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Going undercover as a sex worker

aljazeera.com

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Re: Going undercover as a sex worker

#71

Post by boothead »

ameen wrote: post #40
logical42 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one puzzled by this comment?

You shouldn't be. I'm a Muslim and I've dealt with numerous such individuals painting Muslims as backward and illiterate. Muslims are the scapegoat of this generation, as the Jews, Blacks were before them. Their entire worldview is constructed of an us vs. them ideology rather than understanding that we're fundamentally the same regardless of our ethnicity/faiths/inclinations/etc.

ameen, may I ask how you regard people who call themselves reformers such as Maajid Nawaz https://twitter.com/maajidnawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali https://twitter.com/Ayaan?

Re: Going undercover as a sex worker

#72

Post by geon »

bruceb wrote: post #24

What is the level of opportunity for these young women (and lets call them women that is what they usually, calling them girls makes them sound like less human and more of a commodity) in the origin countries. Fighting pimps and such is all good but cut off supply then there is no need to deal with pimps. Are hiring laws enforced in these countries?

Cut off supply? When the women get into trafficing from kidnapping... How?

Re: Going undercover as a sex worker

#73

Post by roel_v »

minthd wrote: post #52
eru wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, lie detectors don't work.

They have an error rate - which makes them in admissable as a tool for deciding whether someone should go to jail. That's reasonable. On the other hand, their are routinely used in classified agencies for some tasks. So maybe ,even with this error rate, we could see reduction at trafficking , at some risk of loss for freedom of profession. Maybe the benefits are big and the disadvantages are quite small(depending on…

You make it seem as if lie detectors somewhat work, except that they have a stochastic failure rate of x%. They don't, they're snake oil. Whole libraries have been written about it, one can start at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph and follow the literature from there. No civilized country allows lie detectors to be used for any 'real' purposes except the US.

So no, it's not a worthwhile tradeoff, because it's hardly better than rolling dice.

Re: Going undercover as a sex worker

#74

Post by a_bonobo »

Ygg2 wrote: post #63
hedgew wrote: post #2

Much like with drugs, the best way to reduce human trafficking and abusive prostitution would be to fully legalize and regulate sex work. In countries where prostitution is accepted and legal, it's safer for both the sex workers and the customers, with less risk of disease and abuse. Sex workers are treated humanely and not condemned. Society in general benefits too, through properly paid taxes, lower crime rates, an…

That wasn't the case with Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Germany It seems to reduce the violence against workers, but increases human trafficking, because Germany now acts as a safe haven for traffickers. Maybe trafficking would disappear, if all societies made prostitution illegal and not a looked down profession, but I somehow doubt it[1]. So if your goal is to reduce human trafficking, it m…

I don't agree with your points - they echo the recent campaign by Spiegel Online; looking at your Wikipedia article, it seems more to be an issue with open borders and no passport control, and the fact that Germany is in the "middle" of Europe and a relatively rich country, which makes Germany a good target for trafficking.

The numbers of yearly cases seem to be fairly low (about 700-800 cases per year in your Wiki-article), and pimps who force people into prostitution are arrested and jailed.

If anything, I'd say that legality makes it much better for these forced prostitutes to escape - they don't have any fear of persecution.

>Also there is the silly issue, of woman losing her unemployment status because she didn't refused to work as a prostitute.

That was a single mistake - the Arbeitsagentur accidentally sent along a job offer which was from a brothel, and the media made it into a big case (see http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/berufsleben/arbeitsagentur-in... ). Of course she didn't have to take the job, there have been rulings that you can't force unemployed to work as prostitutes (see same article).

Re: Going undercover as a sex worker

#75

Post by digi_owl »

Ygg2 wrote: post #65
violentvinyl wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I have with this logic, is that I suspect with legalization/regulation, supply increases to meet or exceed demand, and drives prices down. This isn't a tremendous economic problem with drugs, because it should be relatively straightforward to ramp up production (and employment and tax revenue increases with it). With prostitution however, trying to increase the supply and driving down costs creates proble…

Hmm, I wonder if making semi-realistic sexbots would be the solution to this supply/demand problem. You can make them way, way faster than you can breed humans. I know it sounds icky, but urge for sex often drives technology.

The Japanese may already be on the case.

I recall seeing a video where someone had combined a early Rift headset with a robotic arm holding what i believe they call a tenga.

Strap on the headset, sit in the proper location, and have a 3D anime style girl give you a session...

Re: Going undercover as a sex worker

#76

Post by pluma »

erikb wrote: post #35
pluma wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad truth is that rape (like many disturbing behaviours including murder and child abuse) is entirely natural, it's not actually aberrant behaviour. Of course we're capable of recognizing it as harmful behaviour we would rather not see happen, but that's a matter of "ought" not "is". I think the best bet at preventing rape is education and empathy (violence becomes more difficult if you can relate to your victim)…

I agree with that rape itself is natural. And there are many instances in which even consenting sex is more exciting because it contains rape fantasies like calling the other one nasty names, hurting each other, bondage games etc. Stories like 50 shades of grey show that it is not just a male instinct to rape but also a female instead to be conquered. Power and sex are hard to separate. Education and empathy is a rea…

Human trafficking is, essentially, modern slavery. As far as I know the two biggest sources of victims are:

1. people (frequently children, especially girls and women) being "sold" into slavery out of financial desperation or pressure from organized crime.

