Flash

Monday, September 10, 2007

Email: ralston@vegas.com

This dispatch prepared for GUY ROCHA

BlackBerry users: Click on "view as a Web page" for better viewing.

A COUPLE OF POLITICAL NUGGETS: 

Nugget No. 1 – In the wake of Melissa Farley's screed against prostitution, which sparked New York Times columnist Bob Herbert to his anti-Vegas crusade, another professor has provided me with some research about Farley. Ronald Weitzer, a sociology professor at George Washington, has extensively studied her work and those of others he labels "abolitionist feminists."

Weitzer argues in a couple of scholarly treatises that Farley and others treat prostitution as a form of violence, exaggerate numbers to make their case and have been embraced by the Bush Administration. He claims they have "ideological blinders" that causes them to portray prostitution as "evil and a human rights violation."

For another point of view, his pieces are worth reading and I have posted them here: www.vegaspundit.typepad.com

As I said last week, Farley is a polemicist and her political views, amplified by Steve Miller's conspiracy theories, are not that interesting or relevant. What is relevant is the picture she paints of life in the rural brothels, portraits that are harrowing.

I guess Bob Herbert didn't take Oscar's baseball bat threat too seriously

September 10, 2007

The recent articles on the Nevada sex scene have given bloggers plenty to post the last few days, so why not go with the flow; hopefully, the attention will keep Oscar saying stupid things, his stock in trade, giving bloggers continued blogisms...or is that blogasms.

New York Times, September 8, 2007
Escape From Las Vegas
By Bob Herbert

Amber is 19 years old and on Sunday she caught a flight out of Las Vegas's McCarran International Airport and went home to a small town in Minnesota, not far from the Iowa border.

I'm rooting for her. She's low on funds ("I've got my ticket, that's about all," she said), and she's at a crucial turning point in her life.

The question is whether she will go off to college in Florida, and stick with it, which she insists is what she wants to do, or whether she will slip back into her life as a stripper and lap dancer, which is so often the start of the descent into the hell of prostitution.

"I hate the dancing," she told me. "Sometimes I think I don't have a strong enough mind for it, because of the way people treat me."

I met Amber in Las Vegas last week. I was with Melissa Farley, a psychologist and researcher who was asked by the head of the U.S. State Department's anti-trafficking office to do a study of the sex trade and its consequences in Nevada. (She published the book-length study this week under the title, "Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections.")

Amber's story is far more typical than many Americans would like to acknowledge. There are many thousands of Ambers across the country, naïve kids from dysfunctional homes who are thrown willy-nilly into the adult, take-no-prisoners environment of the sex trade with no preparation, no guidance and no support at all.

They are the prey in the predatory world of pimps, johns and perverts that goes by the euphemism: adult entertainment.

Amber's parents are divorced. Her mother, with whom she lives when she's in Minnesota, is both physically and emotionally ill.

For awhile, she said, she had a stepfather who physically abused both her and her mother.

"He was on meth," Amber said. "He'd hit us, scream at my mother. We'd make dinner and he'd go into a rage and throw away the whole dinner. So we'd go without dinner that night."

Amber was both shy and rebellious and began dancing at a strip club in Minnesota on a dare. That was several months ago.

One afternoon a wrestling coach from her high school came in while she was dancing. "I was topless," she said, "and I just wanted to crawl into a hole."

She saved enough money to go to Vegas and tried out for a job there. "The manager told me, 'You can't work for me. You're too big,' " she said. "So I didn't eat for four days. All I had that whole time was one bowl of cereal and some water. It was horrible. I lost 10 pounds and went back. He made me take off all my clothes and dance for him. And then he said I was still too big. You have to be practically anorexic to dance for him."

I asked why she continued dancing even though she hated it. Her face took on the puzzled look of a kid who had no good answer for not doing her homework.

"I don't know," she said. "It's not very logical, is it?"

She got a job at Sheri's Cabaret on South Highland Avenue, which trumpets to all and sundry that its dancers are completely nude. The owners of the cabaret also own Sheri's Ranch, a legal brothel about an hour's ride outside of Vegas.

"It's unbelievable the way the customers degrade you," Amber said. "Their hands are all over you and they're always trying to have sex with you."

