Bob Kraft has apparently been charged with soliciting prostitution:
In his Tuesday news conference about a major human trafficking investigation , Martin County Sheriff William Snyder said about 100 men would be arrested.
When asked about prominent people or celebrities, Snyder said, “There will be a newsmaker in this one.”
That newsmaker is Robert Kraft, billionaire businessman and owner of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots.
On Friday, Jupiter Police Chief Daniel Kerr confirmed to WPTV that Kraft is one of 25 men being charged with soliciting another to commit prostitution.
He confirmed that there is video evidence of all of the men being charged. “The question was, does the video contain Mr. Kraft inside receiving the alleged acts. The answer to that is yes,” Sharp said in response to a reporter’s queston.
According to a number of different reports, this involved a human trafficking sting. Beyond the obvious schadenfreude of Kraft being arrested, this whole story pisses me off. Prostitution should be legal, it should be regulated, and it should be out in the open. I don’t mean we need to set up brothels next to schools or churches, you can zone them however you want, but this should not be something that is hidden in back alleys.
Sex workers are people, they provide a service that is clearly a basic human need, and they should be able to perform their job and provide their service safely, with dignity, and they should be regulated and required to have health inspections. You wouldn’t have all the human trafficking issue, you wouldn’t have the other crimes that go with prostitution, and you wouldn’t have the public health issues were we to act like fucking adults about this.
It’s 20 fucking 19.
Timurid
Legalize the prostitutes.
Outlaw Robert Kraft.
guachi
I agree it should be legal. But until then Robert Kraft is on tape supporting human trafficking. There is no way it’s acceptable for an owner of a sports franchise to support human trafficking.
The NFL needs to boot him from ownership.
SFAW
@Timurid:
Can we split the difference? Let Kraft stay out of jail, but send Belichick to the NY Jets in exchange for Adam Gase and Mike Maccagnan? I’d be OK with that.
trollhattan
@guachi:
Roger Goodell has already acted, suspending Tom Brady for four games.
Royston Vasey
I live in Wellington, New Zealand. Here we have taken a different approach.
“Prostitution, sex work, brothel-keeping, living off the proceeds of someone else’s prostitution, and street solicitation are legal in New Zealand and have been since the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 came into effect. Coercion of sex workers is illegal.
The 2003 decriminalisation of brothels, escort agencies and soliciting, and the substitution of a minimal regulatory model, created worldwide interest; New Zealand prostitution laws are now some of the most liberal in the world.”
RV in NZ
PS I fully expect this post to go into moderation due to the words used!
Anotherlurker
As far as zoning laws and their effect on the future site of knocking shops, locating them next to churches seems like a natural choice. In my extensive travels troughout the South and Midwest, the fastest way to find an “Adult” store is to look within 1 block of any evangelical church. Locating brothels next to churches suddenly allows real world, practiclal services to be available to the faithful.
Major Major Major Major
Unfortunately, this is a true Both Sides! issue, as both Dem-supermajority California and the US Congress have recently passed, by large majorities, strong anti-sex-worker legislation under the guise of combatting human trafficking.
Matt Smith
It pisses me off that someone like that, with the money to treat sex workers well, would instead choose trafficking. Maybe he’s so used to exploitation already, a little more doesn’t even register.
catclub
@guachi:
Now, a college football coach and the Sports administrator….
catclub
@Major Major Major Major:
ummmm isn’t it more like 79 fucking 19?
Mnemosyne
Saying that there would be no human trafficking issues if prostitution was legal is like saying there would be no illegal workers at Tyson if meat processing was legal.
There will still be human trafficking if sex work is legalized because some employers will want to cut corners or make a bigger profit by underpaying their workers, or they’ll want to provide illegal services, like underage kids.
It’s not an argument against legalizing prostitution, but let’s not be naive about how the labor marketplace actually works right now. Dirty, unpleasant jobs like the ones at this low-rent massage parlor are exactly the kinds of jobs that would be staffed by illegal workers even if prostitution was legal.
SFAW
I guess I’m not understanding major parts of this, but is soliciting a prostitute/sex worker anytime, anywhere, in any situation now considered human trafficking? If so, I guess I must have missed that change.
Martin
@catclub: Shut it down. Catclub wins all threads for today. Well played.
hells littlest angel
Given the seriousness with which Florida treats sex crimes committed by billionaires, I expect that Kraft will be fined at least twelve dollars.
Mnemosyne
@guachi:
From the few details in the story, it sounds like the workers may be here illegally and were forced to work long hours in gross conditions (and I’m not talking about the sex per se).
This seems to be yet another example of rich Republicans privately exploiting the same immigrants that they rail against in public.
Aimai
@Mnemosyne: exactly!
gratuitous
“Should be” legal and “isn’t” legal are a long ways away from each other. Kraft, a man of means who should be able to consult with competent legal counsel, really should know this, and understand the difference. Sadly, legal sex work or not, there will probably always be sex trafficking, because it’s not just about sex. It’s also about power. It’s also about “do you know who I am” domination. It’s also about exploitation. It’s also about money. Those and other threads are so inextricably intertwined, we’re going to need several generations more to come to any terms with this issue.
