review of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry

Chapter 7 of this book is about prostitution and I will limit myself to commenting on this. I will deal with three points that she makes. Otherwise it would be a very long post.

Right at the start of the book we have the idea that an archaeologist will say 'a pit of newborn babies' bones was how to spot a brothel'. One wonders what this is to do with the modern world. If you are interested in the remains of newborn babies in the modern world and not the ancient you will find them in great quantities in the grounds of a Magdalene laundry. The Magdalene laundries in Ireland where young women and girls were incarcerated. The laundries that would still be there were it not for the changes in attitudes in society which brought about the sexual revolution.

In Chapter 7 on page 147 Louise Perry writes this:-

"Decriminalisation or legalisation of the sex industry increases the demand for commercial sex. In countries that have adopted these legal models, the proportion of the male population who have ever bought sex is higher, and the sex tourism industry is larger. Given that the number of women who will willingly enter the sex trade is small, when demand grows, unwilling women must be sought out in order to meet it."

Decriminalisation and legalisation are two different legal models. I support the former not the latter. The only country that has adopted decriminalisation is New Zealand, although Belgium has recently adopted it too. In New Zealand demand has not increased. Some people say that it has but that is not true. I don't know if it has increased in the Netherlands or Germany. I have not seen evidence of that and Perry offers no evidence.

It is interesting that she uses the phrase 'the proportion of the male population who have ever bought sex'. From my analysis of statistics from Sweden I know that there is a difference between the proportion of men who are active sex buyers and the proportion who have ever bought sex. The proportion of men who were active sex buyers before the Nordic model was 1.3%, after it was introduced it was 1.8%. The proportion of men who had ever bought sex dropped from about 13% to about 8% in the same period.

That is because the proportion who have ever done it will change as older generations become too old to participate in surveys. The cut off age is 74 years old. It will depend on factors such as whether the country was at war or whether they had large scale conscription decades ago. It won't depend on recent changes in law. The proportion of men who are active sex buyers will probably change because of changes in the law but will certainly change because of a financial crisis when men have less money to spend.

When demand grows the existing sex workers make more money. They have more customers and each customer will pay more. It doesn't mean that women will be forced to become sex workers. They may be more incentivised to become sex workers, but that is a different matter.

On page 145 Perry quotes from sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein. These quotes however don't support her assertion that well-paid sex workers are 'highly unrepresentative'. Bernstein quite correctly states that there are two ends of the continuum. There are well-paid sex workers at one end of the continuum and homeless women addicted to crack or heroin who are pimped at the other. That doesn't mean that there are only two types of sex worker, and it doesn't mean that the vast majority are the pimped drug addicts.

In fact we know that drug addicts have never been more than about 15% of the total number of sex workers. That is what Professor Belinda Brooks-Gordon has said*. So does that mean that 85% or more of sex workers are the well-paid sort? That is what you would have to believe if you believed that there are only two types of sex worker. Far from being 'tourists' ie highly unrepresentative, these well paid 'call-girls, escorts, exotic dancers and masseuses' would be the norm.

We know that's not the case though. There are many different categories of sex worker. It isn't true that most working-class women in sex work are drug addicts or pimped. Women who come to Britain from abroad are rarely drug addicts. Most white British working class prostitutes are not drug addicts. There is no 'prostituted class'.

There was a revealing television series called Taken: Hunting the Sex Traffickers. Although they were trying to say that traffickers are evil, they didn't manage to do that. One of the Brazilian sex workers had been arrested and deported. They showed her at the airport returning to Britain to resume her life as a sex worker. She said she wanted money for university. Often women come to Britain so that they can invest in their future.

There was an older Brazilian woman who spoke Portuguese and English. Her job was to answer the phone. Every time she directed a punter to one of the sex workers she got £10. The sex workers got £60 or £70. This older woman was prosecuted for being a pimp and a trafficker.