I asked if she'd ever been tempted to give in. She waited a long moment before answering.

"Sometimes I am," she said. "Sometimes a guy will offer a lot of money, and I might think that could help with whatever I need for that month. But then I think, I just can't do that. Nobody should violate my body like that."

I asked Amber why she was willing to talk candidly and on the record about her experiences. She said, "I want people to know what it's like for us. They think we're just a bunch of lowlifes who like to get naked for money. We're not. We go through a lot."

When I asked her if she ever wanted to get married and raise a family, she was unequivocal.

"No" she said. "I don't want any of that. I just feel if I get married the guy will change and show his true colors. I don't want that to happen to me."

She swears she's going to school and will try to find work in the fashion industry.

I asked if she thought she would ever go back to dancing.

"Probably not," she said.

Posted by Zounds Off on September 10, 2007 5:01 PM | Permalink 

http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/business_politics/

Fantasies, Well Meant

By BOB HERBERT

September 11, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

I must have hit a nerve. While in Las Vegas last week, I interviewed the mayor, Oscar Goodman, who enthusiastically explained how legalizing prostitution and creating a series of "magnificent brothels" could be a boon to his city's development.

Vegas is already a paradise for pimps, johns and perverts, and I accused the mayor in a column of setting the tone "for the systematic, institutionalized degradation" of women.

Mr. Goodman was not pleased. He snarled to the local press that he had no use for me, and added, "I'll take a baseball bat and break his head if he ever comes here."

The mayor, who made a name for himself as a defense lawyer for mobsters, loves to slip into a clownish, tough-guy persona. (He never lets anyone forget that he had a walk-on as himself in the movie "Casino.") But behind his bluster is a serious issue that should be addressed.

A lot of people more thoughtful than Oscar Goodman believe that prostitution should be legalized as a way of protecting and empowering the women who go into the sex trade. I've lost patience with those arguments, however well meaning. Real-world prostitution, in whatever guise, bears no resemblance at all to the empowerment fantasies of prostitution proponents. I have never seen such vulnerable, powerless women as those in the sex trade, legal or illegal.

At Sheri's Ranch, a legal brothel about an hour's ride outside of Vegas, the women have to respond like Pavlov's dog to a bell that might ring at any hour of the day or night. It could be 4 a.m., and the woman might be sleeping. Or she might not be feeling well. Too bad.

When that electronic bell rings, she has five minutes to get to the assembly area, a large room where she will line up with the other women, virtually naked, and submit to a humiliating inspection by any prospective customer who happens to drop by.

"It's not fun," one of the women whispered to me during a tour of the brothel.

The first thing to understand about prostitution, including legal prostitution, is that the element of coercion is almost always present. Despite the fiction that they are "independent contractors," most so-called legal prostitutes have pimps — the state-sanctioned pimps who run the brothels and, in many cases, a second pimp who controls all other aspects of their lives (and takes the bulk of their legal earnings).

They are hardly empowered. Years of studies have shown that most prostitutes are pushed into the trade in their early teens by grown men. A large percentage are victims of incest or other forms of childhood sexual abuse. Most are dirt poor. Many are drug-addicted.

And most are plagued by devastatingly low levels of self esteem.

And then there are the armies of women and girls who are trafficked into the sex trade by organized criminals, both inside and outside of the U.S.

That a city, a state or any other governmental entity in the U.S. could legally sanction the sexual degradation of women and girls under any circumstances, much less those who are so extremely vulnerable, is an atrocity. And if you don't think legalized prostitution is about degradation, consider the "date room" at Sheri's. That's a small room where a quiet dinner for two can be served. Beneath the tiny table is a couple of towels and a cushion for the woman to kneel on.

The only one empowered in that situation is the john.

Mayor Goodman's concept of magnificence notwithstanding, Nevada's legal brothels are not nice places. "The only place I've ever had a gun pulled on me was in a legal brothel," said Melissa Farley, a psychologist and researcher who has studied the sex trade in Nevada for the past two and a half years.

Ms. Farley, who is in her 60s and has the demeanor of a college professor, was threatened at gunpoint by a legal pimp who didn't like her attitude. "I tried to change the look on my face in a hurry," she said.