In the meantime, there’s no dispute that the current state of the law makes what Kraft did illegal.
JPL
A local ABC news station in New England was told that Kraft was not the biggest catch. Since trump is in d.c. let it be Goodell
Since 25 were arrested, we need names.
JPL
@SFAW: He was charged with two misdemeanors .
Martin
@SFAW: My read on this is that law enforcement was investigating a human trafficking ring and in the process caught Kraft as a client. So, no they aren’t conflating those two, but Kraft is only being charged with prostitution because presumably that’s all he thought he was doing, where the operators are being charged with human trafficking because this was more than your run of the mill happy ending massage parlor.
banditqueen
Kraft & the billionaires/millionaires will get at worst a small fine but the trafficked women will be arrested and deported. And the billionaires/millionaires get to keep the thrill they got in forcing themselves on women who had no choice or say in happened to them.
Mnemosyne
@SFAW:
The article seems to indicate that the women were brought here illegally and forced to work long hours with no days off. Doing that is equally as illegal as importing them to sew clothes in a sweatshop under the same conditions.
Yarrow
I’d guess that the exploitation and unsafe nature of it is part of the attraction. People have all sorts of kinks. Some people want the power element, others want the danger element.
varmintito
@Mnemosyne: Swapping a regulatory scheme for prohibition would not eliminate exploitation of sex workers, any more than it has eliminated exploitation of many other kinds of workers, for the reasons you indicate. It definitely pushes the needle the right direction, though. It creates concrete rules, and it provides workers a mechanism to seek recourse. Today, there are no rules, and seeking recourse is asking to be arrested.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Where does Hannity live?
banditqueen
@Mnemosyne: I agree–Kraft & his crew can ‘pay’ for whatever they want–here they were just looking to dominate trafficked women who had absolutely no control over their lives.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Mnemosyne: You can’t regulate things like fair treatment of workers in an illegal market. If it’s illegal, anything goes. Just like in your meatpacking example, legalization certainty doesn’t guarantee good regulations, or reasonable enforcement of those regulations. But keeping an industry illegal does guarantee the opposite.
gene108
People have looked at Holland’s experiment with legal prostitution and it has not been the cure all predicted.
Another issue is are there any women, who enter prostitution for reasons other than past history of abuse, or they are poor and it is the only job they can get?
I don’t think legal prostitution addresses the underlying issue of why a woman wants to be a prostitute.
Independent story from last year
SFAW
@JPL:
@Martin:
That’s kind of what I thought was going on. After seeing comments implying he was involved in the trafficking, I was wondering. [I don’t consider being a john as trafficking, in the same way that I don’t consider buying a dime bag (so to speak) from a dealer being drug trafficking. But that’s me, and I expect opinions vary.]
Mnemosyne
@varmintito:
Exactly. To be clear, I’m not arguing that sex work shouldn’t be legalized. I’m just pointing out that legalizing it won’t actually end human trafficking because people are trafficked to save greedy employers money in ALL segments of the economy, not just sex work.
Dorothy A. Winsor
From Crooks and Liars
Gravenstone
@SFAW: I think in this case it’s that the workers at this spa (as in so many other similar places) were trafficked to bring them here. They’re being exploited because they’re vulnerable. That the exploitation is sexual is an added level of depravity.
PaulWartenberg
what this story is becomes a part of the overall story we’ve gotten this week: the horrifying privilege of self-indulging rich white males with political connections.
Roger Stone: a political hack since the days of Nixon, living off the Wingnut Celebrity Circuit while staging acts like the Brooks Brothers Riot in 2000 that should have locked him up in jail decades ago.
Paul Manafort: a twisted power player/lobbyist/businessman in debt with corrupt foreign powers who’d been operating like that for years – in some respects rather openly considering the stories about his dealings that had been floating around since 2006(!) – who only now faces justice because he crossed a line against our intel agencies.
Jeffrey Epstein: Banker/Political donor who pretty much ran a sex trafficking business with UNDERAGE GIRLS that served the whims of his political allies, and who got a sweet plea bargain deal when caught that was illegal as hell, only now facing fresh scandal because his lawyer buddies couldn’t delay the 11-year-long appeal against that deal any further. This is a scandal that involves so many other entitled power-driven elites that it deserves to drag half the patriarchy into the deepest pit we can find.
and now Robert Kraft: caught indulging in a human sex trafficking operation that by all common sense was something he could have avoided as a rich NFL owner, with the implication he’s been doing this sort of thing for years and in other places, where the only logical reason he DID do this was because he was rich and powerful and thought the law never applies to him.
And that’s just this week.
