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http://www.saij.gob.ar/1472-local-ciudad-autonoma-buenos-aires-codigo-contravencional-ciudad-lpx0001472-2004-10-28/123456789-0abc-defg-274-1000xvorpyel#

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De cómo las abolas nos cagamos en las mujeres prostituídas.

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Prostitución y discapacidad

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Las organizaciones que facilitan esta asistencia sexual promueven "la caricia, la sensibilidad, la ternura, el cariño y la empatía" - MAYA BALANYÁ

Elena CalvoSEGUIR Érika MontañésSEGUIR
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Cuando tenía ocho años, a Antonio Castillejo le diagnosticaron una enfermedad degenerativa muscular que, durante la adolescencia, le dejó en silla de ruedas, lo que le hizo encerrarse en sí mismo. Al llegar a la mayoría de edad, y ante la imposibilidad de sociabilizar y, entre otras cosas, relacionarse con mujeres, sus deseos sexuales le llevaron a recurrir a la prostitución. Hace seis años, la cosa cambió: descubrió el mundo de la asistencia sexual para personas con discapacidad, donde encontró una "intimidad, afecto y confianza" que, hasta ese momento, no había conocido.

En Francia, se ha iniciado recientemente un proceso consultivo para regular la figura del asistente sexual, es decir, aquellas personas que acompañan a otras con algún tipo de diversidad funcional para que puedan ser sexualmente activas. No sin cierta polémica, pues algunos sectores lo consideran un tipo de prostitución. En España, la asistencia sexual -o acompañamiento íntimo- se mueve en un marco alegal, con ONG y entidades, como la pionera en Cataluña Tandem Team o Aspasia en Canarias que, subvencionadas por sus respectivos ejecutivos regionales, procuran la cita entre un acompañante y una persona con discapacidad.

Antonio Castillejo

Ganar autoestima

En Tandem Team fue donde Antonio, este joven de Badalona, encontró el afecto que reclamaba. "Gracias a esto, dejé de recurrir a la prostitución", señala Castillejo que, al mismo tiempo, reconoce cómo esta asistencia sexual ayudó en su autoestima, generándole confianza en sí mismo y ganas de vivir, además de ayudarle a superar los obstáculos que le habían impedido relacionarse con los demás y formar un círculo social con anterioridad. Su implicación emocional fue tal que llegó a mantener una relación sentimental con una de las asistentes de la entidad.

Los mismos problemas de autoestima tenía M.L.M. -una mujer de 43 años con parálisis celebral que prefiere no revelar su nombre- hasta que dio con Tandem Team, donde, a través de este acompañamiento íntimo, aprendió "que era una mujer como las demás, sentía y podía gustar". Los encuentros, dice a ABC, se basan en la confianza, una relación entre iguales, donde se habla y se pacta lo que ocurrirá. " No tiene que haber penetración. Eso depende de cada uno. Muchas veces basta con caricias y cariño para crear esa sensación de intimidad", explica.

Cariño y empatía

Las organizaciones que facilitan esta asistencia sexual promueven "la caricia, la sensibilidad, la ternura, el cariño y la empatía", algo de lo que nadie debería prescindir, aprecia María Clemente, psicóloga especialista en neurorehabilitación, que tuvo una pareja con discapacidad. Francesc Granja, terapeuta emocional en Tandem Team y tetrapléjico desde que sufrió un accidente de tráfico a los 32 años, se coaligó con ella para la fundación en 2014 de esta asociación sin ánimo de lucro, que "no recibe un céntimo" de los encuentros", sino que es algo que dejan en manos del asistente y la persona a la que acompaña.

Después de un protocolo de servicios íntimos muy estandarizado en cuatro pasos para determinar la validez de la asistencia, alguien -"que puede ser voluntario o colaborador y no recibir tampoco ninguna contraprestación económica"- queda con la otra persona. "El milagro se produce -dice la psicóloga de la entidad en Barcelona-. La transformación de la persona es brutal, impactante ". Recuerda María el caso de un joven con traumatismo craneoencefálico que hace siete años solo buscaba cómo morir, y se ha transformado de 0 a 100. Le ha cambiado hasta el humor, aclara. Ahora busca gustar, se siente atraído y atractivo. No es genitalidad, sino intimidad.

En los acuerdos a los que llegan asistentes sexuales y personas con discapacidad se establecen los límites de los encuentros. Así lo cuenta Sergio López, un terapeuta ocupacional residente en Valencia que, por su inquietud hacia las necesidades de las personas con diversidad funcional, desde hace unos meses se dedica también a ello. En su caso, las barreras están claras: ni besos, ni relaciones amorosas. Tampoco pueden tocarle. "Se crean lazos. Coges cierto cariño, pero hasta cierto límite", explica. "Mi objetivo es la satisfacción sexual, y en muchos casos se puede llegar a ella a través de caricias o comentarios de afecto", relata. Un caso similar al de Elena Torralba, asistente sexual en Madrid, donde próximamente abrirá un local llamado Shakta, que acompaña a las personas con discapacidad que lo necesitan pero sin sexo, solo a través de caricias, masajes o abrazos: "Les acompaño a que sean ellos con sus propias manos los que puedan encontrar ese placer, tanto con sus propios cuerpos como en encuentros sexuales con otros, moviéndoles para que sientan esa cercanía con la otra persona. Y siempre desde el cariño y la atención".

Elena Torralba - MAYA BALANYÁ

Contra la regulación

El debate y la controversia, sin embargo, no faltan. Además de quienes consideran que se asemeja a una forma de prostitución, otro de los aspectos que llevan a algunos a oponerse a la regulación de la figura del asistente sexual es el propio nombre. Se propone en algunos casos el de acompañante íntimo, porque en la mayor parte de los casos "es un colectivo que acusa la soledad " y que solo busca esa cercanía fuera de su familia, dicen los terapeutas consultados por este diario. La finalidad es "más compartir que asistir", sintetiza Celmente. Otro de los escollos con los que se encuentran quienes proponen regular esta figura es el reduccionismo mental de negar a una persona con discapacidad su parte emotiva y su sexualidad.

Cuando una persona se expresa, también en su vis sexual, tiene mejor calidad de vida. En opinión de la sexóloga y docente Diana Fernández, "en la medida que se mejora la vivencia erótica y relacional de la persona aumenta su satisfacción vital ". "Es un tema que ha sido tabú y que, silenciado, les hace aún más vulnerables", dice Clemente, y coincide María Rebollo, coordinadora en el Colegio de Psicólogos de Madrid del grupo de Discapacidad Intelectual.

"Es una barrera más, la mental, la social. Las arquitectónicas son las que se ven, pero esta es más importante", asume Anxo Queiruga, presidente de Cocemfe (Confederación Española de Personas Con Discapacidad Física y Organica). Queiruga acepta que muchos discapacitados recurren a los servicios de la prostitución, porque si no, nadie quiere tener sexo con ellos. Y no logran realizarse. "Soy partidario de abordar ya el debate del asistente sexual, porque reduciría precisamente el recurso de la prostitución, justo lo que algunos creen que abona", afirma a ABC.

Rebollo cree que "es bueno que la política sea una avanzadilla y promueva el debate social, fundamental para plantearnos cómo se enralizan los derechos de un colectivo a la realidad. La necesidad sexual existe y cómo se da respuesta a esta necesidad (si está disponible el recurso o no) es lo que se debe abordar". Dar autonomía, libertad y autoreconocimiento a una persona nunca puede ser malo; no dar respuesta genera frustración, resume la psicóloga.
Ver los comentariosTemas

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La asistencia sexual en la discapacidad: "No es es solo sexo, muchas veces basta con caricias y cariño"

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Elena CalvoSEGUIR Érika MontañésSEGUIR Guardar Noticias relacionadas Cuando tenía ocho años, a Antonio Castillejo le diagnosticaron una enfermedad degenerativa muscular que, durante la adolescencia, le dejó en silla de ruedas, lo que le hizo encerrarse en sí mismo.

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Libertad de elección. Mejoras sanitarias.

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PRINCETON - Como dice el dicho, el trabajo sexual es la profesión más vieja del mundo (sólo que el dicho usa "prostitución" en vez de "trabajo sexual"). La adopción de un término menos peyorativo se justifica por el cambio de actitud hacia las personas que se dedican a esta actividad, que contribuyó a la decisión tomada por Amnistía Internacional en mayo de exhortar a los gobiernos a derogar leyes que criminalizan el intercambio consentido de sexo por dinero entre adultos.

El llamado de Amnistía Internacional generó una andanada de rechazos, algunos por parte de personas que evidentemente no distinguen entre la industria del sexo en su conjunto y el tráfico de seres humanos que, en muchos países, es una parte trágica de dicha industria. Nadie querrá legalizar la coerción, la violencia o la captación mediante engaño en la industria del sexo, ni la explotación sexual infantil. Pero algunas organizaciones que hacen campaña contra la trata comprenden que la prohibición del trabajo sexual vuelve mucho más peligroso para quienes lo ejercen en esas condiciones pedir ayuda a las autoridades. Por eso, el Secretariado Internacional de la Alianza Global Contra la Trata de Mujeres aplaudió a Amnistía Internacional por apoyar la despenalización.

También hubo oposición de algunas organizaciones feministas, que acusaron a Amnistía de proteger los "derechos de proxenetas y clientes" y dijeron que en vez de eso hay que "poner fin a la demanda de sexo pago", pero no explicaron cómo lograrlo.

En especies que tienen reproducción sexual, el sexo es, por obvias razones, uno de los deseos más fuertes y ubicuos. Los seres humanos no son la excepción. En toda sociedad moderna, las personas entregan dinero u otros elementos valiosos a cambio de cosas que desean y no pueden obtener de otro modo. Por diversos motivos, muchas personas no pueden obtener sexo, o suficiente sexo, o el tipo de sexo que desean, libremente. Mientras al menos una de esas condiciones se mantenga, la demanda de sexo pago no se detendrá. Y no veo probable que en cualquiera de esas condiciones vaya a haber un cambio suficiente para eliminar la demanda.

No siendo previsible un final para la demanda de sexo pago, ¿qué ocurre con la oferta? Otra respuesta a las propuestas de despenalizar el trabajo sexual es que en vez de eso, deberíamos cambiar las condiciones que llevan a algunas personas a vender sus cuerpos. Esto implica el supuesto de que todas las personas que ofrecen sexo a cambio de dinero lo hacen porque no tienen ningún otro medio de vida.

