Pornography is Not All Bad

Studies have linked porn consumption to sexual aggression, problems with intimate relationships and losing one’s virginity at an earlier age.

But the influence of sexually explicit material on some risky behaviors may be more modest than previously thought.

In a new study published by the Journal of Sexual Medicine, four researchers argue that previous studies on the subject have been too narrowly focused when it comes to drawing a connection between X-rated materials and negative outcomes.

Such research has often asked some form of the same question: whether what people see will affect what people do — and the results didn’t paint porn in a flattering light. The latest study found that the connection may be less significant than other studies have suggested, though the work still provided plenty of support for the anti-pornography contingent.

University of Copenhagen’s Gert Martin Hald and colleagues conducted an online survey of 4,600 young people asking about a broad range of sexual acts, from threesomes to experience with one-night stands to prostitution. They found that among the 15-to-25-year-old participants, almost 90% of males and nearly half of females reported that they had used porn sometime in the previous year, the vast majority of which was online.

And there is some evidence that widespread access to the Internet, with its triple-X domains, may be pushing exposure up.

In 1973, for example, a study found that 84% of men and 69% of adult women had seen pornography, the majority before the age of 21. Thirty-five years later, a 2008 survey in CyberPsychology & Behavior revealed that 93% of boys and 62% of girls had encountered dirty material online before they hit age 18.

Heightened exposure, Hald found, was associated with high-risk sexual practices like accepting some kind of payment for sex. He and his team also tied porn usage to “adventurous” behaviors, like having “real-life sex” with someone they met online, which some experts believe may lead to increased rates of sexually transmitted diseases.

But the researchers emphasize that the link between porn and risky business isn’t absolute or clear-cut. For example, there may be other contributors to the promiscuous behavior, like a tendency toward thrill seeking (which, in turn, could make young people more likely to experiment with porn). Pornography is “just one factor among many that may influence the sexual behaviors of young people,” they concluded, while cautioning that the findings “should not be interpreted as an indication that the influence … is negligible, nonexistent, or unimportant.”

The results should inform educators and policymakers who may turn too quickly to the ubiquity of sexually explicit material as the primary culprit for society’s attitudes toward sex. Expanding the list of potential contributors could lead to more effective ways of curbing perilous behavior, like addressing the thrill seeking that turns sexual encounters solely into opportunities for attaining physical pleasure or engaging in “sexual exploration.” A 2008 study, for example, showed that self-control and planning ahead helped gay men to avoid careless behavior that could put their health at risk.

There is also the fact that public tolerance of sexually explicit material is increasing. A 2011 Gallup poll found a growing generational divide when it came to pornography: only 19% of people 55 and older said it was morally acceptable, compared with more than 40% of people ages 18 to 34. If opposing porn continues to lose popular support among young people, that’s one more reason to explore other avenues for promoting safe sexual practices.

1.5 Million Tourists to Burma May Lead to Spread of Prostitution

On a recent evening at a popular beer hall in Rangoon, two dozen women wearing skimpy dresses and hair extensions swayed mechanically on a stage and took turns mumbling lines of high-energy pop songs into the microphone.

The crowd — mostly Burmese men, but also a few groups of foreign tourists — drank mugs of Tiger beer and took videos with their phones.

Every once in a while, a girl would receive a feather boa — a tip from an admirer in the audience, costing about $12. The show concluded with a performer bouncing a flaming ball on her foot while jumping through a flaming hula hoop — and the doors were closed by 10 p.m.

Rangoon’s so-called “model shows” are hardly salacious affairs compared with the raunchy sex shows that have made Bangkok one of the world’s sex-tourism capitals.

But Burmese officials and human-rights groups are worried about what could come next as tourists pour into Burma after decades of isolation. In 2012, Burma received more than a million foreign tourists, up from 816,000 the year before. This year, the country is anticipating 1.5 million — a near doubling of the number of visitors in two years. While tourism is pumping much needed cash into the country — more than half a billion dollars last year — officials want to keep sex off the list of local attractions. One need only look across the border to see why: Thailand has the highest HIV rate in Southeast Asia, and Cambodia, tragically, has a thriving child sex industry.