Any honest investigation of the facts, as opposed to abstract theories, of prostitution — in any form — would reveal a horror show. That's why the authorities in so many other countries that have given an official green light to prostitution, including Germany and the Netherlands, have been revisiting their policies.

Legal prostitution tends to increase, not decrease, illegal prostitution, in part by creating a friendlier climate for demand. It tends to increase, not decrease, sex trafficking. And the recent explosion of prostitution in all its forms promotes the sexualization of girls at ever younger ages.

Oscar Goodman should be viewed as a wake-up call. As a society, we should be offering help to the many thousands of women who would like to escape prostitution, and providing alternatives to those in danger of being pulled into it.

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/opinion/11herbert.html?th&emc=th

Legalization Without Representation

Sept. 11, 2007

Readers respond to Bob Herbert's Sept. 11 column, "Fantasies, Well Meant."

Scott Willett, New York: Hi, Bob. First, let me say that I agree with almost everything I've ever read in your column, but I don't know how I feel about your opinion on prostitution. I haven't studied it the way you apparently have, and doubtless many women are victimized in such a profession. But it's hard for me to understand why a woman should be restrained from using her body the way she sees fit. If the classic feminist argument about abortion — that a woman should have a right to control her own body — works on that issue, why shouldn't it work when a woman wants to do something with her body that isn't as highly valued? Where do we draw the line? If a woman isn't forced into that situation, and I certainly don't argue that she should be, then why is it wrong for her to freely choose it, whether or not you think it devalues her?

I've never been to a prostitute, but I have difficulty in seeing the argument that two consenting adults shouldn't be able to make any arrangement they want, so long as neither of them is doing something to the other that isn't mutually acceptable. And this culture's take on sex is far from healthy. The need for sex, sometimes as close as a person might be able to get to experiencing love, is something completely human. Who says that prostitutes don't play a valuable role in society — perhaps even reducing violence among men who would otherwise get into real trouble? I have no facts or figures on this stuff, and you've obviously looked into it in some detail, but my gut tells me it's wrong for you or someone of your turn of mind to impose your values this way in a free society. It seems to make sense to regulate the practice, allow women who do it some protection under the law, and try to limit the spread of disease in enforcing medical oversight and whatnot. You've probably heard all of this before and so disagree with what I've said, but I'd be interested in a response if you have time. If not, I certainly understand. Best wishes and, as always, thanks for writing in such a thought-provoking way.

Cory E. Friedman, Crown Point, N.Y.: Unfortunately, it's a slippery slope when society legalizes sin for profit. First gambling, then prostitution, eventually extortion and murder for hire. Each step further desensitizes society to conduct which can never be stamped out, given human nature, but should be suppressed, for reasons we used to be able to understand — like it's just wrong a judgmental word no longer uttered in polite company and detrimental to society as a whole. Humans are just incapable of seeing the line between liberty and license.

Marty Hykin, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada: I read your columns and generally find myself in strong agreement with you on all issues. Prostitution is not a central issue in my personal life but, as it happens, I have a friend here in Victoria who is bound and determined to establish a legal brothel here. For whatever reasons of her own, she has a concern for the women in the sex trade, and her notion is to provide a decent, safe, non-exploitive working environment for her own employees, and to use the profits of this business to provide benefits, education, pensions or whatever she can to other sex trade workers, either to make their lives safer or to help them out of the sex trades altogether.

As you have obviously put much thought into this subject, I wonder if there is any room in your thinking for the sort of thing my friend here is proposing? What accommodation can we make in our societies to reduce the harm? In what way should we think about it? Like many other ills, I'm sure it would vanish in a utopian world, but for the time being, what?

I see the working girls on the street here in Victoria almost daily, many of them quite young, many addicted, many are aboriginal natives. All seem unhappy and feel as though they have no alternatives. I know that were I to take each one and give her a warm place to live, a decent job, etc., she would only be replaced by another. I'm not asking for, nor expecting, a simple answer, but would be most interested in your thoughts on where we can hold these people, this business in our minds and hearts.

Thanks, and thanks for your good work.

MJCIV, Mass.: The sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote about how there is only so much deviance a society can stand before it has to reform itself, making behaviors that used to be taboo acceptable, then drifting once again toward greater deviance. Legalized prostitution is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Sickening. We have lost our way.