We have an entire HISTORY full of powerful elites – mostly white but not always, mostly male, mostly politically connected from one end of the planet to the other – who have been committing crime after crime all because the law does not tend to look at the rich and the powerful. We’ve had corrupt bankers, corrupt political figures, corrupt churches, all of them indulging, all of them abusing the powerless under their aegis, all of them getting away with it for years (if not decades and then centuries) because our system can abide corruption in high places.
Until it’s too late.
And we get stuck with fucking trump – the most self-indulgent example of rich white male – sitting in the White House two steps away from crashing everything with his toxic rule.
Goddamn us.
Haroldo
@catclub:
@Martin:
Indeed, well played…..the ol’ Sophie Tucker and Ernie joke put to impeccable use.
DocSardonic
Wanna get rich? ……..When they legalize bawdy houses go buy one of those empty Walmart or big box type store sub-divide it and put an Evangelical church, a saloon, a bawdy house and a dollar store in it.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne:
My question had to do with Kraft’s level of involvement in the actual trafficking.
PaulWartenberg
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I thought we’re supposed to be punishing the Johns for this sort of thing. Instead Kraft is getting misdemeanors?!
I hope people start investigating Kraft’s habit of visiting these “parlors”. I guarantee you this isn’t his first visit to a place like that.
Mike in NC
@Mnemosyne:
How many of Trump’s various properties employ (or have in the past employed) undocumented workers who are poorly paid and generally treated badly? I’ll go with “All of them, Katie”!
Haroldo
@trollhattan:
……Tho’ I’m guessing Kraft’s failing tumescence is the real Deflategate.
Martin
@Mnemosyne: Yep. I have no objection to making more of this legal, but at the end of the day if the goal is to eliminate the illegal human trafficking (or illegal supply-side activity in any industry) then it’s incumbent on the customers to resist the temptation to use that service. That goes for prostitutes as well as for your gardener. There are certainly cases where we feel that the illegal thing is sufficiently innocuous that it should be legal, and that should be fought for (the gardener getting a green card), but that doesn’t necessarily give license to soliciting it in the meantime.
PaulWartenberg
@SFAW:
Kraft paid the slavers. He had to have some idea the women trapped there were trafficked. I say charge him as a conspirator and hold him without bail since he’s a flight risk.
UttBugly
How can prostitution be illegal in Florida if Rush Limbaugh lives there?
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
IMO, legalizing sex work would probably only succeed if everyone is an independent contractor. Allowing any kind of administrator to control the workers only encourages trafficking.
IIRC, the majority of sex workers do have some kind of sexual or physical abuse in their past. That’s not necessarily a reason to keep it illegal, but there probably should be some free mental health services provided along with the required physical health checks of the workers if the work is legalized.
Cermet
Le me get this right – a white man billionaire that rapes children is given a no jail, told by the Federal attorney’s that your free and no harm done so here is your get-out-of-jail-free agreement but this guy, who paid for services with consenting woman, is arrested. Well, at least he isn’t black, for once.
SFAW
@PaulWartenberg:
Sounds like the trafficking had 100s or 1000s of co-conspirators (i.e., persons formerly known as “johns”) in Florida. Maybe they can all be locked up for 20 or 50 years.
PaulWartenberg
I went to a massage place once.
It was a sports massage/physical therapy office and everyone there was licensed to practice with certifications on the wall and I got a massage – best damn thing I ever felt – and nobody performed sex because I was there for the damn massage.
If Kraft wanted a massage he could have damn well found a sports massage place like I did and gotten one there. No excuses, you depraved slaver.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I generally think that other people’s sex lives are none of my business. The problem is whether that can play out in a way that doesn’t facilitate exploitation.
Mnemosyne
@SFAW:
Kraft isn’t being charged with trafficking. Just the usual misdemeanor fine for being a john. But his being a client was revealed because of the trafficking investigation.
Gelfling 545
Video of Kraft? Eeewww.
PaulWartenberg
@SFAW:
They should. They’re contributing to a culture of slavery/human trafficking.
Gravenstone
@Cermet:
Minor flaw in your argument here. Sounds like the workers are human trafficking victims. Consent isn’t really an option for them.
Mnemosyne
@Cermet:
The women weren’t consenting. That’s why the operators are being charged with human trafficking.
Another Scott
Reuters:
Unpossible!!1 Anonymous Sources said it was happening. When are they ever wrong??!!!?!
Cheers,
Scott.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Gravenstone: Crooks and Liars reports the women spoke no English and believed they were coming to the US for legit jobs. The language barrier alone made it hard for them to complain.
PaulWartenberg
@UttBugly:
because he goes to the Dominican Republic for his sex.
https://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/rush-limbaugh-freaks-when-he-gets-calle
Radiumgirl
@Mnemosyne: ansolutely true. The operator of a rotisserie chicken shop out here in Silver Spring went to jail for bringing in and exploiting illegal. workers.