Ese supuesto es un mito. Dejando a un lado a las que necesitan el dinero para sostener costosas adicciones a drogas, algunas personas que se dedican al trabajo sexual podrían conseguir empleo en una fábrica o una casa de comidas rápidas. Pero enfrentadas a la perspectiva de un trabajo monótono y repetitivo de ocho horas diarias en una línea de montaje o dando vuelta hamburguesas, prefieren la industria del sexo, con mejor remuneración y una jornada más corta. Habrá muchas personas que no pudieron elegir, pero ¿deberíamos criminalizar a las que sí lo hicieron?

No es una elección tan irracional. Contra lo que dicen los estereotipos del sexo pago, trabajar en un burdel legal no es especialmente peligroso para la salud. Algunas personas dedicadas al trabajo sexual consideran que su profesión entraña más habilidad e incluso un toque más humano que otros empleos alternativos a los que podrían acceder. Se enorgullecen de su capacidad de dar no sólo placer físico, sino también apoyo emocional, a personas necesitadas que no pueden obtener sexo de ninguna otra manera.

Si el final del trabajo sexual no está cerca, todo aquel a quien importe la salud y la seguridad (por no hablar de los derechos) de las personas que se dedican a dicho trabajo debe apoyar las iniciativas tendientes a su total legalización. Y es lo que desea la mayoría de quienes lo ejercen. El mismo mes en que Amnistía adoptó el pedido de despenalización como política oficial, el gobierno conservador de Nueva Gales del Sur (el estado más poblado de Australia) descartó una propuesta de restringir la industria sexual (que ese estado ya había legalizado). Jules Kim, directora ejecutiva de Scarlet Alliance (la asociación australiana de personas dedicadas al trabajo sexual), recibió la noticia con alivio, y declaró que la despenalización había producido "importantes mejoras para la salud y seguridad" de esas personas.

El Sex Workers Outreach Project coincidió en que la despenalización lleva a una mejora de la situación sanitaria de este colectivo y le permite contar con elementos de cobertura estándar del mercado laboral, como seguros, programas de salud y seguridad ocupacional, y reglas de comercio justo. La mayoría de los australianos viven en estados que han legalizado o despenalizado el trabajo sexual.

Esto está a tono con la creciente aceptación de la idea de que el Estado debería abstenerse lo más posible de criminalizar actividades consentidas entre adultos que participan en ellas libremente. En la mayor parte de las sociedades seculares, se han abolido las leyes contra la sodomía. La eutanasia con asistencia médica es legal en cada vez más jurisdicciones. En Estados Unidos hay amplio apoyo a la legalización de la marihuana.

Pero además de la ampliación de la libertad individual, la derogación de leyes restrictivas trae beneficios prácticos. En Colorado (EE. UU.), un motivo importante para legalizar la industria de la marihuana fue poder cobrarle impuestos. El impulso a la legalización del trabajo sexual en Nueva Gales del Sur surgió de una investigación por corrupción donde se descubrió que la policía cobraba jugosos sobornos a la industria del sexo, situación que la legalización cortó de cuajo.

Los países que criminalizan la industria sexual deberían analizar el daño que producen esas leyes, así como lo hizo Amnistía Internacional. Es hora de abandonar prejuicios moralistas (sean por motivos religiosos o una forma de feminismo idealista) y hacer lo mejor para quienes ejercen el trabajo sexual y para la sociedad en su conjunto.

Traducción: Esteban Flamini

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Razones para legalizar el trabajo sexual

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Si el final del trabajo sexual no está cerca, todo aquel a quien importe la salud y la seguridad (por no hablar de los derechos) de las personas que se dedican a dicho trabajo debe apoyar las iniciativas tendientes a su total legalización

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Prostitución buena y prostitución mala. Infantilización de las putas.

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El Gobierno de las feministas y de los feministos nos dice que necesitamos un cambio de paradigma para que el consentimiento de las mujeres esté en el centro. "Sólo sí es sí" y por eso deberá constar por escrito y firmado en duplicado ejemplar por todos los partícipes en el intercambio de prestaciones sexuales. Se aconseja añadir un anexo en el que se detallen los actos, posturas y movimientos a los que la dama consiente y la duración máxima y mínima del coito. El varón empresario deberá resaltar en negrita aquellas cláusulas que considere de difícil comprensión para la hembra consumidora de sus servicios orales y/o genitales.

Pero, ay, cómo cambian las cosas cuando el intercambio sexual no es a título lucrativo -o sea, gratis- sino oneroso y es la mujer la que asume por decisión propia el rol de empresaria. En estos casos, la voluntad del Gobierno ha de primar sobre la de la fémina. Ni cambio de paradigma, ni consentimiento expreso, ni puñetas.

Lo único que van a conseguir con esta ley es no tener que apartar su puritana mirada cada vez que se crucen en su camino con esas vulgares meretrices indignas y antidemocráticas

Ha anunciado la vicepresidenta Carmen Calvo una "legislación nacional abolicionista que prohíba la prostitución en toda España y que nos dignifique como democracia". Ya no les basta con negar reconocimiento jurídico y, por lo tanto, protección, asistencia y cobertura a las que se dedican al negocio del sexo. Ahora también quieren relegarlas a la ilegalidad. Saben de sobra que la prostitución no va a desaparecer, porque siempre ha estado ahí y siempre estará: ¡por algo es conocida como el oficio más antiguo de mundo! Tanto es así que algunos de sus más fieles usuarios en privado eran y son quienes más reniegan de ella en público. Lo único que van a conseguir con esta ley es no tener que apartar su puritana mirada cada vez que se crucen en su camino con esas vulgares meretrices indignas y antidemocráticas.

¿Cristiano o progresista?

Confieso que no puedo evitar evocar al caudillo cuando escucho a Carmen Calvo -y a la cohorte a sueldo del Ministerio de Igualdad- argumentar contra la prostitución. Mediante decreto ley de 3 de marzo de 1956, el Generalísimo aprobó la abolición de los centros de tolerancia y otras medidas relativas a la prostitución. "La incontestable ilicitud de la prostitución ante la teología moral y ante el mismo derecho natural, ha de tener reflejo obligado en el ordenamiento positivo de una nación cristiana para la debida protección de la moral social y del respeto debido a la dignidad de la mujer". Así arrancaba el preámbulo de la norma franquista. Si donde dice "cristiano" me ponen ustedes "progresista" ya le estarán adelantando a esta panda de pacatos del Ejecutivo una parte de la tarea legislativa. Seguro que también les valdrá el artículo primero, que rezaba: "Velando por la dignidad de la mujer y en interés de la moral social, se declara tráfico ilícito la prostitución". ¡Carmen, atiende, que Franco era feminista y te adelantó buena parte de la faena!

Lo que está claro es que las mujeres nos debemos a fines más elevados, que en los cincuenta eran aquellos que nos imponía el dictador y ahora son los que nos marcan las ministras, los ministros y les ministres. El paternalismo feminista ha reemplazado al franquista.

La ideología no les deja ver que la explotación sexual no trae causa de la prostitución. Prohibir la segunda no solucionará la primera, sino al contrario, la agravará. Legalizar la prostitución no sólo redundaría en mejoras para aquéllas que se dedican al negocio del sexo voluntariamente, sino que también facilitaría erradicar el execrable crimen que es la trata de seres humanos. Pero sé que pido demasiado a quienes no han venido a trabajar sino a sacar a pasear eslóganes y pancartas.

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A favor de la legalización de la prostitución voluntaria

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El Gobierno de las feministas y de los feministos nos dice que necesitamos un cambio de paradigma para que el consentimiento de las mujeres esté en el centro. "Sólo sí es sí" y por eso deberá constar por escrito y firmado en duplicado ejemplar por todos los partícipes en el intercambio de prestaciones sexuales.

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Los señores nos explican cuál es la papa de una manera "totalmente racional"

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Abolición de la prostitución. Impulsaremos una Ley integral contra la trata con fines de explotación sexual para sancionar penalmente a quienes contribuyan o se beneficien de la prostitución ajena, sancionando la demanda y la compra de prostitución.

Es la medida número 8 de los 35 "compromisos sociales" con los que Pedro Sánchez se presenta a las próximas elecciones. En medio del programa económico, entre la racionalización de horarios y la renta básica, el PSOE recupera una de las banderas de parte de la izquierda europea de las últimas décadas: la prohibición de la prostitución, con un modelo a la sueca, que sanciona con dureza al cliente. No es la primera vez que se plantea esta alternativa (de hecho, este mismo año ya se tramitó una proposición no de ley en el Congreso al respecto) y viendo lo que dicen las encuestas y la beligerancia del resto de grupos de la izquierda, sí es el momento en el que más probabilidad tendría de salir adelante. Porque, además, éste es un tema que incomoda, y mucho, también a la derecha, que no ve con malos ojos una solución como ésta. Nadie quiere aparecer como defensor de proxenetas o dueños de clubes. Así que, si finalmente alguien presenta una ley en el Congreso en esta línea, lo normal es que salga adelante.

De esta manera, los colectivos de prostitutas son los únicos que se muestran beligerantes con una normativa que, en teoría, busca proteger a las mujeres que se dedican al oficio más antiguo del mundo, pero que, en la práctica, las sitúa fuera de la legalidad. Todos partidarios y detractores de este tipo de medidas echan mano de diferentes estudios sobre lo ocurrido en Suecia, Nueva Zelanda u Holanda (países en los que se ha prohibido o legalizado la prostitución) para sostener sus argumentos. Y mientras, los economistas hablan de incentivos, costes o externalidades para intentar poner racionalidad en un debate en el que es muy complicado mantener la cabeza fría.

De Sunset Boulevard a la trata de blancas

En lo que tiene que ver con la prostitución, hay una doble realidad que cuesta mucho reconocer a los defensores de una y otra posición.

Por ejemplo, para los prohibicionistas: imaginen a un multimillonario recorriendo Sunset Boulevard con su deportivo; allí recoge a Vivian, una chica que hace la calle en Los Ángeles después de que un novio la dejara tirada; se la lleva al Beverly Wilshire y allí negocia con ella por un servicio un tanto especial, le ofrece ser su acompañante por una semana a cambio de 3.000 dólares... El resto es un pequeño cuento de hadas.

