Lili Bee went to a protest against sex trafficking and this is what she saw.
Despite a steady rain last night, a sizable and vocal crowd turned out to demonstrate against sex trafficking in front of the Village Voice Headquarters here in downtown New York City.
Songstress Alicia Keys rallied her fans to join the protest, tweeting, “What if these were your daughters? SO crazy!…”
A big shout out to Ms. Keys for that.
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The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) in partnership with Prostitution Research and Education (PRE) held the protest in front of the Village Voice building at the offices of Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC, owner of Backpage.com.
The protest, co-sponsored by Equality Now, Soroptimist International of the Americas, Apne Aap, Alicia Keys, Gloria Steinem, Aboriginal Women’s Action Network, Breaking Free, Ambassador Mark Lagon, Frederick Douglass Family Foundation, Temple Committee Against Human Trafficking, A Call to Men, and more than 75 leading human rights organizations and prominent individuals, brought attention to Backpage’s facilitation of and profiting from sex trafficking.
“Backpage is now the leading online facilitator of sex trafficking,” says Norma Ramos, Executive Director of CATW. Since August, 51 Attorneys General have called upon Backpage to cease its facilitation of sex trafficking. They have cited more than 50 cases across 22 U.S. states in the past three years that involve Backpage’s facilitation of sex trafficking.
“Backpage generates an estimated $2 million per month largely by functioning as a virtual red light district for pimps/traffickers and johns in the U.S. and at least 10 other countries. Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC displays a reckless disregard for human rights and could instead act to create a sex trafficking free Internet by no longer hosting prostitution ads through Backpage.”
It was ironic for me to be at the Voice headquarters last night, since I grew up reading the Voice during the decades it was the go-to paper for left-leaning, anti-corporate news and commentaries. You know, like OWS before there was an organized movement. Seems much has changed at The Voice.
Today, whenever people try to draw me into debates about how there’s no evidence proving sexual trafficking actually exists, and that it’s just moral panic hiding behind a false news front, I just walk away and write articles instead.
I’ve come to believe that either the naysayers utilize these sexual services themselves and feel defensive about it, or else they themselves work in that industry (or have friends who do) and want to persuade the public that the prostitution business is actually populated by workers who choose to be there.
Yes, some do, but it’s a small percentage, and why does that give us license to turn away from the large majority who have not chosen to be there? Because our choice to use or profit from these services supersedes the rights of the people forced to prostitute themselves? What does our complicity in this (and silence is complicity) say about the kind of society we want to call ourselves part of?
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Anyone claiming that trafficking statistics are fabricated must not live in a city with a huge immigrant population, many of whom are here illegally. I’d go one further: New York City doesn’t have an immigrant population––it is an immigrant population, a colossal one at that.
That there are a few articles on a few websites attempting to show false claims about actual sex trafficking numbers, I don’t doubt. What is preposterous, though, is that the same people plastering those few links all over, also refute all evidence to the contrary, even when the reporting agencies enjoy rather sterling reputations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, The New York Times, and many others with solid fact-checking departments.
Here are some recent stats, (2010).
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Since the early days in the eighties, there was always a classified section in the back of the Voice that had maybe three or four ‘racy’ ads showing mostly young, Asian women in come-hither poses.
But today, more and more entire pages of the Village Voice are wallpapered with hundreds of tiny, thumb-nail sized ads featuring ‘sexy’ images. I sat down in a bookstore the other day and tried to count them but lost count after a few hundred. I was dizzy.
And I was only on page seven; it seems that every few months, there are more pages added. With the exception of a few Eastern-European girls being featured, all the rest are Asian and very young. A couple sitting next to my table was watching me and when they realized I’d stopped counting the ads, said, “And whoever said prostitution wasn’t legal here? It’s pretty sad….”
If you know officials at the top of law enforcement agencies here (and I do know a few) there is no debate amongst them about who these girls in the ads are and where they come from. The word “choice” doesn’t even enter into it our conversations.