Cermet
@gene108: Failed just like Nevada … wait, that has worked out well. Uhmm, maybe one failure does not make an argument valid (nor one success.) Yet making it illegal ALWAYS does more harm to woman. So, maybe damned if we do but far more damned if we don’t. It is a human need and no one by laws can do anything except make it worse. A guaranteed living wage, I bet, would put a near end to it but that is another issue.
Lynn Dee
I was under the impression prostitution and human trafficking were not synonymous.
Gravenstone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It just gets fucking worse, doesn’t it?
SFAW
@PaulWartenberg:
And football fans are contributing to an industry which aids and abets the proliferation of CTE. And cokeheads contribute to the ability of drug lords to murder government officials. And people that spend a day on the links at Mar-a-Loco contribute to the trafficking of “illegal aliens.” And people who donate to the Catholic Church contribute to the sexual abuse of children by pedophile priests et al. And so on and so forth.
catclub
@Mnemosyne:
What I don’t understand is how the sting operations continued – presumed source of the videotapes – with trafficked minors.
banditqueen
@SFAW: Well, Kraft has been involved with a movie star, (I guess he has to answer to her as well), and he can go to any country where prostitution is legal and pay and walk away. And he can get a highly professional massage whenever, wherever. But he wanted to visit a ‘massage parlor’ in FL, at $79/hr ($59/30min). He’s not naive–he wanted to dominate someone who had no choice at all.
Cermet
@Gravenstone: A billionaire used forced sex workers! WOW. How stupid can one be? Glad then he is being arrested and charged, then. Hope he gets jail (LOL, that’ll never happen.) Still not as bad as raping children and getting a pass.
oatler.
It will never be legal here. This is a country that still does not allow nudity on broadcast TV. The Sex Rage is a deep part of American culture.
CarolDuhart2
@Mnemosyne: On the other hand, if its legal and regulated, sex workers don’t end up with a criminal record that makes it hard to get non-sex work, taxes can be collected. There can be some recourse from the law. Women/men in the trade can get medical care, protection by law enforcement, bargain for a fair wage, and so much more. Not to mention that legalization helps end the bribery and extortion of workers, customers, and officials to look the other way.
Regulation means too, that neighborhoods can have safe facilities free from drug dealing, unwanted solicitation and so much more. Right now, under illegalization, there’s no incentive for these places to even try to be a good neighbor. There’s no zoning away from schools, churches, and other areas that a place may not be wanted, no spreading out so that poorer neighborhoods aren’t subject to a huge number of them and the issues it may bring.
So do what we’ve done with pot: legalize and regulate.
Millard Filmore
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I expect if these Chinese nationals are from Big China, they will be executed.
catclub
@SFAW: Iwas thinking about the general purpose behavior rule that athletes have:
If you do anything that brings your team or the sport into disrepute, that can be a firing offense.
Now, Pat Goodell says no punishment for Kraft because it is unrelated to the sports operation.
Cermet
@SFAW:Ugh! You win the post! (But he should have known better; this wasn’t a random hooker picked up off the street. That tells me he is beyond stupid. With his money, paying independent consenting woman would have been trivial.
SFAW
@catclub:
Roger Goodell has (I think) counted Kraft as one of his biggest supporters for a number of years. Of course, that alone should call Kraft’s judgment into question.
Brachiator
Every time I read stuff about this, it seems to come down to sex workers should be allowed to be sex workers, but people who use sex workers should be prosecuted, shamed, etc.
Communities still do not want brothels in their neighborhoods. Not even New Zealand, which seems to be doing interesting things to treat sex workers humanely. Sex workers still get harassed by people who don’t want that stuff happening around them. European cities which legalized prostitution are retreating, largely because the illegal market is driving out the legal market.
The key part of the problem is that ultimately most prostitution is not “sex work.” It is about exploitation and individuals who want to treat other human beings as disposal objects for gratification. You can dance around it as much as you like, but you can’t really remove it from the equation.
I recall seeing a photo spread about the Bunny Ranch in Nevada. I guess it was famous and making money, but it still looked pretty shabby, and no one looked happy or empowered.
SFAW
@Cermet:
Yeah, I would 100 percent agree with the “beyond stupid” comment.
UttBugly
@PaulWartenberg: I was referring to a prostitute named Rush Limbaugh. I know. I’m off topic.
JMG
Guy’s got enough money to set up six supermodel concubines in six different mansions. In addition to stupid, he’s obviously real cheap.
CliosFanBoy
@Matt Smith: or he gets off on the coercive aspect
Martin
Speaking of which… A bill has been introduced in the CA Senate (SB-360) that would eliminate the child abuse mandatory reporting exception for penitential communication. IOW, priests would have to report child abuse they learned of during a confessional. The church could no longer fall back on these loopholes to protect their clergy.
The Midnight Lurker
@Royston Vasey: That’s it! I’m moving to New Zealand!!
Awww! My wife just said, ‘no’.
Brachiator
@CarolDuhart2:
This hasn’t really happened where prostitution has been legalized. Social stigma, other issues, still keeps it underground.
