Thank the gods that the Super Bowl is this Sunday. We can say goodbye to another year’s worth of trafficking/stripping/sex work stories related to the Big Game. But first, some gems from the last week:
PolicyMic contributor (and daughter of Jamie, CEO of JP Morgan Chase) Laura Dimon basically rewrote every Super Bowl trafficking story ever. Then a reporter from the Dallas Morning News showed up in the comments to tell her she was wrong, and an editor’s note was posted stating that erroneous information had been changed. But there’s still plenty in there!
The NYPD have already made almost 300 prostitution-related arrests because, of course, the Super Bowl equals human trafficking equals let’s arrest lots of people. The founder of the non-profit Girls Educational and Mentoring Services says that the focus on human trafficking surrounding the Super Bowl may actually be hurting victims, not helping them.
Tits and Sass co-editor Susan debunks the myth of the influx of sex trafficking during the Super Bowl in this fantastic piece for Sports On Earth.
The Super Bowl Media Day got a little a weird. This query was lobbed at Seattle Seahawk Richard Sherman: “…All of you football guys going into the strip clubs, and throwing… raining down on these strippers. I think that’s a bad example for our young ladies. How can we stop that? I think it’s a bad example that we’re setting for our young girls that they need to be strippers.” Tits and Sass would like to remind reporters that strippers do not think these footballers are setting bad examples. Strippers actually love it when wealthy football players give them money.
Plus, strippers are athletes! This Vocativ article talks to dancers preparing for Super Bowl crowds about injuries, conditioning, and the physical demands of working a big game weekend.
Here’s a profile of a stripper in her 40s who’s looking forward to working the Super Bowl crowds at none other than the Bada Bing, aka Satin Dolls in Lodi, NJ. It’s a pretty cute profile and we hope she banks! We’d buy a dance.
New Brunswick’s deputy attorney general Luc Labonte stands by the province’s decision to drop most prostitution cases, given the Canadian Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down the country’s prostitution related laws. Although the Court left the anti-sex worker laws in place for the next year, New Brunswick’s public prosecution services determined it would be “unfair to request a person to answer to charges that we now know have been deemed unconstitutional.” Public officials standing up for sex workers? O brave new world, that has such people in it.
This is a terrifying story about the deaths of eight sex workers/police informants in Jefferson Davis Parish, and the result of two years’ worth of investigative reporting on the law enforcement corruption that has not resulted in a killer being found.
Is this a fucking joke? The Street launched an “investigation,” discovered that sex workers are using Twitter (O RLY?) and notified Congress. Rep. Chris Smith (R. – N.J.) has requested to speak with US Atty. Gen. Eric Holder to initiate a “crackdown” on social media. Seriously, somebody nominate these journalists for a Pulitzer. Just imagine all of the “work” that went into their investigation.
RIP Aiche Nana, the Turkish belly dancer and stripper who inspired La Dolce Vita.
The Pope is going to regret having blessed a male stripper’s parrot when we all show up with our cats.
Did you know that January is Human Trafficking Awareness month? Club Owners Against Sex Trafficking (COAST) will be hosting seminars across the country to help strip club owners identify victims. Interesting.
Janet Mock, in the preface to videos about her experiences as a trans sex worker: “I do not believe using your body—often marginalized people’s only asset, especially in poor, low-income, communities of color—to care after yourself is shameful.”
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Kristy Althaus, runner-up in the Miss Colorado Teen USA 2012 pageant, may have lost her status as the second-best Colorado 2012 teen pageant contestant after some porn apparently featuring her emerged on the internet last week.
Police are investigating email threats to sex workers in Newfoundland, because in Canada, sex workers can go to the police when they are threatened.
Bitchflicks did a week of posts on representations of sex workers in film.
HA! The feds have to pay legal fees for the dancer who had $1 million wrongfully seized. Hey, turns out that having her tax records helped her win her case, food for thought if you stack a million singles.
Fuck you, Ed Sheeran, we hated your song about a sex worker and you’re a prick.
It would be totes adorbs to sell a couple’s dance to these two cutie-patooties.
Andy Wade (née John Hotchkiss), who may have been England’s first male stripper, has passed away at the age of 87. Wade was memorialized in a Beryl Cook painting called “Ladies Night.” “Ladies Night” is considered one of England’s most recognizable paintings.
The licensing system that exists to help regulate Edinburgh, Scotland’s sex saunas is no longer (wonder if it ever did) protecting sex workers. A new system will be developed that will emphasize harm reduction through a “holistic approach.”
Siouxsie Q., founder of The WhoreCast, juxtaposes San Francisco’s spirit of sexual freedom with the threat of working under Prop. 35 in this cover story for the SF Weekly.
Whoa. Something really suspect is going on with P411. Proceed with caution.
On Febuary 4, at 5:30 PM EST, we will be interviewing sex work activist Monica Jones LIVE. Jones is currently facing charges of “manifesting prostitution.” We covered Project ROSE’s relationship to her arrest here and Al Jazeera’s bungled coverage of Project ROSE here.
