The Sex Myth: Why Everything We're Told Is Wrong (33 page)

On its face, the aim of the DNA foundation is to support efforts against forced sex trafficking. However, its remit also affects consensual sex workers. They don’t seem to mind. On
Quora.com, Kutcher contributed an answer to the question ‘Why is it so common to include voluntary prostitution in the category of sex trafficking?’ Not only did his answer reference
some of the most commonly repeated myths about sex work, one of his supporters even used me as an example!
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If there’s one thing I’m definitely opposed to, it’s being used against
my will by people who attack the sex industry. Just being mentioned in that
discussion made me feel more in need of a delousing than any experience as a call girl ever did.

Anyway the
Village Voice
published an article refuting some of Kutcher’s more flimsy claims under the heading ‘Real Men Get Their Facts Straight’.
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Kutcher retaliated by launching a tirade against the
Voice,
pressuring advertisers to pull their money because of the Backpage.com sex worker listings, which he
claimed had been used for underage trafficking (the one case that was threatened against the
Voice
was thrown out of court).
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The usual disclaimer . . . I am (as indeed all of Kutcher’s critics are) opposed to forced trafficking in any form, including child sex trafficking. But we must not let emotion exclusively
carry the day; it achieves nothing. The
Voice
hits the nail on the head with this summary of DNA’s work in their original article: ‘An emotional reaction, based on good
intentions, but grounded in bogus information.’

The problem of bogus information is this – campaigns such as Kutcher’s conflate all sex work with child sex trafficking. Approaches that do so not only encourage criminalisation
legislation that harms consenting adults, but also obscures the real victims. How? By using vastly inflated numbers for one kind of trafficking, and pretty much ignoring everything else. Actual
children being actually trafficked for actual sex are rarely, if ever, found by the kind of scattershot brothel raids and streetwalker crackdowns so many seem to consider ‘successes’ in
the anti-trafficking effort.

Kutcher, while earnest, is propagating harmful myths. The raids on brothels are not successful in stopping trafficking. They are vast wastes of time, money, and manpower. And many groups
receiving funding meant to help victims of trafficking seem instead to be picking and choosing who is worthy of their largesse.

There is undoubtedly work to be done eliminating forced trafficking of men and women for
any
kind of labour. But the approach required almost certainly isn’t the one
anti-traffickers think will work. Making sex work illegal has never been shown to eliminate or even lessen forced sex trafficking.

Kutcher’s response to the
Voice
inspired loads of his millions of followers to join in Tweeting criticism to advertisers. So far, so
‘concerned’.
And then, when the
Voice
didn’t respond directly to him, he Tweeted:

Like a lot of people, Ashton Kutcher seems to have some pretty confused ideas about sex work. To be in a position of wanting to help people, yet still falling back on uninformed
stereotypes when talking about them, is inexcusable. Someone who writes on his blog, ‘I’ve spent the last two years meeting with every expert on the issue of Human Trafficking that I
can find, reading countless books, meeting with victims and former traffickers,’ should maybe know better.
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Perhaps Ashton could have made time
for a little bit of victim sensitivity training in there somewhere?

I know a little about what it’s like to be asked to comment on issues you don’t necessarily have expertise in. Sometimes, journalists and television shows approach people like me to
provide commentary rather than, say, academics in the relevant fields. It’s unfortunate but it’s a fact of media life. And I do try, by following academic discussions and talking with
friends who are professionals in, say, sex education or the porn industry, to at least not come off as too much of an ignorant tit.

I would shudder in horror, though, to ever be described (as Moore and Kutcher have by CNN) as a ‘leading player’ in the debate around such serious issues. But maybe in a weird way
Kutcher is, with significant numbers of his followers joining in his Twitter tirade, and the man himself being promoted as somehow more of an expert on sex work than people who have devoted entire
working or academic lives to the field.

Not bad for a guy whose credentials, according to his Twitter profile, are: ‘I make stuff up.’

The well-meaning Twitter fans following Kutcher’s lead probably
don’t realise they might be being taken for a ride on the facts front. It can be very hard to
sort the real from the fake when people keep repeating made-up stuff about sex work as true.

Issues such as trafficking are hot topics for people who claim their main motivation is to help those involved. Help is a great thing. There are loads of people who could all
use a little help, in all professions and walks of life.

On one hand, many of the people concerned about the welfare of sex workers are no doubt motivated by a genuine desire to help others. Particularly those they think of as unable to defend
themselves. But the flipside of this is that charities need money to survive. As other charities have discovered in the past, sometimes the desire to have a high profile and keep the wheels greased
overtakes the benefit to the people you are trying to help.

High-profile media reports have shown how the money given from individuals’ pockets may not end up where they expect. The people who might be considered most in need are, often, at the
bottom of a very long list.

For instance, how many people supporting Bono’s high-profile charity efforts were shocked to read, in the
New York Post,
that less than $500,000 of the $15 million raised by his
non-profit organisation, the ONE Campaign, ended up in the hands of the individuals that organisation is established to help. The rest, according to the paper, was spent on other things including
black tie galas, salaries and expenses, and pricey incentives and gifts to inspire donors. For every $30 given, it was reported that only $1 went where many original donors might have hoped it
would.