We’re trying, but in California, for example, illegal weed is still 80 percent of the market (a lot of this has to do with taxes and regulation)
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
This is not the standard we use to determine which jobs to outlaw. I agree that the pro-legalization crowd has a bit of a problem painting the ideal situation as shiny happy workers and no exploitation, but… I mean, so does the drug legalization crowd, and that’s also the right thing to do.
catclub
A second name:
Cacti
I agree with the legalization idea in principle, but am not so convinced that it’s easy to unwind prostitution from the exploitation of abused and vulnerable women.
Apart from the philosophical discussion, Bob Kraft is a rapist. He was paying to have his way with sex slaves.
CarolDuhart2
@Major Major Major Major: I agree. But for me the bottom line is the well-being of the workers. Legalization means no criminal record that can be used against them when its time to get other work. (There aren’t many hookers over 40). And criminalization also can create an even more destructive spiral of drugs (must make quota somehow), potential homelessness (hard to get an above-ground job with a record), victimization (can’t call police, possible fear of police stings, whatever). My ideal regulatory would be nothing under 21, areas zoned for the activity, inspections, access to clinics and well person care, taxes and fees collected so that leaving the life doesn’t leave you with nothing to show.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
But people make claims that sex workers will be liberated and empowered if prostitution is made legal.
Right thing to do even if it doesn’t change anything? What would be the point?
different-church-lady
Here comes the TBogg…
Cacti
@Brachiator:
People like Bob Kraft would no longer have to worry about the embarrassment of an arrest and misdemeanor charge.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
I agree that people say lots of things.
Are you seriously arguing that, in places where drugs/prostitution were legalized, nothing changed?
chopper
@Matt Smith:
i know! dude’s made of money, he can’t go where it’s legal and the women are treated like human fucking beings?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m guessing Michelle Goldberg wrote this appreciation of Andrea Dworkin before any of this came up.
BubbaDave
@Anotherlurker:
I was in Amsterdam a couple weeks ago with my fiancée and we were touring a beautiful old church– maybe the Oude Kerk?– ending up in a room with some beautiful old parish registers from the 16th century or so. Turn to leave and I’m looking out the window, and I’m staring at a prostitute standing in the window of a building about 30 feet away.
I guess what I’m saying is you’re not the first to have that idea.
CarolDuhart2
@chopper: I suspect its the anonymous part. No one knew who he was besides perhaps the owners, and if he got a different woman each time, he probably felt safe that way. A better option would mean the woman would know who he was somehow. She might tell someone about him, ask for more money, sell her story perhaps. It might even get back to his wife/girlfriend whatever.
VeniceRiley
I know it makes me horribly old fashioned, but I am against the legalization of sex work. It turns people into c u m receptacles for cash.
Learn to jack off better, guys.
CarolDuhart2
It’s even possible she might be seen with him, and people ask who she was. These foreign women were never out and about in the community, so no embarrassing questions. There was no possibility of following him home or anything.
Yutsano
@Royston Vasey: Huh. I’m gonna have talk with my friends from Dunedin. They never informed me of this particular law being passed. I’m disappoint in both because they could be making decent bucks. Especially the bi one.
Major Major Major Major
@VeniceRiley: I don’t see why you should get to make that decision for people who feel differently.
Doug R
Is this why there’s no NFL in Nevada because they have legal prostitution and gambling?
I guess someone told them prostitution was illegal inside Las Vegas city limits, that’s why they’re getting the Raiders in 2020.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The Midnight Lurker
OMG! There’s billboard up in Times Square that puts the entire blame for Amazon’s pullout on AOC!
What?! You cheap fuckers wouldn’t hire a skywriter?
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
As another poster noted, in Holland things got worse. As I noted, even in New Zealand, which has very humane laws, the nature of prostitution has not changed and social stigma and rejection still allows problems to fester.
In California, 80 percent of the weed market is still illegal. And I voted for cannabis legalization.
Life is more complicated than people often admit.
As I noted you cannot easily unwrap exploitation and degradation from prostitution. You can pretend it is not there, but legalization does nothing to remedy this. To this extent prostitution is different from drug use.
Shana
@Yarrow: And some people just want something or someone different after X years of marriage without the associated crap of an affair.
Haroldo
Sex work is legal in the Australian Capital Territory. The Australian Sex Workers Association has a web site covering the laws of not only the ACT, but other Australian States.
http://www.scarletalliance.org.au/laws/act/
.
The pertinent laws of the ACT seem to deal a great deal with sex worker rights and safety which, to my mind, is what legalization and regulation should be concerned with.
http://www.legislation.act.gov.au/a/1992-64/current/pdf/1992-64.pdf
Shana
@Cermet: Don’t forget that Jerry Springer, then the mayor of Cincinnati, paid a prostitute with a check. Which was how he got caught.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Matt Smith: $80 an hour is like she’s a scary crack addict rates. Not exactly were you expect to find some rich dude And this was in Tampa which is the stripper capital of the US. Serves the cheep ass bastard right he was arrested and maybe next time he should patronize an American sex worker.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Please be Flanders… Please be Flanders… Please be Flanders….
