Show of Hands, Please
Quick follow-up on a previous post about pimps. Anyone know of anyone in the "pro-sex" community, customers or providers, who thinks pimps are poor, misunderstood, sensitive souls? Anyone out there think their pimp was the bee's knees? Anyone out there saying "oh gosh, I'd rather connect with sex-workers through their pimp any day?"
And of course when I say "pimp" I mean it in the larger sense of working with a custodial/coercive/ managerial supervisor as an intermediary between customer and sex provider.**
But seriously, can you or anyone you know, or anyone you've ever heard of, make an affirmative case for pimps such that legal and public policy would permit their continued activities were prostitution legalized in any credible sort of way at all?
I mention this because a lot of venues where prostitution is "legalized," as in Nevada and, evidently, Australia, there aren't actually any legal *prostitutes,* only legal *brothels.* The sex workers themselves in, say, Nevada, have virtually no rights at all. Which means, in effect, the state chose to legalize and license not sex-workers but *pimps and pimp equivalents!* Which, by the way, seems like exactly the worst of *both* worlds.
Which is just part of what I mean when I say "legalized in any credible sort of way." And when I say things like "or else why bother legalizing it at all?"
[** Actually the only people on earth besides pimps and traffickers themselves who might depend on them would be the anti-prostitution our-fairest-flower-clutchers who need pimps the same way, and for the same reasons, George Bush and his neocons needed terrorists... and consequently as with George Bush and the neocons the chances of them proposing realistic solutions that might actually make the world safer from terrorists, or from pimps and traffickers, approaches zero. --fl]
I don't recall reading any "good pimp" testimonials. However, one escort who worked for the late Deborah Jeanne Palfrey referred her as a "great boss."[*] Palfrey admitted that she was discriminate as to the type of client she would accept and that proved to be a benefit for the escorts.
Are all madams benevolent? Probably not, but then benevolent is not the term I would choose to describe the majority of business executives. We all know of the narcissistic bosses who get a kick from "pimping" the life out of their employees. But those employees typically are not in danger of incarceration, physical injury or death in the same way as are some sex workers.
[*] "She Thought She Could Do Better," by Eve Conant and Evan Thomas, Newsweek, May 12, 2008.
[I don't see any way Palfrey could be considered a pimp or trafficker though. Given that her prostitution business was in Washington, D.C. and she lived in California, and given that her recruitment was by personal ad and website and that she managed nearly everything by phone and email... Let's just say that not even the most woman-hating prostitution opponent would argue that anyone is *so* enthrallable they could be "trafficked" by phone from four time zones away. Scratch that, I'm actually sure someone would make that claim but then some people still think WMDs are *still hidden* in Iraq. Thanks, Kochanie. --fl]
You might want to check out An Empirical Analysis of Street-Level Prostitution, by Steven D. Levitt and Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh. They note that "Where pimps are active, prostitutes appear to do better, with pimps both providing protection and paying efficiency wages."
As to whether or not legalizing prostitution would change that, many of us who've worked independently in the technology field refer to brokers of labor as "pimps", and have actively sought out "good ones". I'm guessing that in prostitution, as in almost every line of work, there will continue to be a need for people who can make good matches between customer and provider, and who will help enforce contract terms.
[I actuallly *have* read the study (and linked to it somewhere) and now that you've given me the link again (I'd forgotten the author's names) I'll update the post. So thanks for that, Dan. I did hint in either this post or a related one that *under the current system* pimps do provide some benefit... just not anywhere near as much as a legal booking agency plus the police and/or rent-a-cop... which works just fine for, say, strip-o-gram workers *minus* the verbal, physical, and sexual abuse a pimp provides. Because, for instance, even a bad tech-contracting broker won't scar your face on a stove for not working hard enough. Thanks. --fl]
Just to clarify, fl--
I do not consider Ms. Palfrey to be a pimp or trafficker. However, she was an intermediary and as such would be a trafficker under the pending H.B. 3887, if I understand the bill's ramifications correctly.
If prostitution was decriminalized and a brothel was operated as a business in a zone designated for adult entertainment, I hope the brothel's employees would have a business manager like Ms. Palfrey. She would have been able to screen clients as well as handle the administrative side of the business, such as making sure that payroll tax deposits were made promptly and that 401(k) contributions were correctly credited to the employees' accounts.
[Yup, and by the same principle Craig's List might also be a trafficker because his site facilitates commerce between prostitutes and customers. Eh, maybe not if prosecutors couldn't prove he got some sort of per-transaction fee but the principle applies. Which is an issue. Actually the escort-service model, similar to a lot of house-cleaning businesses by the way, and strip-o-grams, and a lot of other home-visit services, would probably never have 401(k)s. And actually, the way I'd legalize things if it were up to me, even though escort services aren't really pimps *or* traffickers, I think they still carry too much weight and take too much of a percentage. Instead I'd probably insist on a relationship more like doctor's and contractor's phone services where the individual workers rather than the service held all the cards. Cause, again, if it's not almost completely worker-centric then it's going to collide with proprietary issues. Thanks, Kochanie. --fl]