Burmese fears are well founded. Human-trafficking networks have long operated in the country, funneling thousands of women and girls into Thailand to fuel the sex industry there, to say nothing of the many women (particularly from the impoverished border state of Shan) who voluntarily go.

Many are underage and willing to sell their virginity for high prices.

The parents and the girls themselves, and even the community, has kind of accepted that it is happening, and that’s how you can support your parents.

After Cyclone Nargis devastated southern Burma in 2008, the number of women entering the domestic sex industry in cities like Rangoon also rose dramatically

A sex industry catering to foreign tourists has been kept largely at bay, simply because Burma has had relatively few visitors to date. (Thailand, by comparison, received 22 million visitors in 2012.) But there are signs this is changing.

Andrea Valentin, founder of Tourism Transparency, which advocates responsible tourism in Burma, says she recently came across a website in Japan advertising sex tourism in the country, with a list of hotels willing to help arrange it. Hotel owners have also told her that they provide tourists with phone numbers for prostitutes when asked. “They have said, ‘Look, we have problems. We don’t know what to do because we’re a hotel, we want tourists to feel well.’”

Sex isn’t explicitly on offer at model shows, karaoke bars and massage parlors, but it’s certainly available. “Everything is happening backdoor. It’s very difficult to get any evidence that, O.K., this is a good karaoke bar and this is a bad one, but among men, they know, and sometimes the taxi drivers also know. In recent years, 13 foreigners have also been blacklisted from Burma after engaging in or attempting to engage in child sex while visiting the country. While pedophilia isn’t yet the same concern it is in Cambodia, the government doesn’t want the problem to get worse. “By learning from other neighboring countries, we feel we should start working on this now rather than later,” Colonel Win Naing Tun, a deputy commander in the Special Branch of the Myanmar Police Force,said..

In fact, the authorities have been working on the issue of sex tourism for some time. In 2012, the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism launched a new responsible-tourism policy, and published a code of conduct for tourists, for distribution by hotels and tour operators.

Meanwhile work on a master tourism plan for the government is in progress that encourages more public-awareness campaigns and a commitment from hotels, tour providers and police to confront sex tourism when they come across it.

Of course, laws and tourism plans won’t make a difference if enforcement is lax. Officially, prostitution is illegal in Burma, but the authorities tend to turn a blind eye to the profession. And when raids occur at brothels, the prostitutes are usually the ones arrested, not the owners or customers.

Sex workers suffer mistreatment at the hands of law-enforcement officials, as well. Many [officials] still take advantage of the situation, maybe they may ask money or they may threaten them.

Burma has been inward-looking for 60 years. Now they’re opening up, and they’re trying to learn all of these things. The world needs to support these things that they are implementing very bravely.

The Professional ‘Cuddler’ Who Makes $260 A Day By Inviting Strangers To Take A Nap With Her At Home

Jackie Samuel, 29-year-old, is a professional cuddler. She turned to snuggling with strangers to help pay for her studies and provide for her young son.

She can make $260 a day and cuddles with up to 30 men a week – including pensioners and war veterans.

However, her business ‘The Snuggery’ has not gone unnoticed and her college has threatened to expel her – while others have called her a prostitute.

She said: ‘I think I was born knowing how to snuggle. Snuggling is healthy, spiritual and fun.

‘I think clients come to me for all different kinds of reasons. Some of my older clients, their wives have passed away, and they just need someone to be with, like someone to experience touch with.

‘Some of the younger clients are between relationships, some are in problematic relationships, and some people are just really curious and they come to just find out what it’s going to be like.’

Jackie advertises her services online and charges $60 an hour.

She says that she has been called a prostitute over her cuddling service.

Customers can snuggle anywhere in Jackie’s house but most opt for her large double bed.

Jackie started the business to fund her studies and support her young son.

The cuddling can take place anywhere around her cottage in Rochester, New York, but most clients opt to use her large double bed.

They are banned from touching parts of her body covered by underwear, which she wears under pyjamas.

The business has done so well she has even hired another snuggling professional, Colleen.

