Tech Bros Bought Sex Trafficking Victims Using Amazon and Microsoft Work Emails (newsweek.com) 321
An anonymous reader writes:
Newsweek's National Politics Correspondent reports on "a horny nest of prostitution 'hobbyists' at tech giants Microsoft, Amazon and other firms in Seattle," citing "hundreds" of emails "fired off by employees at major tech companies hoping to hook up with trafficked Asian women" between 2014 and 2016, "67 sent from Microsoft, 63 sent from Amazon email accounts and dozens more sent from some of Seattle's premier tech companies and others based elsewhere but with offices in Seattle, including T-Mobile and Oracle, as well as many local, smaller tech firms." Many of the emails came from a sting operation against online prostitution review boards, and were obtained through a public records request to the King County Prosecutor's Office.
"They were on their work accounts because Seattle pimps routinely asked first-time sex-buyers to prove they were not cops by sending an employee email or badge," reports Newsweek, criticizing "the widespread and often nonchalant attitude toward buying sex from trafficked women, a process made shockingly more efficient by internet technology... A study commissioned by the Department of Justice found that Seattle has the fastest-growing sex industry in the United States, more than doubling in size between 2005 and 2012. That boom correlates neatly with the boom of the tech sector there... Some of these men spent $30,000 to $50,000 a year, according to authorities." A lawyer for some of the men argues that Seattle's tech giants aren't conducting any training to increase employees' compassion for trafficked women in brothels. The director of research for a national anti-trafficking group cites the time Uber analyzed ride-sharing data and reported a correlation between high-crime neighborhoods and frequent Uber trips -- including people paying for prostitutes. "They made a map using their ride-share data, like it was a funny thing they could do with their data. It was done so flippantly."
"They were on their work accounts because Seattle pimps routinely asked first-time sex-buyers to prove they were not cops by sending an employee email or badge," reports Newsweek, criticizing "the widespread and often nonchalant attitude toward buying sex from trafficked women, a process made shockingly more efficient by internet technology... A study commissioned by the Department of Justice found that Seattle has the fastest-growing sex industry in the United States, more than doubling in size between 2005 and 2012. That boom correlates neatly with the boom of the tech sector there... Some of these men spent $30,000 to $50,000 a year, according to authorities." A lawyer for some of the men argues that Seattle's tech giants aren't conducting any training to increase employees' compassion for trafficked women in brothels. The director of research for a national anti-trafficking group cites the time Uber analyzed ride-sharing data and reported a correlation between high-crime neighborhoods and frequent Uber trips -- including people paying for prostitutes. "They made a map using their ride-share data, like it was a funny thing they could do with their data. It was done so flippantly."
Legalize prostitution (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention, you could tax it. Just make it a job like an artist or a performer.
Re: Legalize prostitution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Legalize prostitution (Score:5, Insightful)
What if it only stops half of it?
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Why would more customers travel to a bad neighborhood and risk arrest and disease using illegal hookers when there's a local, convenient, certified clean alternative?
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Do you mean ... marriage?
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Buying lunch isn't like buying a farm.
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Re: Legalize prostitution (Score:4, Interesting)
Big problem with "stopping sex trafficking" is that you'd have to have reliable numbers before and after the attempt to stop it. Unfortunately, there's a whole industry (both inside and outside of police) who earn their money dealing with sex trafficking. On top of that, it's hard to challenge those numbers, because you don't want to be that person.
So any and all news coming from police about sex trafficking numbers is suspect to me.
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The point is to make it easier (Score:2)
A better solution would be wide scale social safety nets like basic income combined with trade deals that demand 2nd and 3rd world countries treat their workers equal to first world nations or lose access to first world markets. Then again I've probably got a bet
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Basic income doesn't solve "sex trafficking" - where it is sex which is the thing trafficked, not humans.
It will exist as long as there are those willing to PAY FOR IT - only the prices will go up.
Quality of "service" for customers or life for the sex workers... Not necessarily. Both of those require regulation and control.
As for "trade deals that demand 2nd and 3rd world countries treat their workers equal to first world nations" - I'm guessing you will cover that difference from your pocket? For the entir
Re:Legalize prostitution (Score:4, Insightful)
Legalize prostitution: If you prohibit something that has demand, illegal/black markets *will* be created. It would also be easier to help the women who want to quit and don’t manage on their own. Health controls could be done, which benefits both clients and sellers.