Harry Abraham, Philadelphia: I don't fully agree with everything Mr. Herbert has to say about prostitution. But to the extent he is correct, he also makes the case for legalizing drugs.

Here in Philadelphia and nearby Camden it appears that most prostitutes are drug addicts. And Mr. Herbert is correct that in many cases the girl has a man — not always a pimp in the traditional sense — with whom she shares her proceeds. Many of these girls are white, suburban or rural women who turned to drugs out of boredom and came to the places where they could earn the money to support their habit. Men who will not sell their bodies turn to misdemeanor theft to support their habits. Sometimes the happy couple will rob together.

The goal of making drugs legal would have to be to eliminate most crime now related to drugs. This is not limited to putting dealers and distributors out of business. To achieve this goal one of two things would have to happen: The legal price would have to be well below the street price resulting in less prostitution and theft to earn the same amount of drugs, or — in a significantly enlightened society — drugs would be provided free for anyone stating that they would otherwise turn to crime.

The addicts that can afford the drugs are of sufficient number that providing free drugs should not cost anything for the taxpayers, who save considerable money by not getting robbed. And the profits generated by selling drugs can go into treatment and education. Right now there's very little public treatment for addicts wanting to get off the street. And society does nothing but put roadblocks in the way of addicts trying to get sober. As for education, it has been remarkably successful in reducing cigarette smoking.

Legalizing drugs is often a flashpoint for arguments. But I don't know one person that avoids heroin solely because he or she would be breaking the law by using. How many such people do you know? 

Tom Healy, New York: I found your column about the troubling consequences of legalized prostitution very persuasive. Among other things, it made me wonder what your thoughts are about legalizing drugs — a public policy move I've always assumed would be, on balance, a wiser strategy than the so-called war on drugs. But maybe not. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this parallel issue where human frailty, pain and criminality always seem to mix. Thanks. 

Darden Cavalcade, Alexandria, Va.: Mr. Herbert, I don't mean to sound like the defender of a trade that I despise, but I think you have used trivial examples to make your case for exploitation. Millions work in perfectly honorable occupations where they are expected to respond to signals in the performance of their work and must work against deadlines — airline pilots and reporters, for example.

And when you claim coercion in prostitution you are exactly right. In legalized bordellos, the coercion is often from family members. You ought to read a book entitled “Brothel,” written by a doctor who observed the operation of a legal brothel in Nevada as part of a public health study.

As between evils, legal prostitution is less than illegal prostitution with its pimps, beatings, drugs, and disease. Prostitutes lead a horrible life, I believe, but some forms are less awful than others.

Leora Lev, Brookline, Mass.: Thank you for your lucid, compassionate, humane and urgently necessary article, and for standing up to Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman. As a women's- and gender-studies professor, I am dismayed by the renewed vigor with which our culture — as well, inexplicably, as some of my third-wave feminist counterparts — is glorifying stripping, prostitution, and sex clubs as somehow liberating for women, presumably permitting the female body a new sexual freedom and/or civil rights that those stodgy second-wavers Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan, or, if they have ever bothered to read her, Simone de Beauvoir, would repress. But given the prevalence of interconnected misogyny, homophobia, and racism that gets performed within our current penchant for making a spectacle of the female body in yet new forms of debasement — pole-dancing parties, TV shows in which women compete to undergo multiple invasive surgeries to become The Swan, in which beauty is posited as a white, blond Barbie doll ideal the child-prostitute gear now touted by mainstream clothiers, training little girls for their glorious roles as friends with benefits to older boys, the new labioplasty surgeries undergone by perfectly normal women so they can look like Playboy bunnies and the desperate situations of the vast majority of women who do not choose but are forced, in myriad ways, into stripping and prostitution — it is refreshing to see a dissenting voice asking us all to reconsider our policies, practices, and the deeply misogynist attitudes at their core. Thank you for standing up to yet one more blustering bully and would-be gangster 

Suzy, Boca Raton, Fla.: Last summer we vacationed in Holland with very dear friends who are Dutch. The husband admits that his first sexual experiences were with a legal prostitute, as is common among young Dutch boys. His comment on the positive is that this initiation works well for both the boys and the girlfriends they later initiate. He also commends the government for keeping the whole thing very healthy and safe. On the other hand, he and his wife are quick to point out that those women are rarely Dutch themselves, and what degradation does that in itself imply?