There are thousands of women in Britain from abroad who use their hands for massage and then sometimes use their hands to bring their clients to orgasm. That is all they do. This is the most visible form of prostitution. In the nearest city to me, Liverpool, there are several of these establishments in the centre and even more further out. They are not drug addicts, and often they are saving their money to invest in their future back home.

When Elizabeth Bernstein was writing about pimped drug addicts, it is important to remember that this in America. In America men are prosecuted for paying for sex. Women are prosecuted for selling sex. Yet still prostitution exists in America and is widespread. So how on earth does Louise Perry think that the Nordic model is going to get rid of prostitution? How does she think that she is going to save the drug addicted women of the world?

Drug addicts are helped by rehab. That is the way to help them. Not handing them ASBOs. Not trying to drive away their clients. Not putting all sex work in the hands of organised crime. Benefits and housing are important too. I support spending more money on rehab, benefits and housing. I support welfare workers who ask sex workers what they need. I know that this doesn't happen in Nordic model countries. That is what they promise, help to exit, but as Dr Geoffrey Shannon stated in the official report into the Nordic model in Ireland this has not happened.

The homicide rate for drug addicts is higher. The mortality rate due to drugs or alcohol is higher. Because some prostitutes are drug addicts that can make it seem that prostitution is more dangerous than it really is. Not letting prostitutes work together doesn't help. Not letting them work together means they work alone or for a pimp. That needs to change. It hasn't changed in countries that have adopted the Nordic model.

I have written more about this book here.

*I can't remember where Professor Belinda Brooks-Gordon wrote this. She is Professor of Forensic Psychology and Public Policy, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck University. In one of Dr Brooke Magnanti's books she wrote that the estimate is between 5% and 20%. On this page the estimate is between 3% and 25%. We can say that the proportion of sex workers who are street based and drug addicted can't be more than a quarter. Especially when you think that some street based sex workers aren't addicts. It certainly isn't true what Janice Turner wrote in the Times this Saturday "The vast majority of prostitutes ... were abused as children, lured in by pimp-boyfriends and muffle their pain with drugs or alcohol".

UPDATE: I have found the statistic. Apparently Belinda Brooks-Gordon said "Lots of people mistakenly think that drug addicts form the majority of people in the sex industry. They do not. They are only a tiny proportion. And on-street prostitution only accounts for about 10 to 15 per cent of all prostitution. Decriminalisation makes it safer for people. It could be made no different to any other forms of business - with age guidelines, health and safety rules and zoning areas."

It was reported in this newspaper article.

Janice Turner in the Times

Janice Turner wrote an article in the Times about prostitution published on Saturday. She gave a statistic, if you can call it a statistic, that is false.

"But research shows men who buy sex are more likely to rape: trading money for consent reduces empathy, makes a man believe only his pleasure counts and increases his likelihood of partner abuse."

She doesn't give a reference for this research. She seems to have copied what Libby Purves wrote last year also in the Times. You would think that Janice could have asked Libby about this research and checked it before repeating it. You would think that the Times would have made sure that the statistic is correct. It seems though that they don't care that they publish false statistics.

I think I know the research that they are talking about. It is Comparing Sex Buyers With Men Who Do Not Buy Sex: New Data on Prostitution and Trafficking by Melissa Farley. I have already written what I think of this research in my posts student sex workers and more student sex workers.

Briefly, I wrote that Farley seems to be withholding information about this study. She doesn't seem to want to tell us whether men who buy sex report that they have raped more often than other men. Even though they were asked this direct question.

What I didn't know at the time I wrote this is that Melissa Farley is known for this. Consider this from Ronald Weizer's article The Mythology of Prostitution: Advocacy Research and Public Policy.

"In trying to make the case that indoor prostitution victimizes women to the same extent as street prostitution, Farley (2006) reported that a British study by Church et al. (2001) found that workers in indoor venues (private residences, saunas) reported more attempted rapes than street workers. In fact, the Church study reported the opposite: that 28% of street workers said they had ever experienced an attempted rape, compared with 17% of indoor workers. Moreover, Farley failed to mention that street prostitutes were 11 times more likely to have actually been raped: According to Church et al., 22% of the street sample compared with only 2% of the indoor sample had ever been raped while at work. This example is a clear case of both inverting and ignoring findings that contradict one's arguments."

