legalization

Lessons From The Secret Service / Cargagena Sex-Worker Case: Who Benefits Most When Sex Work is Illegal?

Posted by figleaf on Sun, 2012-04-22 13:04

Something to keep in mind about the recent Secret Service / Sex-worker scandal in Cartagena, Columbia. When an American tried to pay a sex worker only $30 after previously agreeing to pay her $800 she complained to the police.

She complained to the police.

If you're an American take a minute to wrap your head around that.  Take more than a minute if you need to.  And you might.  But let's look at that again.

She. Complained. To the police.

The possibility that a sex worker would complain to the police almost certainly never occurred to the American.

The possibility that the police would listen to her probably never crossed his mind.

Because in America, where that kind of sex work is universally illegal it just doesn't work that way.

Because every American customer, let alone every American criminal/sexual predator, knows that no American sex worker dares go to the police no matter how badly they're treated.

And of course it's not just American customers and predators who can't wrap their head around the concept.  Nominal sex-worker defenders who can speak only in terms of "prostituted women" don't seem to get it either.  Nor is the general public, immersed as we are in cop shows, "gritty urban realism" metaphors, "heart of gold hooker" movies like Pretty Girl, and Krucher Ashton videos, likely to have much luck either.

So.

Small wonder then the American Secret Service agent thought he could get away with treating a Colombian sex worker the way he would treat (has treated?) sex workers at home or elsewhere abroad.

I mean, even if you "know" sex work is legal in the "3rd-world" town* you're visiting it's unlikely it would occur to you that if you bilk a sex worker she'll complain to the police.

The American made a bad decision to effectively rob a sex worker.  Unfortunately for him a decision under Colombian law makes it safe for sex workers to complain to the police.

Standard disclaimer: One can oppose sex work as an industry and still celebrate social, civil, and legal protection for those who practice it.  Further, the social transformations required to end the sex work industry does not require that sex work itself remain illegal.  And finally, one can oppose the sex work industry and still recognize who benefits most from laws prohibiting it.

* Note: Socioeconomically speaking Cargagena, Columbia is considered a thriving, multi-industry middle-to-upper-middle class city that regularly hosts international economic and trade summits.


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Whatever Else One Can Say of the Recent Ontario Brothel Court Ruling, One Can't Say it Protects the Most At-Risk Sex Workers.

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2012-03-26 22:16

Amber, at what appears to be a commercial erotica site in Canada called "GirlZPorn," points out a significant problem with the recent Ontario court ruling that's been characterized as "legalizing bawdy houses" a.k.a. brothels: it leaves street/subsistence sex workers figuratively and to a certain extent literally in the dark. (Emphasis mine.)

PRESS RELEASE: Ontario Court leaves most vulnerable sex workers unprotected

In a ruling which many sex workers are calling a disappointment, the Ontario Court of appeal today released a decision that upheld the law against communication for the purposes of prostitution, modified the law against living off the avails of prostitution and struck down the law against operating a common bawdy house.

“The vast majority of all prostitution arrests are under the communication law. The failure to strike down the communication law means that the most vulnerable sex workers will continue to face arrest, police harassment, prosecution and violence.” –Emily Van Der Muelen, Assistant Professor, in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Ryerson University.

“I reject the conclusion that street work is so bad for neighborhoods that stopping it is more important than protecting women’s lives.” -Lux, a current sex worker with street experience.

“This is a letdown for the most vulnerable sex workers who are largely street, Indigenous and transgendered sex workers” –Keisha Scott, Coordinator, Maggie’s: Toronto Sex Workers Action Project.

Source: GirlZPorn

Living as I do in what's approximately ground zero for murdered street/subsistence sex workers, including successful and unsuccessful pickups and body dumps within a mile of my home, the main issue I really care about when it comes to the whole issue of legalization is making it safe for people who are determined to continue working in conditions with mortality rates that would make the average coal miner, logger, or the nearby "Most Dangerous Catch" crew blanche. And so for that reason I share the activist's concerns that the ruling will do very little to bring safety or security to those who need it most.

Via Newfinland/Laborador's @Anjasa's Twitter feed.