I mean
Please be trump… Please be trump…. Please be trump…
A Ghost To Most
C’mon, Brady. Show us what you got. All the best MAGAts are representing.
A Ghost To Most
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Bill Clinton.
chopper
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
damn sexy flanders!
banditqueen
@Brachiator: It isn’t easy to discuss this, especially so briefly. —-Theoretically, protecting sex workers with labor laws will give them certain rights and recourse against rape, assault, unfair practices, dangerous working conditions, etc, but the burden would still be on the sex worker to ‘prove’ that she/he was a victim.
–It’s a ‘victimless crime’ (?), but this is a profession where the sex worker is expected to meet the ‘buyer’s’ fantasy of anything from abuse, to fetishes, to rape, to dominance, abuse/battering/verbal insults, etc. I suppose there’s the ‘buyer’ who wants cuddling or stories.
–I have no answers, but the fact is that the typical ‘buyer’ wants a young, attractive sex worker to meet fantasy expectations, and there can’t be an easy way to change the view that the sex worker, a human being, is being viewed as a commodity, bought and sold, with the buyer dominating the choices made in the transaction–>consent to have sex.
–Sex is a human need, but really, who profits from this need–the pimp, the government–assigned to protect/tax the sex worker, protect/tax the buyer, on and on.
–I clearly don’t know, but the answer isn’t as simple as ‘just do it’
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: I think it’s reasonable to argue that legalizing something reduces the stigma around it in the long term. It could hardly be made worse, in this case.
(Drugs are also different in that the war on drugs has very clear destructive effects on underprivileged communities, and even if there were no upside at all, eliminating that downside would be very good. I’d suggest that, in exchange for fixing that problem, it even makes sense to tolerate other negative side-effects, like an uptick in abuse/addiction rates.)
bemused senior
@Major Major Major Major: Have a look above at comment 28.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@gene108: The article is shenanigans. Like everything else these days, prostitution is arranged over the internet. Of course the old fashion risk your life and limb in the bad part of town cruising for hookers is failing.
VeniceRiley
@Major Major Major Major: name a kid that dreams of becoming a sex worker. I mean, you can even find kids who want to drive a garbage truck!
It’s already decriminalized to the point of being a redic traffic ticket, so.
Sex should be about pleasure for all involved. I’m also comfortable with outlawing stabbing a man for pay, even if he wants the money.
rikyrah
Stop giving him the benefit of the doubt. It was probably trafficking and they are likely underaged. ??
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
This is not true. I offered some explanation. We do not agree. No matter.
Scales do not balance so easily. Also, I would suggest that legalizing drugs is little more than a libertarian wet dream unless you offer treatment and other remediation. And there is something about talking about the “effects on underprivileged communities” that often ignores the effects on real, living human beings. A forest vs the trees thing, perhaps.
Major Major Major Major
@VeniceRiley:
So that’s how we’re deciding which jobs are illegal now?
ETA: FWIW, the sex workers I know support legalization because the current situation makes their vocation, which they would actually like to continue doing, difficult.
VeniceRiley
@Major Major Major Major: Drug dealers would say the same, I would imagine.
Villago Delenda Est
Stop making sense, Cole. The fundigelicals (who basically hate sex in general) will go batshit.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
Sorry, I assumed for some reason that we were on the same page that this is what I meant as part of ‘legalization’, that’s my bad.
I have no idea what you’re talking about with that last sentence.
cokane
even with legalized sex work, you’re still going to get coercion into prostitution and human trafficking. legalizing the industry doesn’t really solve this. i’m not personally sure where I stand on that question, but it’s important to point out that all these awful problem around sex work continue to exist in countries and municipalities where it’s been legalized.
also important to note that this is case is not busting the sex workers.
Major Major Major Major
@VeniceRiley: my drug dealer friends tend to be against legalization since it makes their job a lot harder actually.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
San Francisco in the early 90s they had a get tough of crime mayor who decreed a crack down on prostitution. Friend of mine is English and loves the Edinburgh Pub which is on the edge of the SF Tenderloin to we go to it weekly and get to see end result -the prostitutes can’t get straight jobs because they have a felony against them, they can’t do safer indoor work because the cops have all that shut down, so they are all out there street walking. Wall to wall scantily clad women, horrible traffic, random fights, vandalism and unspeakable filth since there are no outdoor toilets
Will Brown runs for Mayor, promises to clean up street walking. He is elected, in a week, it’s gone. Basically the cops stop raiding the indoor places.
I would think that if your thesis is something like “All sex workers are hapless innocents forced into prostitution by abusive men (because ALL men are rapist)” then the point that the laws you expect the police to enforce should help these innocent dears should be an obvious one. Perhaps less “a hooker is a criminal” that traps these women into being sex workers for the rest of their lives* and more “guys who beat on hookers are criminals” is in order? Just saying.