Her apprentice has yet to take on a client by herself but has joined Jackie on two occasions in what they have termed a ‘double cuddle’.

Despite her strict rules on sexual activity, Jackie has received a barrage of emails and phone calls slamming her as a prostitute.

Jackie came up with the idea which has become so popular she has had to hire a second professional cuddler.

She added: ‘Some have said I am worse than a prostitute because they think snuggling is more intimate than sex. I’ve been told I’m monetizing love.’

One of her repeat customers, who would only give his name as Tim, disagrees with her critics.

He said Jackie’s cuddles had helped him following a bad break-up and described the sessions as ‘meditative’. However, he said he would not continue to see her while in a relationship. ‘There’s no cheating element, it’s not immoral, I just don’t think it would be appropriate’.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2227708/Jackie-Samuel-snuggle-Cuddling-makes-woman-260-day-New-York.html#ixzz2ESGshckp
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Driving Out Prostitutes From a Village in Morocco

For years, Ain Leuh, a small mountain village with its crumbling whitewashed walls was known locally as the place to go for sex. Women — some dressed in tight jogging suits, some in dressing gowns — dallied in the tiled doorways off the main square, offering a Moroccan version of Amsterdam’s red-light district.

The men deny that they were on a religious campaign, or that they are fanatics. They were tired, they said, of living side by side with drunken, brawling clients, tired of having their daughters propositioned as they headed home from school, tired of being embarrassed about where they lived.

“It reached a point after Ramadan,” said Mohammed Aberbach, 41, who helped organize the campaign to drive the prostitutes out of town, “that men were actually waiting in lines. It was crazy.”

These days the side streets are quiet. The doors, painted green and yellow, are mostly shut, though a few prostitutes remain, now trying to sell candy instead of sex. In the square, the pace has slowed, fresh chickens and slabs of meat hang for sale on hooks, and villagers take their time over displays of vegetables. Nearby, women are bent over looms making traditional Berber rugs.

The changes in Ain Leuh are being held up by some in Morocco as another triumph of the Arab Spring — testament to what can happen when ordinary citizens stand up for change and make life better for themselves.

For others, however, the events of the past year show how the more fundamentalist Islamists, though continuing to be shut out of power in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco, nonetheless manage to promote their conservative agendas — often taking the law into their own hands, and in this case threatening the prostitutes and their customers and driving away the only industry in these parts.

“The economy is in free fall here,” said Ali Adnane, who works for a rural development agency. “The girls rented. They had cash. They bought things. Some people here are really happy about the changes. But some people are not.”

Morocco has avoided much of the violence that has gripped Arab countries in the last few years. In the face of mounting protests, Morocco’s king, Mohammed VI, offered to curb his own powers and in 2011 pledged a variety of reforms. Since then, the country has adopted a new Constitution and elected a new government, led by a moderate Islamist party.

The new PM, who has refused many of the perks of his office, has a flair for mingling with the average man. But many remain frustrated over the pace of change in a country plagued by high unemployment and corruption. Ain Leuh is hardly the only village to have seen the emergence of a local committee, known as a comité, pushing for reforms of various sorts.

Exactly what happened in this village of 5,000 in the Middle Atlas Mountains, about a two-hour drive from Rabat, the capital, is in dispute. Mr. Aberbach says the Islamists never did anything illegal. The campaign, he said, largely involved demonstrations in the main square. No one threatened anybody or used violence or stood at the entrances to the village demanding identification from men who wanted to enter.

“That would be against the law,” said Mr. Aberbach, a friendly man who owns several shops here and has big plans for the future of Ain Leuh.

But others, including Haddou Zaydi, a member of the town council, say all those things, and more, took place. Sometimes, he said, the Islamists used padlocks to imprison the prostitutes in their houses after a customer had gone in. Then, they called the police.

In the past, many here say, the prostitutes would pay off the police to look the other way. Now, though, the authorities, still getting the feel for a newly elected government led by a moderate Islamist party, the Justice and Development Party, let the Islamists have their way.

Mourad Boufala, 32, who runs a cigarette and candy shop in the main square, said he was not in favor of prostitution. But he was offended by the Islamists’ methods. “The way they did it was really rough,” he said. “They hit girls and scared them. And the problem is that they offered them no alternatives.”