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I'm Pretty Sure Legal Sex Work is Safer Than Illegal Sex Work -- There Should be Fairly Simple Ways to Find Out

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2012-02-02 18:13

An interesting exchange posted at Sex Worker Problems raises what seems like an imminently testable research question into whether or not sex-work legalization increases or decreases worker safety. First, here's the post

Anonymous asked

I am a dancer. Yes, though I may face social stigma as well, my cash flow is at least legal, so I couldn't even imagine the terror of possibly facing legal issues to earn my income. Out of curiosity... is the issue of illegality daunting/frustrating/scary? --- Much love and respect. This blog is amazing.

Thank you so much! The issue of illegality IS really daunting and scary. There are of course all kinds of resources for sex workers to do their best to screen clients, but yeah, the likelihood that a cop or a serial killer might be the next person you meet is… well it’s not high, really, but it’s much higher than it is in a lot of other occupations.

Source: Sex Worker Problems

And now here's the research question. Two questions, really.  Ok, actually maybe a whole series.

First, what are the assault, robbery, on the job harassment, and law-enforcement-action rates against dancers vs. otherwise comparable non-dance customer-contact employees (wait staff, bartenders, greeters, etc.) in "strip clubs?"

Next, what are the assault, robbery, harassment, and law-enforcement-action rates against dancers vs. otherwise comparable non-dance customer-contact employees in non-"stripper" bars and nightclubs?

In both these cases, above, both indicated professions are legal.  (The comparisons would be even more informative if data could also be gathered in areas where dancing is not legal.)

Next question, slightly further afield:

What are the assault, robbery, harassment, and law-enforcement-action rates against "escort" sex workers vs. otherwise comparable non-dance customer-contact workers who work in similar circumstances (e.g. massage therapists, housecleaners, or even legal "strip-o-gram" delivery persons.)

Offhand my guess would be that in all cases where both sets of professions are legal rates will be fairly similar.  My further guess would be that in all cases where one set of professions is legal but the other is not, workers in the non-legal arena are subject to considerably greater jeopardy.

I'm... pretty sure the results would not be prediction-defying.  It's also entirely possible that the research has already been done.

Still, considering the rather incessant drumbeat about the relative perils of legalized vs. non-legal sex work it would be nice to have some solid data to base actual policy on.


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Dacia Ray: Sex Work Decriminalization is a State and Local Issue, Start There

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2011-09-29 13:30

Audacia Ray says

Embarrassing Sex Worker Activism:

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO: Decriminalize the practice/occupation of engaging in sexual activity between consenting adults in exchange for payment.

Dear sex worker activists: the Obama administration cannot make this happen. The criminal code is codified at a state level.

If you want to “decriminalize” aka chip away at the legal system that does harm in our lives, start researching the laws in place in your state and city that do this harm. There are lots of local laws that discriminate against sex workers and people profiled as sex workers. Like the fact that condoms can be used as evidence of prostitution, or that until it was defeated this summer, people profiled as sex workers (esp trans women of color) in Louisiana were being put on the sex offender registry.

Source: Waking Vixen

If you follow Dacia's link to the petition at WhiteHouse.gov you'll see the details of the petition are nice but vague, and that while the stated goal is "Signatures needed by Oct. 27, 2011 to reach goal of 5000," the "Total signatures on this petition," at least at the moment, are... 45.

Actually I expect the petitioners were hoping for the President to direct agencies under the control of the executive branch to back off, say, cooperation with multi-state law-enforcement "sweeps" or something.  Which wouldn't hurt.  But even then, since even then the initiatives arise from state and local levels and federal agencies such as the FBI really do mostly just cooperate, she's right that the place to go to work on this stuff is the state and local levels.

Which, since very often what's needed are human faces at human scale, local jurisdictions are probably the right place to make your cases.  And also very often it's the petty outrages like condom carrying as evidence, or sex work as sex offense* that cause the biggest law-related headaches.  And it's also often the merely venal outrages like cops shaking down sex workers for free "dates" as part of the "cost of doing business" that local activism is more likely to have some influence over.

I'd add that it probably really is state and local level activism that'll help incubate "best practices" decriminalization in the long run.  Because as we can tell from Sweden to Nevada to Holland to Australia to Vancouver(!) there are a lot of ways to do it wrong too.

Also, groundswell!  5,000,000 marchers on the D.C. Mall rarely have much impact, even with the backing of FOX news, so 5,000 petition signatures isn't going to cut it either.  If you're going to make a difference I'm... pretty sure it's going to have to be from the bottom up.