* the impression I get is most women who do sex work do it to get by during tough times.
VeniceRiley
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yes I could support misdemeanors for sex workers, even retroactively, and felonies for the johns.
Major Major Major Major
@VeniceRiley: lol
VeniceRiley
@Major Major Major Major: Straw men are the real abusers ;)
Andrey
@bemused senior: That article is nothing more than a collection of anecdotes. “These people say that things are bad. I had a meeting where a lot of people agreed with me.” It cites no sources beyond the author’s own work. It cites no studies of any kind. There is basically no reason to assign any authority to the article unless you believe the author to have inherent authority. While the author certainly has a history of opposing violence against women, they also have a history of specifically opposing prostitution, and of a variety of problematic views including TERFism, so I personally don’t see a reason to assign them inherent authority.
Is it possible that sex workers in Holland are now worse off? Yes, absolutely that’s possible, and I would believe that if I saw appropriate backing evidence. That article isn’t it.
VeniceRiley
@Andrey: I consider TERF a kneejerk pejorative … ironically coined by people who are rightly concerned about being called hurtful names themselves.
sgrAstar
@PaulWartenberg: Kraft certainly did not have to look far for the best sports massage that his money could buy…he owns the fricking Patriots. Their PT facilities are top notch. He was looking for sex with underaged girls, and he found it. What a loser.
Eric K
I agree with you about prostitution.
But just want to say, Robert Kraft is a billionaire who could easily access the kind of high end prostitution that Eliot Spitzer used where it is much more likely to be consensual. Opting for strip mall massage parlors with very possibly underage girls and even more likely girls who are essentially slaves is part of the appeal, so fuck him and his sick friends and throw the book at them.
Andrey
@VeniceRiley: Sure, you can have that opinion if you want, but that doesn’t really change anything about the article.
gratuitous
@SFAW: That’s why I stopped watching football a couple of years ago. That study came out over the summer of the post-mortems on 110 players’ brains and found CTE symptoms in all but one of them. The thought formed in my mind, “I’m watching young men grind up their brains for my entertainment.” Once thought, I couldn’t unthink it, and 50 years as a football fan quietly died.
After I stopped watching, I mulled it over from time to time, and realized how much suffering I had rationalized away. Former players living out their lives in terrible pain, crippled from years of playing. Others dying young because of PED use. Still others badly maimed by “freak” accidents involving high impact collisions. I can’t make a choice for anyone else, but for myself, yeah, I had to stop contributing to that culture.
Ivan X
Where do end-of-massage handys factor into this discussion? Come on, people, nuance.
dww44
@Royston Vasey: So, what is the observable and/or documented impact of the liberalization of the sex laws/practices?
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
Legalisation of the sex trade per se is clearly insufficient to protect sex workers from the trade’s culture of abuse and exploitation. I think that’s the lesson to be learned from The Netherlands’ experience. You also need strong and rigorously enforced labour protections in general, along with those specific to the sex trade. Otherwise the purpose of legalisation is defeated.
JR
The big issue is that this was a sex slavery joint. But I agree that prostitution should be legal.
hervevillechaizelounge
This isn’t Robert Kraft’s first sex-related scandal; he was shaken down by a working girl about a decade ago but managed to keep his name out of the papers:
http://archive.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/21/judge_accepts_plea_deal_in_sex_case/
Honestly, I wouldn’t even mention it but he’s Trump’s friend so fuck him.
Royston Vasey
@dww44: On the whole, it’s really not that much of a big deal. Sex workers are now protected under law – and they have to pay their taxes the same as anyone else. The clients of such services can do so without fear, and again with legal protections in place.
There hasn’t really been as explosion in brothels or other visible sign of the sex trade – though they are there. It just becomes part of the overall social fabric – for those that have the desire to use those services.
For fears like placing a brothel near a school or such like, there are local council zoning laws that restrict that – a brothel has to be registered.
Overall, there is less crime involvement due to oversight of the industry, just like any other business in the service sector.
The NZ Prostitution Law Review Committee presented its final report in May 2008, five years after the initial bill. It found no evidence for the claims of critics at the time of introduction, and it concluded that there was no expansion of the industry.
However, employment conditions still left a good deal to be desired. Stigma remained a major problem, and the traditional distrust of authorities also remained. Sex workers are now more willing to report crimes against them than they had been in the past.
PaulWartenberg
@sgrAstar:
Oh, I know. that’s why I am raging about that.
The thing that bothers me most: this is a billionaire from the New England region, going out of his way to Jupiter FL (the furthest edge of South Florida’s metro) to some sex parlor in a shopping strip (no, NOT THAT) mall. There are, horrifyingly enough, hundreds of those places between Boston and Miami, and yet he’s caught there. And we’re talking about someone who’s been rich for years, with lots of opportunities in different places on different trips to do exactly this sort of perversion.
HOW MANY OTHER SEX SLAVERY PARLORS HAS KRAFT VISITED?!