Not to mention, you could tax it. Just make it a job like an artist or a performer.
Criminalizing certain vices; the prohibition of gambling, prostitution, and even drugs has fueled the rise in violent, organized crime. Where there is a demand for a product or a service, a market will exist. The mafia made fortunes on bootlegging and other vice crimes throughout the 20th century. When you criminalize a service or product, it becomes unregulated and MUCH more dangerous. It's time to admit that these vice crimes just need to go away. If we legalized and regulated drugs, then the domino effect of violence that results from drugs starts to go away.
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If we legalized and regulated drugs, then the domino effect of violence that results from drugs starts to go away.
"Feeling blue? Need a pick-me-up? Get VitaRise! Cocaine in a pill! From GlaxoSmithKline."
Doesn't seem likely. Unfortunately even if all drugs are legalized, 40 years of anti-(some)-drug propaganda has had a lasting effect. It will take another 40 years before the promised benefits of legalization actually take serious effect, just because of human social inertia. Look at marijuana dispensaries today. Admittedly, national brands can't participate in that space because it's not yet a national market,
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"Feeling blue? Need a pick-me-up? Get VitaRise! Cocaine in a pill! From GlaxoSmithKline."
Funny, but getting from a known, regulated source, without the danger of unknown contents or getting killed trying to make a purchase would be big selling point. With a ready recreational market, drug companies might be inclined to research how some of these drugs could be made safer or less addictive.
Nevermind that when you subtract suicides, drug (gang) related homicides are far and away the largest source of gun rel
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No, legalised like tobacco - in plain packaging with logos like 'THIS DRUG WITH HARM YOUR FETUS' on the outside.
No one is saying recreational drugs are good for you - only that prohibition is worse than legalisation.
Re:Legalize prostitution (Score:5, Interesting)
And in any sane country, that has happened a long time ago. It is also patently false to think that most women in prostitution are forced into it. Or at least not more forced than anybody that has to work for a living. They just look at their options and decide that it is this one they like best. In countries were prostitution is legal or decriminalized, it is extremely rare to find anybody forced into prostitution, and it is usually one of the first few customers (often the very first one) that calls the police and gets the victim freed. Of course that only works if said customer does not need to fear prosecution....
With the thoroughly insane idea of making prostitution illegal in the US, the prohibitionists get to design the narrative, and they are shamelessly lying to promote their evil agenda. Suddenly, everybody selling sex is "trafficked", when that is very far from the truth indeed. And suddenly there are incredible masses of underage prostitutes, when in actual reality they are very rare. The "average age entering the sex trade" becomes 13, when in actual reality it is more like 22. And do not forget that prostitution being illegal correlates with significantly higher rates of rape. This evil has to stop.
Re:Legalize prostitution (Score:5, Informative)
The data doesn't seem to support that assertation [harvard.edu].
Re:Legalize prostitution (Score:4, Informative)
Prostitution can be done between two conscenting individuals/adults. Selling sex between two conscenting individuals hurts nobody. Contrary to your two “counterexamples”.
Re:Legalize prostitution (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a fine line between consent and coercion. You have no idea what is pressing against the other person's head who is willing to "consent" to sex with you.
You just summed up decades if not centuries of family pressure on daughters to 'make a good match'.
Re: Legalize prostitution (Score:2)
What does daughters âoemaking a good matchâ for centuries have to do with this debate?
Look, every time something is illegal, no matter what it is, making it legal makes it better for everyone, except those willing to risk the punishment to take advantage of.
Take alcohol for example. Remember prohibition? If you think that was good for society, go watch âoeThe Untouchablesâ. Great movie. The reason there was so much violence is because there was a demand which created a market and thugs w
Re: Legalize prostitution (Score:2)
Testing punctuation bug
"This"
That's
'That'
Re: Legalize prostitution (Score:2)
Thanks! That worked.
Re:Legalize prostitution (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Legalize prostitution (Score:5, Insightful)
You have no idea what is pressing against the other person's head who is willing to "consent" to sex with you.
