The Sex Myth: Why Everything We're Told Is Wrong (32 page)

Leaked diplomatic cables discuss the sex-trafficking scare around that earlier World Cup. ‘Over 20 NGOs throughout Germany have received government funds to conduct dozens of trafficking
prevention and awareness campaigns.’
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The same cable discusses raids on Munich brothels in search of said trafficking victims, noting it
couldn’t find any. Another cable discusses raids, involving hundreds of police officers, in which seventy-four women were detained. ‘[P]olice findings demonstrate there has been no
substantial increase in [trafficking in persons] and that the oft-repeated figure of 40,000 prostitutes converging on Germany for the FIFA World Cup is a gross exaggeration.’
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Despite – or perhaps because of – the hype, German statistics on the total number of confirmed cases of ‘human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation’ in 2006
are readily available. For the entire country (not only sites around World Cup matches), for the entire year (not only the duration of the World Cup), what is the total? It’s five. A
monumentally unimpressive 0.0167 per cent of the predicted number that were supposed to occur during the World Cup alone.

This means one of two things: either Germany’s law enforcement can’t be bothered to do anything about crimes even when warned they are about to occur, or the predictions on sex
trafficking produced for
the delectation of the media are very far off the mark. Now, I’m no expert on German police, but I know which option I’d put my money
on.

So, the numbers don’t hold up. And they don’t even sound likely, given the size of expected crowds at events like these. Consider the 40,000 meant to have been trafficked for the
South Africa World Cup. With the expected number of fans going to the country estimated at 450,000, that just doesn’t pass the sniff test. One working girl for every eleven people at the
tournament? That’s hospitality provision on a level Premier League teams’ Christmas parties would envy.

Why were the working girls in South Africa during the World Cup the ones getting all the headlines? And was the hype about a ticking disease time bomb true?

As it happens, the claim about widespread sex tourism was refuted several months later when a UN Population Fund report showed sex workers’ activity didn’t go up at all.
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The very same scare reports about projected trafficking and disease statistics are being recycled in advance of the 2012 London Olympics, with conferences and fundraising events popping up to
‘raise awareness’. Early 2011 saw reports of the tens of thousands of women who were ‘expected’ to be trafficked into Dallas for fans of American football at the Super Bowl.
The projected numbers were identical to those supposed to have been trafficked for the World Cup in South Africa, the Ryder Cup in Wales, the 2006 World Cup in Germany, the 2004 Olympics in Athens,
and the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. In every one of these examples, the projections have neither been supported by evidence beforehand nor proved to be accurate afterwards. And yet the same stories,
the same numbers, and the usual suspects wanting money lurk behind every major sporting event of the last decade and longer.

Which is unsurprising . . . because the entire ‘World Cup’ disease publicity was part of a strategy devised by (among others) Hunt Alternatives Fund to tie international sports
headlines to hype about sex work and trafficking.

What is Hunt Alternatives Fund? It is a private foundation started in the 1980s by the daughters of right-wing US oil
tycoon HL Hunt. Hunt was a man who believed votes
should be distributed to citizens according to their personal wealth. Hunt Alternatives Fund’s multi-year campaign attacking sex work was developed with the help of Abt Associates, one of the
largest for-profit consulting firms in the world. Abt’s other recent activities include accepting a $250-million consulting contract on how to improve health services in Nigeria, and another
$121 million to look into the possibility of means-testing people on disability benefits in America.

Abt Associates’ input resulted in an action plan that outlined the approach Hunt should take in promoting the criminalisation of sex workers and clients. But rather than relying on hard
research, they had a rather more flashy campaign in mind.

Here is a sample from Hunt’s own report,
Developing a National Action Plan for Eliminating Sex Trafficking:
‘[Hunt Alternatives Fund] should seize large marketing
opportunities, such as the upcoming World Cup matches in South Africa, to create controversy on a world level and use it to draw attention to prostitution.’
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As a PR stunt, it worked. Speculative reports about tourism and prostitution were far more widely reported than the UN’s evidence-based contradiction of these
claims.

