Comments on: Men Who “Buy Sex” Commit More Crimes; Newsweek, Trafficking, and the Lie of Fabricated Sex Studies

By: Thomas Roche

Thomas Roche — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 23:37:01 +0000

@redpesto — To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what her rationale is for saying “buy sex” rather than “buy women.” I’ve seen “buy women” used to mean in “feminist” circles to mean “patronize a sex worker,” including stripping. So I’m not sure what the rationale is, but “buy sex” is certainly MORE accurate than “buy women.,” unless you’re talking specifically about human trafficking.

Even then, I would object to “buy women” because it does not describe the shell game that human traffickers play, in which any number of lies and misleading or incomplete statements are used to disguise the true nature of the transaction.

Referring to human trafficking as “buying people” is to my mind deeply dehumanizing to the victims; it is an organized form of false imprisonment, forced servitude, and (in the case of sex workers) rape, pure and simple. To imply that the term “buy women” lends legitimacy to the idea that this is a transaction, as opposed to participation in a crime.

Law enforcement needs to do a better job of breaking down how the actual business of human trafficking works, and the myriad crimes involved in this. But to do that, they’d have to back away from the hysteria that makes every crime committed against poor people become an excuse for Shock Doctrine policies aimed at addressing a broad range of First World behaviors, related or unrelated, legal or illegal.

I’ve always had some mild concerns about “sex worker,” because it is so unspecific, and because by many peoples’ definition it includes people like me (whereas I think my experience writing erotica, working in a porn studio or selling sex toys or any of the dozen other off-color profession I’ve had, in fact has NOTHING in common with an in-person sex worker like an escort, stripper or even phone-sex operator).

However, politically I think “sex work” is the most useful term. Secretary Clinton’s use of the term earlier this year, I think, is absolutely earth-shaking, so I’m happy to stick with “sex work” indefinitely.

By: redpesto

redpesto — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 21:57:48 +0000

Thomas – First off, this is a terrific piece: the sad thing is that it has to be said over and over again as the likes of Farley won’t listen, won’t learn and keep stovepiping junk ‘studies’ into a too-credulous media.

That said, I wonder what the best/most neutral phrase is re. sex work if ‘buying sex’ is (in Farley’s usage) so ‘loaded’. Is the fact that she uses ‘buy sex’ rather than ‘buy women’ (a standard anti-sexwork ‘line’) a significant shift or not? Is ‘pay for’ sex less emotive/more accurate?

By: Juliet Morrigan

Juliet Morrigan — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 18:57:29 +0000

Brilliant piece. As a sex worker/adult erotic service professional, who is sitting President of the Board of a non profit that works on behalf of sexually exploited minors, I would like to say that not all non profits conflate commercial exploitation of minors with adult sex workers. There is a real problem, obviously and often the efforts to make clear distinctions by advocates of our industry, cause a strange down play.
That is just a side note.
A legal challenge to decriminalize sex work is being launched in California. The challenge will be utilizing the same legal strategy that gay rights used, the constitutional right to privacy. What struck me about the article was the fact that, like the fight for gay rights, there will be a frightening series of moments which will require a ‘coming out’ process by AESP’s.(Adult Erotic Service Professionals- an offering of a subversive use of main stream terminology)
During the fight for decriminalization of homosexuality, it became evident that until the fear based characterizations of the homosexual were countered by visibility and some ‘we’re just like you’ assimlist strategies, it would be impossible to effectively debunk the images created by hostile media writers. This is the growing challenge of our industry. It is even more counter intuitive to the individual worker because we are just starting in the age of some sex positivity to approach our own internalized shame. This article, highlights how critical the consideration and preparation for this next step is becoming.

By: Tony

Tony — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:14:26 +0000

Just to let you know, Jay Leno on the Tonight show made a joke about this last night, Thursday night. I read the article Thursday morning and then heard the joke last night.
Keep up the great work, I look forward to reading what you write. Thank you.

By: Lea

Lea — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 06:13:25 +0000

Thomas, just want to say that you make so many relevant and important points here – and your analyses are brilliant – thank you!

By: Pat Powers

Pat Powers — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 04:25:17 +0000

Misspelled by blog in the previous post. And I forgot to add, the other side of the problem is, there is no money to be made by debunking these scum. Very discouraging.

By: Pat Powers

Pat Powers — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 04:19:16 +0000

This article was cited on the Straight Dope Message Board as part of a thread on the ways the anti-sex types are making up their own numbers about children endangered by human trafficking to make the problem look much larger than it is. The key point from what I see is that various “nonprofits” are making millions from the federal government by hyping the problem and then getting paid to “study” i.e., make up more false numbers, and “solve” it , i.e, come up with antisex laws. The thread has a number of excellent links to debunkings of bogus studies, here’s the link:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=615576

By: violet blue

violet blue — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 01:31:47 +0000

@BEG65 – Thanks for this comment, it’s helpful to know that people want a work-safe version of the articles we write here. I’ve been investigating the best way to do this, though making sure I don’t duplicate the content and be penalized by search engines is one factor, the other is that the sidebar content is what pays the bills and allows Thomas and I to be able to write these pieces when we could also be chasing down freelance writing gigs. So it’s tough – but I’m getting close to a solution.

In the meantime, I might suggest what a few of my friends do – put my blog feed into Google Reader, and read the posts there. No need to visit a blocked URL. Reader strips the sidebar content and retains attribution, while making is so that no one has to click links that might be filtered, and you can also forward the post as an email to friends you want to share it with.