You also have no idea what is pressing against the other person's head who is willing to "consent" to a soul-destroying office job, yet no one seems to bat an eye there. Perhaps instead of trying to second-guess everyone's reasons for doing what they do, we could go after the people who are threatening harm if they don't do the thing?
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Actually, many people advocating for the basic income do wonder just how willing people are to work at the more soul destroying office jobs. Certainly they believe that a basic income would force employers to make office jobs less soul destroying.
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You're lying to yourself if you think all trafficked sex workers are sex workers voluntarily.
Re: Legalize prostitution (Score:5, Insightful)
It's almost like you're both idiots who think in black and white!
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The first thing that you need to understand, is that making a thing illegal doesn't necessarily make it go away. If you want a thing to stop, then the laws you make need to address what causes whatever it is that you don't like. Sometimes, minimizing the extent of a problem starts by legalizing and regulating it. Consider drugs in Portugal, for example. While heroin isn't exactly legal there, it's been decriminalized. Portuguese do not go to prison over heroin, unless they're found with more than a ten day
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No problem with this. Just as long as the people volunteering to be murdered do so of their own free will, are adults and have been vetted by health services.
Great, I work with lowlife pervs (Score:2, Insightful)
So it seems I work with some people involved which sucks. But can we please not have sex trafficking mandatory training from HR next year? People who aren't sick fucks don't need a training video to show them how to act like humans.
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I figure we're about here in this virtuous interaction now: r/niceguys Top Posts of All Time [3] @ 5:19 [youtu.be]
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Excellent, you're one step closer to realizing that the concept of "virtue signalling" is just a means of labelling opinions you disagree with as trivial and dishonest. Now it doesn't even have to benefit the speaker!
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No you work with intelligent hardworking people who are starved for human physical contact and affection. So badly that they have to pay someone to pretend.... Some like me are able to overcome this and retain their dignity but it takes years of mental discipline .... Meanwhile, violent, stupid and abusive people seem to have no problem attracting people to love them and have sex with them..... Welcome to the human condition.
The situation is aggravated by modern Western society, in which many women have turned their backs on men, possibly to pursue a career, and/or possibly after a brief romantic fling and a child. A Jock (one of your "violent, stupid and abusive people") can get a girl pregnant and thereafter she drops out of the dating game, maybe for good, but the Jock is back in the game the very next day. Add to that the the lop-sided sex ratio in immigrants (there was a discussion of the ratio in Indian H-1B here a whil
Sex trafficking is a supply and demand problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that there aren't people who want to work in the sex industry - there absolutely are. However, as studies repeatedly bear out, the number who want to is far below the demand; most people who work in the sex industry don't want to be there, and abusive trafficking is an inevitable consequence of this situation.
Making prostitution symmetrically illegal doesn't solve the problem. By making it illegal and aggressively policing it, yes, you cut down on part of the demand. But you also cut down on the supply. And since the ratio of clients to sex workers is far greater than 1, it's much easier to crack down on the "supply" side of the equation, thus increasing the trafficking motive. On the other hand, making it fully legal causes a boom in demand (and especially sex tourism), which usually is associated with a trafficking boom.
I'm personally a fan of the Nordic system: purchasing sex is illegal, as is pimping, but selling sex is perfectly illegal. After all, if your goal is to stamp out trafficking and protect abused women, why would you throw them in jail? The Nordic system cuts demand without cutting supply, thus heavily damaging the trafficking motive; it's been very successful. There are some things you have to be careful about, of course - for example, in the first version of the Swedish laws they had problems with landlords kicking prostitutes out, out of fear that they'd get caught up in anti-pimping / anti-brothel laws (the laws were later amended to address this). But in general it's been shown to work well. It also makes it so that prostitutes are unafraid of having to deal with the police, which means better crime reporting and an all-around better environment for them.
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I'm personally a fan of the Nordic system: purchasing sex is illegal, as is pimping, but selling sex is perfectly illegal.
Interesting that this is called the "Nordic system".
I might be wrong, but only Norway + Sweden have rules like this, while a rule against pimping and brothels seem more common in the Nordic countries.
After Sweden introduced their ban on purchasing sex, violence against sex workers reportedly went up, as did the number of "johns" going to Denmark for sex. Effectively, it had little impact on the number of customers, it made things worse for the sex workers, and the politicians started patting themselves on t
Re:Sex trafficking is a supply and demand problem. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know every country which has it, but I can tell you that it's that way here in Iceland, too. And Finland. Denmark is the only Nordic which doesn't use it.