In the article Janice also wrote "It is time that the Nordic model, which decriminalises sex work but makes buying it a crime and has been adopted in France, Ireland and Sweden, is debated in parliament."

What she doesn't seem to know is that it has already been debated in parliament. On 04 July 2018 there was the debate Commercial Sexual Exploitation. You can read what I wrote about it in my page Commercial Sexual Exploitation. All my pages are displayed on the right of this screen.

She wrote "The vast majority of prostitutes are not swinging Belle de Jours but were abused as children, lured in by pimp-boyfriends and muffle their pain with drugs or alcohol". This is just complete rubbish, there is no evidence for this. This isn't even true of drug-addicted street based sex workers. They are a small minority of sex workers anyway.

She ends by stating "No man should have impunity when buying a woman’s body, whether out on a stag night or serving his country". I have never bought a woman's body, I have bought a service.

2 new films about sex work

There are two new films that are about sex work. Both are positive about it. The first is Good Luck to You, Leo Grande starring Emma Thompson. The second is How to Please a Woman starring Sally Phillips. Both are well-known comedians.

I found out about the second of these on Woman's Hour this morning. The presenter had no criticism of this film. Someone contacted the show and said how hypocritical they are in saying that men objectify women through prostitution and yet they accept the objectification of men. In both films the sex worker is male. I don't mean trans women, who the Radical Feminists regard as male.

I can see how the Radical Feminists are going to be critical of both of these films. Objectification means different things to different people. It meant one thing to Radical Feminist authors such as Catharine A MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. It means something different to the majority of Radical or Revolutionary Feminists. It means something different again to ordinary people.

To ordinary people it seems to mean having a sexual attraction to someone outside of the context of a relationship. The idea is that a man is incapable of appreciating a woman's personality if he is lusting after her. This is an idea that goes back thousands of years.

If I have casual sex with a woman, let's say on holiday, am I objectifying her more than if I play a game of tennis with her or a game of chess? Why would sex have that special attribute, different from other activities? If I pay for sex with a woman, am I objectifying her more than if I pay for a taxi driver or a waiter? You can say that sex is different from playing the usual sort of game or working the usual sort of job. That's not answering the question though.

We use people all the time. We meet people briefly, do something with them, and don't want to get to know them further. Casual sex or paid-for sex could be seen as harmful to women, but that is at the very least an overgeneralisation of women. Not all women are the same. Treating all people in a group as if they are all the same is one aspect of objectification, according to philosopher Martha Nussbaum.

The weird thing is that Emma Thompson has had a lot to say about prostitution over the years. She has signed up to Princess Eugenie's organisation to fight trafficking. We all want to fight trafficking, if by that we mean coercion. However, most prostitution does not involve coercion. Some other forms of work also sometimes involve coercion.

Other organisations that have associated with Princess Eugenie's crusade are the International Justice Mission, who say they want to release the captives. However, their hidden agenda is to try to stamp out prostitution anywhere in the world, no matter how many women they harm. They are an American Evangelical Christian organisation.

In the past they have called for and participated in brothel raids in countries such as Cambodia and Thailand. Women are arrested and kept against their will. Most of these women have not been coerced, and so their first experience of imprisonment is in a so-called rescue centre.

my day trip to London

Encouraged by my pleasurable day trips to Sheffield I decided to make a day trip to London. Sheffield is two hours on the train from Liverpool and London just a bit longer. I wanted to revisit Soho and any erotic encounters with women would be an added pleasure.

I could see 8 Greek Street was closed but 2 Greens Court was still open. I went up the stairs but before I even rang the bell I could hear a woman's voice shouting that there's nobody here, come back later. When I went back later the door at street level was closed. I think probably the girl hadn't turned up so the maid had closed the door.

