Excellent Interview with Rachel Moran

The subject is prostitution. Moran has written a powerful book about it, knowing about the issue firsthand:



Men who use prostitutes are sociopaths, total scum.

Human Rights Violations Should Not Be "Decriminalized," Let Alone Legalized

Prostitution is a human rights violation. Men have NO right to purchase sex. They have no right to traffic in the buying and selling of human beings. Women are human beings, not garbage cans for men to use and discard. There is not one single argument in favor of legalizing it or even decriminalizing it. Not a single one. Zip. Women do NOT choose this; they are forced into it through economic circumstances, so the "consenting adults" "argument' is one big lie. Women who are in this need programs that will get them out of this abuse and into gainful employment. The way to stop this filth is to go after the people who purchase the women and who exploit them, johns and pimps. They need to be arrested and thrown into jail. They need to be shamed for the human filth they are.

Amnesty International STILL doesn't understand the problem with prostitution.

This woman knows what she is talking about:

I entered the sex trade — as most do — before I was even a woman. At age 14, I was placed in the care of the state after my father committed suicide and because my mother suffered from mental illness.

Within a year, I was on the streets with no home, education or job skills. All I had was my body. At 15, I met a young man who thought it would be a good idea for me to prostitute myself. As “fresh meat,” I was a commodity in high demand.

For seven years, I was bought and sold. On the streets, that could be 10 times in a night. It’s hard to describe the full effect of the psychological coercion, and how deeply it eroded my confidence. By my late teens, I was using cocaine to dull the pain.

I cringe when I hear the words “sex work.” Selling my body wasn’t a livelihood. There was no resemblance to ordinary employment in the ritual degradation of strangers’ using my body to satiate their urges. I was doubly exploited — by those who pimped me and those who bought me.

I know there are some advocates who argue that women in prostitution sell sex as consenting adults. But those who do are a relatively privileged minority — primarily white, middle-class, Western women in escort agencies — not remotely representative of the global majority. Their right to sell doesn’t trump my right and others’ not to be sold in a trade that preys on women already marginalized by class and race.

Of course NO woman does this voluntarily if she has other economic options. Having sex with as many as ten a day is NOT a "career choice."

Some men, especially libertarians, are so totally demented and sociopathic they don't see the human suffering at all involved.

Prostitution is in fact on the way out. More than a few countries are using the Scandinavian approach and going after the men who use and exploit women. This is the correct approach.

This Never Should Have Been Allowed

I know so-called "surrogacy" has been legal for years and is fairly common, but as far as I am concerned it is another form of prostitution, what with it exploiting desperate women so some well-to-do couples can have their "own" children. At least more or less their "own."

Can you imagine a kid growing up in this kind of situation and finding out in adulthood that he or she has been brought up in a twisted, perverted arrangement? At least with adoption it can be explained, but how in the hell can you explain exploiting a kid's birth mother and paying her for the "service"?

Worse still is the risk for custody battles between the birth mother and the couple.

It should never have been allowed in the first place, but this is what happens when you have this "libertarian" nonsense seeping into public policy.

Good southern Oregon has joined the movement of exploiting women for profit.

This is distinctly sick.

It Is What It Is

People, especially nutball libertarians, try to put a pretty face on the scourge of prostitution by peddling all kinds of lies about something that is truly a human rights violation. ALL people, including women, believe it or not, have a right to human dignity and respect and should never be in a circumstance where they have to sell their bodies in order to survive or to support some asshole who is living off of him or her, typically her as the vast majority of those prostituted are female.

Scandinavia is one part of the world that has finally recognized the libertarian crap for what it is, crap, and is trying to do something to eradicate the problem by focusing on the demand side, rather than on the supply.

The Nordic Model denies sex workers’ agency

One of the things that critics seem to find so difficult to comprehend about the Nordic Model is that it is actually about restricting buyers, not about restricting those in prostitution. That is why it decriminalizes prostituted persons. The Model doesn’t discount the possibility of prostitution by “choice” but rather establishes that the buying of women in systems of prostitution is something that the state should actively discourage.