Sí, estamos hablando de Pretty woman y, más allá del edulcorante Made in Hollywood, es un ejemplo que nos sirve para explicar el principal punto débil de los que proponen una solución radical: nadie (o casi nadie) cree que lo que hacen Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) y Edward Lewis (Richard Gere), en la mítica escena en la que regatean el precio de los servicios de la primera ("Me hubiera quedado por 2.000", "Te hubiera pagado 4.000"), deba ser perseguido por la ley. Por ahí es por donde se cuelan los defensores de la legalización: no tiene sentido prohibir una transacción libre en la que dos personas pactan un precio a cambio de unos servicios.

¿El problema? Que esto no es sólo una idealización propia del cine. Es cierto que puede haber casos similares. Pero también es verdad que en cientos de clubes o zonas de prostitución lo que encontramos es un mundo sórdido, que se mueve en los márgenes de la ley y en el que muchas mujeres son explotadas o chantajeadas para el beneficio de otros. Sí, hay prostitutas que ejercen su oficio de manera voluntaria, en sus casas o clubes privados; pero también hay muchos casos en los que todos estos argumentos son sólo una tapadera para enmascarar la trata de personas.

Y en medio de estas dos evidencias queda un debate viciado. Con exageraciones de las dos partes y pocos argumentos racionales. En el que la economía podría tener algo que decir, si es posible, y en el que las soluciones quirúrgicas, como la prohibición total, pueden acabar generando más problemas de los que resuelven.

Apunte: a lo largo del artículo hablaremos de prostitución femenina, aunque está claro que no es la única actividad en la que se intercambian servicios sexuales por dinero. Los prohibicionistas, que aluden a la explotación de las mujeres que se dedican a estas prácticas, tienen en este punto una incómoda piedra en su zapato. Reconocer la prostitución masculina hace que ese argumento se debilite. Así, lo normal es que pasen de puntillas por este fenómeno (minoritario desde el punto de vista económico, pero no por eso menos real). Como la polémica se centra en la regulación de la prostitución femenina, nos ceñiremos a ésta, pero sin olvidar estas otras realidades.

De Suecia a Nueva Zelanda

El modelo prohibicionista es Suecia. El país escandinavo hace años que prohibió la práctica a través de un sistema que penaliza, con fuertes multas y también, en ciertos casos, con la cárcel, a los clientes. ¿Cuáles han sido los resultados? Pues no está muy claro. Depende de con quien hable cada uno, puede llegar a conclusiones muy diferentes. Los defensores de la medida aseguran que ha reducido la demanda; algo lógico, porque una medida así dispara los costes de la actividad: no sólo los costes monetarios, sino también el resto.

Enfrente, los críticos aseguran que, tras unos primeros años en los que sí descendió el número de prostitutas en las calles, ya ha vuelto a los niveles previos a la prohibición (en ocasiones, apunta aquí The Economist, enmascarado como "casas de masajes", que proliferan en algunas ciudades). El punto de partida es que siempre habrá mercado para una actividad que ha existido incluso en las sociedades que con más dureza la han perseguido, por lo que merece la pena aceptarlo. Si no, lo que se consigue es la marginalización de las prostitutas y hacer todavía más complicado perseguir los delitos relacionados con la trata. En Suecia, aseguran los defensores de la legalización, estas mujeres declaran que la prohibición ha tenido un doble efecto negativo: por un lado, hace que la negociación con el cliente sea más complicada, rápida y oculta, lo que dificulta a las chicas descubrir rasgos indeseados en un cliente (esas señales de alarma que te da la experiencia de que un tipo no es de fiar); por el otro, también es más complicado que alguien (otro cliente, una compañera) que conozca que una prostituta ha sido víctima de un delito lo denuncie, por miedo a las consecuencias penales.

También es verdad que, a la hora de decretar su prohibición o legalización, habría que diferenciar entre los diferentes tipos de prostitución. No es lo mismo una escort de lujo que se anuncia como "modelo" y "acompañante", que una inmigrante sin papeles que hace la calle en alguna de las zonas habituales en las grandes. Hace ya más de una década, Fedea publicaba un informe muy interesante al respecto ( aquí, en inglés) en el que diferenciaba entre cuatro situaciones muy diferentes:

Servicios de escort

Burdeles

Prostitución en el domicilio

Prostitución callejera

Cada uno de ellos, es evidente, tiene una problemática muy diferente. Y tratar de solventarlo todo con el bazooka legislativo de la prohibición haría que muchas situaciones tipo Vivian-Edward quedasen penalizadas, lo que no deja de ser hipócrita: castigar aquello que casi nadie piensa que deba ser castigado, aunque luego, en la práctica, todo el mundo sabe que no se perseguirán esas situaciones. Es decir, lo prohibimos, pero luego miramos hacia otro lado en los servicios no problemáticos (o en lo que respecta a algunas casas de masaje que todo el mundo sabe que no lo son) y la persecución queda confinada a la prostitución en la calle que es la que genera alarma social.

Porque ésa es otra: para la mayoría de la población, la situación de alegalidad que se vive ahora mismo en España es muy cómoda, salvo que afecte a tu vecindario. En la situación actual, los únicos que protestan (y tienen motivos) son aquellos vecinos de calles o zonas en las que se sitúan las chicas o los clubes. Ahí sí hay quejas y tienen todo el sentido del mundo, pero no son tanto contra la actividad en sí o contra la idea de que la transacción sea ilegal, como sobre las consecuencias negativas que tienen que sufrir los que lo viven de cerca. Aquí tenemos un ejemplo de manual de externalidad negativa: esa situación en la que los costes de tu actividad repercuten en un tercero que no tiene forma de cobrarte por esos costes.

Por eso es interesante distinguir entre los diferentes tipos de prostitución, como hacía el informe de Fedea y en los problemas de cada uno. Porque, además, también debemos darle una vuelta a si es un problema de orden público o de la actividad. En este sentido, los experimentos de zonificación no han salido demasiado bien: no hablamos sólo del famoso Barrio Rojo de Amsterdam, que cada día cuenta con más detractores; otros menos conocidos, como el de Leeds, en Reino Unido, también están siendo revisados tras las críticas de los vecinos. Aquí se encuentra el principal reto de la prostitución: incluso si se legaliza, nadie ha sido capaz de ofrecer una alternativa válida a la cuestión del dónde y cómo hacerlo sin enfrentarse a los vecinos, que tienen muy buenas razones para no querer que aquello ocurra en la puerta de sus casas.

Y si se legaliza, cómo hacerlo. Porque también sobre esto hay controversias. En Holanda, el modelo ha funcionado, más o menos, con una mezcla de legalización en casas y burdeles pero prohibición en las calles. Los críticos aseguran que no se han reducido (incluso han aumentado) las denuncias por trata o actividades delictivas relacionadas con la prostitución. Los defensores aseguran que las chicas están más protegidas y tienen derechos laborales como autónomos. En Nueva Zelanda, otro de los sistemas de moda para los pro-legalización, incluso hay casos de prostitutas que han llevado (y ganado) a los dueños de burdeles ante los tribunales. En este punto, sus defensores aseguran el mejor efecto de la legalización es que hace que sea mucho más sencillo que las chicas o alguien de su entorno denuncia los delitos que puedan cometerse contra ellas.

Un modelo alternativo

¿Hay algún punto intermedio que pueda contentarles a todos? Desde Libre Mercado, proponemos una aproximación que mezcla elementos de los dos modelos, por si puede servir como punto de partida para una discusión racional. La idea sería la siguiente:

- Por un lado, legalización de la prostitución a cambio de algún tipo de registro de la actividad. Como esto es complicado por temas de privacidad (existe una enorme reticencia entre las chicas a sacarse un carnet de prostituta o similar por miedo a que pueda conocerse su actividad), habría que buscar un formato que protegiese al máximo los datos de las personas involucradas.

En esto, como en muchas otras actividades, la tecnología podría ayudar. Los nuevos sistemas de cifrado podrían lograr que cada chica tuviera simplemente un código asignado que nadie pudiera asociar a una identidad real. De esta manera, estarían controladas, pero al mismo tiempo protegidas ante el exterior. Para conseguir ese código sólo tendrían que pasar una pequeña entrevista ante algún responsable público (en una comisaría, en una dependencia específicamente diseñada para esto, una asociación de ayuda a las prostitutas con licencia para facilitar ese registro, etc...)

- En segundo lugar, esa medida se completaría con multas fuertes y con la persecución de clientes y proxenetas que contraten chicas sin carnet (hablamos de carnet para que la idea quede clara, pero podría ser simplemente un usuario secreto en una web destinada sólo a este fin).

¿Qué se lograría con esto? Por un lado, desde el lado del cliente, el incentivo está claro: sólo acudir a clubes o casas en las que haya una cierta seguridad de que todas las chicas están legalizadas. Para qué arriesgarse con una ilegal que le puede reportar una pena muy dura, pensará un cliente normal, si puede contratar sin temor con una comprobación mínima. No decimos que esto erradicaría sin más las situaciones ilegales, pero cambiaría los incentivos de los involucrados.

Desde el lado de las prostitutas, también cambia la forma de plantearse la actividad. Si muchos clientes te rechazarán si no estás legalizada, los incentivos a sacarse el numerito crecen, sobre todo si hay un sistema que garantice al 100% la privacidad (y, como decimos, parece que eso ya es más sencillo con las nuevas tecnologías de cifrado).

Por último, un modelo así haría muy costosa la trata de personas. Imaginemos un club con 50 prostitutas: si la Policía controla que todas tengan que tener el permiso requerido con inspecciones periódicas, para los dueños sería muy complicado mantener chicas contra su voluntad. Sólo con que una hablase (y para sacarse el permiso o renovarlo sería obligatorio tener una pequeña entrevista a solas con aquel a quien la administración nombre responsable) se les vendría abajo el negocio y se expondrían a penas muy contundentes. Por lo tanto, esa entrevista hacer sacar el carnet a una persona víctima de trata es casi imposible; y al mismo tiempo, tener un negocio clandestino sería mucho menos rentable y más peligroso.

Eso sí, ya sea con esta alternativa o con otras, lo que sí debe quedar claro es que dos de los grandes problemas asociados a la prostitución no quedarían resueltos. Pero es que quizás es imposible que lo estén. En primer lugar, la cuestión de dónde permitir la actividad. Porque es lógico que nadie la quiera en su barrio. Aquí quizás la única alternativa es que sean los ayuntamientos los que regulen dónde se permite (lo normal es que muchos la prohíban salvo en domicilios o clubes que no se anuncien como tales).

