SAAFE forum
General Category => Politics and academic/media queries => Topic started by: StawberryFields on 31 July 2014, 08:29:48 pm
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http://www. theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/20/trafficking-numbers-women-exaggerated
This article is very enlightening. It shows how studies are blown out of proportion when people have a "moral agenda".
It began with finding 71 trafficked sex workers, then to allow for margin of error: "At the very least, they guessed, there could be another 71 trafficked women who had been missed by police, which would double the total, to 142. At the most, they suggested, the true total might be 20 times higher, at 1,420."
By the end of the article, people have extrapolated this to 25,000 and even said that "Politicians and religious groups still repeat the media story that 40,000 prostitutes were trafficked into Germany for the 2006 world cup ? long after leaked police documents revealed there was no truth at all in the tale. The Daily Mirror's baseless claim of 25,000 trafficking victims is still being quoted, recently, for example, by the Salvation Army in written evidence to the home affairs select committee, in which they added : "Other studies done by media have suggested much higher numbers.""
Now, trafficking is very serious business. The problem with this, however, is threefold. Firstly: the government then started looking for large groups of organised criminals, trafficking these "thousands" of women, instead of the small scale reality that needed examining, slipping through the net. Secondly: it perpetuates stereotypes that none of us have CHOSEN this profession in an informed, consensual way, but have either been forced or are desperate etc. Sometimes that is true and is awful. However, to perpetuate this negative stereotype only induces more whorephobia, as people struggle to accept sex work as a valid career choice. Thirdly: it is reported in the wholly heteronormative gender binary. Perhaps they weren't looking for male sex workers. Perhaps they hadn't even considered them. But to use "women" and "sex workers" interchangeably denies the large portion of sex workers that are male.
Your thoughts? (Please read the whole article. It is most excellent, particularly if you are a number cruncher!)
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Looks like it's prossie week at the Guardian again, then :).
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To be fair, this is from 2009, but was sent to me by a family member who doesn't know I am a WG but does know that I'm a feminist and can't stand SWERFs, so stand up against whorephobia etc. Also I like statistics.
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Oh, I see. Somebody else has just posted about another one just before this, that's all :).
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To be perfectly honest I used to think the numbers were massively exaggerated but just the fact that a bunch of girls all from the same country and all with matching profiles arrived in my local town with profiles all created on exactly the same day lead me to believe that the figure is not really that exaggerated and that the trafficked girls are not just the girls who are hidden away any longer but there right in plain sight on a purple site we all know well. The reviews for these girls are already being posted saying they dont want to do the job, look knackered and pissed off all the time, the house they are in is filthy with a single dirty sheet on the bed and low low prices etc plus guys sitting in a car outside the house watching who is coming and going. To me this smacks of trafficking in the modern sense. Maybe Im wrong, I hope I am wrong but something in my gut is telling me that all these cheap cheap girls who dont seem to want to be there are actually trafficked girls. The pimps are just blatant and feel safe enough to put them out there as indies.
There are so many girls in set ups like these in all the towns across the UK now and there are more and more coming all the time. Sorry 6 romanian girls dont suddenly arrive by chance in the same town and set up a profile on the same day plus I have met many romanian girls doing his job. They are clean, they would not have a dirty house and a dirty bed, they are very particular to be honest. Well the ones doing this of their own accord are anyway. They definatley wouldnt willingly sell themselves financially short or allow themselves to be forced to work unless they had no choice either. Its worrying
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To be perfectly honest I used to think the numbers were massively exaggerated but just the fact that a bunch of girls all from the same country and all with matching profiles arrived in my local town with profiles all created on exactly the same day lead me to believe that the figure is not really that exaggerated and that the trafficked girls are not just the girls who are hidden away any longer but there right in plain sight on a purple site we all know well. The reviews for these girls are already being posted saying they dont want to do the job, look knackered and pissed off all the time, the house they are in is filthy with a single dirty sheet on the bed and low low prices etc plus guys sitting in a car outside the house watching who is coming and going. To me this smacks of trafficking in the modern sense. Maybe Im wrong, I hope I am wrong but something in my gut is telling me that all these cheap cheap girls who dont seem to want to be there are actually trafficked girls. The pimps are just blatant and feel safe enough to put them out there as indies.
There are so many girls in set ups like these in all the towns across the UK now and there are more and more coming all the time. Sorry 6 romanian girls dont suddenly arrive by chance in the same town and set up a profile on the same day plus I have met many romanian girls doing his job. They are clean, they would not have a dirty house and a dirty bed, they are very particular to be honest. Well the ones doing this of their own accord are anyway. They definatley wouldnt willingly sell themselves financially short or allow themselves to be forced to work unless they had no choice either. Its worrying
Sassy that's awful! Perhaps it should be mentioned to the authorities? I know a lot of us are afraid of the police but if we suspect something like that perhaps something should be done.
