Last week, I attended Take Back the Night rally and march (though I didn’t actually march due to my disability) held at Portland State University. Many organizations were tabling at the rally, handing out candies, pens, and (most importantly) information and resources.

One of the handout materials I found looked like this.

Here’s how it looked on the other side when I turned it over.

Four sides of this square were folded in like origami, which can be unfolded to reveal what’s inside. So I unfolded the side with “You Are…” and this is what was below it.

The message is that “you” (the person who is unfolding it) are priceless, strong, worthy, able, intelligent, survivor, street smart, resourceful, and resilient. Some word choices are a little bit strange, but okay, they are generally positive messages.

Then I unfolded the other side that says “you may experience…”:

WHAT? It appears that the handout is an outreach material for someone who is working in the sex industry, but what does “you may experience boyfriend” or “you may experience lingerie” mean? It makes no sense… and further, if they think that this list of words and phrases appeals to people who are working in the sex industry, for whatever reasons, they are clearly out of touch with the population they are trying to reach out to.

Anyone who actually does outreach or know a little bit about sex worker organizing recognize how ridiculous this handout is. They are putting these words and phrases together without having any awareness as to what specific culturally appropriate approaches they need to take for people working as escorts, or dancers, or lingerie models, or street prostitutes working the track. As a result, the handout appeals to none of the communities that it is intended to.

What is sad about this is that this handout is designed and distributed by an organization that serves victims of sexual assault and abuse, and it is one of the core members of the Portland metro-area CSEC (commercial sexual exploitation of children) protocol. This organization has also received a new funding from the City of Portland last year to double the number of victim advocates for youth who have been in the sex trade.

How can an organization that has a big program assisting youth who have worked in the sex industry be so clueless about how to outreach to them? I’m afraid that the answer is that the City is basing its funding priorities on ideology (i.e. opposition to prostitution and sex industry) rather than the actual needs of the population being served and the service provider’s competence to meet them.

Dear Trimet,

I am a LIFT paratransit rider and I am writing to express my concern about Trimet’s recent change of policy or its decision to enforce the previously unenforced policy to require LIFT riders to print their names on the back of their monthly passes and LIFT drivers to verify that the name on the pass matches the name of the rider.

The LIFT driver informed me that the change was made due to a concern that some people are sharing their monthly pass among each other, depriving Trimet of fare. I was further told that I would be reported as not having paid my fare even if I am waving a pass in their face, thereby threatening my transportation in the future, unless I write my name on the back.

I find it annoying and disturbing that Trimet would treat paying riders as thieves and free-riders until proven otherwise, but that is not my main complaint.

My main complaint is that this policy discriminates againt people with certain kinds of disabilities because people traveling on regular route Trimet buses and light rail trains are not burdened with such request. Regular bus riders could share a bus pass among themselves and they will never get caught, or asked to prove that they have actually purchased the pass.

The policy singles out paratransit riders–by definition people with certain types of disabilities–and subjugates them to an increased level of scrutiny that people who do not have these types of disabilities, even though they are equally capable of abusing their monthly passes.

If pass-sharing is indeed a serious problem, Trimet must enforce this policy equally to all of its riders, rather than singling out people with certain types of disabilities. Otherwise, Trimet should terminate the policy and stop putting paratransit riders under greater scrutiny than it does to all other riders.

Please know that I have signed my May 2011 monthly pass as “Rosa Parks,” so it will not match my real name. I will also encourage other people I know who use LIFT to sign their passes as Rosa Parks as well.

Dear *****,

I understand that Olympia community has made efforts to hold this person accountable, and they have been unsuccessful. I understand that she may be dangerous and you want to protect members of your community. But I have doubts about banning her from social and activist spaces upon arrival in Eugene.

Eugene has an organised radical and activist spaces in which enough people take sexual assault seriously. I think it’s perfectly reasonable and sensible to warn people about this individual so that people in your community don’t get hurt. But if she is banned from social spaces where people take sexual assault seriously, she would only move on to spaces that do not take similar precautions, where people will not have been warned about her history and are likely to get hurt. And if she cannot enter the Eugene activist scene where people could be warned about her history at all, she would move on to the less organised, less informed cities and communities.

