I have been reading two interesting books about prostitution. The first one is by an academic, Dr Ko-lin Chin. He is a Professor at Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice. The second one is by Sarah Forsyth and Tim Tate (who has a degree in Theology).
The book by the Professor is called Going Down to the Sea. He interviewed 149 sex workers in different countries, all from mainland China. The book recounts the interviews of 18 of these women. In the epilogue he sums up the information given to him by these 149 women.
The vast majority of them were not deceived, coerced or forced into the sex trade. Only 1% were, although 15% were not free to move around or quit sex work because their travel documents are kept by their employer or debtor. There are various definitions of 'sex trafficking victim'.
He says there are different problems in different countries. It is better for them in the USA than in Asian countries. In the USA none of them were underage, in debt to sex ring operators, financially exploited, or denied freedom of movement (or forced, coerced or deceived).
The women had no contact with organised crime except within the Geylang red light district of Singapore. What Ko-lin Chin has found is consistent with what Elizabeth Pisani and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas have found in South East Asia. They are also academics who have conducted research in the field.
The book by Sarah Forsyth and Tim Tate is Slave Girl. There are many reviews online, some people don't believe it is true. Below is part of one review.
"The fact that her description of the Red Light District in Amsterdam is actually highly inaccurate, and anyone who has been there should be able to verify the author has greatly distorted this for sensationalist purposes. I have been to the RLD as a tourist (naturally this book had me feeling ashamed at having done so, and while I question its accuracy I have no intention of going there again) and the girls in the windows appear perfectly healthy, fit, attractive and seemingly happy there. It is quite likely that the latter point is an act they have mastered in order to keep drawing punters in, but even so it is not an act that a hopeless junkie would be physically or mentally capable of pulling off convincingly. In short, there is no way that these women are simply 'living on a diet of drugs and m&ms' as Sarah claims; her description is more akin to the disease-ridden and drug-addicted prostitutes you are more likely to find walking the streets of any big city. Likewise Sarah is extremely demeaning of the punters who visit the girls and even the tourists who pass through the area, she basically says they are all evil and feelingless, knowingly raping the girls."
In the afterword there is a lot of false information about Operation Pentameter and Gatwick Airport, similar to the sort of stuff Evangelical Christians tend to believe.
Tim Tate wrote a book called Children for the Devil: Ritual Abuse and Satanic Crime. This is how it is described: 'The ritualistic abuse of children in satanic ceremonies is increasingly coming to light as children in the UK, USA and Europe disclose identical experiences involving torture, cannibalism, animal sacrifice, live burial, murder and the use of drugs snakes and insects in sexual abuse'. Tate was sued in 1992, shortly after the book was published, for defamatory accusations against a police officer. Tate could not substantiate the accusations and agreed a settlement. It was pulled by its publishers and pulped.
No doubt the Evangelicals will think that the Devil has managed to stifle their free speech.
I don't usually come across books like this, libraries and bookshops tend not to stock them. I might have been looking in the wrong places though. It seems that there are many books in this genre. I was surprised when the book popped up on the Nordic Model Now! site. This is what Megan King ('survivor and abolitionist') wrote.
"Within the book she describes the reality of the sex trade there, including witnessing the murder of a fellow prostituted woman, as the brothel owners created a ‘snuff porn’ video, which for those of you who are unaware of this, means it is pornography depicting real homicide. She witnessed someone being murdered in the name of pornography in front of her eyes."
According to Forsyth (or Tate) she had a gun held to her head. Funny that, none of the women in South East Asia interviewed by Professor Chin had a gun held to their head, not even in Singapore. Yet we are supposed to believe that in North West Europe this happens.
On the same Nordic Model Now! page by Megan King there is a false statistic that I want to address. "In Sweden from 1999 to 2008, there was a 76% reduction in the number of prostituted women." There is a reference for this statistic which is Not a choice, Not a job: Exposing the myths about prostitution and the global sex trade by Janice Raymond (page 73).
I can't get access to this book so I'm not sure where this statistic comes from. I think it comes from here though.
"In 1995, a national government report published estimates that there were approximately 2500 to 3000 prostituted women in Sweden, of whom 650 were in street prostitution. In 1998, street prostitution was estimated even higher, at 726. By 2008, a study estimated that approximately 300 women were prostituted on Swedish streets, while 300 women and 50 men were identified in Swedish online prostitution advertisements. Prostitution increased in Denmark and Norway during the same period, gauged using similar measurements as in Sweden."
We have two different estimates, one from 1995 (not 1999) and one from 2008. Both flawed. Not all indoor prostitution relied on the Internet in 2008. The 300 figure for indoor prostitution is way too low.
2500 decreased by 76% is 600. However, according to surveys in 1996 0.3% of Swedish women stated that they had been paid for sex. In 2008 the figure was 1.1% and in 2017 it was 1.5%. So I would say that it is a myth that there was a reduction in the number of sex workers in Sweden between 1999 and 2008.
Below is an extract from the Skarhed report of 2010. It shows that the 650 figure for the number of sex workers in Sweden in 2008 is not to be trusted. I have emboldened what I think is the most important.
"In the research report ―Prostitution in the Nordic Countries, Charlotta Holmström’s article summarizes the available knowledge about the situation in Sweden in 2008. It shows that approximately 300 women were involved in street prostitution and that about 300 women and 50 men were involved in prostitution on the Internet. However, the article points out that this does not mean that we can estimate the number of people in prostitution in Sweden to be 650. As described above, people in prostitution may be active in several arenas at once, for example both on the Internet and on the street, which would mean that the same person was counted more than once. On the other hand, Holmström felt that the estimate could be rather low, as it was dependent on how social work was organized and what surveys were conducted. Thus, rather than providing a reliable picture of the actual situation, the estimates might in fact say more about the resources and priorities of the police and social services. In summary, she states that the number of women in street prostitution in the three major cities in Sweden appears to be relatively well-defined and that knowledge about women who offer sex over the Internet is somewhat more limited, but under development, while the knowledge of men who provide sexual services and people who offer sex in other arenas than on the street and the Internet, as well as our knowledge of the incidence of prostitution outside the big-city areas, is very limited. Holmström also states that ―at the same time, authorities believe that the majority of prostitution activities occur in less visible arenas."
Clearly she is saying that the 350 figure for men and women advertising on the Internet is not the total number of indoor workers.
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