So when I got news there was finally going to be a demonstration against the Voice, I was psyched to attend. But what inspired me most about the protest, besides the sheer number of people who braved the often-strong rains with umbrellas, candles and placards, was how many men participated- somewhere between one half to one third of the protesters were men.
And I’m not talking only about the “usual” young men one sees at various protests: young guys with goatees, grungy dreads, carrying a djambe drum or a tambourine, but also the many businessmen of every ethnicity and age group clearly coming straight from work.
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I singled out one particularly well-heeled looking man in his early sixties, who would seem to be more at home on Park Avenue with a cognac and his New York Times in front of a fireplace than protesting downtown in the Village on a rainy night. I told him how it’s common to see so many more women at this kind of protest, and that I was encouraged to see so many men taking a stand against trafficking.
He thought for a moment and then said, “I’m out here for our daughters, too” before he rejoined the march. Wow, I thought. That’s how the world heals, one good man at a time. And women, too, of course.
Superstarjackie, I’ve been a sex slave prostitute, a rape victim and a consenting sex worker. In similar and differing scenarios. All prostitution isn’t rape. That’s rad fem jargon from Evelina Giobbe, Susan Kay Hunter and others. Unless we are talking specifically about underage prostitutes than it isn’t all rape. Been there, lived through it more than once and know the difference not from reading books on feminism or listening to a few lectures but instead from actual experience. It is an enormous diservice to the horror that is rape to call all acts of prostitution rape. Attempting to use rape… Read more »
“I’ve come to believe that either the naysayers utilize these sexual services themselves and feel defensive about it, or else they themselves work in that industry (or have friends who do) and want to persuade the public that the prostitution business is actually populated by workers who choose to be there. Yes, some do, but it’s a small percentage, and why does that give us license to turn away from the large majority who have not chosen to be there? Because our choice to use or profit from these services supersedes the rights of the people forced to prostitute themselves?… Read more »
Remember prostitution is paying to rape
isn’t it time we thought long and hard about what is wrong?
Wrong,is wrong even if others say its right.
Prostitution is rape ,rape is wrong
Except that it’s not rape.
Thank you, to all who commented, and for the reminder about the wonderful work done by GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services) http://www.gems-girls.org/ and Polaris Project. Both are exemplary leaders in the human rights movement to help end sex trafficking. http://www.polarisproject.org/ GEMS now operates a Safe House in New York City for trafficked girls and anyone who wants to get away from a pimp. Besides that, they offer resources to help girls get back to a safe and normal life again after sexual slavery. Polaris offers 24/7 hotlines in three different languages, that anyone who is trafficked can call and… Read more »
For anyone interested in the views of *actual sex workers* please take a look at the following site:
http://www.turnoffthebluelight.ie/
Especially interesting is the “opposition” section.
For the love of God and service to humankind Sexual slavery must end ,”do I have it wrong are we living in the 2011″ Time for real human rights !
Great, end sexual slavery, you can start by getting off backpage and going looking for some.
As a sex addict in recovery, I am sad to say I compulsively frequented the ‘massage parlors’ on Backpage and Craig’s List. I can say from first-hand experience that the only ones who spoke English half ok were the front desk women The girls who worked the massage rooms did not, unless, “You like?” counts as fluent English. I’d wager a huge bet they were NOT there by free choice. What choices do illegal immigrants really have when 10,000 miles from home and family? And don’t speak our language? Bet they wish they could go to college and have a… Read more »
So you think they’d be better off if you removed their source of income? “A poster recently produced at a workshop at the Empower Foundation, a collective of sex workers, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, is instructive. It lists reasons why the women there do not want to be rescued by police or charity workers, including that it leads to them to getting locked up, interrogated and deported without any compensation for them or their dependants. The final reason listed on the poster is ‘we must find a way back to Thailand to start again” http://www.empowerfoundation.org/index_en.html Don’t get me wrong, it’s… Read more »
And saying you’d “wager a huge bet” is an emphatic way of saying “I suspect, but don’t really know and haven’t checked.”