I feel that community accountability is an ongoing process, and even if she has failed to make improvements in Olympia, I don’t think that she cannot be rehabilitated. By banning her from social and activist spaces, we also fail at continuing the gruesome process of community accountability. I don’t fault Olympia community for giving up on her, because they have made efforts and couldn’t continue to let her hurt members of their community. But the Eugene community hasn’t made efforts yet.

Without a commitment to taking risks and making at least some efforts to engage with the offender, believing in her humanity and capacity for change, we are no better than the prison system. Besides, banning her from every social and activist spaces in the entire world is clearly not a viable strategy, as it is impossible and she will eventually find an unsuspecting community in which she can continue to hurt many more people.

We should definitely warn members of our communities about this individual and her violent history, but we need to also give her a chance to be part of the Eugene community–not necessarily because she deserves it, but because excluding her is not the solution. As I said I do not fault the Olympia community for having to exclude her after making serious efforts to hold her accountable, but I worry that excluding her upon arrival would only push her to other cities where nobody knows her history. Community accountability can fail but we cannot fail ourselves before we even try.

Best,

Emi

I was going through my computer, and found this slide from the keynote speech at Alternatives 2006 conference, an annual gathering of mental health client/consumer self-advocates and allies funded by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a branch of the federal government (with its baggage–read “Anatomy of an Epidemic” author Robert Whitaker’s experience of being invited, dis-invited, and then re-invited by the conference organizers due to his politics).

It was at this conference my bio simply stated that I was “an advocate” without specifically mentioning what sort of advocacy I do, because words like “intersex,” “transgender,” “queer,” “sex worker,” and others were unacceptable to SAMHSA (at least under Bush administration). Anyway, here’s the slide I used for my talk, which is pretty straightforward…

So I was reading up on FBI’s Innocence Lost Initiative and “Operation Cross Country”–somewhat periodic nationwide sting operation targeting prostitution (well the goal is to target commercial sexual exploitation of minors, but a lot of adult prostitutes get caught up in it) in preparation for (you may have guessed it) my upcoming sine about the fraud that is the U.S. anti-trafficking movement. FBI does not publicly release all its data, so it’s hard to understand the full impact of these sting operations.

Below, you will see information about each of these nationwide stings that I can gather form FBI’s own celebratory press releases. I put the data into a table for my own convenience, and I thought I’d share with my readers just in case someone is interested. Data correspond to results of Operation Cross Country I thru V, plus a precursor to Operation Cross Country (labeled “0”).

Some comments:

1) If OCC II is any indication, the nationwide sweep affects adult prostitutes in far greater numbers compared to youth on the street, johns/clients, or pimps (642 total minus 73 pimps and 518 pros leaves 51 arrests unaccounted, which I assume are johns).

2) On average, OCC results in the “rescue” of one or two minors in each city where stings are conducted. Sure, that may be “one too many,” but it doesn’t strike me as an evidence for a shockingly large epidemic. Anti-trafficking groups would have us believe that there are hundreds of thousands of teenagers being exploited in the sex trade, but these stings either casts serious doubt in their claim, or FBI and local law enforcement officials are totally incompetent.

3) I’m having difficulty believing that 73 pimps were arrested for trafficking 49 minors, or 60 pimps for 52 minors, or 99 pimps for 69 minors. Are they counting pimps who control adult prostitutes? Or are they labeling friends and family members of trafficking victims as “pimps” automatically–as the legal definition of pimping includes anyone who benefit from the earning of prostitution, even if they are not the traffickers? More disclosure would help me understand this data.

4) In fact, more data overall would be helpful, for example: breakdown of arrests (youth/adult, worker/client/pimp), and what happened to each group of people after their arrest. How many “pimps” are actually minors also? How many people are arrested on drug and other charges during the sweep–which often police officers do to coerce women to testify? How many of the convictions are for pimping and trafficking, compared to johns? (FBI boasts “these convictions have resulted in lengthy sentences, including multiple 25-year-to-life sentences”–the choice of the word “multiple” leads me to think that they probably have perhaps two or three such victories…)

Does anyone know if it’s possible to obtain more detailed data, including all the above plus the breakdown of different cities? Is there any researcher (i.e. someone who has more professional credibility than I do) interested in submitting a FBI records request (and share the result with me)? Now’s the time to take advantage of your class and social status privilege!