James Linkin, New York: Legally, it is often difficult to distinguish between sex for money and sex for other considerations. In reality, sex is always traded for something of value, tangible or no, even within marriage.

The problem of exploitation arises because, whether or not it is legal or tolerated or both, sex workers are uniquely vulnerable. Unless they are directly protected by the state, they will become crime victims. And yes, sex work is inherently humiliating and degrading, and relatively few sex workers are not deeply scarred by the experience, if not ultimately killed by it.

Nearly all societies view sex work as a permanent indictment on one's personal record, for lack of a better phrase. But that disapprobation is in part what creates demand. And even nudity on the Web, even when not salacious, can wreck a person's career, as we have recently seen. That speaks more about our attitudes than any real transgression of morals or dignity.

What we should all be able to agree upon is that the point of enforcement for the illegal sex trade is generally wrong and counterproductive. People — not just women — who work in the sex trade should never be at risk of arrest, and should always receive our full support and protection. It is their patrons, and especially their pimps, who should be the object of our enduring and unyielding wrath.

Miranda Worthen, San Francisco: Mr. Herbert misunderstands the goal of many who advocate legalizing prostitution. Anti-prostitution laws were originally a way to punish women, not protect them. As the laws stand where prostitution is illegal, a prostitute has standing to report crimes against her or to seek help to leave an abusive brothel situation. Current laws continue to penalize the women, who, as he pointed out, are often coerced or find themselves in threatening situations if they work in a brothel. Laws that decriminalize the act of being a prostitute but criminalize pimps, brothel owners and brothel managers would make it easier for women to report crimes perpetrated against them. It would also make it easier for women to leave abusive situations. 

Both England and Sweden have recently implemented laws seeking to do just that, although in Sweden these laws criminalize soliciting sex and so prostitutes complain that it forces them further underground.  
Almost no one who advocates for the decriminalization of prostitution believes that prostitution is a great career. We just believe that women should not be exploited by a legal system that punishes them alone, and where they are also easy prey to corrupt police who take a little on the side instead of bringing charges.

New book: brothels as concentration camps? From RGJ

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

People who live outside of Nevada have a lot of unusual ideas about what it's like to live in the Silver State. When we encounter outsiders, those of us who live here aren't surprised when the of discussion turns to one of several topics: gambling, drinking and legalized prostitution.

In my experience, all three are largely misunderstood by non-Nevadans. Spend any time here and you'll realize that gambling just isn't something many locals do. In fact, the only time most of us step into a casino is for a show or a nice dinner. On those rare occasions, we'll usually skip the gaming floor altogether and head straight to our destination.

The uniquely Nevada trait that you can get a drink at any time of the day (or week, for that matter - in parts of my home state of Georgia, it's still illegal to buy and sell alcohol on a Sunday) is of little consequence to most of us working stiffs.

Which turns us to the holy grail of all great Nevada misconceptions: brothels. Yes, we have them. Yes, they are legal in certain counties and no, they're not really something most of us spend any amount of time thinking about. From the outside, brothels are unassuming and even a bit depressing; little more than double-wide trailers tucked against craggy hills and protected by metal fences topped with conspicuous surveillance cameras.

So, it's easy for an outsider to look at Nevada's storied history - you know, the one with the leisure-suited gangsters and the holes in the desert filled with bodies; the one where Bugsy Siegel parked his car on a dusty stretch of lonely highway and willed Las Vegas into existence (never happened) and make some assumptions about the present. Which is exactly what seems to be going on here.

In her new book, Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections, author Melissa Farley appears to have written a pretty scathing account of life within the brothel system, evoking charged images of places more akin to concentration camps and prisons than the all-party-all-the-time sorority houses a television series like Cathouse would lead us to believe.

In Connections, Farley tells of greasy, pistol-waving pimps who regularly starve their bi-polar, schizophrenic girls in order to maintain their skinny figures. She also speaks of supposed laws that prevent the sex workers from entering bars in a certain city (pardon my French, but where the hell is she talking about?) and some draconian regulation that prohibits the girls from owning cars. It only gets more bizarre from there.

