Not Pretty Babies
Via Susie of Echidne of the Snakes and the current Carnival Against Sexual Violence here's one of those "oh dear" statistics that goes around and around without much need for sourcing.
The average age of entry into prostitution today in the United States is 13 years old. Source: Fledgling Fund promo page for "Very Young Girls" documentary.
Let's just assume it's true for a minute, m'kay? Let's go ahead and take it as given that the number of children who become prostitutes at or *before* age 13 is so vast that it overwhelms the collective ages of everybody who ever becomes a prostitute after age 13 -- say ages 14 to 99 -- such that the *average* prostitute *becomes* a prostitute at 13. In other words that the *average* prostitute begins her career in approximately 7th Grade (U.S.), or three years before she can get a driver's license most places, five years before she can vote or sign contracts, and *eight* years before she can legally drink!
I gotta say that if that's a correct statistic, that 13 is the *average* age of entry for *all* prostitutes in America, then that's some kind of *seriously* fucked up situation.
So! Why stop with such frankly denial-inducing numbers? Why not magically translate the average age to, say 18? Would it change anything if a smaller fraction of people entered prostitution as children?
Why no! While it's fine for adults to engage in affirmatively consensual commercial sex it's not ok for children to. And *certainly* not for children to do so with the adults who make up the *pronounced* majority of customers. So it doesn't really matter how many children wind up in prostitution, it's just a bad idea for every reason you can imagine and a few maybe some people can't.
Oh, and as long as we're talking *averages,* a little Googling and a bit more Excel-ing indicates that a 13-year-old prostitute is also, based on an average of all states and territories, three and a half years shy of the age of consent.
Which in my mind should put offenders (i.e. customers and pimps) not only "John school" but also on sex-offender registries! (Because, seriously, "I didn't know" just doesn't cut it when you've gotten close enough to a barely-out-of-elementary-school-aged child to have sex with her.)
There's a fly in the ointment, though, for those who'd prefer to push a pedophile rap on those who traffic in school children. As the Fledgling Fund page puts it
A man who has sex with an underage girl should be prosecuted as a criminal rapist. But there is a loophole: if the child accepts money in exchange for sex, the rapist is now a "john" and rarely is subjected to greater punishment than a fine. For the very same act, the girl is often prosecuted as a prostitute and sent into detention.
Charming how that works. A city-commissioned report by cultural anthropologist Debra Boyer called "Who Pays the Price? Assessment of Youth Involvement in Prostitution in Seattle" (pdf) concurs:
The routine fine for those arrested for “patronizing” is $500 although the maximum that can be imposed is $1,000.
Just a fine for the hatful of customers who manage to get caught having sex with legal minors? Definitely not ok.
And not to be a stick about legalization or anything but, y'know, if
- prostitution was legal *for adults,* and
- (unlike the "Swedish" model) it wasn't illegal in the first place for customers to hire prostitutes, and
- *paying* for sex with minors didn't magically reduce pedophilia to philandering, and
- law enforcement officials and prosecutors credibly brought no-excuse sex-offender charges against those who have sex with underage prostitutes
Then I'm just guessing that prospective customers who didn't want to have to worry about their names showing up on fliers every time they moved into a new neighborhood might not just ask for but closely inspect sex-worker's documents before proceeding.
And just to break down my list a little, when prostitution is illegal under every circumstances and, especially, when being a customer is already illegal under every circumstance (as it is under the "Swedish" model that criminalizes *only* customers) then customers have no incentive to discriminate between services provided by adult or child, free or trafficked/pimped. To invert the already gruesome quip, "might as well be hung for a lamb as a sheep."
Meanwhile if prostitution was legal for both customers and providers *but* purchasing sex with minors remained illegal and (gasp!) was actually enforced *as the sex crimes it is* then, again, customers would have every incentive to make sure they verified not just identification but also age...