Last July, I debunked the false claim that “the average age of entry into prostitution” is somewhere around 13, which has been in circulation among anti-trafficking groups, politicians, and media.

But that is not the only falsehood that is passed off as a fact about domestic minor sex trafficking. Another oft-repeated claim is found in the 2010 Congressional testimony by Ernie Allen, president and CEO of National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, otherwise a legitimate and reputable organization:

This “statistics” is often presented without source, or attributed to the National Incidence Study of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Thrownaway Children (NISMART-2), which has been compiled by Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Depart of Justice.

For example, “U.S. Trafficking Facts,” a document created by anti-trafficking group Love146 states:

However, NISMART-2 does not include any such information. And yet, variations of this factoid are repeated by many other anti-trafficking groups as well.

There are more, but I’ll stop here.

There are some variations: some attribute the data to NISMART-2, while others attribute it to Center for Missing and Exploited Children or National Runaway Switchboard–these two organizations don’t have any report showing this data either. Also, some groups claim that one third of runaway youth are trafficked within 48 hours, while others say it takes an average of 48 hours for someone to be trafficked, or simply that it may only take 48 hours for some to be trafficked.

Where does the factoid come from? The only document that show some actual numbers is on the website of Gracehaven House, a faith-based organization in Northwest Ohio providing “shelter, security, and rehabilitation” to female victims of commercial sexual exploitation under the age 18. On its “fact sheet” about CSEC, Gracehaven House cites another Ohio group, Huck House. The document states:

Huck House, or Huckleberry House is an organization in Columbus, Ohio that provides safe place for runaway youth. The one-third figure seem to come from the survey of its client/participant base for FY 2007, which included about 800 boys and 600 girls. Assuming that this report is accurate, here are some things to consider:

1) The one-third figure is often presented as a national data (attributed to NISMART-2, Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or National Runaway Switchboard) but it is based on a survey of participants at a Columbus, Ohio social service agency.

2) It is often claimed that one third of runaway youth are recruited into prostitution within first 48 hours, but the data do not support this. Huck House figure states that one third of girls who came to Huck House have been approached, but if all “runaway youth” are included the figure is close to 14%, not 33%.

3) That one third of girls who showed up at Huck House have been approached by a pimp does not mean that one third of runaway girls are. Here’s why:

If we assume, reasonably, that short-term or casual runaway youth (which comprise majority of runaways) are far less likely to be approached by a pimp or engage in prostitution than those who run away longer period of time or farther distances, many of the girls who are not approached by a pimp and don’t even come close to it go home (or find other arrangements) without showing up at Huck House’s door.

To illustrate this point, let’s imagine that 100 girls ran away from home in a hypothetical city or region. Imagine that 70 of them are casual runaways (i.e. low risk of being exploited), and 30 are high-risk runaways. Pimps generally approach girls in the high-risk group, so let’s say 10 out of the 30 are approached. Once the 70 casual runaways return home or find other arrangements, it leaves 30 longer-term, high-risk runaway youth who show up at Huck House.

Huck House surveys those 30 who showed up, and report that a third of its client base have been approached by a pimp. But you cannot conclude, based on this figure, that a third of all runaway youth (or just girls) are approached: we started with 100 girls, 10 of whom are approached, so the actual rate is 10%.

In short: Huck House, or other groups like it, does not serve a representative sample of runaway youth; they serve those who are part of a higher risk group. Therefore, you cannot take figures from its survey and generalize it to the entire runaway youth population.

4) Even though a third of the girls who showed up at Huck House report to have been approached by a pimp within 48 hours, only 10-15% of the girls (60-90 out of 600) at Huck House are involved in prostitution (and this includes any girl who became involved at any point, not just within the first 48 hours), according to Huck House.

In other words, it is false to claim that one third of the girls at Huck House are “forced into prostitution” or “trafficked,” as some anti-trafficking groups claim; they are simply “approached”–and at least a majority of girls are smart and empowered enough to turn them down.