It seems to me that most of these advertised women in question are not legally and morally represented by the sex-worker support groups, blogs and activists that attempt to discredit and eliminate the slavery and anti-protitution issues. In my opinion, the concerted efforts of these debunking groups would be better served if the underground market for prostitution was eradicated, which is what this protest of the article seemed aimed at doing. The efforts of debunking the global consensus of Sex Trafficking seem to embarrass the position of the debunkers more than enlighten the uninformed. People are more swayed by horror… Read more »
Michael, how can you possibly believe that people who have never done sex work can possibly know more about what it’s like to be a prostitute than those of us who have? The very idea is absurd. If all the “trafficking” activists really wanted to help sex workers, they’d ask what WE want, both individually and collectively, rather than presuming to speak for us and declare that they’re acting “in our best interests”. Would YOU accept other people you don’t even know presuming to make judgments for you and demanding that your profession be abolished because they don’t like it?… Read more »
Maggie- I believe that we are talking about two different things. I am not anti anything except stolen people. I know that this exists. I am not an activist, I’m just a guy. The activism that you and your friends are on about, seemingly legalizing prostitution, is your issue and I’m not arguing that. I regret that your difficulties exist as well as regret that so many people do not have healthy intimacy in their lives that they feel they have to buy it, or sell it. It all seems sad to me.
The problem, Michael, is that we AREN’T talking about two different things. The whole “trafficking” hysteria (which, BTW, has been around once before in the first two decades of the 20th century, when it was called “white slavery” and was just as false) is driven by two things: 1) Anti-prostitute groups and individuals who have finally learned that trying to argue that the private actions of free adults should be restricted, is a very tough sell in Western countries; and 2) xenophobes who are afraid of immigration and globalization. The first group has therefore changed its rhetoric from “let’s stomp… Read more »
Okay, STOP. This is not about you. This is not about how people are subtly attacking your industry by masking it under “Let’s Save The Children”. I and the people truly fighting against child sex trafficking are for saving, rescuing, and defending the children harmed by sex trafficking, and that has nothing to do with you. Yes, there is sexism because sexists like to hang around, and yes, some statistics are off…but we’re doing what we can. That has absolutely NOTHING to do with any anti-prostitute movement. I DON’T CARE about the anti-prostitute movement OR the prostitute movement. Do whatever… Read more »
Except that the women you’re trying to stop from advertising mostly weren’t trafficked. And even the ones who were probably weren’t underage and did it of their own free will to escape poverty. Who are you to tell them they can’t?
ONLY 3.5 % of ALL prostitutes are underage? Enough said… How many should be acceptable ? This is a stat to bolster your argument ? I fully support an adults right to choose…lots off things, and am vehemently against censorship. I say it repeatedly, this is a much larger issue and we tend to point at stats and symptoms. However an argument like the above seems rather counterproductive. Only 3.5 percent of people who have guns are killed. Only 3.5 percent of people who commit crimes hurt anyone… The tweet about the image seems a little obvious too. Do you… Read more »
Jack, my point was not that those girls should be ignored; my point was that anti-prostitute activists lie and pretend that many or most prostitutes are underage, when in fact very few are. They pretend that most prostitutes of all ages are coerced, when in fact only about 1.5% are (roughly the same as the percentage of women in the general population who have abusive husbands or boyfriends). They pretend that huge numbers of underage girls advertise online, when in fact 75% of underage prostitutes work only on the street and most of the rest in clandestine brothels, with no… Read more »
Wow Maggie!
You Hit The Nail Right ON The Head! Keep up the good work.
So many think they now the subject. It’s just a pity they haven’t seen life on the streets!
The figures of 3.5% are in question. It takes time and money to gather statistics. It takes more time to reach out and communicate with those forced outside of society. The money runs out and the statistics are skewed!
Short change for those who are not seen as worth counting.
Thank you, Media Hound. 🙂
That means that when you ban adult ads on backpage 96.5% of the people you’re penalising are adults making decisions about their own life.
You really want to help those kids? Go help fundraise for a homeless shelter. That alone will help them more than closing down a million advertising venues.