However, I would still maintain that 6 women is still small, independent traffickers, whereas when the numbers were put out there in tens of thousands the government then started looking for these massive organised crime organisations that simply weren't there, because it's little pockets like the 6 local to you, not mass shipments as it was portrayed wrongly by the media.
Still, trafficking is atrocious and that needs looking into.
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Any person being forced / coerced to work is wrong, I have always had the feeling that the figures being "guessed" at are way off the mark.
Many of the girls from the EU are in groups and work together, most of them do have "managers" due to the language problems and other factors like being able to advertise, make travel & hotel arrangement etc.. But this is not an indication that they are being trafficked in the forced sense of the phrase. Many are more than happy to work and often have been working in their home country.
if there are indication that they are being forced, as in the case above, then the authorities should be told and you can do that anonymously via crime stoppers
Sarah x x x
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To be perfectly honest I used to think the numbers were massively exaggerated but just the fact that a bunch of girls all from the same country and all with matching profiles arrived in my local town with profiles all created on exactly the same day lead me to believe that the figure is not really that exaggerated and that the trafficked girls are not just the girls who are hidden away any longer but there right in plain sight on a purple site we all know well. The reviews for these girls are already being posted saying they dont want to do the job, look knackered and pissed off all the time, the house they are in is filthy with a single dirty sheet on the bed and low low prices etc plus guys sitting in a car outside the house watching who is coming and going. To me this smacks of trafficking in the modern sense. Maybe Im wrong, I hope I am wrong but something in my gut is telling me that all these cheap cheap girls who dont seem to want to be there are actually trafficked girls. The pimps are just blatant and feel safe enough to put them out there as indies.
There are so many girls in set ups like these in all the towns across the UK now and there are more and more coming all the time. Sorry 6 romanian girls dont suddenly arrive by chance in the same town and set up a profile on the same day plus I have met many romanian girls doing his job. They are clean, they would not have a dirty house and a dirty bed, they are very particular to be honest. Well the ones doing this of their own accord are anyway. They definatley wouldnt willingly sell themselves financially short or allow themselves to be forced to work unless they had no choice either. Its worrying
All those cheap girls want to be here and they are not traficked for sure. Its their choice as is better to earn 40-50/ hour then 200 a month in Romania.
They choose to come to uk and work from hotels or sordid flats and to pay the maid (pimp) half of their earnings because they cant rent a flat for themselves (as they need refferences and loads of money for that) and some of them dont speak a good english and dont know/understand the british system (how to obtain NIN, get a GP, go to the GUM, etc etc).
The ones who live in nice flats and are independents are not always independent (some pimps are smarter and care for their girls, some simply dont). Few girls manage to become independent but a lot of them dont have the chance.
Having a pimp and sharing their earnings dont necessarily mean they are trafficked, they come here because they want to.
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So they want to fuck on filthy sheets with two guys watching their premises I guess and are just randomly pissed off for no reason.
I think the pimps are just moving with the times and have small groups of girls in different locations to try to stay under the radar. I think there are guys with many girls working for them but I dont think they have those girls all locked up in a secret location chained to a bed each like you see in the movies. Perhaps there are in some countries, who knows. I do think though that the "lover boy" pimp is pretty endemic now. They dont move girls around in the back of blacked out vans but they do still control and pimp for gain.
I remember a girl who worked for me for a few days left because she wasnt earning enough money. She turned up a few months later and it turned out her boyfriend had sent her back to romania as she wasnt a good earner and now had a new girlfriend working in this country. Ive had girls start to work for me in the past and then had another girl turn around and say, she is with my ex boyfriend now, he brought her here. EE guys find girls who are already HERE then slowly persuade them to get into this business. Its everywhere as far as I'm concerned.
These guys nowadays maybe are not all in the big pimp gangs that these figures are based upon but I wouldn't be surprised if the figures were still extremely high even if its a lot more individual pimps or small groups of them controlling the girls rather than the massive organised crime syndicates that are talked about.
Then you have the family pimping. Years ago when I first got into this industry and literally had no clue about trafficking/pimping I met a girl who had been brought to this country when she was 14 by her uncle and started working at that age here. She was due to return to romania when she was 23 by that time having completed her "stint" at contributing to the family finances. Her cousins had been here also and her other cousins were due to be coming along. I was horrified but she was nonchalant about it, shrugging her shoulders. She never smiled though. By the time I realised the score the parlour was long gone.
I have met two girls who were trafficked into this county under the guise of waitressing jobs only to be told when they arrived that they would be having sex with strangers for money. They were rescued and were given the choice to return home or stay here, they stayed here and stayed in the industry of their own volition.
I didn't say ALL EE girls by the way. Certain circumstances are to blatent to ignore.