It’s pretty simple really. The Nordic Model acknowledges that less demand for prostitution and less demand for trafficking = less prostitution and less trafficking ∴ reducing the number of women exposed to these particular types of abuse and creating a better chance of achieving gender equality.

Face it: It's men who want the "right" to buy and sell women for their own ends. They don't give a shit about the conditions of the women who are in it. "Consent" to them means "consent" for men to use women as human toilets.

It's not acceptable.

A Human Rights Violation

I have written many times about how the public has been so brainwashed into thinking prostitution is a "victimless crime," and attempts to try and legitimize a human rights violation by calling it "sex work" and other euphemisms, that it almost seems to be an uphill battle to persuade people that this is NOT a "victimless" crime.

It isn't about two "consenting adults," either, especially given the fact that the average age of women first going into this "life" is 13. and women usually have a very hard time getting out of it. Legalizing it, as I have written, makes the problem of illegal sex trafficking worse. From this very good article:

That, in fact, is exactly the theory behind the Sex Purchase Law in Sweden. As of 1999, johns are punished by up to six months’ imprisonment, traffickers are locked up for 2-to-10-year hits, and prostitutes are offered medical care, education, and housing. As a result, prostitution has been reduced by 50 percent in Sweden, and the purchase of sex, which is understood to be a human-rights abuse, has decreased by 75 percent. In contrast, Europol studies show, nations such as Holland and Australia, where prostitution has been legalized, have become lucrative, low-risk magnets for international sex-slave drivers and organized crime. On the subject of Sweden’s demand-side laws—which Finland and Norway have now adopted, and Denmark is currently considering—Sweden’s minister for justice, Beatrice Ask, notes, “If we could get rid of slavery, then I think this type of buying human beings is something that we have to fight too.”

Exactly. The "Happy Hooker" idea is simply bullshit.

News, Etc.

The United States needs to follow Sweden's example and criminalize the purchase of sex rather than jail the prostitutes; this would virtually end it and certainly diminish the need for sex trafficking.

When people quit believing prostitution is a "victimless crime" but is instead a human rights violation, that's when real reform can happen and the practice all but stopped.

Men who exploit others should have their names plastered all over the media and subject to shame and humilation.
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The Nevada legislature thinks some "protections" for a tiny, tiny minority of frankly mentally ill people who are confused about identity are more important than legislation that would actually help many, many thousands of people such as banning discrimination against the longterm unemployed and banning credit checks for most job openings.

I guess the jobless are much less vocal than the "transgendered" community.

I have stated on this blog my position about "transgendered" people, and it goes against what most liberals or progressives believe. That's too bad, so sad, but just because one has cosmetic surgery to act out a fantasy doesn't mean one is the opposite sex. You are what you were born with. I am not referring to the very, very tiny number of people who are "intersexed" with physical defects, either, the only cases where "reassignment" surgery may be justified.

News, Etc.

Not just the fact that prostitution is a human rights violation, but the recent stories about the Craigslist killer should give the website pause for allowing ANY kind of "erotic" service to be put on the internet.
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If at first you don't succeed, keep trying until you die.

My God, what a story:

A PERSON could know South Korea for a long time without knowing Wanju, an obscure county 112 miles south of Seoul. And, at least until recently, a person could know a lot about Wanju without ever hearing of Cha Sa-soon, a 69-year-old woman who lives alone in the mountain-ringed village of Sinchon.

Now, however, Ms. Cha is an unlikely national celebrity.

This diminutive woman, now known nationwide as “Grandma Cha Sa-soon,” has achieved a record that causes people here to first shake their heads with astonishment and then smile: She failed her driver’s test hundreds of times but never gave up. Finally, she got her license — on her 960th try.

The written test was what gave her trouble. She failed the driving skills and road test only four times each before passing.
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Sharron Angle finds out she is in the crosshairs of the frivolous Righthaven law firm thanks to yet another lawsuit filed.
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News

WCSD has another "sexual assault" allegation on one of their campuses although we don't know the exact nature of the alleged "sexual assault." link
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I thought prostitution was a "victimless" crime and its victims are "sex workers" who freely "choose" to be in their trade.

Of course it's bullshit, media glorification and talk shows notwithstanding.