* Though, of course, never, oh never, is a customer put on the offender registry.  Even when the sex worker they select is working under duress.  Even when the sex worker they select is working under *age!*http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2011/09/big-dick-goes-to-canadian-pedophile.html


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A Really Bad Example of Not Forcing Customers of Trafficked or Minor Sex Workers to Register as Sex Offenders

Posted by figleaf on Tue, 2011-03-22 00:17

Audacia Ray calls out a genuinely egregious form of discrimination against a former prostitute based on a Louisiana state law from... the year 1806!

The words “sex offender” now appear on her driver’s license. “I have tried desperately to change my life,” she says, but her status as a sex offender stands in the way of housing and other programs. “When I present my ID for anything,” she says, “the assumption is that you’re a child molester or a rapist. The discrimination is just ongoing and ongoing.” Eve was penalized under Louisiana’s 205-year-old Crime Against Nature statute, a blatantly discriminatory law that legislators have maneuvered to keep on the state’s books for the purpose of turning sex workers into felons. As enforced, the law specifically singles out oral and anal sex for greater punishment for those arrested for prostitution

Source: Waking Vixen

This is a form of reflex prosecutorial piling on that's just inexcusable. In what conceivable universe is a prostitute who performs fellatio a registerable sex offender in a way that a prostitute who "merely" performs intercourse isn't?  Or that a prostitute's customer isn't.  My personal and 100% correct opinion is of course that a prostitute is never a registerable sex offender and, for that matter, shouldn't be considered a criminal at all.   And while there's a bit more division in the ranks over this, with one interesting exception it's also my opinion that simply being a prostitute's customer should never be considered either a sex offender or a criminal either.

The exception, of course, is when the customer engages in behavior that would normally get them charged as a criminal or sex offender.  But, in today's... morally conflicted environment is considered boys-will-be-boys, hearty-fellow-well-done when a customer does it.

In other words, when customer has paid for sexual activity with someone who through age or coercion couldn't or wouldn't ordinarily be considered a freely consenting adult.  So paying for sex with a trafficked person?  If you weren't paying it would be rape, and thus a registrable sexual offense -- therefore if you get caught paying for it you should go on a sex-offender registry as well.  Same with sex with minors.

I happen to think it's appalling that prosecutors or judges in Louisiana, or any other state, would use such a heavy tool to penalize a voluntary adult prostituted or his or her customer.  But I also think it's appalling that they leave the same tool on the table when it comes to customers who have sex with children or slaves.


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Since Legalized Vices Become Less Profitable for Both Organized and Disorganized Criminals Let's Legalize Prostitution Too

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2010-11-01 23:09

Jonathan Chait of The Plank inadvertently puts his finger on why I think prostitution should be legal despite my lack of enthusiasm for prostitution itself.

La Cosa Nostra has always made a lot of money from illegal gambling. In the 1940s, elements of the mob moved into Las Vegas, obviously thinking, “This will be great — we can do what we’ve always done, but this time openly.” Bugsy Seigel tried to open a swanky hotel in Vegas but he did a ridiculously bad job of managing the project. His skill was killing people, but managing construction projects. It’s bizarre that these gangsters forgot that the whole reason they were involved in gambling in the first place is that it was illegal. Once you make it legal, then gangsters have very little added value in the business world.

Source: The Plank.

I think that’s about right. Whereas I happen to believe gambling itself remains pernicious, legalization has mitigated almost all the collateral damage that went with it. Same with post-prohibition alcohol.

Since even extremely high-quality cannabis costs about eleven dollars a pound to grow, and since surgical cocaine still costs seven dollars a gram (even after extortionate medical markups!), there’d be pretty much no money in illegal drugs if it weren’t, well, illegal. Given that drug-crime related deaths far, far outweigh drug-use deaths, and given that drug-related crime (from drive-by shootings to boosting car stereos) is astronomical compared to drug-use crimes, the profit margins on legalized drugs just wouldn’t ever be high enough to justify a) selling to schoolchildren, b) robbing stores to support habits, c) buying bullets, let alone guns, let alone using them to enlarge or defend drug-dealer’s “turf.” And I say that even though I think most drug users are… well… dopes.