During committee hearings this week on a client-criminalisation bill in the Northern Ireland Assembly, one of the committee members alleged that pimps were controlling “their prostitutes” by Twitter. As in, sending them orders by Twitter to complete Susann Huschke’s escort survey.
Dear Tits and Sass,
I know you like to write about “sweatpants boner guy” in the strip club. However, where I dance, we’re much more afraid of “creepy Indian guys” and “molesting middle-eastern guys.” I understand this is called bigotry by some, but there’s no denying it. I didn’t grow up in a home where my parents reared me to look at all Indian and middle-eastern guys as creepy sexual assaulters either. This is something I learned from interacting with them in the strip club. Most strippers know that men from India are likely to try to assault or fuck you in the titty bar. Why can’t we talk openly and honestly about creepy Indian guys if this is supposed to be an honest look at the industry?
We don’t like to write about sweatpants boner man. We like to use the phrase, because it accurately describes a type of customer, a guy with a boner wearing sweatpants.
By far the worst customers I’ve had have been white guys. Every guy who’s ever tried to pull his dick out of his pants while I was dancing for him? a white guy. And I’ve had plenty of respectful Indian customers. So I wouldn’t say “most strippers” know anything of the sort.
I don’t know why you think it’s our job in particular to talk about the ethnicity of customers who behave badly—exactly what is the positive outcome you envision from that? A guide to racial profiling for sex workers?
Seconded. The only clients who’ve ever scared me have been white guys, and all my Indian regulars are sweeties. Scratch the surface of a sex worker who claims she’s not bigoted but refuses to see South Asian men and you’ll find someone who can’t encounter bad behavior from an individual without turning to racial profiling, plus someone who doesn’t give a shit about how their South Asian sex worker sisters and brothers feel.
Caty, you fuck your customers and you aren’t a stripper who refuses to have customers put their hands on you while you dance. Completely different situation.
Furthermore, many South Asian strippers and non-white strippers notice how Indian men behave, and comment on them as well.
That’s interesting-so you think b/c I do full service, my clients can’t violate my boundaries? Thanks for compounding your racism with lateral whorephobia.
Because race is a topic that is discussed nightly in the strip club dressing room and this site completely avoids the subject because you are white liberal isolated PC freaks from Oregon and Massachusetts. Race is a huge deal in the strip club and everybody knows it.
Such bullshit. Right, and black people tip. This site is such bullshit.
Not to give your perspective more energy than it deserves, ’cause it’s really just kind of goofy, but I’d like to point out some logical fallacies you seem to have fallen victim to here…
Appeal to consequence of a belief
Over generalization
No true Scotsman
Non-sequitur
Kind of a straw man in the sense that you’d rather blame race than your own racism for your experiences in the world
Tautology
And using “This site is such bullshit” as a (totally mature) response to people disagreeing with you… I don’t even know what that is! Childish?
Whatever world you live in, it sounds scary!!
Let it be known I only approved this racist bullshit so people could enjoy shooting kelly/wendy/whoever down for it.
Let it be known that Caty Simon and Jenny Heineman both come from wealthy white Jewish backgrounds in uber white states like Massachusetts.
Uh, you mean a lower to lower middle class (at *best*, for a few years) Russian Jewish immigrant background? I’m a scholarship kid. Classwise I have more advantages than most educationally, but I have never been “wealthy.”
But sure, let’s add some anti-Semitism to the mix, honey.
,,,I mean, is this an example of the accuracy of your racial profiling? Did you think, “oh, Simon and Heineman, obviously those kikes have money”?
…and you’re so comfortable with your identity and your argument you made up a new persona to hide behind.
Really?! That’s news to me… The wealthy part and the Jewish part and the Massachusetts part. Hahahaha! Goddess bless ya, Kelly.
SE Asian sex workers don’t like Indian men very much. OTH, they don’t like a lot of American men because they’re often considered rough, loud, and too big (and hairy). I daresay that a lot of the prejudice against Indian clients is part of the general prejudice against Indians. This is also seen by Indian sex workers often not being able to charge as much in SE Asian countries. I don’t know if traveling Indian sex workers were treated worse by their clients for this prejudice or not.
Indian culture is extremely sexist and it does come through with their attitude toward women, whether you’re walking down the street or seeing them as a sex worker. There are healthier cultural attitudes out there that make for a much more pleasant experience.
So no other strippers admit to racial profiling their customers in the club?
Oh plenty of strippers will admit to avoiding Molesters from India, it’s just most strippers have realized by now that Tits and Sass is bullshit, so they stopped reading a long time ago.