I'll let you read the article and judge for yourself, but I will say this: Farley spent two years working closely with the sex workers, madams and johns. It would be a shame if she came away with anything other than a straight-up factual account; one that doesn't serve to push her own personal agenda. But, as we've seen, it's awfully hard for folks not to do that when they're talking about Nevada.

posted by James Ball at 10:20 AM

7 Comments:

Ryan Jerz said...

James,

Have you read this book? It paints a similar picture in the sense of the places and environment just not being great, but Albert actually holds the women up as heroes instead of victims. It's certainly a different culture than what many of us can comprehend.

posted by Ryan Jerz @ 12:48 PM  

James Ball said...

Ryan, not yet, but it looks like a well-balanced account. Thanks for the suggestion.

posted by James Ball @ 12:52 PM  

Jasmine said...

I did read it, and I found it to be not only poorly written, but from a Native Nevadans perspective, highly insulting to those of us who live here. The author was completely one-sided, and chose several interviewees who have never been legal prostitutes in the state. It seems to me that she was merely trying to push her own opinions on those who may not know any better. Further more, I know of no one that lives in this state that feels this is a necessary part of our economy. Some of us feel more strongly about it than others, but I highly doubt the health department, law enforcement, and state officials would continue to allow "food to be thrown over a fence" to feed anyone. Granted though, a lot of the brothels are in trailers... which doesn't paint a pretty picture about them. I was really disappointed in the book. If the author wanted people to really see what legalized prostitution was about, she would have done more responsible reporting, and let the reader make up his/her mind.

posted by Jasmine @ 1:22 PM  

Katie said...

What a JOKE! My father used to work for Joe at mustang ranch... (20 years ago or so but still) Those girls were treated A LOT better then most employees, especially any casino employees.

Every industry has problems.. I'm sure you could find a good handful of employees from any industry that feel they are unfairly treated and stretch the truth, especially to a hungry writer who is determined to ask the right questions to get the answers she is looking for.

Why weren't legal prostitutes interviewed or talked about (I haven't read the book just the article)

Unless something has horribly changed since the 80s.. legal brothels are NOT a bad thing and Joe and Sally (mustang ranch) used to treat the girls there like they were worth a million bucks. Yes, if they did something wrong they got in trouble (if you did drugs for example.. you got kicked out) but heck they sure did get taken care of when they did things right. Food through bars? OMG my dad had to cook full course meals, full buffets basically ANYTHING the girls wanted he had to make. Maybe the Conforte's were just exceptional and I'm wrong.. but I'm sure if you talked to any of the women who worked for them I bet they agree.

What a great way to bring another bad rap for Nevada who the heck keeps deciding to publish these types of stupid books! It makes me sick to think people make money on this crap when that is all it is!!

posted by Katie @ 1:29 PM  

Mark Robison said...

Having spoken with a number of workers at the new Mustang, the old Mustang, the Old Bridge and another whose name escapes me, the women uniformly loved their jobs -- and I wasn't a potential customer for whom they had their game face on. Just a journalist. For some it was a once a year thing to earn spending cash, for others it was a respite from their crappy "real world" jobs of being waitresses or working retail. Admittedly, some warned of the dangers of getting addicted to the good money so you put yourself in bad situations. But the description of the book makes it seem wildly off base.

Now women who work in places where prostitution is not legal? They're in real danger. And overseas? The horror is unimaginable. I heard today on Democracy Now that a women's rights group that has chronicled some 4,000 Iraqi women who've been kidnapped into sexual slavery since the U.S. invasion.

posted by Mark Robison @ 1:46 PM  

Anonymous said...

I would have to agree that this article was poorly written and as for her investigation I think it was more of her one sided opinion about the subject. There are two sides to every story and hers just paints her own beliefs about something she knows nothing about nor can investigate well enough to give the reader a true account of the situation. I am tired of people from out of state sticking their noses in our State and trying to change things that have been around for centuries. This still is the old west and we like it that way.

posted by Anonymous @ 1:52 PM  

D said...