This is a lie based around this report [wordpress.com]. The short of it: Since the law passed, the following reports of changes have occurred:
Verbal abuse: +17%
Hair pulling: +167% (but still only a third of those surveyed reported any hair pulling)
Being struck with a fist: -38%
Rape: -48%.
Because when you consider them all together and equal, it's a net increase of 7% (52% to 59%), that's "violence is up". But most of those cases are verbal abuse. The most extreme examples, such as rape, went down by half.
Street prostitution decreased by 50% and indoor prostitution by 16% since the law was passed [google.com]. The rate of prostitutes seeking help from the police decreased by 41%, but rather than this being some sort of "afraid of the police" situation (they're not legally liable for anything), rates of seeking help from ProSentret decreased by 54% - an even greater amount. The simple fact is, severe violence dramatically decreased since the Nordic Model was adopted.
The estimates on the number of prostitutes operating in Sweden dropped significantly after the law was passed, and are 1/10th the number as in (lower population) Denmark. A study by Durex found that Sweden had the lowest percentage of the population (among 34 countries surveyed) of men paying for sex, at 3%. But as for:
Obviously, just on the face of this, this is stupid. The concept that you'll get the same rate of people visiting prostitutes when they can get it where they live vs. where they have to drive for hours (Stockholm to Copenhagen = 10 hours round trip) and pay ~$50 each way to cross the bridge (let alone the super-expensive Nordic gas prices) is nonsense. Furthermore, the rate of people going to Denmark to buy prostitutes has not increased [tandfonline.com]. A large majority of the population in countries with the Nordic model strongly support it, not just "politicians". Only 25% of Swedish men and 7% of Swedish women support repealing it.
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I should mention I'm basically repeated what's been in the news, primarily in DK. There was a larger effort to look at sex work some years back, incl a look at the effects in Sweden something like a year after they introduced those laws.
And yes, it was at the time absolutely reported that the numbers went up in DK as a result of the changes in Sweden.
If things have improved since mid-2000s (not following the news there as closely since I left), good on them.
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I'm personally a fan of the Nordic system: purchasing sex is illegal, as is pimping, but selling sex is perfectly illegal.
Interesting that this is called the "Nordic system". I might be wrong, but only Norway + Sweden have rules like this,
Denmark and Iceland too Finland is similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Denmark and Iceland are considered Scandinavian and Nordic.
Next time do your homework
Re:Sex trafficking is a supply and demand problem. (Score:4, Funny)
I find the same thing where I work. Ask around, and everyone would rather be at home than at work.
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purchasing sex is illegal, as is pimping, but selling sex is perfectly illegal
As a solution to human trafficking this sounds like a good solution, except that it really isn't all that. [washingtontimes.com] This solution fits so very nicely with today's zeitgeist, and so we are rather invested in believing that it works.
Not to mention there's an important moral issue with this solution, in that it criminalizes a transaction - and one-sidedly at that - between what in a lot of cases are consenting adults. If 9 out of 10 women work in the industry against their will, that doesn't make it right to arrest
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Lol, how did I know that that article's source was going to be Petra Östergren? Literally whenever anyone wants to claim anything against the Nordic Model, it comes down to her rantings ;)
Meanwhile... [springer.com]
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You realize the exact same argument could be used to ignore everything YOU post?
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Re:Sex trafficking is a supply and demand problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
We need to start an open source sexbot movement. They will fulfill an important need, but can't be under the sole control of corporations who have already shown themselves to be untrustworthy by spying on customers and using DRM.
Start with GNU vibrators that support remote control over secure net connections. Sarah Jamie Lewis has already made a great start on this. In time we need to make sure that Free high quality blowjobs are available for anyone to download. VR should be a target too.
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As much as I like the idea of sexbots, I also expect that the moment they become even half-way realistic there will be a worldwide movement to ban them. It'll probably involve stories describing how perverts can modify sex-bots to look or act like children.
Remember that even America, one of the world's more sexually open countries (if not so much as parts of Europe), it is a criminal offence to sell a dildo in Texas or Alabama.