This is the feed, but if you click it in certain browsers you’ll also get a stripped version of my content:

http://www.tinynibbles.com/feed

I hope that helps – for now. I hope to have a solution soon.

By: BEG65

BEG65 — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:34:42 +0000

(Sorry, that should be “a SFW version” I guess…)

By: BEG65

BEG65 — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:33:50 +0000

Is there an NSFW version of this? I wanted to forward this article to a friend, but she couldn’t open it b/c it had been blocked, and I have to admit that the images in the sidebar are definitely NSFW. I don’t want to cut and paste the article and email it to her (unless that’s okay with y’all), and I wondered if there was something like a printer friendly/image free way to link or look at this?

By: Thomas Roche

Thomas Roche — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:02:02 +0000

Billy — Re: “buy sex.” I wouldn’t make an issue of it if there wasn’t an obvious agenda behind Farley’s use of the term “buy sex.” I’m not being a language cop, I’m objecting to her intention. Throughout all of the writing of Farley and her associates, there is a frequent — I would say constant — attempt to equate all prostitution (including, in their view, porn, stripping and lap dancing) with slavery. In the context of Farley’s body of work, her use of the term “buy sex” is not neutral, nor does the claim that you could “buy an oil change” apply. She is explicitly attempting to equate the purchase of a sex worker’s time with the purchase of a human being in a trafficking context.

I do think it’s telling that Farley has to commit language-fu in order to constantly equate a stripper in San Francisco giving a lap dance with a Thai girl being sold into sex slavery at age 8. She believes that all male sex work consumers regard both females as property that can be sold, and that’s what I object to. Her use of “buy” is a trick of public relations designed to convince people that all sex work is, explicitly, slavery.

I think your claim that you “buy services” is pedantic and entirely misses my point. One does “buy my friend A lap dance,” or at least I’ve heard it said that way. But I believe one would never say you “buy lap dancing,” which is linguistically the Frankenstein monster Farley has created in the use of the term buy. I don’t believe, linguistically, you do “buy public relations consultation,” “buy an oil change,” “buy tailoring,” “buy a doctor’s visit,” “buy surgery,” “buy a haircut,” etc. etc. Maybe you do in other English-speaking countries; where I come from, that would be convoluted language-fu. I find this argument pretty nit-picky, but I believe that’s a misuse of the term “buy.”

Even if you do, that’s not why Farley uses the term “buy” here. It is manipulative. She uses it to equate slavery and prostitution. She is not innocent here in choosing that usage, and suggesting she is is, frankly, unsupportable in the context of everything else she’s ever written.

By: Iamcuriousblue

Iamcuriousblue — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 20:01:23 +0000

Yes, I remember that story specifically – two Afghan warlords fought a *tank battle* over the rights to sodomize a young boy. There is a strong culture of pederasty in Afghanistan that is long-standing. It’s something endemic to cultures that are extremely patriarchal and practice heavy segregation of the sexes. Classical Athens was the same way.

And Afghanistan is not exactly a center for production or consumption of m/m “twink” porn, either, as much as the antiporn types would like to make porn at the root of all sexual violence and exploitation.

By: Billy Dubh

Billy Dubh — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 19:00:14 +0000

Clearly this report is academically worthless and has a political agenda. Fine. But I want to pick up on your objection to the phrase “buying sex”, because I don’t understand your assertion that hiring a professional (be it an accountant, prostitute, landscape architect or whatever) doesn’t constitute buying a service. The fact that there’s not necessarily a physical object that becomes your property afterwards doesn’t stop it being a commercial transaction, and “buying services” is a pretty straightforward business concept I would have thought.

By: Thomas Roche

Thomas Roche — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 18:31:48 +0000

Iamcuriousblue — Also, my generalization is a bit weaker when it comes to Afghanistan; I removed that country entirely from the list, because I don’t know that I can argue “constancy.” One of the things that galvanized the Taliban in its early days, at least according to its own mythology, was a vigilante action against two military commanders who were fighting over the “ownership” of the same boy (YOUNG boy, like…young). I don’t actually have enough information to comment on the Taliban itself and homosexual rape, or Afghanistan and homosexual rape outside the context of post-Soviet, pre-Taliban corruption. Since (the) Taliban(s) were/was and are/is the most powerful Islamist force in that region, it’s a little disingenuous of me to wrap Afghanistan up with Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It’s also slightly dicey of me to call Sudan an Arab country, though maybe not now that South Sudan has been split off.

Funny thing, I included Afghanistan because I was trying to avoid saying “Iran,” because it’s also not an Arab nation. But my information about male-male rape in today’s Iran, especially in a penal context, is very thin. I suspect it was pretty common before the fall of the Shah, but I don’t have any documentation of that.

By: Thomas Roche

Thomas Roche — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 18:21:00 +0000

Iamcuriousblue — Oh my, I can’t believe I made that mistake. Normally I’m the nitpicker on that topic! Thanks for pointing it out.

By: Iamcuriousblue

Iamcuriousblue — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 18:16:58 +0000

And since we’re in nitpicking mode anyway, I’ll point out that Afghanistan is not an “Arab” country, even if it is an Islamic one.

Minor details aside, great post!

By: Thomas Roche

Thomas Roche — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:44:12 +0000

Charlie — Thanks for reminding me; I don’t know why I forgot that about Dworkin, that was a brain fart on my part. I’ve updated it with what she did say, which is not quite as crazy but still reflects her extreme squickability and social agenda. Thanks for pointing it out!

By: Charlie

Charlie — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:56:03 +0000

Great post! I’m passing it along.

One small thing: the whole “all intercourse is rape” quote has been debunked: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinnon.asp