Category Archives: Porn Is Prostitition

The PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (the PIC) A MATTER OF CHOICE- THE CONSEQUENCES OF ARBITRARY ENFORCEMENT OF VICE LAWS

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The PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (the PIC). TO HELP PROSTITUTES ‘REALIZE’ THEY ARE VICTIMS, MUST THEY BE ARRESTED AND THREATENED WITH INCARCERATION IF THEY DON’T ACCEPT THEIR ‘VICTIMHOOD’?
How do cops intend to ‘help’ us realize we are victims? By arresting us? Putting us in jail where we are quite likely to be raped by the staff? Or turned into the ‘sex slaves’ of the sheriff in charge of the jail? and sent to solitary confinement if we report the rapes? or take us off the prison grounds to work as prostitutes for those who run the place?

The PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (the PIC) is in the New Jersey NewYork, Manhattan, Illinois, Michigan, California sex industry.  The legal line between porn and the prostitution premise benefits law enforcement, not victimised grown women.

 

Why is prostitution illegal but people can have sex for money in porn? 
In prostitution, someone plays someone else to have sex with them. Its illegal. 
In pornography, someone pays you to have sex with someone, and also documents it…. and its legal!? 

Someone told me porn has to do with free speech, but that doesn’t explain why prostitution is illegal then. 
Someone else told me prostitution spreads disease and is not regulated and thats why its illegal. Well its not regulated because its not allowed. 
So can someone explain this? 
It looks like two identical things to me: sex for money. 

New York Penal Law defines a prostitute as a person “who engages or agrees or offers to engage in sexual conduct with another person in return for a fee.” A pornographic actor does just that: Like a more typical prostitute, he or she engages in sex in return for a fee.

Porn, like Hooter’s and Playboy Clubs, commercializes women’s bodies, BUT it is largely (not entirely) hidden — the cultural message is that it’s private (“adult”). Prostitution, in my view, is completely different from these enterprises. In prostitution, individual adult women could have the potential to be their own enterprises, to control their choices independently –in private contracts between consenting adults — with no mass exploitation or commercial messaging. Yet THAT is illegal.So back to my question: What is the difference between a Hooters and a Playboy Club?

As Playboy, the magazine and the clubs, had made sex and sexual attraction acceptable, it inadvertently opened up American society to the seedy filth of Hustler, porno theaters and the ubiquitous strip clubs. Charming cheesecake centerfolds and fabulous fantasy Bunnies were no longer the idols in a society of Debby Loves Dallas, Deep Throat and 10-cent peep shows.

The Nordic Model – adopted in Sweden and Iceland – penalises the demand for commercial sex while decriminalising the prostitutes themselves; But could endanger women even more.

A MATTER OF CHOICE- THE CONSEQUENCES OF ARBITRARY ENFORCEMENT OF VICE LAWS

Despite the number of guys I ‘dated’ I was very fortunate that I never contracted a sexually transmitted disease. Of course most of my ‘encounters’ with these men involved oral copulation, which was still a felony in 1972 when I began my ‘career.’ People could go to prison for 5 years or more- even if it was oral sex between a husband or wife. It was not until 1975 that oral sex between consenting adults was decriminalized in California. Prostitution was a misdemeanor.

One night, this one particular business owner decided he was going to get back at me for all the customers I cost him. His car was parked in front of his business, and when he saw me walking toward his store, he came running out, knocked me into the street, got into his car and attempted to run me over.

I called the cops, who came and took a report, but since I wasn’t really hurt, they didn’t arrest him- instead they gave him a summons. The case eventually did go to court, but this man was a member of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, and in the court’s eyes, who was I to make a complaint against him?

One night I was sent on a call to porn star John Holmes’ house on Wonderland Drive. It was July 1, 1981, the night that four of his guests were brutally murdered. It became known as the ‘Laurel Canyon Murders’ or the ‘Wonderland Drive Murders.’ Even though I knew a lot of cops through my work, I could trust none of them.

Years later after I stopped working the streets, I learned from a very prominent Los Angeles attorney that four call girls had filed criminal complaints against some cops who had sex with them and then arrested them. All four of those women had ‘fatal car accidents.’ Problem solved. Many of the Hollywood Division cops were taking street prostitutes up to Griffith Park for sex in exchange for not arresting them. Sandra Bowers was one of them, and she was a key witness in the police scandal that broke in the early part of 1982. She was found murdered in one of the sleazy motels on Sunset Blvd. She had been stabbed and her throat slit- perhaps as a warning to others to keep their mouths shut.

Sex worker rights activism and being an advocate for a change in laws which criminalize any part of consensual adult commercial sex was my objective from the first day I started working as a prostitute. Decriminalizing prostitution will not in any way benefit me financially, as I retired from sex work years ago. However, I believe in a woman’s right to control her own life and body, and that ‘choice’ means ‘choice’ and not what someone else chooses for me. I am passionate about overturning laws which prohibit consenting adults from engaging in commercial sex. Such laws are harmful to all of society and for so many reasons, need to be repealed.

Sex work and sex trafficking are not the same, but because there are so very few real victims, prostitution abolitionists and law enforcement agencies must conflate the two to create the illusion that there are hundreds of thousands of ‘sex slaves’ around the world just waiting to be rescued. All they need is MORE MONEY!  All of these rationales for prohibiting prostitution could apply to the work and life experiences of millions of women in many other types of labor, including the military (rape and PTSD, danger), taxi driving (homicide, rape, robbery, danger), law enforcement (from civilian to sworn officers), domestic servitude (rape, danger, slavery, the desire to be doing ANYTHING other than cleaning toilets and scraping off dried feces, urine and vomit of strangers), and so many other jobs and circumstances.

If ‘prostitution is like rape,’ why ‘proactive’ enforcement of prostitution laws if the prostitute has not claimed to be a victim? For all other violent rapes, sexual assaults and domestic violence, a victim must first report the crime before the police are permitted to begin an investigation. And unfortunately, quite often even when those victims do report crimes against them, the police do not investigate beyond an initial query. If they don’t believe the victim, as happens in so many cases of rape and domestic violence, the investigation stops.

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