PaulWartenberg
@SFAW:
Okay. Fine. Let’s arrest em all.
Procopius
@Matt Smith:
You know, I have a problem with this. The phrase, “human trafficking,” has been preempted by dishonest NGOs and politicians worldwide. Prostitution is illegal in Thailand, but widely accepted. There was a “reform” of the law in 1996 that did a lot to reduce child (under age 18) prostitution, but the new law still allows for the arrest of prostitutes. This, by the way, is a big source of corruption, but the “reformers” said, “We have to be able to arrest them in order to help them.” Anyway, the term “human trafficking” includes aiding in any way people who are adults who want to engage in sex work for money. We had a woman Senator here who gained fame for rescuing trafficked workers, especially underage girls. Seriously, she did real good, but she made the mistake of touring a neighborhood famous for its availability of prostitutes. Tea/coffee shops, barber shops, massage parlors, etc. When she interviewed them, she did not find one who was there involuntarily. She received some derision, which is too bad, because there is still some problem with abuse of underage girls and illegal immigrants. Anyway, back to the topic, this post does not make clear what the term “supporting human trafficking” means in this context. I suspect it means he said he thinks prostitution should be legal.
SFAW
@PaulWartenberg:
Glad to see you’re keeping it in perspective.
If you give me enough time, I can probably find a few more categories/activities like those, should be able to arrest a lot more people who somehow, in whatever way conceivable, support immoral activities. Or maybe they’re not supporting them, but perhaps they once had doubleplusungood thoughts.
Barbara
@Procopius: I don’t know anything about Thailand, but in the US, there is a good chance these women don’t speak English, have no access to their passports, do not have freedom to leave whatever basement they are forced to live in close quarters with other women, are monitored when/if they are allowed contact with their families, are charged excessive amounts of money to eat, do laundry, make phone calls or just send money home, are forced to perform personal chores including sexual favors for their bosses, and even strongly encouraged to use drugs for their disinhibiting effects. And of course, the underage girls are not in school. But other than that, I’m sure they are just professionals like anyone else.
Bobby Thomson
@Mnemosyne: this.
Mnemosyne
@Shana:
Then they need to talk to their spouse about having an open relationship, because cheating with a paid sex worker is still cheating.
If I found out that my husband got a blowjob from someone else, I would not feel better about it if he said he got a hooker to do it.
Mnemosyne
@Procopius:
Call me cynical, but I doubt that people who were illegally smuggled into this country were working 7 days a week because they enjoyed it so much.
Annamal
@Brachiator: Things have gotten measurably better for sex workers in New Zealand, it’s still a crappy industry and there is still a risk of exploitation but sex workers can no longer be arrested for their occupation (the police used to use carrying condoms as evidence which as you can imagine was awful) and they are a lot more willing to interact with the law (there was even a successful case of a sw suing a brothel owner for sexual harassment). They’ve also unionised and the NZPC is able to speak up on their behalf.
http://www.nzpc.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Model
The bottom line is that legalisation did not make anything worse and has made women safer than they would otherwise have been. You’re making the perfect the enemy of the improved.
It’s also important to note that the MP who championed this bill had been in sex work herself, she had a view from the ground up.
Pamela J.
Anyone who thinks prostitution should be legal is a sick, morally degenerate male chauvinistic, narcissistic pig! NO SANE WOMAN WANTS TO BE A PROSTITUTE! Regardless of what they say WHILE they’re doing it they hate it! Shame on all the selfish pigs who use women for their own sick gratification! We’re not even talking about guys who NEVER have sex with any woman but guys with girlfriends or wives who decide to CHEAT ON THEM in order to fulfill some sick, perverted fantasy. And just because a guy knows a lot of guys as sick and morally bankrupted as they are doesn’t make THEM normal.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/11/prostitution-legalised-sex-trade-pimps-women
(cutting and pasting from several different articles including one from Australia so no the words aren’t misspelled. )
Those in favour of decriminalisation, including many liberals and some feminists, consider prostitution to be work, and argue that “sex workers” can be protected by unions and health and safety measures.
The opposite, abolitionist position – favoured by feminists including myself, and every sex trade survivor I have interviewed – is: prostitution is inherently abusive, and a cause and a consequence of women’s inequality. There is no way to make it safe, and it should be possible to eradicate it. Abolitionists reject the sanitising description of “sex worker”, and regard prostitution as a form of violence in a ne-oliberal world in which human flesh has come to be viewed as a commodity, like a burger.
Abolitionists do not consider prostitution to be about sex or sexual identity, but rather a one-sided exploitative exchange rooted in male power.
What those who oppose us fail to realise is that decriminalisation, as it is most commonly used and understood, also means allowing pimping, sex-buying and brothel-owning. And this is not the way forward – unless we want to make it easier for the men who run the global sex trade to make more money out of women’s bodies.
Sex slavery has become a global business and the source of huge profits for criminal syndicates. Because trafficking networks are notoriously fluid and adaptable, they often evade detection.