Read the article....it's a load of crap. America is still a free-will country the last I looked. It's slanted and does nothing to further Nevadas respect from others. It was rediculous. I'm sure the girls are free to leave........they just get used to the $$$$$$$$$$$$$

posted by D @ 2:02 PM  

http://www.rgj.com/blogs/books/2007/09/new-book-brothels-as-concentration.html

Las Vegas Sun Letter: Mayor's remarks not helping Vegas at all

September 11, 2007

Ah yes, once again our illustrious "Martini Mayor" does us proud. Apparently he didn't like New York Times columnist Bob Herbert's recent column, in which he stated that Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said that he would support legalized prostitution in Las Vegas.

The reason the mayor didn't like it? Because Herbert quoted him out of context and neglected to add that Goodman told him that the idea was not on the table because Las Vegas residents "weren't ready for it yet." And, for this egregious omission, Goodman stated, in true "ex-mob lawyer" fashion, "If he comes to town, I'll crack his head with a baseball bat!"

Way to go, Mayor! The silver-tongued devil strikes again, sounding like Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas." Ya gotta love it.

And please explain how the added context to Mr. Herbert's remarks changes the fact that he supports legalized prostitution in Las Vegas (which was really the point in the first place)?

And one more thing. Why do we keep electing this guy?

Linda Caterine, Henderson

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/debate/2007/sep/11/566624358.html

The town pickled herring

Let's recap: Oscar Goodman's shtick was a distraction from a study on prostitution in Nevada. Then columnist and Goodmanophobe Jon Ralston proved to be a distraction from Oscar Goodman's shtick being a distraction from a study on prostitution in Nevada, at least for those who dislike Ralston and/or find Goodman credible. And tucked in between, here and there, were some snippets of actual discussion about prostitution in Nevada. Evil incarnate, or economic empowerment? "Systematic, insitutionalized degradation" of women, or women being free to "choose how they want to use their bodies in the marketplace?"

For expert insight, we considered trying to reach Louisiana Republican senator, diaper-fetishist and avid whoremonger David Vitter. But National Republican Senatorial Commisseration chairman and staunch Vitter apologist Sen. John Ensign, R-Slanker, has passed along memos to his colleagues written by the bright young things on Little Mikey Slanker's staff and instructing all the big strong War Party senators that whatever else they do, "do not engage liberal blogs directly." So call us cut and run defeatists, but we didn't even try to reach the embodiment of Republican Party morality and the poster boy for the party's deep belief in and practice of strong family values, i.e., Vitter.

Instead, we asked the Nevada chapter of the National Organization of Women what to make about all the recent professional talk about professional sex. True, NOW might not have as much expertise on prostitutes and their working conditions as the Ensign-sheltered Vitter. But nor is the organization noted for its lying, faux sincerity or an eager and shameless embrace of full-on hypocrisy for political gain, like Vitter (and, for that matter, Ensign). So we figured NOW would do.

The following statement was helpfully sent over from Nevada NOW's Jessica Brown:

As a national organization, NOW does not take a position on legal or illegal prostitution.  Taking a position on prostitution is a red herring that distracts from the issues that contribute to prostitution.  71% of Americans earning less than a living wage are women, and many of those women are the head of household.  500,000 women and children are trafficked into the United States every year, and girls involved in prostitution are increasingly getting younger, dropping from 14, to 13 and 12 years of age.  Scholars and activists on both sides of the legalize prostitution debate can agree that human trafficking is unacceptable.  Also, some argue that the chronic underfunding of domestic violence and sexual violence shelters can contribute to forced prostitution.

NOW works hard on ameliorating these problems.  To take a position on legalized prostitution would require us to draw conclusions based on theories and conflicting evidence in the scholarly debate. We would rather work on root causes of the problems, problems that we can at least make some headway in improving through grassroots lobbying and education.

First, if a position on prostitution is a red herring, and Goodman is a distraction from a red herring, what does that make Goodman? A red zooplankton, perhaps? A smoked sardine of an altogether different color? A herring that has been preserved through fermentation?

Second, 'tis true that people on both sides share the same position on transporting women and girls over state lines or international borders against their will to become compulsory sex workers: they're against it.  And call us naive, but human trafficking seems like a far bigger issue than the argument that seems to have taken hold 'round here of late over whether some women are sex workers by choice.

