Tag: prostitution

Rape at gunpoint is illegal in America? Tell that to the women we work with

Every day on the streets of the US, women are being raped, viciously attacked and left for dead. When women do die, their killings almost never make the local news and the perpetrators who commit these horrendous acts of violence do so with almost total impunity.

Under the country’s laws, these women are victims. But their lives are deemed worthless by the public and the state. They hold no political agency or economic power and, while they are incarcerated time and time again, the perpetrators – the people who hurt them – are never jailed.

The men who attack them are “regular” guys – husbands, sons and co-workers – but they are seen as outcasts, somehow deserving of mistreatment.

This is the reality of life as a victim of human trafficking in the US today.

Rape at gunpoint is illegal in America? Tell that to the women we work with | Global development | The Guardian

America’s outcasts: the women trapped in a cruel cycle of exploitation | Global development | The Guardian

Kate had spent three years behind bars at Lowell Correctional Institution, Florida’s largest women’s prison, when the letters from Richard Rawls started to arrive.

Men had written to Kate in prison before, but this time was different. Although she had never met him, Rawls made her feel special. He wrote that he’d seen her mugshot online and couldn’t stop thinking about her. Somehow aware that she was getting out soon, he offered her money, a home and unconditional love when she was released.

The letters promised Kate a future she never imagined possible – a way out of the cycle of prostitution and incarceration that had defined her life after a childhood of chaos and abuse. Soon, Rawls stopped signing his letters “Rick”; instead, he urged her: “Come on home to your daddy.”

“When you’re in prison, all you think about is getting out,” Kate says. “The hours go by and it really hurts to know that nobody thinks about you in there.

“So when you get a letter it’s like a gift from God. He told me everything that I wanted to hear. He said I wasn’t going to be a prostitute any more, that I could go home with him and live at his house, and that he would be the love that I was searching for.”

When Kate walked out of prison, Rawls, a career criminal and convicted felon with more than 47 charges for sexual battery, child abuse, drug possession and assault, was there to pick her up. Just as he had promised.

America’s outcasts: the women trapped in a cruel cycle of exploitation | Global development | The Guardian

Revealed: how US sex traffickers recruit jailed women for prostitution | Global development | The Guardian

Women in prisons across the US are being recruited by sex traffickers who force them into prostitution on their release.

A Guardian investigation has found that traffickers are using government websites to obtain personal information including mugshots, release dates and charge sheets to identify potential victims while they are still behind bars.

Pimps also use inmates in prisons and jails countrywide to befriend incarcerated women who, on their release, are trafficked into the $9.5bn (£7.2bn) US commercial sex industry.

The investigation also found cases of the bail bond system being used in sex trafficking operations in at least five different states. Pimps and sex buyers are locating incarcerated women awaiting a court date by using personal data such as mugshots and bail bonds posted online, or through corrupt bondsmen.

Traffickers are then bailing women out of detention. Once released, the women are told they must work as prostitutes or have their bond rescinded and be sent back to jail.

Over the course of the investigation, The Guardian found cases of the bail bond system being used by pimps and sex buyers in Florida, Texas, Ohio, North Carolina and Mississippi.

“The pimps would use bail as a way to control us and keep us in debt bondage,” said one trafficking survivor from Tampa, Florida. She claimed she was forced to work as a prostitute to pay off her bail debt and locked inside a house and beaten if she didn’t bring home enough money.

Revealed: how US sex traffickers recruit jailed women for prostitution | Global development | The Guardian

Sex with robots is on the cusp of becoming a worrying reality, warns a robot ethicist — Quartz

If you could construct a sexual partner that was faithful, beautiful, and responsive to your every wish, would you?
It’s a question Aimee van Wynsberghe, co-founder of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics, thinks a lot about. In July 2017, she and fellow ethicist Noel Sharkey published a report (pdf), Our Sexual Future with Robots, that delved into the state of the robot sex industry and its future.

Quartz met van Wynsberghe, a professor of robotics and ethics at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, on a trip to London in a busy café, just before she headed to the Science Museum’s Robots exhibition, to discuss how close humanity is to sex and even love with robots, and the risks involved. The interview is edited and condensed for clarity.

Sex with robots is on the cusp of becoming a worrying reality, warns a robot ethicist — Quartz

How has the internet changed sex work? — Quartz

“Elle” is a 63-year-old sex worker. She’s been at it for decades, and what makes her extraordinary isn’t just her longevity in the business, but her ability to adapt to a changing market. Sex work is as old as civilization, but in the past 20 years the market for illegal sex services has undergone a radical transformation thanks to the internet, upending how it is sold and priced. There are now more women selling sex, more overall encounters, and—unlike in many other industries disrupted by the web—higher wages for workers.

Gregory DeAngelo, an economist at the University of West Virginia, scraped 17 years’ worth of data from The Erotic Review, a website that is like the Yelp for illegal sex services. The dataset features about 1.1 million reviews, which contain extremely detailed descriptions of encounters, time spent, features of the sex worker, and price. According to data on the site, average inflation-adjusted hourly rates increased 38% between 2000 and 2015. Elle’s reviews have appeared since 2000 and her prices—now around $270 per hour—almost exactly track the national average each year.

How has the internet changed sex work? — Quartz

Daddies, “Dates,” and the Girlfriend Experience: Welcome to the New Prostitution Economy

A growing number of young people are selling their bodies online to pay student loans, make the rent, or afford designer labels. Is it just an unorthodox way to make ends meet or a new kind of exploitation?

…

“The girlfriend experience” is the term women in the sex trade use for a service involving more than just sex. “They want the perfect girlfriend—in their eyes,” says Miranda, the young woman at our table.* “She’s well groomed, cultured, classy, able to converse about anything—but not bringing into it any of her real-world problems or feelings.”

Vanity Fair

The Shame Game

Officials appear to have designed Flush the Johns to maximize the potential for public attention—and to exploit men’s fear of being found out, not just by the police but also by their own families. “You’re going to be caught, and your mug shot could end up right like these men,” Rice warned during the press conference.

A slew of other cities have embraced john-shaming as a way to combat prostitution: Colorado Springs; Albany, New York; Flint, Michigan; Prince George’s County, Maryland, outside D.C.; and a number of places in California—Oakland, Richmond, Fresno, and Orange County. Some have published the names and photos of accused johns upon arrest on designated web sites and social media, or in press conferences; others have waited until they’ve actually been convicted. But the upshot seems to be the same: Shame isn’t just the side effect of catching and prosecuting criminals in an open society with an active press corps, but an end goal that is officially sanctioned.

Tapping into the new power of the internet, along with our very old obsession with transgressive sex, these officials hope to wield the fear of public judgment in the name of the public good, arguing that prostitution is linked to far more serious crimes than we ever thought. But by taking punishment out of the hands of law enforcement and placing it in the hands of the public, whose emotions and reactions lie beyond their control, shaming campaigns can also be messy and unpredictable. And the resulting stigma can last indefinitely. “Guilt punishments make the statement, ‘You committed a bad act,’ ” writes philosopher Martha Nussbaum in her book Hiding From Humanity. “Shame punishments make the statement: ‘You are a defective type of person.’ ” Or as Yale law professor James Whitman told me, shaming “allows the general public to do the dirty work.”

New Republic