Human slavery and trafficking conditions are said to exist in Ohio of all places:

About 1,000 American-born children are forced into the sex trade in Ohio every year and about 800 immigrants are sexually exploited and pushed into sweatshop-type jobs, a new report on human trafficking in the state said Wednesday.

Ohio's weak laws on human trafficking, its growing demand for cheap labor and its proximity to the Canadian border are key contributors to the illegal activity, according to a report by the Trafficking in Persons Study Commission.

''Ohio is not only a destination place for foreign-born trafficking victims, but it's also a recruitment place,'' said Celia Williamson, an associate professor at the University of Toledo who led the research.

Formed last year by Ohio Attorney General Richard Condray, the commission also found that hundreds more in the state are at risk of being forced into sex trafficking or to work against their will in fields, restaurants, sweatshops or constructions sites.

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It looks like there is a "bipartisan" bill being crafted for a "jobs" bill that probably won't be enough to help people.
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Former president Bill Clinton had surgery today to put two stents in one of his coronary arteries:

“Following a visit to his cardiologist, he underwent a procedure to place two stents in one of his coronary arteries,” Mr. Band’s statement said.

“President Clinton is in good spirits and will continue to focus on the work of his foundation and Haiti’s relief and long-term recovery efforts.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton learned of her husband’s condition after she concluded a meeting with President Obama in the Oval Office.

An associate of Mrs. Clinton’s said she was still in Washington, but making plans to head to New York City late Thursday afternoon.

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Senator Harry Reid has one less competitor as Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki has declined to run for the Senate.
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A six-year-old girl is handcuffed after she has caused a disturbance at a school, and now mom is talking to a lawyer, etc., because after all, she is only six years old, how dare the cops traumatize and scare her precious daughter, and so on.

Mom is a piece of work:

Misc Whatever

Frank Rich made some good points in his recent piece about Wall Street, but of course in the WSWS's eyes, he didn't go far enough.
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Since atheism and religious belief are two sides of the same coin, there shouldn't be any debate over debating the unanswerable issue of whether God exists.

In fact, nobody knows that; it's a matter of faith or having a faith that He doesn't exist. And when it comes to the hereafter, nobody knows what is on the "other side," and therefore EVERY person, whether he or she admits it, is an agnostic.
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Wall Street did better than anybody else in this country last year.
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A man died trying to save his dog, who was hit by a car. The man was struck and killed by a bus:

John Christopher Morgan, 22, was buying some beer at a Plant City convenience store just after 7 p.m. when he saw his dog jump out of his car and run onto S.R. 60, according to his friend, Jason Braden.

The dog – a pitbull-cur mix named Jersey, who Morgan always called "Pup" – was hit by a car, Braden said.

So Morgan ran onto the road to get him, Braden said.

Morgan probably ignored the oncoming bus that, seconds later, would hit and kill him, Braden said.

"I know him long enough to know he saw the bus was coming," said Braden. "He would take the hit, but it was worth it for him for that dog. That dog was all he had."

Jersey, the dog, is reportedly alive.
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Because they are losers who believe women are nothing more than garbage receptacles. There is no point trying to sugarcoat it.

News Briefs

I doubt it very seriously there are many women who will use male prostitutes for sex; it will be gay men, instead.

Who the hell are the brothel owners kidding?
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Elin Nordegren has been seen around without her wedding ring thus creating all kinds of speculation on the state of her marriage.

There is Something Truly Appalling

about people who make excuses for prostitution, using the lie that it is an exchange between "consenting adults." That is a crock of shit, as is calling prostitutes "sex workers" instead of victims of human rights violations.

I have no patience for people who glorify it or make excuses for its existence. Go after the demand side of prostitution, and the incidence will largely disappear. After all, there would be no prostitutes if there were no customers or others profiting from their exploitation.

The Day We Can Admit Prostitution is Not a "Victimless" Crime

but a human rights violation is the day we can make inroads on it and even reduce it to the point where it is not a major problem anymore.

The solution to the problem is easy: make the exploiters, the men who use and abuse them, the criminals and take this problem seriously.

Women also have to have options other than exploiting themselves, but getting rid of the demand side of the equation takes care of the supply side.

