I’ve always been annoyed at how prostitution is portrayed as a single-faceted issue by people on both sides of the argument: moral crusaders depict all prostitution as rape for money, without acknowledging those who choose and love it as a career. Yet I don’t feel the pro-sex-workers, pro-sexuality community does enough to acknowledge the problems of forced sex-slavery (which I understand, because their causes are already fighting from a position of political weakness, so it isn’t easy to address issues as horrible as these). This is why, anytime I find myself in an argument with someone on the issue of prostitution, I always clarify the terminology early and enforce it throughout the discussion: prostitution is consensual selling of sexual services between two adults, and selling of sexual services under any form of coercion is rape. This stops the conflating of common terms to muddle the argument, such as when someone will speak of “child prostitutes in Thailand,” for example, to evoke an emotional distaste of the prostitution occupation. I point out to them that these children are incapable of consent, and therefore are not prostitutes but rape victims.

It is from this viewpoint that I have difficulty. I have no problem at all with women who are willing to spend the night with me for money; in fact, I’m incredibly grateful and appreciative of these women. Yet, rape is one of the few crimes that still activates a primal part of my brain, and conjures thoughts in me of castration and lynch-mob justice. And because I’m cursed with the mental capacity to see nuance and grey-areas, I know that the issue isn’t as black and white as “willing/ unwilling”. Not every sex-slave ring looks like the one in that movie “Taken”, with girls kept in basements and strung out on drugs. Using the migrant sex worker as an example, I know that there are Chinese escorts who will perform sexual favors in a seemingly eager and happy way; but only because if they don’t, then someone will see to it their families back home will suffer. But on the other hand, given economic differences and basic human nature, there have to be quite a few who came to America on their own to work. But how can you tell? When I visited Amsterdam a couple of years ago, I was reading an article that brought up just this point with their legalized system. A lot of anti-sex-work groups were automatically counting all immigrant sex-workers as trafficked women, and to be fair the eastern European mafias were known to engage in this sort of activity. But the article went on to point out that a lot of women were coming to work in Amsterdam not just from eastern Europe, but also Africa and southeast Asia, because they could make more money in a month there than they could in a year back home, and in a manner that was safer and less open to exploitation. But in a legalized environment, where all the girls occupy pretty much the same small but well kept rooms, and exhibit no physical signs of abuse… how does one tell?

That’s the point I’ve been trying to get at (sorry I ramble a lot). There seem to be zero… zip… nadda… resources out there for what I would call “the ethical John”. There are many sites that argue in favor of sex-work and sex-workers rights, but don’t address the issues of sex-slavery. The resources available that address sex-slavery take the stand that all prostitution in all forms is bad, and site a lot of statistics and numbers that ping my b.s. detector (such as the Dutch groups that count all migrants as slaves, for example). Guides for finding prostitutes (especially overseas) are even worse, as they clearly do not draw the same ethical distinctions regarding the practice that I do.

I guess what I would ultimately like to see is a book, or website, or something that is a ethical guide for punters. Something that addresses the issues that prostitutes have with clients, ways to ensure smoother and more pleasant transactions for everyone involved, and gives tips on how to recognize trafficking victims if you meet them (and more importantly, what you can do for them should that happen.)

Sorry too if this comment was a big rambling mess. Thanks!