why an advertised happy ending massage is sexual exploitation. It's prostitution, but, isn't that a consent-based business transaction? If someone's doing it against their will, then sure, there's a problem, but I agree with the article. Banning the ads isn't going to be any kind of help for the disenfranchised sex worker who's been brought to this country in some sort of slave arrangement. If anything, it's just going to make it harder for am New York to put out a free paper.

It's much easier to regulate an industry when it is legal. As much as we may dislike prostitution, bringing it into the light is the only way to ensure the health and well-being of sex workers. Take these ads out of the local print papers and they will just increase on the internet. Shut down brothels/massage parlors and others will take their place.

NO sex-positive feminism for you, Tracy. Not yours.

Doesn't it feel like we are entering a new era of Victorian morality plays?

were this to be WOMEN seeking sex from men for pay, Broadsheet would be all for it, as in the case of women vacationing at resorts in order to procure sex services from men.

So this is really not about prudery as much as it is about maintaining the market price for men's access to sex.

Women seem very uncharitable towards men in general, this being one key area of concern. There seems to be no affection or desire for women to treat men decently or fairly. There is always this hypocritical chicanery on feminists' parts. A dishonesty leavened with deep disdain for men and their needs. It is sad that so many men out there cannot just spread their legs and get women to jump on them and to give them some love and affection, unlike the author and her female cohorts.

Maybe it is time for men to be equally uncharitable back at women. It might wake women up from engaging in their little power trips against men.

. . . to read such an article with Clark-Flory's name on it. A woman who shamelessly wrote in these pages a few months ago touting her own sexual exploits with strangers. That article was on a par with the shameless sex ads she deplores--but instead of solicitation dressed up as legitimate massage, you had debauchery dressed up in nice prose. (Don't get me wrong! I have no problem with debauchery, you get to go round only once.)

I suspect it being Friday Tracy just wanted to find something quick and easy to hand in to the teacher so she could go home.

i just can't imagine.

I think prostitution should be made legal, but right now it's not, and we all know that the great majority of massage parlors featuring Asian women are merely fronts for sex slave rings. So yeah, ban the ads, or better yet, use them to raid every single establishment that is stupid enough to advertise itself. Grab the managers and use them to go after the scumbags who supply the women. There's your happy ending.

...a retarded eleven-year-old can tell the difference between an ad for a legitimate massage therapist (hint: a state license number is a good, though not foolproof, place to start) and one for one of "those" places.

And no, banning these ads won't make human trafficking go away...but you have to wonder about a paper that accepts advertising revenue from businesses that more than likely engage in that. Whatever your thoughts on the legalization or morality of prostitution, human trafficking is slavery, plain and simple. It isn't a feminist issue so much as a human rights one.

(In New Orleans, there used to be this place right on Canal St., right downtown across from the Radisson called "V.I.P. Health Spa," advertising Jacuzzis, Saunas, and Oriental Body Rubs. It was located in a broken-down building, had all the windows blacked out, you had to ring a doorbell to get in, and was open at 3 a.m. It was there for at least five years before the building was torn down, but the "Bangkok Health Spa" and "Asian Health Club" are still right out in plain sight. The police don't need the ads at the back of the Gambit to find these places, so there must be other (cough, cough) reasons these places are still in existence...)

"we all know that the great majority of massage parlors featuring Asian women are merely fronts for sex slave rings."

Proof? Or more unsubstantiated overblown feminist rhetoric?

Try reading newspapers for awhile. It's a fine way to educate yourself about the world.

Ahh, you believe everything you read in the papers. Now I understand your "perspective" a bit better.

Right on! Always great to read your input--

Thank you too, Jimmy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/22/AR2007092201401_pf.html

Human Trafficking Evokes Outrage, Little Evidence

U.S. Estimates Thousands of Victims, But Efforts to Find Them Fall Short

By Jerry Markon

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, September 23, 2007; A01

Outrage was mounting at the 1999 hearing in the Rayburn House Office Building, where congressmen were learning about human trafficking.

A woman from Nepal testified that September that she had been drugged, abducted and forced to work at a brothel in Bombay. A Christian activist recounted tales of women overseas being beaten with electrical cords and raped. A State Department official said Congress must act -- 50,000 slaves were pouring into the United States every year, she said. Furious about the "tidal wave" of victims, Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) vowed to crack down on so-called modern-day slavery.

The next year, Congress passed a law, triggering a little-noticed worldwide war on human trafficking that began at the end of the Clinton administration and is now a top Bush administration priority. As part of the fight, President Bush has blanketed the nation with 42 Justice Department task forces and spent more than $150 million -- all to find and help the estimated hundreds of thousands of victims of forced prostitution or labor in the United States.

But the government couldn't find them. Not in this country.

The evidence and testimony presented to Congress pointed to a problem overseas. But in the seven years since the law was passed, human trafficking has not become a major domestic issue, according to the government's figures.

The administration has identified 1,362 victims of human trafficking brought into the United States since 2000, nowhere near the 50,000 a year the government had estimated. In addition, 148 federal cases have been brought nationwide, some by the Justice task forces, which are composed of prosecutors, agents from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and local law enforcement officials in areas thought to be hubs of trafficking.

In the Washington region, there have been about 15 federal cases this decade.

Ronald Weitzer, a criminologist at George Washington University and an expert on sex trafficking, said that trafficking is a hidden crime whose victims often fear coming forward. He said that might account for some of the disparity in the numbers, but only a small amount.

"The discrepancy between the alleged number of victims per year and the number of cases they've been able to make is so huge that it's got to raise major questions," Weitzer said. "It suggests that this problem is being blown way out of proportion."...