In the Hunt document these recommendations come under the heading of ‘Demand Reduction as an Effective Public Health Intervention’, or in other words, push the myth that sex workers
are responsible for STIs. But spreading rumours about disease is only one plan. Other sections cover ‘Emphasizing Sexual Exploitation of Children Versus Adults’ – so that’s
keeping the focus on child abuse, regardless of the actual issues – and ‘Establish a National Center Devoted to Combating Demand’, since these recommendations would presumably do
better with a ‘centre’ to give them legitimacy.

The Hunt/Abt strategy values political lobbying far above sound evidence. ‘With severe time and resources constraints, lawmakers should not be asked to do the groundwork and raise support.
Instead, a coalition and political advocates should present them with the issue, easily packaged and understood.’ Also, never underestimate the power of celebrity: ‘Several celebrities
are already involved or interested in
combating demand, such as Ashley Judd, Ashton Kutcher, and Demi Moore.’

The Hunt guidelines note that finding evidence to support their viewpoint might be difficult. ‘The point is that the “gold standard” usually is costly, and is not always
feasible to pursue,’ according to the document. ‘The challenge in establishing standards of evidence is in determining the level or type of evidence required to convince [those
organisations] sponsoring the programs.’ Or, in other words, find the lowest acceptable level of evidence, and pursue only that. And, if in doubt, avoid conducting studies at all: ‘No
new information is necessarily required, so there is no need to wait for new research to unfold.’

It’s possible that many of the people who oppose sex for money have the best possible, if misguided, intentions. Hunt Alternatives Fund, for instance, declares that its main aim is to
‘advance inclusive approaches to social change’.

In case there was any doubt about how Hunt Alternatives Fund feels about the people in sex work, and whether this ‘inclusive change’ extends to them, the guidelines speak for
themselves. When discussing the words that should be used to describe people having sex for money, the document recommends sticking to ‘prostituted person, sexually exploited, sex
slaves’.

In Hunt’s view, there is no way to distinguish between willing and unwilling sex workers, so why bother trying? ‘When addressing demand that drives sexual slavery, it is not possible
to separate the buyers of compelled sex from those whose participation is not due to force, fraud, or coercion.’ This assumes that no participants in sex work have any agency. That solely by
the act of having sex for money, one is rendered incapable of self-determination. That’s a ludicrous assumption, with nothing to support it.

So when the document says, ‘If the National Campaign is to be comprehensive, it will require numerous partners from diverse backgrounds engaging in many different collective
activities.’ That presumably excludes all people who have a positive experience of sex work.

The people who oppose prostitution on principle not only produce suspect research, but feel that rhetoric better suits their campaign
than facts. Looking over the list of
contributors to Hunt Alternatives Fund, one sees many familiar names:
Guardian
writer Julie Bindel, Gail Dines, Melissa Farley. Conspicuously absent is any input from women in sex work
themselves. Imagine if a similar document outlining how to tackle the international problem of sexism was signed only by men? There’d be an uproar.

Also absent are any of the numerous academics who do not demonise sex work as a precondition of their research. No independent academics have been called to give evidence to any of the recent
government committees examining prostitution.

And the pay for putting one’s name to this document is, apparently, not bad either. On Twitter I asked Julie Bindel if she found her alliance with Hunt to be a lucrative one –
‘Absolutely lucrative as fuck!’ was the reply.
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Ironic, isn’t it, for such a vocal opponent of sex work to be so pleased to be in it
for the money?

Hunt Alternatives and Abt Associates are not the only groups using this kind of approach. The Schapiro Group, a market research firm in the US, regularly produces press releases with an
anti-sex-work bias. And their publications have been used to influence US policy on sex workers and advertising.

In September 2010, the popular website Craigslist was forced to remove its adult advertising section after explosive testimony to the US Congress. Deborah Richardson of the Women’s Funding
Network, which commissioned Schapiro to conduct the study, told legislators that juvenile prostitution is exploding at an astronomical rate. And she laid the blame at the door of websites like
Craigslist.