Snip:

Some claim that women choose to work as prostitutes, but you call it the ultimate act of humiliation and desperation.

A very small number do it by choice. Studies show that the vast majority, 89 per cent in one, desperately want out. They're hungry, need to feed children or give health care to aging parents, and the only alternative is to take their clothes off and service platoons of men.

They can't get any other work?

Not in many Third World countries or where sex tourists go. For women in Moscow, Kiev, other parts of Ukraine, there is absolutely no work for young women. They are in abject poverty ... There are so many escorts, from Third World countries, you have to ask, "How did they get here?" They don't have business acumen or language skills. On the lower east side in Vancouver, the vast majority have serious mental-health issues, drug issues, or are native women tossed off reserves. They're controlled by pimps with a bag of white powder. The drug is their handcuffs.

Miscellaneous Stuff [Updated]

A UNR K-9 police officer accused of abusing a police dog has denied the charges.
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I now expect a sequel to Frost/Nixon, called Ronnie/Nixon. Nixon was right, of course, and Reagan's health was already declining by 1987.
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Thank God that stupid idea of legalizing prostitution in Vegas is going nowhere this legislative session.
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Update: As everybody knows, a fatal commuter plane crash happened this evening near Buffalo, New York, when Continental Flight 3407 crashed into a home, killing all 48 in the plane and the person inside the house.

It was the deadliest U.S. plane crash since the Lexington, Kentucky, crash in 2006, which also killed 49.
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What a Goddamned STUPID Idea

Some idiot Nevada legislator, a Democrat named Bob Coffin, wants to put the nail into his career by looking into the possibility of legalizing prostitution all over the state of Nevada in order to raise additional tax revenue.

No, this is no joke. This is one of the most appalling things I have ever heard. In truth, the legal whorehouses (called "brothels" in Nevada) should be put out of business in the state. Only a truly ignorant person would even suggest such a thing as legalizing something that is a human rights violation. The prostitutes in the legal brothels in Nevada live and "work" in the middle of nowhere and as virtual prisoners. Moreover, Las Vegas is already known as one of the major world centers for sex trafficking. But to hear the advocates for legal prostitution, who see nothing wrong with exploiting women's bodies for money, it's a "victimless" crime between two "consenting" adults.

I have written on this blog about how I feel Phil Donahue and other television talk show hosts of the 1970s and 1980s did a terrible disservice to the public by glorifying this kind of thing, even making the likes of tax dodger and pimp Joe Conforte into some kind of folk hero.

I have linked this article before, but it's worth noting it again:

Described as "pussy penitentiaries" by one interviewee, the brothels tend to be in the middle of nowhere, out of sight of ordinary Nevadans. (Brothels are officially allowed only in counties with populations of fewer than 400,000, so prostitution remains an illegal - though vast - trade in conurbations such as Las Vegas.) The brothel prostitutes often live in prison-like conditions, locked in or forbidden to leave.

"The physical appearance of these buildings is shocking," says Farley. "They look like wide trailers with barbed wire around them - little jails." The rooms all have panic buttons, but many women told her that they had experienced violent and sexual abuse from the customers and pimps.

"I saw a grated iron door in one brothel," says Farley. "The women's food was shoved through the door's steel bars between the kitchen and the brothel area. One pimp starved a woman he considered too fat. She made a friend outside the brothel who would throw food over the fence for her." Another pimp told Farley matter-of-factly that many of the women working for him had histories of sexual abuse and mental ill-health. "Most," he said, "have been sexually abused as kids. Some are bipolar, some are schizophrenic."

Then there is the fact that legal prostitutes seem to lose the rights ordinary citizens enjoy. From 1987, prostitutes in Nevada have been legally required to be tested once a week for sexually transmitted diseases and monthly for HIV. Customers are not required to be tested. The women must present their medical clearance to the police station and be finger-printed, even though such registration is detrimental: if a woman is known to work as a prostitute, she may be refused health insurance, face discrimination in housing or future employment, or endure accusations of unfit motherhood. In addition, there are countries that will not permit registered prostitutes to settle, so their movement is severely restricted.

What a great career and lifestyle to which all women should aspire.