The girl's name wasn't outside the door. In the past their names were always outside. If you had a favourite then you could tell if she was there without knocking on the door. I didn't see any names anywhere. I think that the police have decided they shouldn't do it. I don't know why. I would have liked to see Poppy's name outside, she was the best.

I went up the stairs at 4 Greens Court. There was a young woman there who seemed Eastern European. Quite pretty but short. She gave me a nice smile and showed me the list of services. The cheapest one was £30. In the past it was nearly always £20. I'm glad they have increased the prices, they deserve more. She mentioned the £2 tip for the maid. I had forgotten all about that. I told her that I didn't have any change (which was true) and that I would come back later (which I knew I probably wouldn't).

One of the places I used to go was Little Newport Street so I made my way through Chinatown and went up the stairs. There was a nice Thai lady there and I decided to stay. I had sex with her, with all the noise of the street outside. The sounds from the street didn't put me off, in fact I quite liked them, the idea that there were people outside who had no idea what was happening a few feet away. The idea that you can step off the street and within minutes be looking at a naked woman who opens her legs for you.

Later I wanted to see another woman. In Peter Street was a lovely young blonde woman. I could have said girl because she looked about 20 but later she said she was 30. She is from Bulgaria. She has a very nice figure and a nice face. This is I feel what most men would go for. Young, slender and blonde. I got on top of her and shagged her.

It was a similar experience to the Thai lady. No name on the door, the same £30 for ten minutes, the same friendly smiles and conversation. There was something else that was the same too. When I was putting on my clothes both of them had sat on the bidet and washed their genitals. Both naked apart from their stockings. I found it very sexy. I realise that most men won't. That's a little kink of mine. I would have liked to photograph them on the bidet. Their faces wouldn't be seen.

Before I saw the blonde girl I had to wait. She was with another customer. The maid let me sit with her and her friend. She wanted the money from me before I saw the girl but assured me that she was beautiful. When I said I wanted the basic £30 service she said "Are you sure you wouldn't like a blowjob?". I could have asked them anything but all I could think to ask was if 8 Greek Street has closed permanently. She told me it had closed a long time ago, before the pandemic.

I would say about half of the walk ups have closed. I could have done more research before I went - finding the best girls and places - but I've never been good at planning in advance. There was a third woman in Lisle Street but the less said about her the better. Then it was time to go home.

I spent the same amount of money in Soho as I had in Sheffield. £90. Each sexual encounter in Sheffield cost £45, but it was for half an hour, not ten minutes. So Soho is not good value for money, even if you are able to orgasm within ten minutes using a normal thick condom. I expect most men spend more than the minimum £30.

UPDATE: I have since found out that 8 Greek Street has not closed. I was told something that was not true.

Some of you may be wondering if I found any culinary delights in Soho. Yes I did. I found a new chain that do salt beef. It is Tongue & Brisket in Wardour Street. When I lived in London I would sometimes have salt beef in Brick Lane or Selfridges Foodhall.

another day trip to Sheffield

I enjoyed myself in Sheffield so I decided to go again. I enjoyed it even more this time. Before taking the tram to paradise I thought I would have a look at Sheffield's indoor market. It was more interesting than the Winter Gardens I looked at last time. There were lots of food options and I chose a Nepalese curry.

I decided to go to City Sauna to begin with. Jenni off the telly was there. There were two sex workers. One was the tattooed lady who had been there on my previous visit. There was also Charlotte. I chose Charlotte. She is an older lady, quite tall and attractive. She smiles and talks a lot. She has black hair done up and wears stockings. I shagged her for a while but didn't manage to orgasm despite her best efforts.

She tried to wank me off. They know that wanking over tits works for most men. It doesn't work for me. I tried to wank myself but that didn't work either.