Y luego está el tema de la trata o las actividades ilegales (desde personas explotadas, inmigrantes ilegales o menores). Siempre habrá desalmados que quieran pagar por estos servicios. Con prohibición y con legalización, los malos buscan una forma de saltarse las normas. La clave es qué modelo hace que sea más sencillo perseguirles. Hasta ahora se ha probado casi de todo y ninguna alternativa ha conseguido un consenso universal. Quizás porque es imposible lograrlo en temas tan complejos como éste.

Porque, además, que una actividad sea legal no quiere decir que sea buena o que el resto debamos tolerarla. Por ahí se abre otro debate muy interesante: cómo penalizar socialmente (boicot, exclusión social, reprobación...) este tipo este tipo de conductas, incluso aunque decidamos que deben ser legalizadas.

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Prostitución: ¿hay alternativas más allá de la prohibición que quiere Sánchez?

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Abolición de la prostitución. Impulsaremos una Ley integral contra la trata con fines de explotación sexual para sancionar penalmente a quienes contribuyan o se beneficien de la prostitución ajena, sancionando la demanda y la compra de prostitución. Es la medida número 8 de los 35 "compromisos sociales" con los que Pedro Sánchez se presenta a las próximas elecciones.

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4 modelos de prostitución: Nueva Zelanda es la papa (despenalizar todo, no regular)

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What do sex workers want? | Juno Mac | TEDxEastEnd

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El mundo es una mierda. Dejame prostituirme en paz.

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Sobre "falacias" abolicionistas

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In 1996, California enacted legislation legalizing the medical use of marijuana. Today twenty nine states permit such use. Ten states allow recreational use as well. In August 2013 the U. S. Attorney General announced that the Justice Department would not interfere with the new policies even though federal prohibitions against any marijuana use remain in place (this may change under the Trump Administration, although it hasn't as of early 2019).

Before 2004, no state recognized same-sex marriage. By 2015, when the Supreme Court announced that same sex-marriage was a fundamental right, more than thirty states, through the ballot box or court decree, had already made room for it.

Historians will look back on the last seventy years as an era of astonishing changes in public attitudes and legal policies. A series of "liberation" movements, beginning with the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Liberation Movement, have swept away deeply-held and widespread prejudices, and thoroughly changed the country's institutions and practices. In particular, the rapidity of the shift in opinion on gay rights and drug enforcement is remarkable.

These revolutions in opinion and policy throw a sharp glare on a remaining stigmatized class that still lives and works under state repression: prostitutes. Why, in a country keen to protect personal liberties, has there been no similar "liberation" movement affecting the rights and well-being of this burdened class?

A Canadian report some years back described the United States approach to prostitution as "draconian." This was not an overstatement. The United States retains on its books laws more repressive than those in any other Western industrialized nation. Public opinion remains unfavorable to prostitution reform. In a 2012 poll by the website YouGov.com, 38% of respondents thought prostitution should be legalized while 48% thought not and 13% remained uncertain. A 2008 Quinnipiac University poll of New Yorkers showed 62% opposed to legalization, 30% in favor.

Prostitutes in the United States remain largely unorganized; the associations that speak for them are few and ineffectual. Where they are organized, they meet failure. A 2004 ballot measure in Berkeley, California that would have made enforcement of anti-prostitution laws a "low priority" in that city failed 36% to 63%. A similar 2008 ballot choice in San Francisco failed by 42% to 58%.

By contrast, those hostile to prostitution are well-organized, funded, vocal, and effective. The intellectual shape of this hostility is driven not only by conservative Christians, from whom one expects moral distaste for prostitution, but by a community of "abolitionist" feminists. This alliance between feminists and religious conservatives has been able to do two things: to insist that all prostitution degrades all women - women who prostitute and women who do not - and to link prostitution to human trafficking, indeed, to elide the difference between them.

This convergence of Christians and abolitionist feminists on a common theme was especially instrumental to the Bush Administration's committing the United States government to an explicitly anti-prostitution position. In major legislation in 2003 authorizing distribution to NGOs of billions of dollars to fight the spread of HIV around the world, Congress forbade funding to any organization "that does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking." This provision derived from a Congressional "finding" that "[p]rostitution and other sexual victimization are degrading to women and children and it should be the policy of the United States to eradicate such practices."[1] After several years of litigation, the Supreme Court in 2013 struck down this requirement as a violation of the First Amendment. According to the Court, the requirement went far beyond any practical need Congress had to assure that its funds would be put to effective use. It blatantly compelled NGOs to profess a controversial position, favored by Congress, as their own.[2]

Likewise, abolitionist groups have been effective in creating or influencing "prostitution exit" organizations that assist women in leaving prostitution. Exit groups have mushroomed across the country, in both governmental and non-governmental forms, because the federal government gives millions in grants to local police departments and social service organizations to implement the goals of its anti-trafficking legislation, first authorized in 2000 and then reauthorized periodically since. Scores of organizations at the local and national levels make up a formidable network, most focused on a simple nostrum: "end demand."

Equality Now, an advocacy group international in scope, with offices in New York, London, and Nairobi, declares that

the most effective way to end sex trafficking is by addressing demand for prostitution. Such a strategy would include criminalizing traffickers and buyers of sex while decriminalizing victims and providing them with rehabilitative and other services.[3]

The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), with offices in several countries, likewise favors a legal approach that "criminalizes the purchase of commercial sex and offers the exploited an exit strategy."[4]

CATW and Equality Now joined together to urge the Supreme Court in the Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International case to uphold the anti-prostitution pledge embodied in the 2003 federal legislation. CATW and Equality Now argued that prostitution, "which most often takes the form of sex trafficking," endangers the family and the community. "The prostitution and sex-trafficking industry is inherently harmful [and] opposing the legalization and legitimization of prostitution lies at the heart of any effective program aimed at eradicating HIV/AIDS."[5]

Other groups with broad national reach echo the same themes. These include the Demand Abolition group, funded by the Hunt Foundation; Shared Hope International; and Demand Forum, a project of the Abt Associates, a major policy advocacy group with funding from large foundations, corporations, and the U. S. Government. At the local level, numerous organizations add their voices to the chorus.

Arrayed against this tide of anti-prostitution voices in the United States are a handful of ill-funded and barely functioning sex worker organizations. For example, the Global Network of Sex Works Projects, an international umbrella group, lists only a few member organizations from the United States, all of them minor-leaguers compared to their adversaries.[6]

TRAFFICKING

In 2000, Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), defining the crime of "trafficking in persons" and augmenting penal sanctions for it. The Act authorized grants to state and local agencies to combat trafficking and assist trafficking victims; obliged the President to assess the anti-trafficking efforts of every nation in the world and take certain actions against those that fail to meet minimum standards; and required the State Department to make an annual report on the progress of nations in fighting trafficking.[7] The legislation coincided with the United Nation's adoption of the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Convention's Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (the Palermo Protocol). In the following years, various U.S. states passed their own anti-trafficking legislation.

The Palermo Protocol defines trafficking as the exploitation of persons for labor or sexual services by use of force or fraud.[8] The TVPA uses different terminology. "Sex trafficking" means "the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act." Sex trafficking that utilizes "force, fraud, or coercion," or involves a minor, counts as a "severe" form of trafficking.[9] Just as TVPA defines "trafficking" differently than the Palermo Protocol, state laws offer up many variations of their own. (Throughout all the essays that follow, when I refer to "trafficking," I shall mean what the TVPA calls "severe trafficking.")

The federal and state governments have always had legal power against the elements of trafficking, which include kidnapping, battery, extortion, pandering, and other common crimes. The new trafficking legislation purportedly makes it easier to prosecute these crimes, and adds tougher penalties, authorizes substantial funding, and integrates enforcement with victim assistance.

Trafficking has always existed but the Palermo Protocol and the TVPA raised awareness about it in the United States, an awareness further enhanced through media campaigns and the proliferation of anti-trafficking NGOs. Images of foreign girls tricked and transported to the U. S. or other countries and brutally forced into sexually servicing scores of men a day make compelling newspaper copy and TV imagery. Municipal and state police forces now have special trafficking units (typically located in their vice divisions) that make many well-reported trafficking arrests. Sex trafficking in its most horrendous forms has come to dominate the contemporary discussion of prostitution, making it easy to collapse the one into the other. Every current prostitution debate in this country and around the world takes place in the shadow of sex trafficking alarmism.

THE WORLD CONTEXT

The Palermo Protocol and the United States federal legislation on trafficking emerged at a pivotal moment in the "new prostitution wars." In 1999, Sweden had made purchasing but not selling sexual services a criminal offense. The sex purchase ban rested on the premise that "it is shameful and unacceptable that, in a gender equal society, men obtain casual sexual relations with women in return for payment."[10] Sweden touted its pioneering approach to abolishing prostitution and set up institutions to evangelize the rest of the world.[11] In 1996, Norway adopted similar legislation. In December 2013, the French National Assembly passed a bill banning the purchase of sex, although in the summer of 2014 the French Senate stripped out the ban. In 2016 the Assembly prevailed and the sex purchase ban went into effect.[12] In October 2014, the legislature of Northern Ireland passed a sex purchase ban; and the legislature of the Republic of Ireland has recently adopted its own ban.[13]

Not all of Europe followed Sweden's lead, however. In 2002, The German Federal Republic enacted the Prostitution Act, which sought to regularize prostitution as legitimate work like any other. The law has had limited effect, however, because the different German Länder (states) persist in regulating prostitution as they have for more than a century, tolerating its existence on their own restrictive terms.[14] In 2000, the Netherlands passed legislation lifting the ban on brothels (whose existence had long been tolerated). Even so, local authorities retain considerable discretionary power about licensing brothels, controlling permitted zones of street prostitution, and the like.[15] In 1999, Denmark made it no longer a criminal offense to sell sex but left prostitutes in a legal limbo, since almost anything a prostitute might do to make her enterprise safe and successful remains under a legal cloud.[16]

Elsewhere in the world, in Australia, Victoria legalized brothels in 1994; New South Wales decriminalized prostitution half a decade earlier; Queensland legalized brothels in 1999. In all three states, streetwalking is circumscribed to a greater or lesser degree. In Western Australia and South Australia, brothels are illegal, as is soliciting in or near any public place.[17] New Zealand in 2003 legislated sweeping changes in its treatment of prostitution. It permits streetwalking, regulated large brothels, and unregulated small owner-occupied brothels.[18]

