BlogGuest Susan L. (USA) : “I was a trafficked woman in Tokyo”.

Susan L., sexworker från Las Vegas, in her own words:

“…I myself entered Japan on an “entertainer’s” visa (as they’ve put it below). As a matter of fact, by most of the US admin’s definitions, I was a trafficked woman in Tokyo. Hmmm… funny thing is, I never felt trafficked!

As a matter of fact, I, like many of the other women I worked with, made incredible money, learned Japanese, and had a great time while in Japan.

I worked with women from the US, Australia, Russia, the Philippines, South Africa, England, Ireland, Germany, China, Korea, Kenya, Brazil, New Zealand, Vietnam, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Argentina, Hungary, Romania, and Japan.

I spent a total of one year there, for three months per time, four times, over three years.

The cash I sent home was amazing, and I still spent money like water while I was there (some of the best shopping in the world is in Tokyo’s 8-12-story shopping malls!). The agency I went through really looked out for us, set us up in an apartment, and were there for us should we have needed anything.

I also had been able to visit many hostess clubs staffed with Filipina women, as they were staffed and managed by a man I was madly in love with at the time (a very sexy Japanese computer geek).

I spent a lot of time speaking with several of the women, hearing about their lives back home, and how they liked life in Japan. I made friends with a few, and learned how astronomical the money they earned while in Japan was compared to anything they could earn back home.

As a matter of fact, most of them earned much more as hostesses than I did as a stripper.

What a fascinating group of women! One of the clubs I wish I had been able to spend more time in was a club staffed with gorgeous transvestites from the Philippines.

I remember one woman in particular, of whom I still have tons of photos. She was amazingly beautiful, articulate, formally educated, and spoke several languages. She loved her job at the club, and she had been saving up money to travel. I had a crush (but she only liked boys-darn!).

I am sad to think that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for these women to renew their visas and continue working as they do.

There were other clubs in Japan one could work for, and often their employee-employer relationships weren’t the friendliest. I heard some really horrible stories of a**-hole bosses who were very unkind and rude to the women who worked for them. And yes, they tried to fine them when they left the clubs to find better ones to work for. They would use manipulation and scare-tactics to try and discourage women from leaving. There were even stories of missing passports, and threats of deportation.

I am absolutely certain situations like the one described below exist. They exist in every country- I know of a few stories that make my toes curl.

The problem is that by trying (unsuccessfully) to annihilate the sex industry altogether, and making it difficult for women to gain at least semi-legitimate access to the jobs we had, they will only push this situation described below even further underground.

Why can’t these people see that? Instead of sending women like myself and the ones I worked with on the run, they should realize what a wealth of information we can be in terms of what is going on in the “underground” sectors. Make allies instead of enemies of us.

If they were really interested in addressing trafficking- true trafficking (and not just eliminating “my kind” from the planet)- they would have more sensible policies than they do.

I therefore find it very difficult to believe these people who profess to have an interest in ending trafficking are very serious about it. It would seem they are much more interested in controlling women and eliminating our willingness and ability to participate in the sex industry.

My story is a far cry from those who are truly trafficked. To name me trafficked is a tragic insult to the women who are really suffering.

While enormous resources are wasted on women like myself and my Filippina friends, women like the ones described below are slipping through the cracks.

XOXO Susan “

International Union for Sex Workers (IUSW) + other foreign activists say the same as me: Hysteria over sex trafficking = Moral Panic

Unfortunately, Swedish sexwork-activists support trafficking-paranoia while using it for own purpose,

But IUSW and all other (non-swedish) sexwork organisations & activists say the same as me:

” When feminism contributes to and promotes the moral panic about ‘trafficking’ it makes itself complicit in the increase of states’ border control, restrictions to migration, worsening migrants’ dependency, police raids in working places and deportations….”

What said  other people:
Prostitution Panic - The article below written by Professor Ronald Weitzer , was published in American Sexuality Magazine in 2006 (please click on the link above)

The growing hysteria over sex trafficking

We are in the midst of a growing, well organized campaign against the sex industry in the United States and abroad. The campaign is being led by a coalition of strange bedfellows on the left and right. Certain feminist organizations (e.g., Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, Equality Now) have aligned with evangelical and other rightwing organizations (Focus on the Family, National Association of Evangelicals, Catholic Bishops Conference) in an unprecedented war against prostitution, under the guise of fighting international sex trafficking.

The antiprostitution crusade has all the earmarks of a moral panic in terms of the various evils that are being associated with prostitution. The main claims are that (1) prostitution and sex trafficking are proliferating around the world, now at “epidemic” levels, (2) virtually everyone working in the sex industry has been coerced into it, (3) violence and exploitation are omnipresent in prostitution, (4) customers and traffickers are the personification of evil, and (5) legalization would only make the situation worse by giving the state’s blessing to a wicked institution and increasing trafficking into destinations where prostitution is legal.

Some of these claims are nothing more than articles of faith, but others are derived from “studies” conducted by a few prominent antiprostitution feminists. My review of these studies identified numerous violations of the canons of sound social science research, so serious that we can have absolutely no confidence in their arguments or conclusions (see Ronald Weitzer, “Flawed Theory and Method in Studies of Prostitution,” Violence Against Women 11, 2005). Prostitution is much more complex and diverse, both structurally and experientially, than the caricature proffered by antiprostitution authors and activists. Although we must be careful not to romanticize prostitution, research finds that many indoor workers (call girls, escort agency workers) have made conscious decisions to enter the trade, reject the notion that they are oppressed and exploited victims, are at much less risk of abuse than street prostitutes, and do not feel degraded or dehumanized by their work. With respect to legalization, some excellent research—on Australia, Nevada, and The Netherlands—shows that, under the right conditions, legal prostitution can be organized in a way that greatly increases workers’ safety and job satisfaction.