A spokesman for the charity, Oliver Buston, came out to defend ONE, saying the money is used for raising awareness. ‘We don’t provide programmes on the ground. We’re an
advocacy and campaigning organisation,’ said Buston. The honourable intentions of the ONE Campaign are not in doubt but whether many donors were fully aware of this focus at the time they
gave is open to debate.

Charity funding is something of a minefield. Charities vary widely in how their money gets distributed and in how much makes it to the
purported beneficiary. While
high-drama concerns such as abuse and trafficking can pluck at the heart- (and purse-) strings, it’s interesting to examine where exactly the money comes from, and where it’s ending
up.

There is no reason to think Constellation Makers produce misleading statistics with the sole intent of abusing the public’s trust. If anything, their intentions are probably well meaning
on some level. Still, there is a motivation that goes beyond altruism: money. Researchers can study a crisis; advocacy groups claiming to address it can get grants and support; stories related to
sex and sex work sell papers.

While many people are motivated by their beliefs or by a sense that they need to be seen to be doing something, it is also true that without money, it’s pretty hard to get anything done.
You can’t further an agenda without something greasing the wheels, and it’s always worth following the money.

Charities and other groups that purport to ‘attack’ the problem of sex work and ‘save’ the victims of trafficking are little different. For all the good work they purport
to do, there is also a network of high-profile campaigns, conferences, and media-friendly PR that eats up rather a lot of the money donated – including money given by the government.

How some manage to profit from the prostitution and trafficking panics is interesting. A total of £100,000 was allocated by the government to the Poppy Project to support victims
identified by Pentameter Two – on top of the over £2 million it already received in funding and the £5.8 million overall given to its parent project, Eaves.
^203
,
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At the time of the operation, their facilities in London included thirty-five beds. Thirty-five seems rather a low
number if they were expecting the police to find thousands of trafficked women.

The credibility gap when it comes to human sex trafficking doesn’t stop at the numbers of supposed victims. The amount of money being thrown at the issue, and what it’s used for, are
also suspect. In the past decade over forty human trafficking task forces have been established in the US, using money allocated by the federal government. However, none of them were required to
collect any data, nor even prove the existence of a local trafficking problem before securing grants. It was January 2008 before these task forces were required to report any
activity to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics.
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The task forces also had very few restrictions on how their funds could be used. For instance, it would be acceptable for a task force to, say, purchase ‘designated vehicles’ and
fund ‘deputy’ positions even without a single reported victim of trafficking in the community.

In 2011, Iowa senator Chuck Grassley called for action after audits showed recipients of human trafficking grants reporting questionable costs. The audits showed that of the $8.24 million total
the Department of Justice awarded to six grant recipients, there was $2.72 million in unsupported, unallowable, or questioned costs. ‘These select individual audits signal to me that there is
a bigger problem’, said Grassley during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. ‘Before we reauthorise another dollar, we need strong oversight language included in legislation – to
ensure that failing grantees will not be rewarded with additional taxpayer dollars.’

One audit discovered that the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs in Chicago, which was awarded $2 million, spent $902,122 on salaries and $174,479 for ‘fringe benefits’ –
amounts for which they did not have appropriate authorisation. An audit carried out in 2008 found that although the Office of Justice Programs’ human grant recipients have ‘built
significant capacities to serve victims’, the programmes have not ‘identified and served significant numbers of victims’.
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In February 2011, Denise Marshall, chief executive of Eaves Housing for Women and the Poppy Project (which funds Lilith R&D, of the questionable lap-dancing statistics), handed back an OBE
she received in 2007. Marshall said it was in protest at the funding cuts her organisation was experiencing under the coalition government. ‘We will see situations where women are in danger
as a result of the cuts’, said Marshall in a newspaper interview. ‘We have always worked on a shoestring, but now that shoestring has been cut.’
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The shoestring Marshall refers to included £1.95 million of
government funding in 2010. And while coverage of Marshall returning her gong makes it sound as if all
money is being cut, the reality is that government funding makes up only some of Eaves’ funding. In 2010 their income, according to the Charities Commission website, was about £5.4
million.
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They’ve launched a new fundraising drive to recover some of the funds lost from the government grants, as well.

In 2011, it was announced that the government contract for providing services to trafficked individuals had gone from Eaves’ Poppy Project to the Salvation Army. There are concerns about
what the change will mean, as the Salvation Army’s philosophy is more faith-orientated than most people would be comfortable with. But as Nelson Jones wrote for Heresy Corner in April 2011, ‘Eaves might not disturb the peace and quiet of your local high street by banging tambourines, but their evangelical zeal is, if anything, even greater than the Sally Army’s.’
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This observation was also made in 2009, when Belinda Brooks-Gordon, writing for the
Guardian
, commented on the relationship of Eaves with the Labour government and their stated aim to ‘be recognised as one of the leading agencies on violence against women issues’. As Brooks-Gordon wrote, ‘one fears this implies corporate domination over the interests of, rather than provision of service to, women.’
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We must consider that the Salvation Army could provide services for men and for women, since after all, trafficking is not only the sex trafficking of women. And that Eaves’ facilities for trafficking victims – which contained fewer than fifty beds – were reportedly accessible only to people who contributed to police investigations. Plenty of folks have reservations about such criteria for accessing services, with good reason.