In 2014, the Canadian Supreme Court eviscerated Canada's prostitution laws. Although it is not illegal in Canada to sell sex, before the Court ruling it was illegal to solicit customers, to earn income from a prostitute, and to maintain a brothel. The Court found that these limitations on an otherwise legal activity made it dangerous and inefficient, and did so for no compelling reason. Thus, these limitations violated prostitutes' rights. The Court stayed its ruling to allow Parliament time to enact new legislation. The conservative government in Canada responded with Bill C-36, passed into law, which follows the Swedish model in banning the purchase of sex (though selling sex remains lawful and though prostitutes may now employ aides and managers, work in brothels, and solicit openly in areas where children do not congregate).[19]

The contest between "end demand" abolitionists and their opponents shows up in cross-national debates as well. In 2013, the organization UN Women circulated a note among international NGOs warning that "[t]he conflation of consensual sex work and sex trafficking leads to inappropriate responses that fail to assist sex workers and victims of trafficking in realizing their rights. Furthermore, failing to distinguish between these groups infringes on sex workers' right to health and self-determination and can impede efforts to prevent and prosecute trafficking."[20] The note generated a number of hostile responses and defensive counter-responses. The Swedish Women's Lobby demanded the note be officially withdrawn:

We are aware that the so called "sex workers" movement is pushing at all levels for a positioning that would distinguish between prostitution and trafficking. While we support the urgent need to stop criminalising women and girls in prostitution and protecting them from all forms of violence and human rights violation, we strongly believe that any purchase of sex, whether the prostituted person has been trafficked/exploited or not, is fuelling trafficking, normalising the sex industry and perpetuating inequality between women and men.[21]

In its 2012 report, "Rights, Risk, and Health," the UN's Global Commission on HIV and the Law, like UN Women, deplored the tendency to conflate sex work and sex trafficking, and declared, "Decriminalisation is the first step toward better working conditions" for prostitutes. Likewise, UNAIDS' 2012 "Guidance Note on HIV and Sex Work" insisted that "[a]ll adult sex workers have the right to determine whether to remain in or leave sex work." Its Advisory Committee was more direct: "States should move away from criminalising sex work or activities associated with it." Similarly, the UNAIDS report on "Sex Work and the Law in Asia and the Pacific" advised decriminalization.[22] These reports drew fire from Equality Now and other abolitionists. The latter, in turn, took comfort from the 2013 report of the European Parliament's Commission on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, which pronounced prostitution to be "a form of slavery incompatible with human dignity and fundamental human rights." "Prostitution," it maintained, "is a very obvious and utterly appalling violation of human dignity" and to legalize it "is to legalise sexual slavery."[23]

FACTS AND FACTOIDS

Every scholarly study and responsible report about prostitution and trafficking begins the same way: there's a "relative dearth of thorough-going empirical studies" about prostitution; "[o]ne of the biggest challenges of doing research on human trafficking is the scarcity of reliable and comparable data;" "numerous articles have been published in scholarly journals but few are based on systematic primary data collection. . . . [w]ith few empirical studies available, imagination seems to have filled the gaps of our knowledge."[24]

Imagination - and reckless imagination at that - has indeed filled the "gaps of knowledge" with an amazing array of "factoids." Here are a few, easily accessed on websites or stumbled across in the written literature:

People in prostitution face a "workplace" homicide rate 51 times higher than the next most dangerous job for women (working in a liquor store).[25]

The average age of death of prostitutes is 34.[26]

There are 40 million prostitutes worldwide (or 200 million or 13 million).[27]

The average age of entry into prostitution is fourteen (or twelve).[28]

Only an estimated 100-300 women in the U. S. actually choose prostitution.[29]

One in five [pornographic] images on the internet is of underage girls.[30]

400,000 children in the U. S. are lured into the sex trade every year.[31]

Only 2% of prostitutes ever get out.[32]

The average life expectancy for a child forced into sexual slavery is 7 years.[33]

The international sex trafficking industry is yearly worth $32, or $44, or $58 billion.[34]

There are 12½ million slaves in the world today (1.5 out of every thousand people); or 27 million; or more than 30 million.[35]

79% of all human trafficking in the world is for sexual purposes, or 87%.[36]

50,000 women and children are trafficked annually for sexual exploitation into the United States, or it might be 18,000-20,000.[37]

The list could be expanded indefinitely.[38] Unfortunately, these factoids not only find their way into popular commentary, advocacy websites, and the like, they often show up in academic writing as well. I call them "factoids" because sometimes they have a mangled though tenuous relation to real facts. Other times they are plainly made up. For example, the idea that you can pick out 100 to 300 prostitutes among the alleged one million (or the alleged 84,000) that ply their trade in the U. S. as the ones who freely choose their occupation is risible.[39]

Other "factoids" have their origins in facts. Take for example the ubiquitous claim that the mortality rate for prostitutes is extremely high. This claim arises from a study by John Potterat and fellow researchers. They kept track of prostitutes in Colorado Springs between 1967-1999, gathering enough information to identify death rates and causes of death among them. Ninety-four percent were street prostitutes and many if not most were drug users. Drugs and alcohol accounted for 27% of the deaths. Homicide accounted for 19%, accident 12%, and AIDS 9%. Overall, the mortality rate among these prostitutes was very high, indeed, and their murder rate was 18 times higher than for women in general aged 15-44. What the study showed is that drug-taking street prostitutes lead a dangerous life. And one can hardly blame less-than-careful readers for extrapolating these numbers to prostitutes as a whole, since Potterat and his colleagues made this same leap: "The high homicide and overall mortality rates observed in our cohort probably reflect circumstances for nearly all prostitutes in the United States."[40] On the contrary, they probably don't. Potterat and his colleagues supplied no justification for their claim. Yet if streetwalkers represent only 10% or 20% of the total prostitution population in the United States, a figure commonly cited by studies,[41] then the fate of streetwalkers does not necessarily represent the fate of prostitutes in general. The relevant comparison class to those Colorado Springs streetwalkers is the one composed of other drug-taking young women not selling sex on the street but dealing drugs, stealing, and engaging in other risky illegal activities. Their mortality rate is likely to be quite high too.

A second claim arising from the Potterat study, found in lots of abolitionist literature, warrants no excuse at all. This is the claim that the average age of death of prostitutes is 34, a claim peddled by, among others, Nicholas Kristoff in his New York Times column of March 13, 2008.

In the Colorado Springs study, the average age of death of the 100 prostitutes who died during the study was 34, not the average age of death of the 1600-plus prostitutes studied, almost all of whom hadn't died yet in 1999 and many of whom are likely still alive today. Such sloppy and inattentive reading, joined to an obvious desire to bandy about the most extreme or shocking "facts" characterizes so much of the abolitionist ouvre, in print and on-line. Consider, for example, the report of the European Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, mentioned above. Twice it reports that there are 40-42 million persons involved in prostitution worldwide. It further reports that prostitution generates revenues of $186 billion per year.[42] However, the site (Havoscope.com) from which it takes the $186 billion figure puts the number of prostitutes worldwide at 13,265,900. The Committee hadn't the slightest interest in this figure and never bothered to reconcile it with the much higher claim of 40-42 million it presented in its report.[43] However, if the Committee couldn't take seriously Havoscope's low-balling the number of prostitutes, how could it put any credence in dollar figures on worldwide revenue? There's an easy answer: the Committee wanted the most dramatic figures it could get. It had no interest in reconciling the numbers. This is not a very generous interpretation, to be sure, but one only needs to read the report to see how the cards are stacked.

"Only 2 percent of prostitutes ever get out."

"The average life expectancy for a child forced into sexual slavery is 7 years."

Do you believe these figures? I set the reader a challenge: find the source of the claim that children forced into sexual slavery have a life expectancy of seven years. Any number of websites that make this assertion refer to "FBI" without further description. Find the FBI source and then find its basis for the claim. Good luck.

WHAT DO WE KNOW?

We know very little about prostitution. Most studies and reports acknowledge this. Even the European Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality observes "that the lack of reliable, accurate and comparable data among countries, owing mainly to the illegal and often invisible nature of prostitution and trafficking, keeps the prostitution market opaque and hinders political decision-making. . . . [M]ore analysis and statistical evidence is needed" in order to make sound policy choices: either to decriminalize prostitution or to impose sex-purchase bans.[44]

However, like so many reports, it then proceeds without caution or qualification to opt for a sex-purchase ban, a policy that presupposes that the "more analysis and statistical evidence" called for will in fact show prostitution to take one shape rather than another. The report makes frequent references to cherry-picked "studies," offering the illusion of that its own recommendations are thoroughly fact-based. They are not.