Further, if we include all youth into the analysis (and there is no reason not to, because anti-trafficking groups claim that one third of all runaway youth are recruited, not just girls), it is 60-90 youth at Huck House among 1400 total. That is 4-6% of the group surveyed, far lower than the anti-trafficking groups’ claim.

None of us wants to see any number of (non-casual) runaway youth, whether 33% or 4%, having to engage in prostitution to survive on the street. But there is a huge gap between the claim that “one third of runaway youth are trafficked within the first 48 hours on the street” and the actual figure of 4-6% over the course of homelessness.

Bad factoids misinform the public about this very important issue and mislead our discussions over what to do about it. Those who traffic fake statistics and launder its true source must stop doing so.

Case in point: just a couple of months ago on this blog, I criticized GEMS for using this fake factoid on its main site. Later, in mid-March, I took a screen capture of the site, showing the line about “48 hours” myth, in preparation for my lecture at Grand Valley State University.

But when I visited the site again today, I found that GEMS had removed a line about the “one third” figure from its main site. The quote you saw earlier on this post is actually from GEMS’ ning group, because the main site no longer carries this fake factoid.

I don’t know if my criticism had anything to do with this, but good job, GEMS! Please also start verifying other equally questionable factoids on your site too! And please be brave and be more transparent about why you have removed that information, rather than just quietly removing it from the main site, because it will help other anti-trafficking groups recognize the errors they have made as well.

“Houston is hub of human trafficking”
The Houston Chronicle, 11/26/2008

“Oklahoma’s position […] makes it a hub for traffickers”
The Oklahoman, 04/15/2011

“Portland a center for human trafficking”
The Oregonian, 01/09/2011

“Las Vegas: ‘Hub’ of Human Trafficking”
Las Vegas Tribune, 04/10/2011

“California […] is a hub for both international and domestic traffickers”
Oakland Tribune, 01/09/2011

“Toledo’s reputation as a hub for enslavement of people for the sex trade”
The Blade (OH), 01/04/2009

“Chicago is a major ‘hub’ for human trafficking”
The Chicago Sun-Times, 04/23/2006

“Atlanta is the east coast hub for human trafficking”
WALB News (GA), 03/30/2011

“North Carolina’s location makes it an increasingly attractive regional hub for human trafficking”
Gaston Gazette (NC), 04/08/2011

“The city [San Francisco] is a major hub on the global trafficking network”
San Francisco Chronicle, 03/09/2007

An “economic coercion” argument often invoked by anti-trafficking/prostitution activists holds that, even though many prostitutes and other sex workers appear to be making a free choice to engage in their work without “force, fraud or coercion,” they are nonetheless victimized by the sex industry and should not be viewed as freely choosing to do what they do because they have little or no other means for self-sufficiency and are therefore “economically coerced.”

I do not disagree that freedom to choose one’s occupation is severely restricted for many sex workers as well as for others who occupy low-end of the American workforce. Under capitalism, we all have to make choices under economic constraints (unless one is super-rich), although some of us have more and better options to choose from than others do. The “choice” to engage in sex work is often (but not always) made by people who do not have very good pool of options to begin with.

But it is not useful to talk about “choice” and “free will” in abstract or absolute terms, or to equate one’s difficult decision to choose the “least bad” option available to her in a pool of bad options with “coercion” in a more traditional sense.

Instead, I suggest that we start from this simple question: “If a better opportunity or option comes up, is she free to take it?” Below is a chart demonstrating why this is a more useful approach.

I made a PDF version of the above chart available for download so that you can share it with others.

What this chart demonstrates is that we must reject the equation of so-called “economic coercion” with “force, fraud or coercion” that involve another actor (i.e. the trafficker) because there are very significant differences between the two, and conflating them leads to wrong policies and interventions that harm sex workers.

That of course does not mean that we should not address the fact that many people “choose” sex work under dire economic constraints. It just means that we need to understand the problem correctly and intervene in ways that are actually helpful rather than harmful. We must work toward reducing economic desperation among women, homeless youth, immigrants, queer people, and others by enhancing programs that ensure that everyone’s basic needs are met, and creating better and wider range of educational and employment opportunities for all.

Yes, “economic coercion” exists. But the problem is not selling and buying sex; it is the lack of options. Let’s actually address the problem, rather than depriving the “least bad options” from the already disadvantaged population.