If a girl has had a bad experience with 8/10 clients of a certain enthnicity, then she will naturally feel cautious toward that demographic. And yes, I know workers who don’t like young white guys for this very reason. (where I’ve worked it’s the steroided-up white dudebros with backward caps and tribal tattoos who get avoided the most) I think on one hand it’s true that we don’t profile white guys – they are still the default. I know you should never stereotype an entire culture…but I’m not going to begrudge a stripper or FS worker who doesn’t want to see anyone from x demographic if they’ve had an awful experience with them and find it triggering. It’s amusing to me as someone from a mixed race background that when a worker says they won’t see clients from a certain ethnicity there’s a tendency for everyone to trumpet their PC credentials as loudly as possible, and it defeats the whole purpose of being anti-racist because it just comes across as white people centering themselves in the debate and trying to prove how ideologically pure they are. I may disagree with the reasons, but at the end of the day who a worker wants to see or not to see is their own business. *shrug*
I actually do profile the types of white guys you are referring to as well, Eva. I avoid them most of all. It’s just my club doesn’t get very many of them, and Molesting Indian Men are a lot more common.
Southern Whites are also a demographic that I avoid, because they are also very sexist and assaulting. Again, I get a lot more Molesters from India than Southern Whites.
Obviously a sex worker should see whoever the hell she wants to see and no other sex worker should question it. One of the way strip clubs are oppressive is b.c there’s pressure from management to put up with customers. I prob fucked up saying “refuses to see Indian men.” And I’m certainly not ideologically pure–I’ve been racist plenty of times. However, a white stripper coining the phrase “molesting Indian men” and using it repeatedly and trying to get the rest of us to agree that it’s totally cool the way she talks about South Asians? Then pouring some anti-Semitism and lateral whorephobia on top of the mix?
I agree with you there, Caty, it’s not cool & she seems to be taking pride in being obnoxious just for the sake of it, and if she thinks TaS is such “bullshit” then she sure is spending a lot of her time here!!
But the thing – as this comment thread has obviously pointed out – is that sex workers are not a monolith. Sometimes I think the discourse around sex work activism has become so impossibly politically correct that it’s almost self-defeating. I don’t quiz my co-workers on their politics, and indeed there are some who I would vehemently disagree with. But you better believe I will have their backs against any shit they might incur from clients or the wider community. It’s kind of the same as the workers who love and are inspired by “Secret Diary of A Call Girl” vs those in the hipster-hooker activist scene who pour scorn on them for liking it because it’s supposedly “problematic”. And it’s also why I’ve always been hesitant to join the activist scene, because a lot of the time people in it seem more intent on calling each other out, ie: yelling at each other & belittling each other for being problematic (there’s that word again!) than they do about taking on anti-sex worker legislation or the inherent whorephobia in the media. And the thing is(in the west anyway) it’s always cis white workers I see doing this, not transgender SWs or SWs of colour. I feel sometimes like the whole movement has become derailed somewhat by cis white women looking for cookies, when in reality we are many and varied and if we were going to discount someone every time they said something flawed, we’d end up with like maybe 3 people in the movement!
I definitely know what you mean. Being deep into the activist scene myself, I find callout culture very wearying, and it’s also easy toget infected by it and thus derailed from important policy work and basic solidarity. And it is cis white girls like me who are the main offenders. Guess the only thing we can do is remember to keep focused. Thank you for the timely reminder, seriously.
I don’t disagree that most sex workers who have a string of bad experiences with clients of one ethnicity will avoid that group in the future. But there are other ways experienced sex workers assess a situation.
Maybe the correct term to use is “behavioral profiling.” A guy (with any skin color) wearing baggy pants and a baseball cap backwards in the club probably won’t spend money and will be unpleasant. A guy in baggy gym shorts slouching low in his chair with legs spread is looking for one thing. A group of guys yelling at the game on the TV hanging around the bar are pretty much a waste of time until the game’s over.
It’s the same thing with escort work. I learned very quickly to profile someone’s likely behavior based on their emails. I was often wrong about their skin color when I saw them in person, but rarely was I wrong about their presumed behavior (which is important since I was trying to screen out bad behavior, not skin color). This isn’t an absolute standard, because my bad behavior is another escort’s shoulder-shrug.
Anyway, just wanted to toss that out.
I do believe in some form of what you call “behavior profiling,” Amanda, but for me it has nothing to do with race. Like, this morning I got a call from someone at 7 AM speaking in a fuzzy, garbled, slow fashion, saying he was in a room at the motel 6. Conclusion? Cocaine or crack or speed binge, and party on, guy, all power to you, but I don’t want to deal with your volatility and impotence. Sometimes I’ll do something similar in which I’ll quote somewhat higher prices for multi hour calls (rather than rounding down as I multiply up) to someone who gives off certain subtle signals of wealth. That kind of thing.
I’m an Indian sex worker and I find the OP incredible offensive.
I’m not sure what I can add to what Caty has said; I take on a lot of Indian clients, I have never had a problem with them. I feel most uncomfortable by clients who actually don’t share my ethnic background and making invasive assumptions because they think that all Indian whores are the same.
Actually, they sound remarkably similar to you. However, I’m not going to relate your bigotry to your race and lump all other white sex-workers with you.
I’ve said this elsewhere, but I’ve done a fair amount of dabbling in different areas of sex work and the ONLY clients I’ve ever had a genuinely scary problem with have been wealthy, older white men. The OP has nothing going for her argument but confirmation bias and the warm glow of feeling justified in her racism.