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Lower your standards, you pasty nerds. Be realistic.
Total and complete darkness...
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I don't want to 'work on my game.' I know I'm not going to pull - but I'd rather not-pull as myself then read some slimeball guides so I can emotionally manipulate someone into sleeping with me through psychology and trickery.
Re:Sex trafficking is a supply and demand problem. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not that there aren't people who want to work in the sex industry - there absolutely are. However, as studies repeatedly bear out, the number who want to is far below the demand
If there is more demand than is on offer, prices rise, and the job becomes appealing to a larger group of people. What you describe is what happenes when instead of paying adequate wages, people from poorer countries are imported to dump prices. That is not different with prostitution than with any other job.
most people who work in the sex industry don't want to be there
Most people who work in any industry (except for a very few glamorous professions) would rather like are less strenuous and higher payed job. Again, not in any way specific to prostitution.
abusive trafficking is an inevitable consequence of this situation.
No. Abusive trafficking is happening for a lot of reasons and for many kinds of work - just look into gastronomy and construction sites, where you can find the same "slave like" working conditions with workers "paying off debts" to those who trafficked them into the country.
Abusive trafficking is the inevitable consequence of lacking prosecution of those who traffick and those who do not adhere to existing labor laws.
Regarding the absurd "asymmetric" anti-prostitution laws in Sweden: If there was any honesty in those who want to criminalize prostitution, they would apply the same logic to many other professions: So eating in a restaurant where a trafficked worker cooked your meal would be illegal. Being helped by some trafficked nurse would be criminalized. Having your garden shack built by a company who brings trafficked workers to your site would make you a criminal.
Once you think of this, you might realize that the Swedish law is not at all against trafficking, it is against sex services being on offer in general, for irrational reasons.
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most people who work in the sex industry don't want to be there
Most people who work in any industry ... would rather like are [sic] less strenuous and higher payed job. Again, not in any way specific to prostitution.
Prostitution is an easier way of making money than in most jobs, provided the woman is independent or working with a small group (2 or 3) of similar other women, especially if they have poor qualifications or no other skills. This is provided they have the attitude and stomach for it of course, and this does not generally apply to trafficked women.
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Rejecting effective solutions for the sake of consistency is dumb.
Often the trafficked women cost more because they can be forced to do stuff other women won't. They were clearly offering something more or no one would have taken the risk of sending their work ID and using their work email when they could have just used locals anonymously.
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Sweden, rape capital of Europe, is "shown to work well" when it comes to supply and demand for sex?
Ah yes, that old saw-horse, which has been shown to be false for a number of reasons. But you missed the opportunity to tie it in with immigration and you know .. "those people".
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From your link: "The Swedish police record each instance of sexual violence in every case separately, leading to an inflated number of cases compared to other countries. Sweden also has a comparatively wide definition of rape.[242][243][244] This means that more sexual crimes are registered as rape than in most other countries."
This is the main problem, every country have different laws and every country have different views of how to count the statistics. Here in Sweden if you where found guilty of raping
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1. So your concept of men is that if they can't pay for sex, they'll go out and rape someone? Man, you really have a terrible opinion of men.
2. As for your claim that Sweden is the "rape capital of Europe", Wikipedia sums it up nicely with lots of references:
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I can see why you post as an Anonymous Coward. You equate women and girls as commodities.
All Prostitution is now 'sex trafficking' (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All Prostitution is now 'sex trafficking' (Score:5, Informative)
Every notice how you never or rarely heard of sex trafficking before yet starting a few years ago
Not really, even if you limit yourself to the US and "modern day history" [wikipedia.org].
Re:All Prostitution is now 'sex trafficking' (Score:4, Insightful)
The numbers estimated seem a bit inconsistent. Somewhere between 1000 and 100,000 cases a year? Something seems a bit dodgy when the estimates span two orders of magnitude.
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It is indeed very hard to accurately estimate the numbers. In case you're interested, here's some more background [pbs.org] about the issue (including the fact that until December 2000, there wasn't even a generally accepted definition of "trafficking"), and numbers from various (US and other) institutions.
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Also, one of those numbers you quoted (1,362) is about actually identified victims, while the 100,000 is an estimate. Estimates by definition are extrapolations of actually identified cases.