2. emigrants being tricked by traffickers, thinking they're buying a ticket to freedom in a better place but actually accruing "debt" they are then forced to "pay off" doing illegal sex work.

Both of these are social problems in as much as they are crime problems. Crime thrives on social and economical instability.

A naive plan of action would include:

1. Decriminalizing sex workers and illegal immigration to empower the victims who are too afraid to go to the police even if they could.

2. Improving the socio-economical situation in the victims' countries of origin, especially by curbing corruption and improving their human rights situations (e.g. reducing sexism) but also by improving social welfare and socialized health care.

But I'm just navel-gazing, really. I have no experience with human trafficking and I'm just a middle-class white male so I can only make rough guesses at best.

Re: Going undercover as a sex worker

#78

Post by bruceb »

geon wrote: post #72
bruceb wrote: post #24

What is the level of opportunity for these young women (and lets call them women that is what they usually, calling them girls makes them sound like less human and more of a commodity) in the origin countries. Fighting pimps and such is all good but cut off supply then there is no need to deal with pimps. Are hiring laws enforced in these countries?

Cut off supply? When the women get into trafficing from kidnapping... How?

Some are kidnapped but plenty are coerced in to it by circumstance. How many people with decent opportunity does this happen to, a lot fewer.

Re: Going undercover as a sex worker

#79

Post by Jugurtha »

chronial wrote: post #28
dagw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In countries where prostitution is accepted and legal, it's safer for both the sex workers and the customers, with less risk of disease and abuse. Do you know any good studies that back this up. While I certainly want to believe it and it does fit nicely with my own general political/economic narrative of the world, I've yet to find any conclusive evidence for it.

Unfortunately, it is not true. In germany prostitution was legalized a few years ago and what mostly happened was a massive increase in it. The situation of prostitutes barely improved and human trafficking went up. But you have to keep in mind that that is also the effect of only one country doing it. What would happen if the whole EU legalized prostitution is a different question.

Well, here, in Algeria, prostitution isn't illegal. Many think it is, but the law doesn't incriminate the sex-worker, it incriminates the person who lives off of a sex worker or her handler if she has one. In fact, I think there are still establishments authorized by the State that have been up for more than 50 years or something, but those appear to be very drastic in their internal policy stuff.

A lot work for themselves. When I was in college, there were many girls who used it as a way to have some fun and some money (college is free, and a lot live in dorms that are also free)).

Also, it is not like in the U.S. (movies) in that you won't find sex-workers on the streets.

This stuff is pretty organized. Happens mostly in night-clubs or in dedicated places that are guarded with security, where you will be thrown out if you cause any problems or are too drunk to behave.

They generally have a compound with the club and the hotel inside, convenient if you plan to get wasted as you won't have to drive. Just a few yards and you're in bed.

These compounds offer a sort of "Security as a Service" and the girls "lease" the place (the client pays an additional fee). And many girls will just go from club to club, compound to compound. They have usual taxi-drivers who take them, etc.

The biggest hazard would be the fact they won't properly put a condom on a man. The usual way would be to put it while he's erect, and some need help, so the girls will perform fellatio on a limp phallus with a condom on and the phallus grows into the condom. They also use cheap condoms that are way too tight for anyone older than a 13 year old (crappy 52mm condoms).

Also, most of those who do anal don't have the proper lubes; so they'll have whatever makes it easy and it is often an oil based hair product, or something. They're not really aware of how latex reacts to that, etc.

And again, some clients are just idiots and want to have protection-free sex at all costs. The girls are reluctant to talk if they have a disease because there's a whole procedure and they'll lose their job, so they comply, infecting the person.

And as for Al Jazeera, is amusing that a Djihadist Channel doesn't even cover Qatar. They used to let nut-jobs go on for hours on their waves inviting people world-wide to kill Algerians because we're not "Arabs or Muslims". It's a channel that has glorified terrorists despite the atrocities they committed. Whether they're trying to make themselves a new virginity is another story.

Re: Going undercover as a sex worker

#80

Post by pluma »

geon wrote: post #69
pluma wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad truth is that rape (like many disturbing behaviours including murder and child abuse) is entirely natural, it's not actually aberrant behaviour. Of course we're capable of recognizing it as harmful behaviour we would rather not see happen, but that's a matter of "ought" not "is". I think the best bet at preventing rape is education and empathy (violence becomes more difficult if you can relate to your victim)…

By your definition, everything that ever happens is natuaral. That makes the word completely meaningless.

Yes, but what gave you the idea that "natural" equals "good"? I'm using the term entirely objectively.

Of course everything that happens in nature is "natural". That's what the word means. The distinction I'm making should be obvious: a behaviour that happens in other, closely-related animals, especially if it happens quite frequently, and especially if it is "beneficial" in natural selection (like lions killing their young, chimps raiding and murdering other groups or dolphins engaging in gang rapes), is by definition "natural" and shouldn't be surprising if it occurs in humans. Non-consensual sex (i.e. rape in the most straightforward sense) is one such behaviour.

That it shouldn't be surprising doesn't mean we should tolerate it or that we can't do anything about it. We're in the quasi-uniquely privileged position that we can reason about our collective behaviour and decide what kind of behaviour we do or don't want to tolerate and what we can do about it.

In other words, because we're capable of sculpting our own human nature, yes, the term "natural" is pretty arbitrary when it comes to human behaviour. But it's entirely appropriate when looking at how other species behave without our interference.

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