Honeypot has a good reputation so I went there. It wasn't so easy to find. The entrance is not in Attercliffe Road, it is in Worksop Road. It does have 774A in big letters on the front though. I went up the stairs and rang the bell. An old woman answered the door and explained that there was a man with the sex worker and another one waiting. She said I could come back later. I think she said the sex worker's name was Jessica. I thought Jessica seems to be very popular.

I thought I will have a look at the other brothels nearby. I could see Athena Massage and Diplomat clearly. There's supposed to be another one nearby called Escorts but I couldn't see it. Athena and Diplomat are a couple of doors away from each other and with both of them the entrance is at the back. I went into the alleyway at the back and thought about what to do next. Neither of these places has a good reputation.
 

is this the seediest alleyway in Britain?

I decided to go into Diplomat. I don't know why. It seemed quite nice, there was a bar and at the other end of the room were sofas with four women. One was a big black woman who was in charge. There were a couple of bored looking young women looking at their smart phones. And there was Alec.

Alec is an attractive blonde. She has a natural beauty but has a couple of tattoos, what look like enhanced breasts, and lips that might have been enhanced too. I thought she looked as if she could be a student. Later in the room I could see she was probably older than that but it was a wonderful experience. She is very friendly. I shagged her for a while but wasn't getting any further than I had with Charlotte. She seemed to be enjoying it, at one point she was playing with her clit while I was shagging her.

I don't like to ask if I can use one of my ultra-thin condoms. Usually the answer is no. I felt I could ask Alec. She asked to see them and then said that would be fine. So we put one on, I got back on top of her, and after a couple of minutes I had a powerful orgasm.

Alec took me downstairs to the bar and gave me a bottle of water from the fridge to take out with me. She's such a thoughtful nice girl. It wasn't a hot and humid day that day, unlike my previous trip, which I think was part of the problem.

Another thing that has happened to me is that I have found out one of the places where some of my favourite sex workers go to. I like to go to Rock Ferry Thai Massage near Birkenhead. I have a few favourites such as Joy. She works there some of the time but most of the time at other places.

Somewhere in Manchester is one place. Now I know that there is a flat in Southport. I went there a few days ago. The woman I saw, who will be there for a couple of weeks, was nice but I don't want to see her again.

I am planning a day trip to London. I intend to head straight to Greens Court in Soho to see if Poppy is still working there. I doubt it but I'll try there first. Then maybe head to Greek Street to find if they are still open.

my day trip to Sheffield

Last year I went to Manchester on a day trip. In previous years I went to Manchester often. I won't be going again. Last time was a disapointment, with many brothels I knew closed. I thought that I would try Sheffield. It's a bit further than Manchester but not too far. There are quite a few brothels in Sheffield, most of them along the Attercliffe Road.

I watched a TV series about one of these brothels. The series was called A Very British Brothel. The brothel - City Sauna - is run by a mother and daughter. They had another series called A Very Yorkshire Brothel. I thought the episodes were good, showing sex work as it mostly really is. The people at the Nordic Model Now! site were up in arms about it and made a complaint to ITV. 'They are concerned that women might be encouraged into prostitution on the basis of the programme.'

I thought it might be nice to go there. However, my research showed me that their place is not the best place to go in Sheffield. The best place seems to be GFE. I thought that I can go to Sheffield by train and have a look around the town centre, including Sheffield Winter Gardens. Then after lunch I could get a tram to Meadowhall South/Tinsley and walk to GFE. I expected there to be some young slender women there. I could enjoy spending time with one of them then perhaps go on to somewhere else that has the older fatter women that I prefer.

I think everyone who goes to GFE goes by car. It is easy though to get there by public transport, if you know how and don't get lost. You can walk along the canal from the tram stop a short distance and come out on the little road called Sheffield Road.

I went in and there was a man sitting behind a desk. That was different from what I'm used to. I asked him how many girls there are there today and he replied that there are three ladies. I had to give him £20. I can't remember if this was before or after I got to see the women. All of them were indeed young and mostly slender. There were two blondes but I chose the smaller black-haired girl. I thought she looked like she would be more friendly.