Actually it’s alot higher than 96%. I doubt any starving kid on the street has the money to take out advertising.
Since Maggie MacNeill very eloquently made so many important points, giving links to support them, I just want to say how much I wish people fighting against prostitution would talk to sex workers before deciding what’s best for them and to add this tweet by Melissa Gira about the photo used in the article:
https://twitter.com/#!/melissagira/status/136934502822977536
Amen to that! There is one group that is not mentioned. It’s possible to use plausible denyability when age of the advertised in is doubt. When age is apparent and an issue there is no public advertising. Many public adverts use images of people above a certain age – and behind closed doors age is ignored. Some people do not have the opportunities that Sandusky and other’s had and still have. Those people would pay happily to have the same opportunities – and they do. I would love to see some speaking to sex workers, both male and female who… Read more »
People fear what they don’t know. One place that we need experts is the law – for which we have so many attorneys in the world. I believe the way to fight this issue with The Village Voice is with all the legal means possible. Take a look at this article about a man in China who gives legal advice – and has been arrested and tortured and currently resides under house arrest. http://articles.cnn.com/2011-11-04/asia/world_asia_china-florcruz-demonstrations_1_yuan-weijing-blind-activist-chen-guangcheng?_s=PM:ASIA My hope is for a world where we can call the boys and girls of the world our children and the men and women, our brothers… Read more »
“I’ve come to believe that either the naysayers utilize these sexual services themselves and feel defensive about it, or else they themselves work in that industry (or have friends who do) and want to persuade the public that the prostitution business is actually populated by workers who choose to be there.” How nostalgic! It’s so very much like that golden oldie, “anyone who would defend a witch must be a witch herself,” or its more modern relative “anyone who would defend a commie must be a commie.” Because, you know, NOBODY could possibly believe that women are adults capable of… Read more »
Maggie- Thanks for your views here. Sorry if you feel anyone here is “assuming you are mentally defective” here. The naysayers to whom I refer are those who deny sex trafficking exists, not the prostitutes themselves. I felt I made that pretty clear. The 51 Attorney Generals who have tried the many cases from 20 states that tie back to the Village Voice ads– they are trying sex traffickers, not the girls themselves who were prostituted. If someone wants to know all about those who made the choice to go into prostitution and what that career choice and lifestyle is… Read more »
Au contraire; I know a LOT of girls who have advertised on Backpage, and they’re nearly all independent escorts who made a free and adult choice. That’s what the AGs and hysterics ignore; closing down Backpage won’t help ONE SINGLE girl who’s trafficked because her pimp will simply put her out on the street instead. But it will deny cheap advertising to a lot of independents, mostly students and single moms, who need it.
Maggie- I am sure that you have friends who advertise, are educated and who take care of themselves but the majority of those hundreds of girls whose photos are on Voice ads do not have those luxuries. They are there as “product” on the black market and it’s the Voice that operates as a cheap place for the profiteers to advertise their wares. This has already been researched and documented. Again, more than seventy five human rights organizations that organized the rally stand by that. I choose to believe that research, plus the other data I posted. And of course,… Read more »
You are incorrect, as you would know if you consulted the links from my first post (especially the Agustin and Parrenas links). Only about 3.5% of all prostitutes are underage ( http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/numerology/ ) and fewer than 16% of underage prostitutes have even MET a pimp ( http://maggiemcneill.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/john-jay-nyc-study.pdf ). The vast majority of the organizations of which you speak use methodologically-unsound, highly-biased “results” from the likes of Melissa Farley ( http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/a-load-of-farley/ ) and distortions of the Estes & Weiner report ( http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/a-tale-that-grew-in-the-telling/ ) intended to make prostitutes look like mostly-underage, exploited, helpless victims when the opposite is true. Consider the well-documented… Read more »