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Not really generational as much as from what part of the world you came from. Middle Eastern countries as well as some Asian countries treat woman much more as second class then in places like the US and UK. Ethnic upbringing has created this continuous lack of respect for woman. Just because they move to the US and work at Microsoft. Doesn't mean they become more civilized towards woman or change that culture.
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Actually I remember hearing a lot about it in the 90s. Here in Israel there were several news stories about sex trafficking in girls from what used to be the soviet union. Supposedly police busted several of the pimps to make it stop.
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Numbers from sane countries where prostitution is not illegal indicate that people actually forced into it are extremely rare and that usually one of the first customers calls the police to get them freed. That does, of course, only work if said customer does not need to fear prosecution.
Note that the need to work for a living and having selected this as the best option does not qualify as "having been forced into it". Also note that a driver or a bodyguard is not a "pimp", he is a helper employed by his bo
Trafficking now interchangeable with prostitution (Score:5, Interesting)
All of these anti-trafficking organizations use Superbowl TV commercials of women and/or child being sold as slaves (which is extremely rare) but if you read what their true goal is, they want to stop all prostitution. They even consider 100% voluntary prostitution as trafficking. Amnesty International has the right solution which is to legalize prostitution so that women aren't forced into the underground where they are victimized by their Pimps and by the Police.
Re:Trafficking now interchangeable with prostituti (Score:5, Insightful)
On one those 'anti-trafficking' organisations, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation* (better know by their old name of Morality in Media, they rebranded because they were a laughing stock) features a 'dirty dozen' list every year of the twelve organisations they consider most destructive to sexual morality. Amnesty International is on the last two lists because they support decriminalisation of prostitution.
They also list the American Library Association (for opposing government-mandated filtering), Amazon (for selling pornography), youtube, Comcast (for not blocking pornography by default) and HBO (for making Game of Thones, with "with copious amounts of gratuitous nudity, sex, and sexual violence.").
There's a lesson to be learned here: Sometimes organisations try to veil their real goals. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation sounds like an organisation dedicated to protecting women, superficially, and their front page supports this interpretation - boldly claiming "NCOSE has a proven track record of changing corporate and government policies that previously facilitated sexual exploitation." But dig a little deeper and you find that their definition of 'exploitation' includes not only trafficking, but consentual prostitution and even the very absolute softest titillation of pornography - they have called upon Steam to ban Mass Effect: Andromeda as too racy. Dig a bit deeper still and you find they have campaigned for schools to block gay rights websites for 'promoting the homosexual lifestyle.'
*Abbreviated NCOSE, by their own choice. Probably to avoid confusion with the NCSE, the National Center for Science Education.
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*Abbreviated NCOSE, by their own choice. Probably to avoid confusion with the NCSE, the National Center for Science Education.
The "C" is silent, and hence the acronym is pronounced "Nosey"
I think the trouble is a lot of Christians (Score:2)
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It's a bit of political posturing in this case. The NCOSE used to be an overtly Christian, right-wing pressure group dedicated to stamping out sinful media - they were called Morality in Media, and they tended to use language associated with the right-wing faction of politics - decency, morality, family. A few years ago they noticed that their name was a joke and nothing they said was taken seriously, so they completely reinvented themselves to turn from a right-wing anti-pornography organisation into a lef
A great surprise. (Score:2)
People who expect 50% of their employees to be women should expect 80% of the johns to be them. If not, these companies are doing a good job, actually. It smells of a shakedown operation by a law firm, fishing for a case.
They are not "buying sex trafficking victims" (Score:2)
Well, they are, but it is like saying that if you buy an iPhone, you are buying into slavery and child labor. It is just too hard to find a complex product that doesn't involve any of these at some point.
They are just buying sex, and unfortunately, the market is dominated by trafficking. The legal system and stigma associated with prostitution doesn't give much choice.
The answer: (Score:2)
It's Oprah's fault (Score:3, Funny)
That would end it plain and simple.
No more Harvey Weinsteins. No more sexual predators. No more prostitution, sex trafficking victims and abuse.
If the above seems like too much of a chore then we GoFundMe the ultimate BJ machine and install it in every men's room in the land. It would pay for itself in days with similar outcomes.
If we don't deal with the root cause, horniness, we'll never solve any of these problems.