‘An independent tracking study released today by the Women’s Funding Network shows that over the past six months, the number of underage girls trafficked online has risen
exponentially in three diverse states,’ Richardson claimed. ‘Michigan: a 39.2 per cent increase; New York: a 20.7 per cent increase; and Minnesota: a staggering 64.7 per cent
increase.’ National papers like
USA Today,
the Houston
Chronicle,
the Miami
Herald,
and the Detroit
Free Press
all repeated the dire warnings as gospel.

What is the Schapiro Group? Perhaps it’s easiest to explain that the Schapiro Group’s other main activity is conducting ‘push polls’ for conservative candidates in the
US. Push polling means
cold-calling voters supposedly to assess their political leanings in an upcoming election, with the real agenda of ‘pushing’ a particular
point of view.

Push polling is a strange business. It’s also one I’ve experienced first hand. As a poor student, I briefly worked in an establishment that used such tactics, and quit as soon as
humanly possible. That call centre used every trick in the book, from misrepresenting ourselves, to lying about our location, to asking loaded questions. One I recall in particular was,
‘Would you be more, or less inclined to vote for the Democrat candidate if you knew he was involved in money laundering?’ Of course, the man in question had never been accused of such a
thing. But the question was cleverly written to avoid a legal challenge, and also to invoke a particular response. That was the year of the surprise success of Republican House leader Newt Gingrich
and his conservative ‘Contract With America’. I was sickened to think my job had contributed to that in any way.

Considering the culture of push polling, it’s no surprise that Schapiro’s results look frightening, until you critically assess the details. As with much push polling, definitions
are stretched, and assumptions are relied upon. One study defined ‘adolescents’ as anyone up to the age of twenty-two. Another focused on ‘child sexual exploitation’ of
people one and two years over the age of consent.
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Another study estimates the number of teenagers in escorting, but look carefully – they don’t have any actual data on age. So, where do their numbers come from? Guesses of age, based
on photos in escort ads! Even they admit this method is laughably unreliable. ‘The problem is, there is no scientifically reliable previous experience on which to base the probability that a
girl selling sex who looks quite young is, indeed, under eighteen years.’ Doesn’t stop them from writing an entire report in which they do exactly that, mind.

While the information given to legislators focused on child exploitation, there was no evidence that children were being exploited on Craigslist. Rather, the issue appears to have been used as a
smokescreen to obtain the
real
desired result: eliminating consensual adult sex work. And it’s done by fudging the details and hiding behind the smokescreen of protecting children.

No one supports child sexual exploitation, but stretching the
term to include people who are legally adults is manipulative and disingenuous. It also deflects attention
from the real abusers of actual children.

Shutting down websites and spreading misinformation is undoubtedly far easier than doing the real work of stopping exploitation. Closing down adult ads on sites like Craigslist gets attention.
Hollywood stars getting their mates to front flashy ‘awareness’ campaigns gets attention. High-profile raids, high-drama invented statistics, and Congressional hearings get attention.
The real victims don’t.

But as far as Hunt Alternatives, Abt Associates, and the Schapiro Group are concerned, thin research is good enough for them.

‘There is no “other side” of the argument,’ claims the Hunt document. In spite of evidence that 60 per cent of British people think prostitution should be the choice of
the person doing it, not the government.
¹⁹⁸
‘They have no credible supporters’, claims Hunt. Who’s calling who not credible again?
When Hunt comes out of its own reports looking like just one more group promoting minimal research standards and celebrity endorsement over intellectually honest evidence.

Unfortunately for Hunt Alternatives Fund, the celebrity train does not always pull into the station as smoothly as planned. Some people who don’t need the money seem to
be in it for the credibility boost.

Hollywood stars Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher unveiled their DNA Foundation charity in 2010. The centrepiece was a barrage of viral adverts, fronted by some of the famous couple’s friends.
Justin Timberlake, Ed Norton, and Sean Penn all lent their star power to the ‘Real Men Don’t Buy Girls’ campaign.