Mr. Boufala worries that the country is adrift, easily prey to self-appointed militias like the Islamists.

“No one is governing,” Mr. Boufala said. “The militias exist like they are the authorities.”

Repeated phone calls to local police officials were not returned.

Curiously, few people here see the campaign against the prostitutes as particularly religious. Mr. Aberbach and several other members of the Islamists frame the campaign in moral terms — and business ones. They say the name “Islamists” was attached to them because they are members of various Islamic parties, including the governing one.

They say that they consider the prostitutes victims of criminal gangs that brought drugs and human trafficking to their village. And they are determined to end the corruption that allowed such crimes to flourish in their streets.

“What we did is related to the Arab Spring because it brought the culture of speaking out,” Mr. Aberbach said.

“We could have tourism,” he added. “But we have no good roads or hotels or restaurants here. There are beautiful things around here. Waterfalls, a lot of things. But who is going to come to a village known for prostitution? It got to the point where if you were a woman you could not say you were from here.”

For the prostitutes who remain, the last year has brought hard times.

“I won’t even make 10 cents today,” said Khadija, 34, who has tried to earn a living selling cigarettes, candy bars and small toys displayed on a round table outside her door. “My neighbors are feeding me.”

“They are watching us all the time,” she added, referring to the Islamists.

Up the street, Arbia Oulaaskri, 64, said her family has been living in terror since the Islamists’ campaign began. Her house is luxurious compared with others in the village. Her living room easily seats 30, and more than 50 tea glasses are arranged on various coffee tables. She says she was never involved in prostitution and obtained her money from her family and from her daughters who live abroad and send her checks. But, she said, the Islamists carrying chains arrived at her doorstep night after night, telling her to leave.

Her son, wearing a gold lamé jacket, exhibits a room nearby that shows signs of a fire and says the Islamists did that, too. But, Mrs. Oulaaskri says, the authorities would not listen. She is facing charges related to running a house of prostitution.

“We filed a lot of complaints,” Mrs. Oulaaskri said, “but no one followed up.”

Should the Blue Film Actors Use Condoms?

by Stephanie Diani for The New York Times

Lights, Camera, Actors ran their lines on the set of a pornographic film.

First, they show each other their cellphones: Each has an e-mail from a laboratory saying he or she just tested negative for H.I.V., syphilis,chlamydia and gonorrhea.

Then they sit beside the film’s producer, Shylar Cobi, as he checks an industry database with their real names to confirm that those negative tests are less than 15 days old.

Then, out on the pool terrace of the day’s set — a music producer’s hilltop home with a view of the Hollywood sign — they yank down their pants and stand around joking as Mr. Cobi quickly inspects their mouths, hands and genitals for sores.

“I’m not a doctor,” Mr. Cobi, who wears a pleasantly sheepish grin, says. “I’m only qualified to do this because I’ve been shooting porn since 1990 and I know what looks bad.”

Bizarre as the ritual is, it seems to work.

The industry’s medical consultants say that about 350,000 sex scenes have been shot without condoms since 2004, and H.I.V. has not been transmitted on a set once.

Outside the world of pornography, the industry’s testing regimen is not well known, and no serious academic study of it has ever been done. But when it was described to several AIDS experts, they all reacted by saying that there were far fewer infections than they would have expected, given how much high-risk sex takes place.

“I don’t think there’s any question that it works,” said Dr. Allan Ronald, a Canadian AIDS specialist who did landmark studies of the virus in prostitutes in a Nairobi slum. “I’m a little uncomfortable, because it’s giving the wrong message — that you can have multiple sex partners without condoms — but I can’t say it doesn’t work.”

Despite the regimen’s apparent success, California health officials and an advocacy group, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, are trying to make it illegal to shoot without condoms. They argue that other sexually transmitted diseases are rampant in the industry, though the industry trade group disputes that.

In January, the city of Los Angeles passed a law requiring actors to wear condoms. A measure to do the same for the whole county is on the ballot on Nov 6.