The man said I had to give the other £30 to the lady in the room, he had already explained that prices begin at £50. Millie led me to the room, chatting to me while she did so. I gave her £30 and she asked me to have a quick shower. On the bed she didn't seem to want to take her top off but was happy for me to look at and feel her pussy. I got on top of her and enjoyed looking at her pretty face. She told me she has Italian and Maltese ancestry as well as English.

After I made my way back to the tram stop which didn't take long. I got off somewhere near Attercliffe Road. I found City Sauna and went in. The daughter who I had seen in the TV series - Jenni - was there. I asked her how many girls she has there today. She said only one. There was a woman sitting on a sofa with lots of tattoos and a shaved head. I'm sure she must be some type of woman but I'm not sure what type but not my type. I said I'll leave it.

The funny thing is there were men sitting on other sofas in the same room. My guess is that there were other women there and these men were waiting for them to become available - having declined the offer of the tattooed lady.

Opposite City Sauna is another brothel called Pandoras. A sign said the entrance is at the back. I could see two doors at the back but they both seemed locked. Perhaps Pandoras opens later or maybe it has closed. I wanted to go to Honeypot further along Attercliffe Road because it has almost as good a reputation as GFE. I couldn't find it though because I had copied the number down incorrectly.

I found Caesars in Stanley Street easily enough. A woman spoke to me through a tiny hatch. She wanted me to give her £30 through the hatch. I asked how many girls she has and she said there is her and there is an Albanian girl. All I could see were her hands. She seemed to be African. I walked away. Finally I found Paradise Studio. The place seemed not only closed but abandoned. A large window had been smashed.

My conclusion is that the brothels of Sheffield are in decline. GFE was good and good value for money at £50. I think most men spend more there than £50. I would have liked to ask Millie what perversions she negotiates with her clients. She's not as innocent as she can look.

the Scottish government and the Nordic model

I found out recently that the Scottish government refuses to fund any women's sector organisation unless they accept that prostitution is a form of violence. Organisations have to sign up to the Equally Safe strategy or they won't get any money. The Scottish government also refuse to use the term 'sex work'.

The theory that prostitution is a form of violence against women and girls comes from Radical Feminist ideology. They say that a woman can't truly consent to sex with a man in a patriarchal society. If you accept this ideology then prostitution is not only violence it is also rape but all forms of heterosexual sex are rape too. You can't just apply the theory to prostitution.

The Scottish government think that they are using an accepted intellectual theory but there is no intellectual justification for it. They don't explain where this theory comes from, people are just expected to accept it, even though it's not the genuine theory. That's quite disturbing. Also, I can't find out who in the government brought in this policy: I would like to know if they are Radical Feminists or Evangelical Christians.

The Scottish government are copying what socially conservative Americans have done. President Bush reinstated the Mexico City Policy, also known as the 2001 Global Gag Rule. It banned NGOs from receiving funding if they are pro choice about abortion. Then in 2003 USAID stopped funding any group perceived to be encouraging sex work, including HIV outreach groups. A literacy class for Thai sex workers was denied funding.

In 2003 the Bush administration passed a Global AIDS bill that prohibits international agencies from receiving funds unless they explicitly sign an oath that they do not support or condone prostitution and that no funds will be going toward harm prevention among sex workers. See Running from the Rescuers: New U.S. Crusades Against Sex Trafficking and the Rhetoric of Abolition by Gretchen Soderlund.

It seems that the Scottish government is preparing itself to introduce the Nordic model into Scotland. That would be foolish because the official report into the effectiveness of the Nordic model in Northern Ireland shows that it has not reduced demand. There have been three reports into the effectiveness of the Nordic model in the Irish republic and none of them say there has been a reduction in demand.

I have been looking at books about women and violence. I looked at Enough: The Violence Against Women And How To End It by Harriet Johnson. As far as I can tell it has nothing to say about prostitution. It doesn't have an index but none of the chapter headings are about prostitution. It seems Harriet Johnson doesn't think prostitution is violence if it doesn't even get a mention.