If they want to play, the legalization crowd might want to develop a strong case on how legal brothels will stem human trafficking through rigorous government licensing requirements, inspection, monitoring and strict regulation (which of course would be unlikely to happen under the government-hating administration of the nation's worst governor, who thinks he should be able to have sex with unwilling partners without having to pay for it anyway). Developing such a case wouldn't sweep legal brothels onto the scene any time soon. But it would make the community's discussion more meaningful, assuming the community is going to continue to have a discussion beyond, oh, next week.

Meantime, inasmuch as no headlong rush to legalization can be spotted on the horizon, those opposed to legalization might want to back away from their gallant fight against a straw man and shift their priorities, using their considerable passions and talents to help a state that is notorious for policy foot-dragging figure out how better to crack down — not on streetwalkers and johns, but on human traffickers.

And as for obscure Assemblyman Bob Beers (pictured, at left, because we know, we know, nobody's ever seen him before), it's easy to see why he is disappointed that having the same name as another batshit crazy ideologue hasn't yet translated into a similarly visible public profile, as the unknown assemblyman so clearly hoped and planned. His call to outlaw prostitution might be just the ticket to garner his long sought-after headlines and stroke his ego. But since there is about 3,264 times as much illegal prostitution in Nevada as legal prostitution (admittedly an estimate), his bill doesn't doesn't do jack to address the larger issue. Oh, which larger issue? Pick one.

In fact, it's tempting to say Beers' contribution is even less relevant than a Goodman-Ralston spat — except the available bandwidth on the public dialog spectrum for things that are less relevant than a Goodman-Ralston spat is very, very narrow (and most of that space is already occupied by the perpetual pissing match between R-J publisher Sherm Frederick and Las Vegas Sun patriarch Brian Greenspun).

11:54 AM | Permalink

Comments

Bob Beers (republican), of assembly district 21 used the other bob beers name, or, I should say, lack of familiarity among the not so bright voters of aforesaid assembly district, to get elected to the assembly, so now he introduced a bill to outlaw prostituion in Nevada, as governor gibbons (republican of ?) has requested and said he would sign if someone would send one to him, so maybe again he seeks cheap name recognition or seeks a job in the governor's patronage pool when he fails to retain his assembly seat 21.

Posted by: | 09/12/2007 at 01:08 PM

Gibbons couldn't sign a bill outlawing prostitution. As his failure at McCormick and Schmick proved, not even a woman who is supposedly falling down drunk would go to bed with him. If he wants to get laid, he has to pay for it.

Posted by: Keeping Them Honest | 09/12/2007 at 02:44 PM

A comment from Vitter? brilliant.

Posted by: Larry Craig | 09/12/2007 at 02:53 PM

How about a Gleaner contest? To which funny-named "Committee" was Hizzoner going to be named by the Clinton campaign, in what would have undoubtedly been a "major announcement," before he got quoted on the NYT Op-Ed page calling brothels "marvelous" and threatening to hit a columnist in the head with a baseball bat?

a) "Winning in the West" Spokesman?
b) Town Drunk Advisory Committee?
c) Homeless Outreach Board?
d) Norman Hsu Defense Fund?

Posted by: Team Rory | 09/12/2007 at 04:54 PM

No shit?

Posted by: | 09/12/2007 at 06:17 PM

http://www.lasvegasgleaner.com/las_vegas_gleaner/2007/09/the-issue-of-os.html

Las Vegas Sun Letter: How Goodman views women is on display

Today: September 12, 2007 at 7:36:4 PDT

This appalling caricature of a mayor has insulted and will encounter the resentment of thousands of Las Vegans with his suggestion of turning this city into "brothel city." Mayor Oscar Goodman's glandular mentality has now conceived of buildings to house this decadence.

I find it totally unacceptable, yet those to whom he appeals may not; for greed is their venue and for them it may be an inviting thought. It is a revolting possibility, to say the least.

Many parents who are already aware of the loathsome activities in parts of Las Vegas are trying daily to instill clean ideas, ethics and humane behavior into the minds of their children.

Further, Goodman's suggestion is indicative of his level of respect for and value of young women. In the Old West a man of his ilk would have been ridden out of town on a rail. It's not a bad idea!

Madelyn Olds, Las Vegas

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/debate/2007/sep/12/566675910.html