If we really cared about the facts, how would we find them? Where could we place our trust and reliance? I start to answer this question in Essay 2.

~~~~~

END NOTES

[1] United States Code, Title 22, Chap. 83, §7601 (23). During the same period Janice Raymond of the Coalition Against Trafficking of Women was urging Congress in its anti-trafficking legislation to take an abolitionist position against prostitution. See CATW>Best Practices>Legislative Advocacy>Testimony. According to Penelope Saunders, the split among feminist groups on the issue of prostitution hampered lobbying by liberal forces against the "must-oppose-prostitution-pledge" in the HIV legislation; Penelope Saunders, "Prohibiting Sex Work Projects, Restricting Women's Rights: The International Impact of the 2003 U.S. Global AIDS Act," Health and Human Rights, 7 (2004), pp. 179-192. A New York Times article describes a meeting of evangelicals and feminists in 2006 to give their stamp of approval to John Miller to head the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. His attraction to both groups lay in his willingness to endorse that the claims that prostitution is "inherently hurtful and dehumanizing" and that it, along with other sex work, "[fuels] the modern-day slavery known as sex trafficking." Joel Brinkley, "A Modern-Day Abolitionist Battles Slavery Worldwide," New York Times, February 4, 2006.

[2] Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International, 133 S. Ct. 2321 (2013). Congress imposed its requirement on all recipient organizations "except . . . the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the World Health Organization, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative . . . [and] any United Nations Agency." The United States still imposes this requirement on other foreign NGOs, who are not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and thus not covered by the ruling in Agency v Alliance.

[3] Equality Now>Our Work>Trafficking, http://www.equalitynow.org/our-work/trafficking.

[4] CATW>Projects and Campaigns>Redefining Prostitution Law, http://www.catwinternational.org/ProjectsCampaigns/Projects.

[5] Supreme Court of the United States, Agency for International Development et al., Petitioners, v Alliance for Open Society International Inc., et al., Respondents. ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT. BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE COALITION AGAINST TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN, EQUALITY NOW, ET AL., IN SUPPORT OF REVERSAL, pp. 5, 9, http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/supreme_court_preview/briefs-v2/12-10_reversal_catw-etal.authcheckdam.pdf. In a footnote at p. 6, CATW and Equality Now write: "While amici do not conflate prostitution and trafficking and acknowledge that not all individuals in the commercial sex industry are or were under the control of a trafficker, we have learned both from our work on the ground with victims and survivors and from available research, that most individuals in the industry entered as children exploited by adults, as recognized by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, 22 U.S.C. § 7101(b)(4) (2006); that the vast majority of people in prostitution are induced into it by 'the abuse of power or a position of vulnerability,' a means of trafficking identified by the Palermo Protocol . . . and that once in the commercial sex industry, it is extraordinarily difficult for prostituted people to exit, as the result of addiction, trauma and other psychological injury, and subtle and not so subtle tactics of coercion employed by sex industry profiteers."

[6] They include several chapters of SWOP (Sex Worker Outreach Project, headquartered in San Francisco), the Red Umbrella Project, Desiree Alliance, and HIPS, a twenty-year old Washington, DC project with some public as well as private support. The Sex Workers Project in New York City, part of the Urban Justice Center, is perhaps the best supported, and provides both policy advocacy and assistance - psychological, material, and legal - to sex workers in the city. SWOP USA gets along on about $25,000 a year; the combined budgets of Equality Now and CATW are nearly 200 times as large.

[7] See http://www.state.gov/j/tip/laws/ for links to the original legislation and subsequent reauthorizations.

[8] The Protocol's full definition: "Trafficking in persons shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs; (b) The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) have been used; (c) The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered 'trafficking in persons' even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article; (d) 'Child' shall mean any person under eighteen years of age." Article 3, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/ProtocolTraffickingInPersons.aspx.

[9] Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, Section 103, http://www.state.gov/j/tip/laws/61124.htm.

[10] Förbud mot köp av sexuell tjänst: En utvärdering 1999-2008 (Prohibiting the purchase of sexual services: An evaluation 1999-2008), SOU 2010:49, p. 29, http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/12634/a/149142.

[11] May-Len Skilbrei and Charlotta Holmstrom, Prostitution Policy in the Nordic Region: Ambiguous Sympathies (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013), p. 118.

[12] Proposition de Loi-Renforçant la Lutte Contre le Système Prostitutionnel, Chapter IV, Article 16 (National Assembly, November 30, 2013); Proposition de Loi Adoptée par L'Assemblée, Renforçant la Lutte Contre le Système Prostitutionnel, Texte de la Commission Spéciale, Chapter IV, Article 16 Supprimé (Deleted), July 8, 2014, http://www.senat.fr/leg/ppl13-698.html.

[13] BBC News, "Human Trafficking Bill: Paying for Sex to Become a Crime in Northern Ireland", December 9, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-30404275; Marie O'Halloran, "Bill to Criminalise Purchase of Sex Includes on-the-spot Fines and Jail for Repeat Offenders," Irish Times, May 3, 2013, http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/oireachtas/bill-to-criminalise-purchase-of-sex-includes-on-the-spot-fines-and-jail-for-repeat-offenders-1.1382076.

[14] Prostitutionsgesetz vom 20. Dezember 2001 (BGBl. I S. 3983), http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/prostg/BJNR398310001.html. For the limited effect of the law, see Rebecca Pates, "Liberal Laws Juxtaposed with Rigid Control: an Analysis of the Logics of Governing Sex Work in Germany," Sexuality Research & Social Policy, vol. 9, no. 3 (September 2012), pp. 212-222.

[15] See A.L. Daalder, Prostitution in the Netherlands since the Lifting of the Brothel Ban, Scientific Research and Documentation, Ministry of Justice, Netherlands, 2007.

[16] See "Danish stance on prostitution," http://kvinfo.org/laws-facts-and-figures/danish-stance-prostitution.

[17] See these websites: Scarlet Alliance, http://www.scarletalliance.org.au/laws; Coalition Against Trafficking in Women in Australia, http://www.catwa.org.au/?q=Statelegislations.

[18] See "Prostitution Law Reform in New Zealand," July 2012, http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/parl-support/research-papers/00PLSocRP12051/prostitution-law-reform-in-new-zealand.

[19] Canada v. Bedford, 2013 SCC 72, https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/13389/index.do; C-36, Second Session, Forty-first Parliament, House of Commons of Canada, 2013-2014, http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=6717422.

[20] Global Network of Sex Work Projects, http://www.nswp.org/resource/un-womens-note-sex-work-sexual-exploitation-and-trafficking.

[21] Swedish Women's Lobby, http://sverigeskvinnolobby.se/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Regarding-the-UN-Women-note-on-prostitution.pdf.

[22] UN Secretariat, Global Commission on HIV and the Law, "Risk, Rights, and Health," July 2012, p. 40, http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/HIV-AIDS/Governance%20of%20HIV%20Responses/Commissions%20report%20final-EN.pdf; UNAIDS Guidance Note on HIV and Sex Work, April 2012, p. 17; Annex 1, p. 6, http://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/sub_landing/files/JC2306_UNAIDS-guidance-note-HIV-sex-work_en.pdf; John Godwin, Sex Work and the Law in Asia and the Pacific: Laws, HIV and Human Rights in the Context of Sex Work, UNAIDS, October 2012, p. 14, http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/hiv-aids/sex-work-and-the-law-in-asia-and-the-pacific/.

[23] Mary Honeyball, Report on Sexual Exploitation and Prostitution and Its Impact on Gender Equality, European Parliament, Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, February 2013, p. 16, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A7-2014-0071+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN.

[24] Margaret A. Baldwin, "Pornography and the Traffic in Women," Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, vol. 1 (Spring 1989), p. 124; Seo-Young Cho et al, "Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Trafficking," World Development, 41 (January 2013), p. 69; Sheldon X. Zhang, "Beyond the 'Natasha' Story - A Review and Critique of Current Research on Sex Trafficking," Global Crime, 10, (August 2009), p. 178.

[25] Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE), Fact Sheet, "Misconception: Prostitution is Just Another Job," http://media.virbcdn.com/files/43/FileItem-150151-AM_Prostitution.pdf.

[26] Nicholas Kristoff, "Do as He Said," New York Times, March 13, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html?_r=0; Helen Mees, "Does Legalizing Prostitution Work?"(2009), posted in the Carnegie Council on-line journal Policy Innovations, http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/commentary/data/000107.

[27] The Stats on Prostitution, http://findingjustice.org/prostitution-statistics; Michael Chan et al., "Regulating the Oldest Profession in the New Economy: A Study of Online and Cyberprostitution in the Netherlands, the United States, China, and Hong Kong," http://newmedia.cityu.edu.hk/cyberlaw/gp22/intro.html; Havoscope: Illegal Markets-Prostitution Statistics-Number of Prostitutes Worldwide: 13,265,900, http://www.havocscope.com/tag/prostitution/. The figure given by Chan et al. illustrates the sloppiness of research in this area. They posit 200,000,000 prostitutes worldwide based on a claim by Donna Hughes. They give the wrong date for their citation of Hughes, but they are relying on her essay "Pimps and Predators on the Internet: Globalizing Sexual Exploitation of Women and Children" (no longer on the CATW website Chang et al cites but available at this site: http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/pprep.htm, where she asserts, "There are approximately 200 million people around the world who are forced to live as sexual or economic slaves (emphasis added)." Since Hughes counts all prostitutes as slaves, everything depends on how many non-prostitute "slaves" there are in the world (e.g., children and adults coerced into street begging, agricultural production, manufacturing, tuna fishing, and the like). If "forced labor" exceeds by far "forced prostitution" or prostitution in general, then the Chan et al figures are way off base (as they almost certainly are).

[28] Vednita Carter and Evalina Giobbe, "Duet: Prostitution, Racism and Feminist Discourse," Hastings Women's Law Journal, 37 (1999), p. 45; Human Trafficking Awareness Partnerships, Florida, http://humantraffickingawareness.org/programs/.

[29] Robert Brannon, "Does Consensual Prostitution Exist?" NOMAS Task Group on Pornography and Prostitution, http://www.nomas.org/node/179.

[30] Safe House of Hope, Baltimore, MD, http://safehouseofhope.org/backgroundinformation/.

[31] San Diego Youth Services-The Action Network, http://www.sdyouthservices.org/site/DocServer/Action_Network_History_and_Overview.pdf?docID=501.

[32] Leslie Fain, "Why Do It for Free?" Human Life Review (Summer 2013), http://www.humanlifereview.com/index.php/component/content/article/78-2013-summer/254-why-do-it-for-free.

[33] Traffic 911 Innocence Taken, https://www.traffick911.com/what-human-trafficking#.U90WBGN7SFw. Or see the many variations: "The average life expectancy of a child who enters prostitution before the age of 18 is only 7 years," http://www.azgovernor.gov/HTTF/documents/Materials/HTTF_060613_FBI.pdf; "The average life expectancy of a prostitute is 7 years," http://childrescuenetwork.org/know-the-facts/human-trafficking/what-is-human-trafficking/; "The average life span of a child caught in the sex slave trade is two years," http://www.mannafreedom.com/get-informed-about-human-trafficking/what-is-human-trafficking/.

[34] Massachusetts Attorney General, http://www.mass.gov/ago/about-the-attorney-generals-office/community-programs/anti-human-trafficking/; Lord McColl, Parliamentary Debate, United Kingdom 2009, http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld200809/ldhansrd/lhan128.pd; The Stats on Prostitution, http://findingjustice.org/prostitution-statistics/.