Miscellaneous News

If cities like San Francisco are going to deal with prostitution, it needs to be handled the way Sweden, I believe, deals with it, and that's by not criminalizing the supply side but the demand side instead. This means jailing those who use prostitutes and those who exploit them. In fact, I'd go further and have these pieces of filth's names publicized all over the place. Create shame for those who exploit others.

THIS, not perpetrating the lie prostitution is a "victimless crime," would take care of it.

No demand, no supply. Period.
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Fritzl.

Prosecutors will question him tomorrow and will try to get answers out of him.

From prosecution to prostitution, as Fritzl's reputation for perverted sex was such not even prostitutes would go near him. No amount of money could be paid for them to make a "date" with this pervert given his track record:

"Ninety-five per cent of the guests are entirely normal, 3 per cent are slightly ‘derailed’, but Fritzl belonged to the last 2 per cent of extreme perverts, who are surely mentally deranged," Mr F told the Oesterreich newspaper.

He said that some of the prostitutes would refuse to go upstairs with him – "which was extremely rare in this business" – because of demands including sadism and "demanding that a girl should pretend to be a corpse".

Prostitution is legal in Austria, by the way, but that doesn't mean the hookers have to take every john who wants a date with them.

And Fritzl was no exception:

He added: "Ninety-five percent of customers are totally normal, three per cent are a bit weird. Fritzl belongs to the remaining two per cent that are definitely mentally ill.

"None of the girls wanted to spend time in a room with him. Two of them even strictly refused to and did without the earnings."

But Fritzl went there again and again as the brothel changed its prostitutes every ten weeks. Mr Flugel continued: "I recognised Fritzl from the pictures in the papers and on TV. I will never forget his tight-fistedness too.

...

"At the bar, he acted despotically. As soon as he found one of the girls attractive and ordered champagne, he said things like, 'sit straight!' or 'don't talk such sh**!'.

"This is unusual at brothels - you go there to have a good time. And upstairs, in a room, he got completely out of the track."

Asked what he meant by an Austrian newspaper reporter Flugel replied: "Perverse. I heard about that when talking to the girls. Two of them said, 'never again with that guy!'. Such a thing is very rare in this business.

Fritzl drove some 40 miles out of town to visit the nightclub. No doubt he feared being detected.

When Eliot Spitzer

had to resign the New York governorship because of being involved in a prostitution ring, people like Alan Dershowitz pooh-poohed the whole thing because it was supposed to be a "victimless crime." For anyone with knowledge or intellectual integrity, it isn't:

The fact is that all prostitution, including Spitzer’s brokering of a high-priced call-girl, is dangerous for several reasons: first, as a population, prostitutes suffer grave victimization and physical harm; second, prostitution degrades the status of all women by affirming the pathology of associating sex with property; finally, prostitution undermines perhaps the most important moment of reckoning in our country’s history – when we established legally that human beings cannot be bought and sold.

For many prostitutes, “sex work” follows naturally from childhood sexual exploitation or incest victimization. 8 times out of ten, victims of rape or incest prior to engaging in prostitution. Prostituted women are routinely raped. Their life expectancies are shorter than average. They represent 15% of the women for whom suicide attempts result in hospitalization. Most prostitutes experience physical violence. They come from poverty and remain in poverty as prostitutes. This is the norm to which there are few exceptions.

Furthermore, prostitution comes at a high psychic cost to its “workers.” Renowned psychotherapists like Lenore Walker and Judith Herman confirm, based on their clinical experience and research, the overwhelming presence of PTSD in prostituted women. Melissa Farley, whose international research substantiates the consistency of prostitution’s extensive harm, stresses the importance of understanding the “choice” to pursue prostitution. She writes, “conditions that make genuine consent possible are absent from prostitution: physical safety, equal power with customers and real alternatives.” Comparative studies underscore the ridiculousness of accepting prostitution as a vocational choice. In a 2003 study, Farley and Cotton reported a 75% homelessness rate among respondents, and 89% of prostitutes in the 9 countries they studied expressed “their desire to get out of prostitution.”

What gets me is how escort services and strip clubs are even legal, since prostitution is more often than not part and parcel to these "businesses."