Producers say the condom requirement will drive them out of business since consumers will not buy such films. Local newspapers like The Los Angeles Times oppose the ballot measure, calling it well-intentioned but unenforceable, and warning that it could drive up to 10,000 jobs out of state.

Very frequent testing makes it almost impossible for an actor to stay infected without being caught, said Dr. Jacques Pepin, the author of “The Origins of AIDS” and an expert on transmission rates. “And if you are having sex mostly with people who themselves are tested all the time, this must further reduce the risk.”

When the virus first enters a high-risk group like heroin users, urban prostitutes or habitués of gay bathhouses, it usually infects 30 to 60 percent of the cohort within a few years, studies have shown. The same would be expected in pornography, where performers can have more than a dozen partners a month, but the industry says self-policing has prevented it.

“Our talent base has sex exponentially more than other people, but we’re all on the same page about keeping it out,” said Steven Hirsch, the founder of Vivid Entertainment, one of the biggest studios.

Performers have to test negative every 28 days, although some studios recently switched to every 14.

If a test is positive, all the studios across the country that adhere to standards set by the Free Speech Coalition, an industry trade group, are obliged to stop filming until all the on-screen partners of that performer, all their partners, and all their partners’ partners, are found and retested. In 2004, the industry shut down for three months to do that.

It has had briefer shutdowns in each of the last four years.

In 2009 and 2010, no other infected performers were found. Coalition representatives said an infected woman in 2009, from Nevada, may have had an infected boyfriend, and offered evidence that a man infected in 2010 in Florida had worked outside the industry as a prostitute. The 2011 test was a false positive.

A shutdown in August came after several actors got syphilis, not H.I.V. All performers were given a choice: Take antibiotics, or pass two back-to-back syphilis tests 14 days apart.

State law in California covering these issues is vague. It requires protective gear for workers exposed to blood-borne diseases, but it was written with nurses and police officers in mind and does not mention condoms.

The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration interprets the law as requiring condoms, but says it cannot find the industry’s workplaces — most movies are shot in houses rented for a few days. Even if it does, it cannot enter without the producer’s permission or unless a performer files a complaint, which would allow investigators to get a warrant, said Amy Martin, the agency’s chief counsel.

But the industry hires only actors willing to work without condoms, so complaints are not filed.

The industry says the state’s interpretation would require all films to be shot with latex gloves, face shields and lab coats. It also says the state tolerates other industries, like boxing and football, in which performers take risks.

The Legislature has avoided making the law specific to pornography.

“No politician wants to touch the issue, because it’s about sex,” said Michael Weinstein, head of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, who has made the issue a personal crusade.

For producers, it’s really about money.

Vivid Entertainment shot with condoms for two years after a 1998 H.I.V. outbreak, and sales dropped 30 percent, Mr. Hirsch said. Producers have threatened to leave the state, taking the jobs of 1,200 actors and more than 5,000 crew members with them.

Because of court rulings, filming adult movies is legal in California, Florida and New Hampshire. Nevada, where prostitution is legal, tolerates it.

Gay pornography, by contrast, has included condoms since the 1980s, because producers assume some actors are infected and because many gay men consider forced testing an invasion of privacy.

However, that is changing as “bareback” films become more common. Some producers claim their actors are safe because they shoot in places like Slovakia, where H.I.V. rates are very low, or because they test, or because infected actors are taking antiretroviral drugs, which can reduce the risk of transmission by 96 percent.

But it remains controversial. Chi Chi LaRue, who has been producing gay pornographic movies for 28 years and shoots only with condoms, dismissed bareback producers as “industry pariahs.”

While cases of H.I.V. are rare, Mr. Weinstein and California health officials say they also want condoms required to stop other diseases.

Thirty-five diseases — including drug-resistant gonorrhea — can be transmitted sexually, and the industry tests for only four, said Dr. King Holmes, head of global health at the University of Washington.

Los Angeles County officials estimated that sex-film actors get chlamydia and gonorrhea at least eight times as often as other young adults. The industry disputes that estimate, but a new study by the county suggests that the industry’s urine testing for gonorrhea underestimates how much is transmitted through oral and anal sex.