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Wouldn't have stopped Weinstein. He could easily afford expensive prostitutes, but that wasn't what he wanted. It was about power, forcing young actress to do things with him.
Same with trafficking. They want certain types of girl, otherwise why take the huge risks (sending your ID or using a work email) when for $50k a year you are not going to have difficulty getting laid?
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Wouldn't have stopped Weinstein. He could easily afford expensive prostitutes, but that wasn't what he wanted. It was about power, forcing young actress to do things with him.
Half right. In some of those cases it was young actresses doing things with him in order to further their own career and getting some money on the side, that's on top of the rape claims which may or maynot ever be proven. Rose Mcgowan who started this current outbreak, took money as payment not to shush her up but as a pay-off for the sex to further her own career. And that's by her own admission, with that I also expect to hear something in a few years that the reason she "spoke out" was because she was
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Your theory is that she slept with him to further her career, but then decided to sabotage it by extracting money from him... Doesn't sound like a great plan, especially as she was just one of eight people who got hush money and her other complaint at Amazon got her project dropped.
Considering everything that Weinstein has simply admitted to, why do you need to invent improbable theories that make him the victim?
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Considering everything that Weinstein has simply admitted to, why do you need to invent improbable theories that make him the victim?
Why are you making the assumption that he's a victim? Neither of them is a hero, neither is a victim. Both are whores selling themselves for differing things though, and neither had any care of the consequences of it. And both thought that they were getting something "of value" out of it as well, until they thought they no longer were. She's just as a shitty human being as he is, that's all there is to it.
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Yeah, nice plan, dickhead.
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That's an awfully strong stereotype you are portraying, that having sex is a required part of being a normal man.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Fucking make masturbation legal... (Score:3)
When did masturbation become illegal in your own home?
Why pick on the pope for the moral aspect? There are much larger religions than Catholicism with similar positions in masturbation - what is the Muslim position on masturbation, for instance?
You just want to blame an octogenarian in the Vatican for societies problems.
Why is this the employer's problem? (Score:2)
Why is sex trafficking the employer's responsibility to fix? This is something to be addressed by policing and international diplomacy efforts. Trade tarrifs against nations that ship out sex slaves for instance.
See, this won't be stopped because those women won't fall into sex slavery if they have good paying jobs at home.
Define "tech bros" first (Score:2)
When I think of "tech bro" I think of the ex-fratboy culture among web developers in startups, rather than an Amazon or Microsoft employee. Amazon is known for working their employees insane hours, and Microsoft's culture favors working crazy hours if you want to get ahead. Maybe the tech bros are just well-paid staffers with no time on their hands and no desire to look for long-term companionship. I'm married and have a healthy relationship, but working in IT makes me well aware that some aren't interested
Tech bros? (Score:3, Funny)
Is this another "tech is a hotbed of evil women abusing misogynists" story?
WTF kind of defense argument is this? (Score:2)
A lawyer for some of the men argues that Seattle's tech giants aren't conducting any training to increase employees' compassion for trafficked women
I would like to think anyone born in this country learns compassion growing up. But this sounds like it's something that these 'men' learned to be acceptable while growing up in another country. Now I'm curious of the nationality breakdown.
Re: (Score:2)
More Mandatory Training... Yay (Score:2)
Setting aside all other moral/practical considerations -- which, no, does not diminish them -- this is what stood out to me:
A lawyer for some of the men argues that Seattle's tech giants aren't conducting any training to increase employees' compassion for trafficked women in brothels.
Seeing that, all I could think was, "oh great, now my company's going to add yet another 'hey, don't be bad' training session."
Do all these mandatory sessions actually accomplish anything? That is, aside from *wanting to believe* that they make a difference in behavior, do they actually make a measurable difference? Or is their sole purpose to provide a company with a due diligence out
Re: (Score:2)
As long as people keep blaming "tech culture" for stuff that's really an omnipresent cultural problem across all groups no matter how you slice and dice it, tech companies will have to do stupid useless shit like this to show "they're doing something".