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So they want to fuck on filthy sheets with two guys watching their premises I guess and are just randomly pissed off for no reason.
I think the pimps are just moving with the times and have small groups of girls in different locations to try to stay under the radar. I think there are guys with many girls working for them but I dont think they have those girls all locked up in a secret location chained to a bed each like you see in the movies. Perhaps there are in some countries, who knows. I do think though that the "lover boy" pimp is pretty endemic now. They dont move girls around in the back of blacked out vans but they do still control and pimp for gain.
I remember a girl who worked for me for a few days left because she wasnt earning enough money. She turned up a few months later and it turned out her boyfriend had sent her back to romania as she wasnt a good earner and now had a new girlfriend working in this country. Ive had girls start to work for me in the past and then had another girl turn around and say, she is with my ex boyfriend now, he brought her here. EE guys find girls who are already HERE then slowly persuade them to get into this business. Its everywhere as far as I'm concerned.
These guys nowadays maybe are not all in the big pimp gangs that these figures are based upon but I wouldn't be surprised if the figures were still extremely high even if its a lot more individual pimps or small groups of them controlling the girls rather than the massive organised crime syndicates that are talked about.
Then you have the family pimping. Years ago when I first got into this industry and literally had no clue about trafficking/pimping I met a girl who had been brought to this country when she was 14 by her uncle and started working at that age here. She was due to return to romania when she was 23 by that time having completed her "stint" at contributing to the family finances. Her cousins had been here also and her other cousins were due to be coming along. I was horrified but she was nonchalant about it, shrugging her shoulders. She never smiled though. By the time I realised the score the parlour was long gone.
I have met two girls who were trafficked into this county under the guise of waitressing jobs only to be told when they arrived that they would be having sex with strangers for money. They were rescued and were given the choice to return home or stay here, they stayed here and stayed in the industry of their own volition.
I didn't say ALL EE girls by the way. Certain circumstances are to blatent to ignore.
What you mean girls working for you?
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The poster above is no longer pimping and whilst I don't know why she's brought it up either, further discussion along these lines isn't helpful. Move on. please.
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WOW Amy if ever there was a low blow that was it. I was never a pimp I simply managed a place for a while. The girls who worked there applied for work there, no one went and got them from anywhere and no one made them do anything they didnt want to do, they chose what services they offered, what day they worked and if they even worked there.
Before that I was an escort and again Im now an escort. I have worked for agencies, parlours and indie so sorry but I have come across people with alternate experiences to the women on here who have only ever worked for themselves and only ever will
I brought it up because it was relevant to what I was explaining about the particular girl.
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So they want to fuck on filthy sheets with two guys watching their premises I guess and are just randomly pissed off for no reason.
I think the pimps are just moving with the times and have small groups of girls in different locations to try to stay under the radar. I think there are guys with many girls working for them but I dont think they have those girls all locked up in a secret location chained to a bed each like you see in the movies. Perhaps there are in some countries, who knows. I do think though that the "lover boy" pimp is pretty endemic now. They dont move girls around in the back of blacked out vans but they do still control and pimp for gain.
I remember a girl who worked for me for a few days left because she wasnt earning enough money. She turned up a few months later and it turned out her boyfriend had sent her back to romania as she wasnt a good earner and now had a new girlfriend working in this country. Ive had girls start to work for me in the past and then had another girl turn around and say, she is with my ex boyfriend now, he brought her here. EE guys find girls who are already HERE then slowly persuade them to get into this business. Its everywhere as far as I'm concerned.
These guys nowadays maybe are not all in the big pimp gangs that these figures are based upon but I wouldn't be surprised if the figures were still extremely high even if its a lot more individual pimps or small groups of them controlling the girls rather than the massive organised crime syndicates that are talked about.
Then you have the family pimping. Years ago when I first got into this industry and literally had no clue about trafficking/pimping I met a girl who had been brought to this country when she was 14 by her uncle and started working at that age here. She was due to return to romania when she was 23 by that time having completed her "stint" at contributing to the family finances. Her cousins had been here also and her other cousins were due to be coming along. I was horrified but she was nonchalant about it, shrugging her shoulders. She never smiled though. By the time I realised the score the parlour was long gone.
I have met two girls who were trafficked into this county under the guise of waitressing jobs only to be told when they arrived that they would be having sex with strangers for money. They were rescued and were given the choice to return home or stay here, they stayed here and stayed in the industry of their own volition.
I didn't say ALL EE girls by the way. Certain circumstances are to blatent to ignore.
What you mean girls working for you?
I managed a parlour for a while. There are girls on here who have worked and do work in them. How professionally they are run I have no idea but the one I was working for was highly professional and only employed girls who were here legally and in possession of their own passport/ID etc
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I understand, its good when we can help someone to start :)