I looked at Equal Power by Jo Swinson. She was the leader of the Liberal Democratic party. In Jo Swinson's book she writes about Sreypov Chan, who was 'sold into slavery in Cambodia as a seven-year-old girl'. "When she refused her first client, the pimp crushed up hot chilli peppers and pushed them into her vagina, then thrust a hot metal poker inside her." As an adult Srepoy Chan worked as an advocacy officer for the Somaly Mam Foundation.

Somaly Mam claimed to have been a sex slave and got others to make the same false claims. Long Pross and Meas Ratha were two of the girls who we know made false claims, and Sreypov Chan is another. Thomas Steinfatt has been looking into prostitution in Cambodia for a long time and has said that he has never encountered genuine instances of torture. Steinfatt has conducted research that shows coercion is not common.

So that's the fictional violence. What about the real violence against women in Cambodia? Sex workers are arrested by the police then held against their will in 'rescue' centres for months. Kept in poor conditions, there a near-total lack of psychological care for traumatized girls, an absence of meaningful job-training programs, and a blatant disregard for the young women’s privacy. One former worker said it was “like there was a revolving door for tourists and camera crews. It was like a zoo.”

American Evangelical organisations such as the International Justice Mission have conducted brothel raids in countries including Cambodia. The women they capture try to run away. IJM is funded by the American government. It would be good if the Biden administration stopped all funding to these organisations. It would help women more than the Scottish government refusing to fund good organisations such as Scot-Pep.

Jo Swinson learned about trafficking from Marie Claire magazine. Perhaps that is where Princess Eugenie learned about it too. She and one of her chums (Julia de Boinville) have teamed up to fight trafficking. It is clear that they support organisations such as the International Justice Mission and people like Nicholas Kristof. They are not doing good work helping women around the world, they are harming them. Instead of interviewing people like Kristof and the guy who made the Taken television series, they should interview people like Emily Kenway. At least they should read academics like Shelley Cavalieri and Gretchen Soderlund, who I have quoted below.

Below I have quoted from Between Victim and Agent: A Third-Way Feminist Account of Trafficking for Sex Work by Shelley Cavalieri.

In May 2003, law enforcement officers raided a brothel in Chiang Mai, the capital of the northern region of Thailand and the regional center for the many indigenous peoples or hill tribes that populate the surrounding mountains. They conducted this raid at the behest of a coalition of Thai non-governmental organizations and an American evangelical Christian organization [International Justice Mission]. The American organization, with funding from the U.S. government and in conjunction with the Thai non-governmental organizations, was dedicated to investigating and reporting brothels with children inside to the authorities, and tried to persuade the police to shut down such locales. The particular brothel raided in this story was a brothel like many others in the country, filled with ethnically Shan women from Burma. Most of the women were of the age of majority, but while accounts vary, some organizations asserted that there were teenagers working in the brothel as well. How these teenagers reached the brothel is unclear; the organizations claiming that teenage girls were there also asserted that the girls’ presence could not be voluntary due to their age and that the girls were victims of human trafficking.

The coalition of organizations effected what they termed a “rescue” of the women in the brothel because of the believed presence of children. What followed was a human rights debacle. Twenty-eight women and girls, most of whom were, by all accounts, adults, were involuntarily detained beyond the period of time that victims of trafficking may be confined under Thai law. They were not arrested or charged with crimes, but detained, according to the authorities, because they had been rescued from a situation of human trafficking. They were deprived of access to their belongings and saved earnings, which were locked inside the inaccessible brothel under police control; they never regained ownership of these possessions. After a lengthy period of time, the government deported many of these women to Burma. All of these actions, which the women experienced as both harmful and alienating, occurred under the guise of rescuing them from the brothel in which they worked.