I Agree

with Nicholas Kristof regarding prostitution. If we can crack down on the demand side of the equation, by prosecuting the pimps and the johns, the supply side (the prostitutes) will automatically decrease to the point to where it becomes unusual. I say the names of the johns and pimps should be made public in order for them to be shamed and humiliated as well.

The media did a horrible injustice by glamorizing this so-called profession by claiming it was a lifestyle choice. Well, it isn't; human rights violations never are.

Snip:

One response would be: Prostitution is inevitable, so we might as well legalize and regulate it. That's a pragmatic argument that I used to find persuasive. If brothels were legalized and inspected, I believed, then we could uproot child prostitution and reduce AIDS and sexually transmitted infections.
I changed my mind after looking at the experiences of other countries. The Netherlands formally adopted the legalization model in 2000, and there were modest public health benefits for the licensed prostitutes. But legalization nurtured a large sex industry and criminal gangs that trafficked underage girls, and so trafficking, violence and child prostitution flourished rather than dying out.
As a result, the Netherlands is now backtracking on its legalization model by closing some brothels, and other countries, like Bulgaria, are backing away from that approach.
In contrast, Sweden experimented in 1999 with a radically different approach that many now regard as much more successful: It decriminalized the sale of sex but made it a crime to buy sex. In effect, the policy was to arrest customers, but not the prostitutes.
Some Swedish prostitutes have complained that the policy reduced demand and thus lowered prices, while forcing sex work underground. But the evidence is strong that the new approach reduced trafficking in Sweden, and opinion polls show that Swedes regard the experiment as a considerable success. And the bottom line is that if you want to rape a 13-year-old girl imported from Eastern Europe, you'll have a much easier time in Amsterdam than in Stockholm.

This piece came out several months ago about Nevada's legal brothels, where the women live in almost slave-like conditions.

Farley's not making it up, either, for political ends. My landlord and I were talking about this article, and we knew somebody who rented a room from him years ago when he had a guest house who worked as a prostitute in one of the legal brothels. What she told my landlord backs up this article. She was also a drug user because she felt she had to take drugs in order for the "work" to be bearable.

And people glamorize this, make people like Joe Conforte folk heroes for exploiting and abusing women.

Disgusting.

Edit: This post by an ex-prostitute is good.

Boy,

do I agree with this.

Prostitution is not a "victimless crime." That is one of the biggest lies out there:

But most women in prostitution, including those working for escort services, have been sexually abused as children, studies show. Incest sets young women up for prostitution — by letting them know what they’re worth and what’s expected of them. Other forces that channel women into escort prostitution are economic hardship and racism.

The Emperor’s Club presented itself as an elite escort service. But aside from charging more, it worked like any other prostitution business. The pimps took their 50 percent cut. The Emperor’s Club often required that the women provide sex twice an hour. One woman who was wiretapped indicated that she couldn’t handle that pressure. The ring operated throughout the United States and Europe. The transport of women for prostitution was masked by its description as “travel dates.”

It's certainly not a "profession," a "career," or a "job."

In Case

anybody cares, this is supposed to be a report of what prostitution is like:





I hate to tell people, but it isn't a "career," or a "profession" like being a doctor, lawyer, or teacher. It's done for money when women (and some men) realize they have no other options to make decent money, which is a tragic commentary on women and society.

This report is like the old Phil Donohue programs in the 1970s, which tended to glorify prostitution and pornography. Shows like Donohue and Geraldo Rivera's program in the 1980s glorified pimps like Reno's very own Joe Conforte, now a fugitive from justice. Both prostitution and pornography are terrible and exploitative. But when women are objectified, as they are in either endeavor, who cares? They're "choices," "victimless" crimes, and all of that other crap. But I ask these questions: If ALL women had equal opportunity in this economy to make decent money, would any of them resort to this? If men actually respected women, would they demand women sell their bodies for their own selfish purposes?

But isn't prostitution a great way to make easy money? Forget your dignity and your contempt for men. You can retire rich by the time you're thirty--that is, if you don't spend all of your money on drugs to deaden the pain and die as a result.

I don't care if these women make $20 a trick or $5,000. It's disgusting no matter what the price.

This report is disgusting.