Same with porn, I might add. Back when organized crime was responsible for almost all pornography a lot of the hoary stereotypes that continue today were often dead… and deadly… true. Today? I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say that while the total amount of available porn is orders of magnitude greater than it was before the 1980s when porn became legally generally acceptable the amount of coercion and exploitation in commercial porn has gone down. I am going to go out on a limb and say I think part of this is due to the much-despised but also much-complied-with Title 18 U.S.C. 2257 records-keeping requirement.

And so for the same reasons I think prostitution should be legal. Because there simply wouldn’t be much use in the system for… well… abuse such as pimping, trafficking, recruitment, let alone the almost routine rape, robbery, assault, serial murder, extortion by law enforcement, and trafficking that seems part and parcel with contemporary illegal prostitution, particularly subsistence/street prostitution. So even though I happen to believe prostitution as currently constructed both reflects and further distorts society’s baffling faith in the egregious Two Rules of Desire.

Update: See also economist Tyler Cowen on a British Journal of Criminology on the generally benign outcome of Portugal’s 2001 decision to decriminalize most illegal drugs. (Hint: consumption of more dangerous drugs declined slightly.)


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Another Unintended Consequence of the Recent Craigslist "Adult Services" Blackout

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2010-09-06 01:06

I have a number of friends and even more extended family members who are massage therapists. Here in Washington State licensed massage practitioners are required to take ongoing courses in order to maintain their certification. Here’s a catalog entry for the Pacific Northwest School of Massage’s continuing education program from earlier this summer. You’ll notice one of the items on the list is very not like the other ones.

All classes are NCB approved (NCB #451040-09) and valid for NCB, AMTA, and WA state CE Credit. You will be issued a certificate at the end of class.

  • Treatment Massage for the Low Back Structures
  • Muscle-Specific Deep Tissue Techniques for the Back
  • Deep Muscle-specific work of the Anterior Neck
  • CTM-Bindegewebsmassage Review
  • Massage and Prostitution: What’s Going On?
  • Understanding the Somatic Nervous System and Proprioception
  • Deep Tissue Chest and Supine Shoulders
  • The Neuroendocrine System, Stress, and Massage
  • Deep Tissue of the Iliopsoas, Diaphragm, QL, and Paraspinals
  • Nutritional Self-Care: Know Your Macronutrients
  • Deep Tissue of Legs
  • Deep Tissue Techniques for the Iliopsoas, Diaphragm and QL (Quadratus Lumborum)
  • Hydrotherapy Principles and Physiology and Banya 5 Field Trip
  • Deep Muscle Therapy Workshop in Hilo, Hawaii

Read the list and course descriptions in context here.

Now figleaf, you might be saying, aside from their 90+ inches of rainfall a year what possible problem could you have with privately paid-for education junkets Hilo, Hawaii? And how could it possibly related to recent news about Craigslist’s capitulation to pressure to black out their “Adult Services” category? Which is, after all, a major point of this post.

Eh, if you didn’t have the patience to closely read the list the odd duck in the mix would be…

Massage and Prostitution: What’s Going On?

One of the great frustrations legitimate massage therapists face is the confusion in the public eye between massage therapy and prostitution. We like to believe that there is less of this confusion than there used to be, and that massage is much more accepted as legitimate therapy by the general public. The truth is that the overlap has actually gotten worse in one significant respect: there are more prostitution businesses fronting as massage businesses in Washington than ever before. Some of these businesses are engaged not only in sexual massage, but in human trafficking.

Come and learn why the problem has gotten worse and what we can do about it. Our instructor will be Butch Watson, LMP, a massage therapist and retired police detective who has been studying the problem for 3 years. The situation we find ourselves facing in Washington is a perfect storm of legal, legislative, enforcement, and economic issues. This class is a call to action—our response to the problem will need to be organized, nuanced, and multifaceted if we are to disentangle our profession from prostitution.

This class satisfies the new Washington State Ethics requirement, and fulfills 4 hours of the NCBTMB Ethics requirement.

Instructor: Butch Watson
Ethics CE hours: 4
Location: Redmond, WA
Tuition: $75 if registered by August 20th; $100 thereafter
Registration: Send check to Pacific Northwest School of Massage, 7511 25th Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98117

It happens to be a persistent, perpetual annoyance to massage practitioners almost everywhere, that the work they do is confused with sex work. It’s a problem made even worse by the fact that many prostitutes advertise themselves as massage therapists, and that many brothels advertise themselves as massage “parlors.”