[35] Melissa Dess, "Walking the Freedom Trail: An Analysis of the Massachusetts Human Trafficking Statute," Boston College Journal of Law and Social Justice, 33 (2013), p. 154; Bangor (Maine) Daily News, October 5, 2012, http://bangordailynews.com/2012/10/05/news/state/maine-and-portlands-roles-in-the-sex-trade-on-the-rise/; Not for Sale Campaign, http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/global-initiatives/international-projects-methodology/.

[36] Speaking of Prostitution Website, http://www.kvinnofronten.nu/eng/speaking-of-prostitution.htm#diff; Melissa Farley, Prostitution & Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections (San Francisco: Prostitution Research and Education, 2007), p. 1. Here we have another example of the sloppy treatment of evidence common across the board. The Speaking of Prostitution website and Melissa Farley both rely on an apparently impeccable source, a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Global Report on Trafficking in Persons (Farley uses a 2006 version, Speaking of Prostitution a 2009 version). However, both brush over an important qualifier made by UNODC: "[S]exual exploitation is by far the most commonly identified form of human trafficking (79%), followed by forced labour (18%). This may be the result of statistical bias. By and large the exploitation of women tends to be visible, in city centres, or along highways. Because it is more frequently reported, sexual exploitation has become the most documented type of trafficking in aggregate statistics. In comparison, other forms of exploitation are under-reported." (Emphasis added.) Moreover, here is what the International Labour Organization currently says about forced labor: Almost 21 million people are victims of forced labour - 11.4 million women and girls and 9.5 million men and boys; almost 19 million victims are exploited by private individuals or enterprises and over 2 million by state institutions or rebel groups; of those exploited by individuals or enterprises, 4.5 million are victims of forced sexual exploitation. International Labour Organization, http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang-en/index.htm.

[37] U.S. State Department, TIP Report 2001; U.S. State Department, TIP Report 2003.the TIP Trafficking Persons) reports for each year can be found at http://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/.

[38] For further examples of baseless claims, consider these. Gloria Steinem, amplifying on the baleful consequences that would follow if prostitution were legalized, claims that "[t]he women's movement had to march to keep the state government [in Nevada] from denying welfare, unemployment and other benefits to women who wouldn't take this job [of prostituting at one of Nevada's legal brothels] - because it was presented as 'work like any other.' In Germany, too, legalisation turned the government into a procurer - until there were massive objections." Interview of Gloria Steinem by Rakhshanda Jalil, June 18, 2012, http://herald.dawn.com/2012/06/18/interview-gloria-steinem-2.html. The Germany allusion is based on a newspaper article in the Telegraph (London) in 2005 by Clare Chapman, who reported that an unemployed German woman got a call through a job center offering her a job. The job was in a brothel. Chapman then quotes an individual who conjectures that unemployed women who refuse to take brothel jobs could have their benefits reduced, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1482371/If-you-dont-take-a-job-as-a-prostitute-we-can-stop-your-benefits.htm. Since then countless stories, without attribution, have reported this conjecture as fact. The "massive objections" in Germany that Steinem refers to never happened. As to the Nevada part of Steinem's claim, it's impossible to find any sourcing for it. Nevada state government has little to do with prostitution, which is authorized and regulated at the county level. Moreover, those who work in brothels in Nevada are not "employees" with "jobs;" they are independent contractors. Nevada unemployment benefit rules do not require any jobless person to set himself or herself up as an independent contractor of any sort. Otherwise, no one would be eligible for unemployment benefits. The Nevada rules today and in the past mirror all state rules: "A person must accept an offer of suitable employment when made and must go on referrals to suitable work as directed by this Division. Suitable work is defined as work which the individual customarily performs and that pays the prevailing (average) wage for that type of work in the area that the work is being performed" (emphasis added), http://nvdetr.org/esd%20pages/ui%20eligibility.htm.

A similarly made-up "datum" is the frequently quoted contention that human trafficking is the third or second most lucrative illegal trade in the world. In recent comments at a conference, Kevin Bales, co-author of The Slave Next Door (University of California Press, 2009), recounts:" I know exactly where [that claim] came from and exactly how it happened, because I said it. In a meeting, at the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, I was the consultant on human trafficking for the establishment of the 'trafficking' part of ODC in the year 2000. It was a closed meeting and someone said 'so where do you think this lands in terms of other types of organised crime that we're working on here at the Office on Drugs and Crime, drugs and arms, like that?' And they turned to me because I was the data guy and I said, 'Listen, no one knows the answer to that question, it's impossible to answer that question. If I had to guess I would say it was third, but no one could answer that question.' Soon this figure found its way into a report, and then into nearly every book and essay on human trafficking." The comments by Bales were made at a speech by Ronald Weitzer at Queens University in Belfast, April 2013. The transcript is at http://sexworkresearch.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/popular-claims-vs-evidence-based-conclusions-in-human-trafficking/.

[39] The number 1,000,000 is provided by the web-site Havoscope, http://www.havocscope.com/tag/prostitution/, the 84,000 estimate is in John H. Potterat, Donald E. Woodhouse, John B. Muth, and Stephen Q. Muth, "Estimating the Prevalence and Career Longevity of Prostitute Women," Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 27 (May 1990), pp. 233-243.

[40] John J. Potterat, Devon D. Brewer, Stephen Q. Muth, Richard B. Rothenberg, Donald E. Woodhouse, John B. Muth, Heather K. Stites, and Stuart Brody, "Mortality in a Long-term Open Cohort of Prostitute Women," American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 159, no. 8 (2004), p. 784.

[41] In a prior report, Potterat and associates remark: "Colorado Springs female prostitutes work in a variety of settings: on the stroll (street), in bars, dance halls, hotels, bawdy houses, massage parlors, and through various services advertised in newspapers. It has been our experience that the same woman may work in different settings, simultaneously or sequentially." John J. Potterat, Donald Woodhouse, John B. Muth, and Stephen Q. Muth, "Estimating the Prevalence and Career Longevity of Prostitute Women," Journal of Sex Research, vol. 27 (May 1990), p. 234. However, they offer no further support for this observation, nor further elaboration; earlier work by Potterat and associates focused only on street prostitution (John J. Potterat, Richard Rothenberg, and Donald C. Cross, "Gonorrhea in Street Prostitutes: Epidemiologic and Legal Implications," Sexually Transmitted Diseases, vol. 6 [April-June 1979], pp. 58-63). In the current study, a high percentage of the prostitutes were injecting drug users, a characteristic of street prostitutes but not of off-street prostitutes.

On the estimation of street prostitutes numbers generally, see Michael S. Scott & Kelly Dedel, Street Prostitution, 2nd Edition (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2006), p. 2; Tamara O'Doherty, "Victimization in Off-Street Sex Industry Work," Violence Against Women, Vol. 17 (2011), p. 945; Frances M. Shaver, "Prostitution," The Canadian Encyclopedia, article posted online 2011, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/prostitution; Christine Stark and Carol Hodgson, "Sister Oppressions: A Comparison of Wife Battering and Prostitution," Journal of Trauma Practice, Vol. 2 (Summer 2003), p. 19; Frances M. Boyle et al., "Psychological Distress Among Female Sex Workers," Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, Vol. 21 (1997), pp. 643-44; Jody Raphael and Deborah L. Shapiro, Sisters Speak Out: The Lives and Needs of Prostituted Women in Chicago (Chicago: Center for Impact Studies, 2002), p. 8; John Lowman, testimony, Subcommittee on Solicitation Laws of the Standing Committee on Justice, Human Rights, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, 38th Parliament, 1st Session, Monday, February 21, 2005, § 1825; Jane Scoular and Maggie O'Neill, "Legal Incursions into Supply/Demand: Criminalising and Responsibilising the Buyers and Sellers of Sex in the UK," in Vanessa E. Munro, and Marina Della Giusta, Demanding Sex: Critical Reflections on the Regulation of Prostitution (New York: Ashgate, 2008), p. 17; Report of the Prostitution Law Review Committee on the Operation of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003, Ministry of Justice, Government of New Zealand, May 2008, pp. 34, 118; Meredith L. Dank, The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2001), p. 13.

[42] "Prostitution is a major factor in organised crime, second only to drugs in its scope and reach and the amount of money involved. The Havocscope website estimates prostitution revenue at around $186 billion per year worldwide." Mary Honeyball, Report on Sexual Exploitation and Prostitution and Its Impact on Gender Equality, European Parliament, Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, February 2013, p. 15, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A7-2014-0071+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN.

[43] "According to a 2012 report by Fondation Scelles, prostitution has a global dimension involving around 40-42 million people, 90% of whom are dependent on a procurer." Mary Honeyball, Report of Women's Committee, p. 15.

[44] Mary Honeyball, Report of Women's Committee, p. 9.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Essay 1: Why No Liberation? An Introduction

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In 1996, California enacted legislation legalizing the medical use of marijuana. Today twenty nine states permit such use. Ten states allow recreational use as well. In August 2013 the U. S. Attorney General announced that the Justice Department would not interfere with the new policies even though federal prohibitions against any marijuana use remain in...

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De cómo en realidad hay también clientas mujeres...

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Exciting, enjoyable, and lucrative. These are just some words that come to mind when I think back on my first sexual experience with a woman. I was nineteen years old and living in Oaxaca, Mexico as a student abroad when my credit card hit its limit as I went to pay for a conveyer belt full of groceries. Rather than go home to the claustrophobic suburbs I'd struggled so hard to escape, I started working as a stripper at a fully nude club called La Trampa. That's where I met Selma, another dancer who took me under her wing and, eventually, between her legs.

Sex work softened me to the idea of sex with a woman, paving the way for my first non-transactional same-sex sexual relationships. It became the first space where I could comfortably explore my sexuality, as it is for very many sex workers - as well as our clients.

I spoke with other queer sex workers whose jobs allowed them to explore their physical and emotional desires, as well as a queer client who offered insights into what compelled her to buy sex. While the women I spoke to described the experience as mutually beneficial, they also spoke candidly of how stigma negatively impacted their experiences.

To be sure, there are economically disadvantaged people - including queer and trans people - who engage in survival sex work out of desperation, and whose experiences in the industry are defined by shame and sex-negativity. There are sex workers who would do anything to be "normal" instead of what Amber Hollibaugh, feminist writer, filmmaker, and activist, as "an outlaw in an already outlawed world."

Certainly, for me, sex work hadn't begun as a political statement. I started stripping because I needed the money, and the fact that I enjoyed the work and had been curious before trying it and wanted to keep doing it still after I "needed" to initially confused me.

