It still is, ultimately, thrilling that the next US president is very likely to be a woman, and if not, a black man. I think at the end of the day, the thought of that thrill will win over, and HRC, unsatisfactory tho she is in many many ways, will get the nod. There are a lot of Republican women that will, once in the privacy of the voting booth, pull the switch for her. Which is too bad, because I think Obama's the better leader.

But damn it will be so nice to get the current dolt-in-chief and his squad of thugs, goons, and corrupt evil geniuses out of there, ANYTHING would be better, I don't what kind of melanin count or genitalia it has.

Whatever you feel about sex-work and its advertising, it is not synonymous with human trafficking and sex slavery. I should know, because of my job, and my anecdotal experience agrees with all the reputable stats I can find: there actually does not appear to be much of a human trafficking sex trade at all, at least into North America, outside of the imaginations of media frenzy-makers and the Dolt-In-Chief.

The White Slave Trade myth, while noble in its pedigree and extraordinary life span, is and always has been bogus, telling more about our fears and prejudices than it does about anything real. Just for starters, does anybody really believe that there is a huge market of American johns looking to rent a slave? Really? And the slave-owning rings publicly advertise in easy for law-enforcement types to find publications? Are we idiots?

Numbers are thrown around all over the place without any real attribution, and your alarm bells have to be set off by statements like this: "Laura Lederer, a senior State Department adviser on trafficking, told me, 'We're not finding victims in the United States because we're not looking for them.'" Right, because they are probably controlled by the satanic child abuse rings nobody ever cracked down on in the 80s, because they just wouldn't face the "facts."

The link to an atrocious over-heated story that ledes with one sex-slave brothel with four girls (which, BTW, is full of holes; just for starters the "slaves" were able to cross the street and buy a soda from time to time, and that's just the first page) does not prove a damn thing other than an overheated imagination. And it is telling that the story seems awfully preoccupied with the porousness of the US/Mexican border, Mexican corruption and secret slave-trading societies, lurid details of quasi-(faux)-lesbian "breaking girls in," and with the opinions of "faith groups."

I don't know how many of the advertising organizations were run by organized crime, and how many by self-employed women themselves. Not all sex-workers are slaves; some women do in fact take up the work for their own reasons. I bet they are celebrating this victory right now.

(No, I'm not a punter/customer, just a social worker. And yes, I have met and helped a few real breathing actual trafficked sex-workers, I'm not saying it doesn't happen. But not like this, at all.)

A woman wants to join the most massively reviled and hated occupation in the world? Good on her, but personally, I try and be a gentleman and not swear at women, and what would happen if she made it? I'd practically have to give up watching baseball at all.

I have just been put in my place by Lynn Harris linking to Glenn Sacks! And he's right, too!

OMG!

(Lynn and Glenn be damned, however, as long as DimBulb56 can keep on damning women for not being easy, I can keep on swearing at umpires. It's goddamn god given right kind of thing.)

Please don't ever include me in some kind of club with DimBulb37, it feels like being soiled by association.

Read the article, linked to from the BroadSheet post. Then tell me how reality based it is. From what I can see, not very, but maybe I am wrong and there actually are massive gangs secretly selling thousands of women to hordes of secret-keeping US johns and the only reason this is going on is that the authorities just don't care.

Or not.

Anyway plenty of sex workers are not slaves of any description. They are self-employed women (and a few men), and I don't think whatever else it may be cutting them out of advertising is exactly a celebration of female empowerment.

Though frankly, given the intertubes and basics like Craigslist, I doubt it will put much of a dent in anyone's bottom line, criminal slave masters or self-empowered sex-positive entrepreneurs or whatever.