It’s a problem in the sense that the spouses, partners, friends, and family members of clients often question the legitimacy of the treatments they’re receiving. It’s a problem in the sense that many state and local licensing authorities impose increasingly stringent certification requirements for licensing*. It’s a problem in the sense that the penalties for letting your license lapse are high** (as is the lack of reciprocity between jurisdictions that leads to sometimes year-long training requirements to get back in compliance in a new jurisdiction!)

And it’s a big fucking problem with customers who show up wondering whether, when, and/or why they’re not getting a “happy ending” with their massage.

And why might this be? Well, it might be because it’s illegal to be a prostitute and so they have to lie about what they’re doing.

Y’know one of the nice things for massage therapists in Washington State? Craigslist had two separate sections for the two kinds of “massage:” a section for real, trained, professional, licensed massage therapists, and one in the Adult Services section called (I think but, of course, I can’t check at the moment) “body rubs.”

Not everyone knew about the difference. And not all sex workers advertised in the “body rub” sections. Some, annoyingly, continued to advertise in the professional massage-services sections.

Now? Well, now they’re all going to start advertising in the massage-therapy sections. And even if they didn’t? Even more of their erstwhile customers are going to start fishing in the pool of real massage therapists to see if maybe, just in case, they’re one of the ones that does more than grind their thumbs and elbows into pressure points in your neck and back.

Anyway, next time you need to fulfill continuing-ed ethics requirements what are the odds you’d be offered a section on the hassles of sex workers pretending to be members of your profession? I’m not saying it never happens in other professions (though I can’t think of many.) I’m definitely not saying there’s anything wrong with sex work per se.

I am saying the burden placed on legitimate body-work professionals it just one more stupid, thuggish, and ill-considered consequence of all these Attorney’s General grandstanding against Craigslist’s Adult Services sections.

* Significant bit of trivia: back in the day a common requirement for a license were tests of anatomy but tests for sexually transmitted diseases! Connection much?

** Amusing anecdote: According to the instructor, former police detective and current massage-therapist activist Butch Watson, state agencies are actually quicker to take action against legal massage practitioners who let their license lapse than they are against individuals and businesses who never bother to get licensed at all!


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Funny Thing About the Way Trafficking is Presented in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" Novels

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2010-07-22 05:48

I’m traveling with family and have next to no time for blogging but I did want to make what I think is a critical point raised in the middle book of the Stig Larssen “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” series of detective novels.

A major thread in the 2nd book, The Girl Who Played With Fire, involves sex-trafficking in Sweden.

Sex trafficking is the current bugaboo of sex-work abolitionists, both in America and abroad.

In America you hear, um, bullshit about how hundreds of thousands of women and children are trafficked into the country, against both their wills and their inclinations, for use as prostitutes. It’s bullshit because a) while there’s certainly international and intranational sex trafficking in America there’s no conspiracy large enough to conceal an extra million new enslaved people coming into the country every five years and b) there’s no evidence of such numbers either.

The problem seems to be that activists believe that unless the numbers are really, really, really big then nobody will care and nobody will do anything about it. And so they inflate their numbers.

In Larssen’s books, which are set in Sweden, everyone’s scandalized that as many as 400 (that’s four hundred total) humans might be trafficked into Sweden.

You know why I think that’s so cool?

Because 400 people trafficked against their will into any country, for any kind of work, really is a scandal.

Even one would be!

That American anti-trafficking activists feel they have to gin up the numbers is itself scandalous. That they might be right that no one would care if they used real numbers is also scandalous.

Of course I happen to think that, contrary to abolitionist activist hyperbole, ordinary voluntary sex work ought to be legal. I also happen to think that if it was legal then it would be a lot easier to identify and protect the much, much, much smaller number of people who really are illegally trafficked into the country, against their will, to perform sex work. Or any other kind of work.