Politicians, media, and anti-trafficking/prostitution groups repeatedly claim that the average age of entry into prostitution is 13. I’ve debunked this myth before by pointing out problems with how the number has been reached, but here’s a more simpler, common-sensical debunking.

Assuming normal distribution, mean of 13 and standard deviation of 5, here’s a chart depicting what age of entry into prostitution would look like.

As you see, you’d have to accept that there are equal number of 5 year olds and 21 year olds entering prostitution, and also that it’s more likely to enter prostitution at age 0 than at any age past age 26. If this is your view of the world, your sense of reality is severely distorted.

Yes, we read about 12, 10, and 8 year olds being rescued from forced prostitution and other forms of commercial sexual exploitation. But they are in the news precisely because they are rare. Non-commercial forms of sexual exploitation (i.e. plain old sexual abuse) is much, much more common, but it doesn’t make the news the same way.

(Of course, there is also a possibility that the distribution is not normal, which might explain why we hardly see 0-10 year olds in forced prostitution. But it would also mean that there are *huge* number of 10-13 year olds entering prostitution to compensate that, if we assume that the average age is 13, and it just isn’t true.)

A Boston-area university instructor contacted me to seek permission to distribute copies of my (very old) article, The Transfeminist Manifesto. As you can see on my “readings” page, I have instituted a licensing fee policy: anyone who wishes to redistribute my article must pay $0.10 per page per copy (because there’s no middleman, my fee is lower than $0.12 that copy shops charge for copyright clearance), or give me a good reason for me to waive the fee.

The instructor wrote that she was hoping that I would waive the fee because she would be “using it in the classroom.” I understand that many people consider this a good reason, as education is given a special moral position in our society, but I did not feel it was. Below is my response to her.

* * * * *

Hi *****,

I am sending you a printer-ready PDF file, because my purpose for instituting the licensing fee is not to prevent someone from using my article. I am granting you the permission to print and distribute copies of the article in the class, though not the PDF file itself. This file also includes a “bonus” that explains some of the backgrounds of the Manifesto.

That said, “using it in the classroom” at an institution like ***** is exactly the situation for which the licensing fee is intended. I would challenge your assumption that liberal arts education at an elite private university might somehow deserve to be subsidized by this activist and author whose income is a fraction of the tuition necessary to attend *****.

I would question further: Do students get textbooks for free because it’s for use in the classroom? Are the chairs and other equipment donated to ***** for free because they are for use in the classroom? And of course, do instructors teach the class for free? The answers are obviously “no”–why, then, are materials published and made available online by activists any different?

As you might have gathered by now, I don’t request licensing fees just because I need the money. I do so because I want members of academic institutions to consider these questions and try to build a more respectful toward and mutually beneficial relationship with activists whose work is studied. Scholars and students often rely on countless hours of uncompensated access to activists and their work for information, source material, interviews, etc. to further their careers or degrees, and yet act as if they are actually doing them a favor by paying attention to the issues. It needs to change.

As I said in the beginning, I am already granting you the permission to use the article in your classroom. But if you feel like paying (or having students pay) for licensing, please make (and encourage your students to make) donations, in lieu of the fees to: The Network/La Red in Boston.

(By the way–the article is also available, sans the “bonus”, in the anthology Catching a wave: reclaiming feminism for the 21st century. You would still have to comply with the copyright law, but you can have students find my article in libraries that way. If anyone had to pay fees for copyright clearance, I prefer that the money go toward The Network/La Red instead of some copy shop).

Best,

Emi Koyama

* * * * * (End of email)

In this case, I decided to give her the permission to use the material for free, but only after she is forced to read the above (and hopefully it made her think); I have waived fees in other instances, for example when an isolated trans student contacts me from a small college in the Midwest because she wants to educate her classmates about trans issues in a class presentation.

That’s an example of what I’d consider a good reason for me to waive the fee, because what she is trying to do is a form of activism and it matches what I wrote the article for in the first place. Teachers sometimes think of “exposing students to new ideas” as a form of activism too, but it’s also their job and I expect to be treated professionally in that context–unless of course there are other factors.