Thank you, Maggie! I am grateful for people like you with the patience to respond to sensationalist, confused articles like this. And grateful for people like Laura Agustin and Emi Koyama who keep working in spite of how often their efforts are ignored in favor of those with the most extreme positions. How ridiculous it is for people completely outside of the sex industry to think they’re more qualified to talk about “trafficking” than sex workers simply because they’ve eagerly consumed every prohibitionist faulty statistic. Sex workers can be (and are) concerned citizens too—why are our voices illegitimate? All sex… Read more »
These links are not relevant to the article. One story is of police corruption in Cambodia and the other is hysterical Korean women who are legally being put out of business. How is this related to protesting Village Voice’s Backpage, Inc for their aiding to the proliferation and support of trafficking and underground brothels in America? You seem to be on an agenda and not relating much to where you post comments. This seems to be a cut/n/paste reply that’s maybe posted elsewhere? I’m sorry that you feel that your profession is somehow threatened but this article isn’t really about… Read more »
Michael, I think Charlotte’s point is that the anti-prostitute movement does not actually care about how we are treated; all it cares about is abolishing our trade, no matter how many of us get hurt. As for the Korean women being “legally” put out of business, that law was established at the instigation of the US State Department. And must I point out that until Lawrence vs. Texas in 2003, male homosexual activity was against the law in a number of states? Just because a sexual practice (or any other activity) is against the law doesn’t make it wrong; in… Read more »
What is it with the US state dept? Amsterdam,Korea,Japan,all bowing before the pressure to be Neo- Puritans?
You’re welcome, Charlotte; like you, I think it’s important to let people know the truth about these issues. The whole anti-prostitute movement has hidden itself in this elaborate “trafficking” mythology, inflating rare tragedies into international crises and denying the agency of women who cross international borders to work by insisting that they can’t POSSIBLY have arranged it on their own. But though the instigators of this anti-sex work campaign know very well what they’re doing, I believe that most people who buy these lies simply don’t know any better, so it’s the responsibility of sex workers like you and me… Read more »
I understood that what Lili meant about the prostitution business being populated, she meant entirely populated. We’re not talking about you. You can be a willing prostitute for as long as you willingly like, we don’t care. We’re talking about people who DON’T have the choice, and there are tons of them. I understand your point about Backpage, the website isn’t an issue…it’s a medium. Like water, water can be used to nourish and it can be used to torture. But please, quit whining about how people want to shut down your business. If people try to use anti-trafficking protests… Read more »
Maggie- I just read this last link you left off with, the ‘deepthroated link. Its sad. It’s sad because the woman writing openly declares that she was a sex-trafficked girl who now is an aging prostitute with serious health issues and the damning affects around that. What I find glaringly wrong here, and in her portrayal of her situation, is that if she were not trafficked, or stolen, at her young age then she would likely have had different choices in the course of her life, no? What she writes about is the aftermath of a life gone wrong, the… Read more »
Michael, I”m the woman from Bound not Gagged. You aren’t me. You are speaking as though you know me. As though you understand me. And lecturing Maggie like you have the first clue about my life. You don’t. And I don’t need activists such as yourself thinking that you are somehow in touch with reality to pass judgment on me, to use my words to further your views. Views that entirely missed the point. Nor do I need you taking actions that put me in higher risk of being nailed by another predator. Next time you want to play expert… Read more »
Jill- I am just a construction guy commenting about something obvious. I do care about the young girls in Asia who are sold by their fuct-up families or simply stolen away and sold into sex slavery. That is more a part of what this article was about. It seems that you got thrown into this from Maggie posting your blog post. Sorry for the way that you were introduced here. I was not judging you, I am only commenting on what you wrote as well as what you did not write, which was anything about your own experience of being… Read more »
My trafficking experiences and most everything else can be found in the four part interview
http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/interview-jill-brenneman-part-one/
Thank you Jill. I’ve started it but need to take a breather, at least while I can still eat dinner. I’m shaking just reading about the straps. I’m truly sorry that you experienced this. You were just a kid.