This is a society problem, not a tech problem. If we can't get people to raise kids properly, then it will have to be done in public schools I guess. I remember my wife telling me the (extremely famous and highly rated) university she went to had mandatory sex
Re: (Score:2)
This is a society problem, not a tech problem. If we can't get people to raise kids properly, then it will have to be done in public schools I guess. I remember my wife telling me the (extremely famous and highly rated) university she went to had mandatory sex ed where they had to teach people how to use a condom. I got thought that shit in 6th grade (yeah, elementary school). Everything else (like, you know, rape is bad, m'kay) was drilled in my head since I was a toddler.
Most of the time it's not a society problem, it's a person problem. Though in some cases it is a social problem, and some groups of people are far worse. Look at it like this, the media and feminists fall all over screeching "dude tech-bros" and how we're all awful men. They'll screech over a couple of guys making a shitty dongle joke and ruin their lives. But they won't come out of the wood work when thousands of young girls are groomed, raped and forced into prostitution over 15 years. They'll even g
Those evil young men with money. (Score:3)
Prostitution is the oldest profession in civilization. It probably existed before recorded civilization.
But yeah, lets blame young tech workers for the problem. Lets blame "insensitivity". But lets ignore the politicians and the police, who set policy and can use immigration status to go after sex workers. Lets ignore capitalism, because they're all doing this for free. Lets blame news outlets for not covering this "tragedy" and making it the #1 issue in Seattle, as opposed to housing, infrastructure, law enforcement, and the residents themselves.
Lets blame tech workers again, for using data to create a prostitution map, because their "callousness" and "inappropriate" sense of humor is the "root" of the problem. Where's the community "outreach" to their new residents paying taxes to their community? Ah, well they're /s But lets keep pretending illegal immigration is not a problem, because Asian sex slaves are a moral horror, but there aren't taking White American sex slaves' livelihoods, so its not a big deal or relevant to the mechanics of the local trade.
Asians and Jews and geeks; who wants them marrying into the family?
Re: (Score:3)
then there's you implying whites are mostly to blame. There have been studies done on the ethnicity of clients in the major cities, there are two other groups leading the list before we get to whites at #3
Here's a prediction (Score:2)
How is sex different from cocoa and coffee? (Score:2)
About 50% of the coffee and cocoa we buy (assuming no fair trade) are produced by slaves, including child slaves. Somehow, nobody cares about it. Why?
Re: I wonder (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder if it was really just the Tech Bros that purchased this. It seems like Tech females would also be on the market for this. Aren't there male strippers in Seattle?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually it's more that they don't want a man who's a redpilled MRA, and most are also turned off by social injustice enthusiasts. There are plenty of guys out there who aren't hazmat barrels of toxic masculinity for them to choose from. But keep on calling women who don't show up to alt-right rallies "screaming misandrists," the rest of us thank you for taking yourself out of the competition!
Re: Eric Schmit? (Score:2)
Reminds me of a pizza parlor in DC...
Re: (Score:2)
"First off, there's what, about a quarter million tech geeks in the area, mostly men, with lots of money and few prospects for finding women who will date them "
That's what I was thinking of too. Of any demographic, overworked tech company employees are probably the most likely to use these services. Even take away the nerd stereotype, which is increasingly rare, and you have a group who just doesn't have any spare time to find a mate. I've been learning Azure for a year now, and the pace of new service del
Re: (Score:2)
Predictable yes. Acceptable no.
We need to move to a system in which after the first offence. Johns are given a choice: 1) castration and penis removal, 2) life on a small island with others like themselves.
Re: Tech geeks need to pay for sex (Score:2)
Next up, oil workers in remote locations and wall street!
The connection? Lots of well-paid men and women that want to profit off them!
Re: (Score:2)
They are not victims. They would prefer to not spend 10hours/day working in a sweatshop back in Thailand or Vietnam so they sign up to rent out their bodies to guys with money.
They are the victims when they don't have a choice to "retire" from the profession. Remember, its organized crime that gets these women into the country, and those criminals get to decide when their "entrepreneurial" contractors get to leave "the business".
But the illegal immigrant girls are no different from the Mexicans working on the construction crews in Austin;
Only when they can choose not to participate in their profession, after settling pre-negotiated debts involved with transporting them to this country, in accordance to US contract law.
upper middle class people want cheap labor and if they have to break a few laws to get it, that's OK. After all, this is one crime the prosecutors will never prosecute.
You are so dead on here. The hypocrisy is vomitous.