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The High Cost of Illegal Sales of Common Commodities

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2010-06-21 15:02

A rare, sort-of off-topic post for this blog: Kevin Drum of Mother Jones says of recently-spotted bumper stickers in California’s Humbolt-County pot-growing region that say “Keep Pot Illegal”

....Legalization could take many forms. But the conventional wisdom here is that fully legal weed might fetch no more than a few hundred dollars a pound, as more people grow it and police no longer pull up millions of plants a year. Illegal marijuana “is the government’s best agricultural price-support program ever,” said Gerald Myers, a retired engineer and former volunteer fire chief who moved to the county in 1970. “If they ever want to help the wheat farmers, make wheat illegal.”

Read the quote in context here.

A few hundred dollars a pound? Sorry but it takes more energy, skill, and effort to grow agriculturally-intensive corn and the spot price for that peaked at $7.88/bushel back in 2008 — about thirteen cents a pound.

Commodity price to tobacco growers is maybe a couple dollars a pound, even though retail-quality tobacco is also harder to grow than “retail-quality” pot. Even after intensive processing — which, sorry, pot doesn’t need — fancy imported pipe tobacco costs maybe $35 pound.

Highly-cultivated northern-latitude hot-house tomatoes and green peppers, which are probably most comparable in terms of cultivation technology, cost on the order of four to six dollars a pound.

Therefore its inconceivable that, absent the cost of risk, even highly-cultivated marijuana would cost more per bushel or bale than corn, tobacco, or tomatoes. Consequently I just don’t see the gazillion-dollar gross revenues, let alone tax revenues, materializing should the stuff be legalized.

That doesn’t mean I don’t think it should be legalized. Quite the opposite! The closer to commodity pricing you get, and the lower the profit margin, the less incentive to sell it to those who aren’t already interested.

Of course you’ll notice this sort of policy position isn’t that far off the beaten path for me: I think the same thing is true about roll-your-own porn (which appears to be just killing industrial porn) and destigmatization of “premarital” sex (which in the last 50 years appears to have decimated the traditional market for prostitution.)

The point being that as with opponents and proponents porn and prostitution the positions of both opponents and proponents of legalized pot are almost hopelessly entangled with the taboo/stigma-based status quo than with almost any realistic projections of what’s really going to happen when the cost closes in on zero.


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New York Senate Passes Labor Bill of Rights for (Largely Migrant and Immigrant) Domestic Workers

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2010-06-17 15:22

Katherine Franke of Columbia University’s Gender & Sexuality Law Blog says of a recent report on New York State’s Domestic Workers Bill of Rights bill, which recently passed in the state Senate.

Frequently ignored in the debates about human trafficking is the vulnerability of the women (typically women of color and often immigrants with less than secure legal status) we pass every day on the street who are caring for other people’s children.  . . working conditions in many cases indistinguishable from those who the law would consider trafficked.  Because the labor of domestic workers is not primarily sexual in nature, their exploitation has been largely ignored . . . 2006 report: Home is where the work is: Inside New York’s Domestic Work Industry

Read the quote in context here.

Sure, it’s not as “sexy” as sex-trafficking and/or pimped prostitution, and since it’s about the way mostly affluent, mostly white people treat their servants and… um… slaves the issue is of no interest whatsoever to mostly white, mostly affluent conservative and neo-conservative “anti-trafficking” activists like Michael Horowitz, Laura Lederer or Donna M. Hughes. But any measure you care to waive about there are vastly fewer immigrant sex-workers than immigrant domestic workers (200,000 in New York City alone according to Domestic Workers United’s report “Home is Where the Work Is” (pdf). And by almost any measure you care to waive about there are more exploited, physically abused, and trafficked immigrant domestic workers than there are similarly trafficked sex workers.

Important: You’ll notice I’m not saying there are no trafficked or otherwise conscripted sex-workers in the U.S. Because, um, there are. Just that they’re only one segment of a much larger national scandal of abuse and exploitation.

Even more important: Gee, I wonder if the genteel obsession with “white slavery,” to the exclusion of everything else, has something to do with the generally socially very conservative and neoconservative nature of the activists involved? And gee, I wonder if there’s any conceivable correlation between the social-conservative and neoconservative indifference to non-sex slavery on the one hand, and their visceral antagonism towards the domestic, industrial, and agricultural unions who tend to champion the rights of exploited non-sexually trafficked? Nah, there’ couldn’t be a connection there.

And hmm… no way they’d object to harm reduction and/or legalization of sex workers (let alone undocumented immigrants in general) just because, say, SEIU or other service-related unions would almost certainly work towards organizing them. Right?


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