Caring about Korean slave girls sold by their families is wonderful thing Michael. But attempting to end that horror by a Don Quixote mission of ending the sex industry through closing venues that are used in a huge majority by independent, consenting adult sex workers who are not being trafficked, or have pimps is toxic ideology. If you wish to solve human trafficking issues than solve the causes that drive all trafficking victims into the situation. Ultimately it is about economics and about economic injustice. Those are what cause and propel trafficking. This ideology of attempting to end the sex… Read more »
And that’s my point Michael. You are shaken, rightfully so, just about reading the details because they are awful. And I lived them at a very young age. Imagine living through that and having circumstance put you back in the sex industry and going through something very similar to the experiences illustrated in the trafficking narrative. Imagine reliving it again and once again being defenseless, to once again having no chance of gaining justice or of even preventing it from happening again because predators exist. Predators know that I and my colleagues can’t go to the police and they know… Read more »
Thank you Jill- I am simply a father and have always feared that something could happen to my daughter, who is now in her 20’s. The issues which you’ve just expressed are very educational, but please know that this is not the message that is in the front lines of the aggressive responses that your activist groups relay. You guys are assuming that we all know what you’re saying and know how to stop this atrocity. We all act on what we see, what is presented to us. You see things from your side and, in this case, we are… Read more »
Michael. A message of this is that drive-by activism can be very toxic. Jumping to do a rally to close Back Page’s adult services section in response to seeing the harm done to Korean sex slaves is counter productive to them and to those that will truly be impacted by closing Back Page. That being the adult, consenting sex workers. Traffickers aren’t going to simply go away or release their captives because advertising venues are taken away. The money they make from their slaves is their income. From first hand experience i can say without doubt that predators are highly… Read more »
Jill and Maggie- First of all, your Public Relations suck! You come out, quite rudely, on a sex trafficking topic with an agenda about legalizing prostitution! Although I can now see a limited correlation you have still came out with flamethrowers whereas if you came out offering cohesive discussion there would have been more understanding. You two have proven to be very intelligent and informative but you are expecting the population to already know what you are standing for. I only ASSUME that what you want is about legalizing prostitution because you have not made it very clear what you… Read more »
Michael, The reason I am angry is because of your response to Maggie about my post in which you blatantly insinuated having knowledge of my thought process. Something you continued to do even after speaking directly with me. That is what brought my hostility toward you. And you prove my point by stating that I am trying to advance a legalization of prostitution argument when I oppose US legalization. I have a problem with people misappropriating my words as though they are some expert on me. I have a problem when I discuss a reality of my life, a life… Read more »
One final note. Perhaps you were responding to Maggie, but you stated Jill and Maggie and stated we believe sexual slavery and sex trafficking don’t exist. I was a sexual trafficking, sexual slavery victim and have been open about this. Clearly I realize they exist.
As does Maggie. If she were in the belief that sexual slavery did not exist it is very unlikely she would have included my perspective and a four part interview on her blog.
“I’ve come to believe that either the naysayers utilize these sexual services themselves and feel defensive about it, or else they themselves work in that industry (or have friends who do) and want to persuade the public that the prostitution business is actually populated by workers who choose to be there.” I’ve have gone to prostitutes but its not really that I feel defensive about it. I just feel you are mostly wrong. Do workers choose to be there? Kinda. Do I choose to work in my boring 9-5 job, get up in the morning, deal with corporate bullshit. Kinda.… Read more »
And you know this how?
I am uneasy about umbrella definitions of human trafficking and anti-porm activism in which “The word “choice” doesn’t even enter into it our conversations.”
These girls don’t have choice so why should you
There is a vast difference between a slave and a free person. If free to choose to prostitute themselves then that is their right. Enslaved to work for anything is wrong. Legalize then the trafficers have less hiding places which includes men who are enslaved to cheaply do work . We forget what slavery is about with the push of just women. It is like they (the males) do no count in our thoughts. Slavery is an equal oppression occupation.
Many of them do, that’s the point. According to the little reliable research done in this are child prostitutes don’t tend to use pimps and probably don’t advertise on backpage either. It’s an anti prostitution campaign disguised as an anti-sex trafficking campaign so that the actual women involved don’t come along and ruin everything.