Ideologically Tainted Government Policy

The antiprostitution crusade has been tremendously successful in influencing policy and legislation over the past five years. The “findings” of the flawed studies and the claims of antiprostitution groups have been seized upon by the Bush administration and its Congressional allies to justify a major crackdown on the sex industry. This is yet another example of how ideology has trumped science in the Bush administration, but in this case the scientific community has been largely silent. Let me outline just a few of the ways in which the ideology of leading antiprostitution forces has been embraced by the government.

Exhibit A is a State Department factsheet, The Link Between Prostitution and Sex Trafficking, which proclaims: “Prostitution is inherently harmful. Few activities are as brutal and damaging to people as prostitution.” “Prostitution leaves women and children physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually devastated.” “Prostitution is not the oldest profession, but the oldest form of oppression.” These are hardly “facts” according to any impartial reading of the best social science research on prostitution.

Exhibit B is the End Demand for Sex Trafficking Act of 2005, a bill currently before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees (HR 2012 and S 397). Like the State Department’s factsheet, the bill is unequivocal in its negative portrayal of sex for sale: By fiat, it defines anyone who engages in sex for money as a “victim.” Similarly dubious is the sex trade’s imputed effect on society: “Commercial sexual activities have a devastating impact on society. The sex trade has a dehumanizing effect on all involved.” The bill condemns legal prostitution because it “fuels” trafficking: Where prostitution is tolerated, there is “nearly always an increase in the number of women and children trafficked into commercial sexual activities.” This bill covers much more than sex trafficking. Its objective is to “combat commercial sexual activities,” which are defined as “any sex act on account of which anything of value is given to, or received by, any person.” This definition appears to be broad enough to include legal pornography, whose actors get paid for sex acts, as well as legal brothel prostitution in Nevada. One wonders, also, if lap dancing qualifies as a sex act prohibited under the bill.

The End Demand bill provides $45 million over the next three years in grants to organizations and state governments to wage war on commercial sexual activity within the United States. Two-thirds of the allocation goes to law enforcement, and one-third is devoted to support services for victims. The attorney general will determine which organizations receive funding, but the bill specifically mentions programs designed to increase arrests of customers and “exploiters,” shaming customers (e.g., posting their names on websites or billboards), and “john schools,” where arrested customers undergo a day of lectures about the horrors of prostitution.

By cleverly naming the bill an antitrafficking measure, sponsors apparently hope to spin the legislation in a way that might otherwise generate opposition from civil rights groups. There has been practically no opposition to the End Demand bill so far, despite the fact that a sizeable number of Americans favor legalizing prostitution­40 percent in one national poll and 45 percent in another­and despite the growing market for pornography.

Exhibit C: Whereas the End Demand bill is largely focused on the domestic sex industry, the Bush administration has been working at the international level to change other nation’s policies on both trafficking and prostitution. Nations that have a poor record in curbing trafficking are subject to formal shaming in the State Department’s annual trafficking reports, and are also subject to economic sanctions under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.

The U.S. government has spent about $300 million in the fight against trafficking in the past four years, but the funds come with strings attached. To be eligible for U.S. government funding, any foreign NGO working on the trafficking front must now declare its opposition to legal, state regulated prostitution, and the AIDS funding law of 2003 requires that any organization working to fight AIDS must “have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking” if it wishes to receive such funding.

It is claimed that legal prostitution “fuels” trafficking, yet no evidence is provided to show that legal prostitution causes or even contributes significantly to sex trafficking. The State Department itself provides some evidence that contradicts the alleged link between prostitution and sex trafficking: Its 2005 trafficking report on The Netherlands, where prostitution is legal, states that the government “fully complies with minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking” and that the Dutch police report a “decrease in trafficking in the legal sector.” Apparently, legal prostitution is not necessarily a magnet for sex trafficking, but may instead help to reduce it via greater government oversight of the legal sector.

The U.S. Government’s position on prostitution contrasts sharply with that of several other nations—Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, etc.—which have recently either legalized some form of indoor prostitution (such as brothels) or are investigating alternatives to blanket prohibition. These governments appear to reject the notion that prostitution is inherently evil and instead have explored ways to regulate it, guided by the principle of harm reduction. This approach has also been embraced in Nevada, where legal brothels have existed for the past 35 years.

None of this is to suggest that sex trafficking is a myth. It does indeed occur and stiff punishment is warranted for traffickers who deceive, kidnap, and force people into the sex trade. Yet public policy is being driven by unsubstantiated allegations of an epidemic of trafficking throughout the world, buttressed by anecdotal horror stories. (Over the past five years, government figures on the number of victims internationally have fluctuated between 600,000 and 4 million, yet no evidence has been provided to support any of the figures.)

The claims outlined above are especially questionable in light of who the key claims-makers are—moral crusaders and a conservative administration, both of whom have a vested interest in turning the screws on the sex industry. What we have is an epidemic of shocking claims that are either impossible to substantiate or contradicted by the available evidence.