Which, just to repeat till everyone's as sick of me saying it, customers have no *current* incentive to do since a) there are currently penalties for hiring a prostitute no matter what their age but b) the penalties are identical regardless of age and c) they're not really enforced anyway and d) probably won't be because law enforcement doesn't seem to distinguish between illegal adult prostitution and illegal minor prostitution anyway either. Whereas e) if *only* child and trafficked prostitution was illegal law enforcement, social services, and *even legal prostitutes* might pay more attention. (If for no other reason than legal prostitutes would have no incentive to tolerate the competition.)
And finally? Does this have any bearing on whether people should be able to decide at age 18 that they want to become sex workers? Even if we'd prefer they, not to mention their "no-sex" class, sexual-scarcity-blinkered customers made other choices? No reason why it should. What adults choose to do and what children are impressed into are unrelated.
So! Any thoughts?
Yeah, I kinda questioned that 13 years old stat as well, though if you go to the Fledgling page and click on their "project resources" page, the stat is 12 (is that worldwide maybe?). I mean, I've heard of girls 8 or even 5 years old being sold into sex slavery in Bankok or Nepal. But that does seem a bit young to be the average for prostitution here in the US. I would have liked to have seen some citation of the research this was based upon.
And I'll never get sick of hearing that consensual sex work should be legalized. Keep preachin'!
[Although just to be clear, based on that report by Debra Boyer (who I found credible based on her report and a radio interview I listened to earlier this month), at least here in Seattle the average age of entry reported by interviewed underaged prostitutes was indeed between 13 and 14. And a big mechanism for recruitment, again based on the interview I overheard, is youth/street gang members who, sort of by definition, are going to start out, at least, recruiting younger rather than older people and, if you're in a gang by age 16 means press-ganging younger children into it isn't such a stretch. The other big path is evidently heavily sexually abused children for whom the transition isn't as great and, perversely, might seem no worse than a lateral step (if they're pimped) and maybe even a step up (if they're able to remain independent.) Thanks, Natty. --fl]
This brings to mind the massive pile of fucked-up shit that was the R Kelly trials. The victim was 13 years old when R Kelly raped her, but because she'd been paid for sex in the past - not even, so far as I can tell, during the R Kelly incident - that meant she wasn't REALLY a victim. Somehow. Never mind that, whether the sex was "consensual" or not, it was still illegal because she was THIRTEEN YEARS OLD.
(Here's the Feministing link.)
[I *know!* For the record in the list of statutory ages of consent there's a little footnote for Mississippi that says "Age 12, unless she's a virgin." In which case, presumably, it's higher. But go figure *that!* Stupid dickheads. --fl]
13 does seem a logical age for girls to enter the business - they have probably had their first period and have developed a more womanly figure. Not that I'm endorsing it, just saying it seems a likely age.
My parents took in a teenage foster child when I was in elementary school. She ended up in the foster care system because as soon as she had her first period her mother told her she was going to start working the family business, prostitution, just like her mother and older sister. N wasn't so keen on that idea and would up in foster care after being removed from her mother's home. She was with us until she graduated high school and we are still in touch 30 years later. We often talk about how different her life would have been had she done as her mother asked and started turning tricks at 13.
Bunny, 13 is a plausible, maybe even typical age (which, ick.) but as an average it means there would have to be a lot of girls starting sex work at 8 and 10 to balance out the women starting at 16 and 18. Even that might be true, if you looked at worldwide numbers or considered sex-for-trade and in-the-home abuse as "starting', but that doesn't seem to be what the number is supposed to mean.
The throwaway line about how "I didn't know" should not be an excuse for elementary-aged girls...really, I think it shouldn't be an excuse for any case where the younger partner was under 18 and the older was more than 5 years or so older. There are a lot of girls wandering around my neighborhoods dressed as sexy as they can manage at 10, 12, 14 - and it makes them look like little girls. Only an idiot, a pedophile, or a man so messed up he can't really see his sex partner "can't tell the difference".
In various discussions with women around the FLDS bust, I was really dismayed to hear a lot of women say "Well, I was sleeping with guys twice my age when I was 15, you know, nobody could keep me home" without considering, looking back on it, that possibly those guys should have known to keep their hands off teenaged girls. I mean, sure, at 15 you might *feel* like a femme fatale...but to an adult, does it really look that way?