According to social services workers who interviewed four women who escaped from the brothel as the police arrived, all of the women were ethnic Shan from Burma and were at least nineteen years of age at the time of the raid. Prior to immigrating to Thailand, their status as members of the Burmese Shan indigenous group rendered these women subject to summary detention and rape at any time at the hands of officers of the Burmese junta. Faced with the option of abuse by the authorities in a region of Burma overwhelmed by poverty, many Shan women chose, and continue to choose, to cross the mountains that demarcate the Thai-Burma border and move to a Thai city to work in a brothel. This choice has a certain logic, as forced labor, forced relocations, and food shortages remain an endemic problem in Burma. For many, work in a Thai brothel presented the opportunity to escape the repression of the Burmese junta and to send adequate money home in order to support families, educate children, and maintain households. From the perspective of these women, that they at times paid people to facilitate their passage to Thailand was merely incidental.

Further, the women who escaped the brothel prior to the raid claimed that they, like the women “rescued” in this particular scenario, and like many other Shan sex workers in Thailand, worked in the brothel of their own volition. According to these women, they were free to come and go as they liked; they were not subject to physical restraint in any way. They were not in debt bondage in the traditional sense of the phrase, although some did at times take pay advances from the brothel manager to travel home and back; they would repay such advances with a portion of their earnings over time, much like a loan against future paychecks that some workplaces offer in the United States. Yet from the perspective of the American evangelical organization doing this work, the women in the brothel, particularly the minors, needed to be rescued from the brothel. According to the IJM employee with whom I spoke during the summer following the raid, as all of the women had traveled across borders and left their communities to work in the sex industry, they qualified as exploited women in need of assistance, even when they personally denied that they experienced harm in the brothels. That they may have paid others to facilitate their migration was presented as further evidence of their exploitation.

Below I have quoted from Running from the Rescuers: New U.S. Crusades Against Sex Trafficking and the Rhetoric of Abolition by Gretchen Soderlund.

Journalist Maggie Jones’s interviews with safe house managers indicate that shelter escapes are commonplace in areas where anti-trafficking groups are currently targeting their efforts (2003). The manager of the Phnom Penh home that took in the 37 prostitutes after the Dateline initiated raids reported to Jones that at least 40 percent of the women and girls taken to his shelter escape and return to work in Svay Pak’s brothels. Indeed, six of the teens taken by MSNBC/IJM had run away from the home within a week of the televised busts. When Phil Marshall of the United Nations Project on Human Trafficking in Southeast Asia’s Mekong Region was asked by Jones what he thought of current rehabilitation strategies, he said he had “never seen an issue where there is less interest in hearing from those who are most affected by it” (Jones 2003,1). In 2003, Empower, a sex workers’ advocacy program, issued a report documenting a brothel raid in Chiang Mai, Thailand conducted by International Justice Mission in which several of the 28 arrested (or “rescued,” in abolitionist parlance) Burmese women escaped from a local institution in the first 24 hours. According to Empower, the raid—conducted ostensibly for humanitarian purposes—took on many of the same features as a criminal arrest:

As soon as they had their mobile phones returned [the] women contacted Empower. They are only permitted to use their phones for a short time each evening and must hide in the bathroom to take calls outside that time. They report that they have been subjected to continual interrogation and coercion by Trafcord [an anti-trafficking NGO formed in 2002 with U.S. financial support]. Women understand that if they continue to maintain that they want to remain in Thailand and return to work that they will be held in the Public Welfare Boys Home or [a] similar institution until they recant. Similarly, they understand that refusing to be witnesses against their “traffickers” will further delay their release. (Empower 2003)

By the end of the month, more than half of the women had escaped from the shelter. What does it mean that so-called sex slaves often thwart rescue attempts? Is it intellectually and ethically responsible to call every instance of a practice “slavery” when many women involved demonstratively reject the process of protection and rehabilitation, and when they escape from supposed rescuers who aim to force them out of a life of prostitution (“captivity”) and into a life of factory work or employment in the low-paying service sector (“freedom”)?