And yet, working in the sex industry introduced me to communities where sexual values were more expansive, non-monogamous, and radical. Historically, says Hollibaugh, this is the role these spaces have occupied. Strip clubs, peep shows and brothels, Hollibaugh says, are "sexual outlaw sites" - places where various sexual minorities and other targets of the state convene, and where policies, laws, regulations, and norms around how people should use their bodies didn't apply. The notion that the sex industry can encourage women to expand notions of their own sexuality is corroborated by academic Bernadette Barton, whose found these environments "offer women easy access to other women, invite them to break taboos, and teach them disdain for men."

In Mexico, gay men, lesbians, the trans and drag community, sex workers, and other people who didn't fit in could be publicly out. Between performances on stage, customers would often dance together, queerness on full display. After returning to the States, I moved from table dancing joints to "gown clubs," more restrictive patriarchal and heterosexual environments that often required female customers to have a male chaperone. Even there, a visibly queer population existed. In the dressing room, dancers talked nonchalantly about their girlfriends. We performed sex acts on one another and our female customers in the champagne room, oblivious to the men. Sure, some were women who were just performing for money, but others were obviously into it. Working alongside unapologetically queer women liberated parts of myself I may have never understood had I not worked in the industry. It was hot, and having an audience was part of the appeal, as was the fact that I was getting paid.

Alaina, a 26-year-old full-service sex worker, tells me she was nineteen years old when she got her start as a dancer.

"I wasn't yet in a mental health spot which permitted me to do mainstream work," Alaina said. "I needed a flexible schedule, and a greater financial return for my time, since I couldn't reliably get out of bed."

Of the first club where she worked - a dive bar in Colorado which Alaina said has since closed - made her feel "entirely at home."

"There was a dynamic amongst the majority of the dancers, a blur between friendship and sexual attraction," Alaina said. "As we know, straight and even homophobic women can sort of behave that way anyhow, because we've normalized sexy interaction between women as long as it's not, well, someone actually being gay."

In the club where she got her start, Alaina said, "it was different. It really, really was just pretty gay."

Prior to working in the strip clubs, Alaina noted she didn't understand that a sexual attraction towards other women could be anything other than a sexual perversion.

"I didn't consider it my sexuality, but rather a super-inappropriate fixation," Alaina says.

After becoming a sex worker, Alaina happily embraced her identity as a bisexual woman.

As both a dancer and full-service sex worker, Alaina said she's met a wide range of female-identifying clients.

"There are middle-aged women who are only just discovering their attraction to women -women who didn't realize that acknowledging this part of their sexuality was even an option, until recently," she said.

Hiring a sex worker with or without a male partner present, Alaina explained, can help bisexual women embrace their physical desires for women and may parlay into non-transactional relationships. Alaina's also serviced queer couples, as well as women in queer relationships further exploring their sexuality with or without their partners' knowledge or consent.

"I do think a lot of us [queer women] deal with a deeply-rooted fear of rejection with women, even long after we've accepted our sexuality," Alaina said. "Counter-intuitive as it may seem, I've observed before how using that environment of paid acceptance can help one learn to be more comfortable forming non-transactional relationships with women."

While rushed monogamy isn't at all unique to LGBT women, Alaina noted that "there's a unique kind of comfort in emotional intimacy with other women. We're hungry for it. We spent so much of our lives not having it, and now when we have it, a lot of us desperately want to hang onto it."

"I can see how having access to a transactional relationship that helps meet both your physical and emotional needs might ease the need to rush into it with other," she continued.

"A lot of types of sexual activity are stigmatized, but queer people find they are safe in exploring them with a professional," Beth, 37-year-old dominatrix based in Chicago, told me.

Nineteen years earlier, Beth says her best friend from high school found an ad in the newspaper to be dominatrixes.

"I had no idea what it was, but it sounded cool and I desperately needed money," Beth recounted: "Sex work opened up my eyes to a lot of things I wouldn't have access or knowledge to sexually. I'm not sure I would fully understand what queer meant to me if I wasn't a sex worker."

Beth says she's seen everything: lesbian couples, other sex workers, married straight-identifying women who come in with their husbands, and more. Like Alaina, Beth often services women in relationships who've come to a sex worker with or without their partners' consent.

"A lot of times one partner isn't comfortable topping or providing certain BDSM activities," said Beth, "so they will seek out the services of me to provide them in a safe way, and where the boundaries are clear and where the potential for emotional intimacy is low."

"If [a queer woman] comes in by herself, they usually bottom to me," Beth continued, "meaning they're either into me directing them or them assuming a submissive role to me, or they are there for me to inflict pain upon them."

In these cases, the couple must have a discussion with Beth at the start.

"We discuss mutual interests, and I will instruct or demonstrate along with the partner who wants to top/dominate on the one who wishes to bottom/submissive," she explained.

"A lot of [queer couples] want to spice up their sex life or want to explore new things to see if it sparks any interest in either of them," says Chicago, who describes the experience as fun and fulfilling.

Fun and fulfilling is exactly how the client I spoke to described her first experience.

"It was Christmas and I had extra money," said Nicky, a 28-year-old writer from New York City. "I needed to clean my apartment and so I figured I'd help someone out, and make it fun. I found an ad for full-service cleaning in the personals section [on Craigslist]."

The ad, she recalled, had pictures of a woman in a french maid outfit with her face blurred out.

"It said, 'get the deep cleaning you need' or something like that," she remembered.

Nicky lived with her partner at the time and says the two had briefly discussed the idea a few months earlier, and so she hired the woman as a surprise.

"Not a lot of cleaning went on," she laughed. "Instead, we just started playing and then it was two hours later."

Overall, Nicky described the experience as "pretty normal" and similar to a hook-up. Her partner, she said, also thought it was fun. Some months later, Nicky hired a sex worker again with a different partner. This time, she hired an acquaintance with experience in the sex trades.

"She was four or five months pregnant at the time and my partner really wanted to have sex with a pregnant woman," Nicky explained. "That was weirder. I was worried I was exploiting this person. It can be confusing."

The second experience was with a male and made her wonder even more.

"'Am I taking advantage of them by paying them? Is this unethical?' That time, it was with a male-identifying partner and so that felt even more confusing," Nicky noted. "You wonder, am I part of the patriarchy?"

In the past decade, the migration to heavily online use has helped streamline and normalize the profession, leading to an increase in the number of women who sell sex. At the same time, there's been an increase in legislation meant to limit how bad people use technology to facilitate exploitation. One of the hardest-hitting bills in the U.S. Senate and House is known as FOSTA-SESTA and became law in April 2018. Since the passage of the bill, sex workers have compiled an incomplete list of over 150 companies or distinct products have either shut down, limited their interactions, or outrightly banned sex workers from using their platforms. The list included Craigslist and Backpage, two classified advertising websites that had become the largest marketplaces for buying and selling sex.

According to the sex workers I spoke to, the legislation has only increased stigmatization and scared away more law-abiding clients, including queer women like Nicky.

"I'm not even sure I know how [to buy sex] anymore," Nicky said. "Not having access to Craigslist makes it so much harder. It feels more dangerous."

Even before FOSTA/SESTA, Alaina noted, you didn't really see any good attitudes about women hiring other sex workers.

"For the most part, I feel like the possibility doesn't even occur to people," she told me. "It just isn't something that they think women do."

Nicky agreed with the sentiment of women being pushed away from the ability to buy sex.

"I don't even think its discussed at all. I can't think of any friends that have [hired a sex worker], and I go to play parties, I'm poly/kink," Nicky noted.

And yet, hiring a sex worker can be an education, according to Nicky.

"Lesbians can be picky. It's hard to find someone to explore with," she said. "If you don't have a lot of experience with women - or you don't want to make things weird in your social circles - [hiring a sex worker] is a good option."

"If women had access to sex workers, you might figure out your sexuality earlier, and feel more empowered to explore sexuality," she continued. "We might have an easier time orgasming, because I have a lot of friends who can't orgasm. If you're in a monogamous relationship, seeing a sex worker on your own or with your partner may be a safe way of stepping out the box."

For couples considering opening up their relationships, Alaina believes that "Frankly, ... sex workers are the better option."

"'Unicorn hunters' have very little regard for the emotional needs of their unicorn, Alaina said. "They tend to make a big mess." With sex workers, she continued, "everyone's feelings are spared."

"I think you can't really comfortably identify as queer if you aren't pro-sex work," Beth admitted. "Sex work is work. I'm a hustler - a badass - and have worked so hard to [get to] where I am in my career."

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Queer Women Do Visit Sex Workers, Here's What It's Like

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Exciting, enjoyable, and lucrative. These are just some words that come to mind when I think back on my first sexual experience with a woman. I was nineteen years old and living in Oaxaca, Mexico as a student abroad when my credit card hit its limit as I went to pay for a conveyer belt full of groceries.

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Argumentación regula (especial para lesbopols)

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Argumentación regula (especial para lesbopols)

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De las maravillas de la prostitución para salir de la rigidez de la heterosexualidad obligatoria (¡especial para lesbopols!)

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What I've Learned from Working as a Lesbian Escort

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"Straight women who've never had gay sex often want to try everything at once. One second they want to eat you out, the next they're standing there with a strap-on."

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Este es el documento que estuvo armando Carola que simula una discusión abolo/regula. Sería bueno si pueden agregar sus comentarios en el mismo así lo vamos enriqueciendo y puliendo

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Hola, paso a dejar mi primer padlet. Dentro de lo que respecta al campo de la prostitución uno de los puntos que todavía no tengo del todo claro cómo argumentar de manera concisa es porqué desde el abolicionismo consideramos que consumir prostitución es violación y no sexo consentido. Espero sus rtas. Las leo.

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* ¿Qué puedo hacer en padlet?
Escribir, insertar imágenes, links, videos, comentar, likear, mover, conectar un post con otro con una flecha, etc.
Para crear un nuevo post, hacen click en el (+), para comentar, el globito abajo a la derecha de cada post.
Arriba de cada post, en los 3 puntitos (...) le asignan color según tema.
* Codigo de colores
VERDE= SALUD Y DERECHOS SEXUALES Y REPRODUCTIVOS /
VIOLETA = ABOLICIONISMO: PROSTITUCIÓN, PORNO, VIENTRES DE ALQUILER
AZUL = TEMA QUEER
ROJO = ABUSOS, VIOLENCIAS, ASI
AMARILLO = INTERSECCIONALIDADES NEGRO = OTROS, GENERAL, HISTORIA, TEORIA FEMINISTA
En este post pueden dejar comentarios con dudas sobre padlet, sugerencias a las admin o recomendaciones para mejorar este espacio.

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Documental sobre el aumento de varones trans en suecia

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Documental sobre el aumento de varones trans en suecia