Actors insist that they are careful because their jobs depend on it. Top performers can earn $200,000 to $400,000 a year.

“If I get gonorrhea, we have to cancel the shoot, the crew is angry at me, and that’s unprofessional,” said Stoya. “And besides, it’s gonorrhea — yecch. So I use condoms in my personal life.”

Her co-star, Mr. Deen, concurred: “If I’m having sex off camera for fun, and it’s not someone from the industry who tests all the time, then it’s condoms, condoms, condoms all the way.”

Several working and former actresses interviewed said they opposed condoms for another reason: They chafe.

Actors repeatedly stop and start while lights and camera angles are changed and different versions of scenes are shot.

“The average length of intercourse for most Americans is 10 minutes,” said Nina Hartley, a former nurse and well-known actress in pornographic films since 1984. In her work, she said, “it’s 30 to 60 minutes of thrusting. It doesn’t matter how much lube you use, it’s uncomfortable, it’s a friction burn, and it opens up lesions in the genital mucosa. I could handle two to three condom scenes a month. But actors are paid by the scene, and I couldn’t do three in a week.”

Girls Forced to Swallow Condoms Containing Drugs

“My mother decided to meet with someone – I didn’t know who that someone was. It was a man. She sold me to a trafficker when I was 14-years-old. I was forced into prostitution and forced to do labour. I was bonded and taken from place to place.”

This is DJ’s story. DJ was one of the million persons trafficked each year.  Victims like her are exploited for forced labour, organ trade and prostitution.  Taken from place to place, DJ was treated like a slave and forced to work for her master. But it did not end here.

“When the traffickers got to know that I held an American passport, they realized that they could use me to mule illicit drugs into the United States of America. I was instructed to swallow drugs and board a plane.

We went to the airport and there I met other victims. I just wanted to scream and run and tell people, but my master was right next to me and he continued to say that if I said anything he’d kill me.”

Many victims of human trafficking are used to ferry drugs across international borders. Popularly known as ‘drug mules‘, the victims are made to swallow balloons containing illicit drugs and are then transported across borders.  Once they have reached their destination, these balloons are retrieved from the victim’s body.

The balloons are made with multilayered condoms and are often force fed to the victim. The traffickers use a special machine to open the condom and put drugs into it. On many occasions, the drug mules are first given a soup laced with drugs to numb their throats. The soup is very oily and makes the balloons slide down their throat. The victim’s mouth can also  be sprayed with anesthesia, enabling them to swallow up to 120 balloons. A drug mule may be forced to swallow up to one kg of illicit drugs and this painful procedure can lead to serious injuries in the throat.

During the journey, they are given medication to inhibit bowel movement. Once they have reached their destination, they are fed laxatives and the balloons pass through their bodies. This medically dangerous way of transporting drugs  can lead and has led to the death of  persons, if and when balloons rupture within the body. Stomach acids can sometimes cause the rupture of the balloons and death is very quick.

DJ says: ”I was forced to swallow 86 balloons and taken to the airport. At the airport, one of the victims became very ill. She said to me that a balloon containing the drugs had popped in her body. She collapsed right there. It all happened so fast.

I watched the innocent girl die, it was painful and especially when you have drugs inside you.  I was crying and didn’t know whom to turn to for help. The flight attendants were unhelpful because they thought I was drunk, so I had no choice but to keep shut. I went through a lot of pain and torture. I was petrified.”

The combined impact of human trafficking and drug trafficking on the victim is immense physical abuse and mental torture.

DJ says: ”All the mental and physical abuse was more than you can imagine. Now that I have escaped, I have to do everything possible today to help change the system. “

DJ was one of the few lucky persons to have escaped from her trafficker. She is now a voice for thousands of survivors of human trafficking who have gone through similar circumstances as she did.

UNODC would like to thank Ms Rani Hong of Tronie Foundation, who shared DJ’s story with us. Ms Hong has mentored DJ through the Tronie Foundation’s Global Survivor Leadership Program.

 

Strauss-Kahn Sometimes Sought Sex with 3 or 4 women in Paris Parties

More than a year after resigning in disgrace as the managing director of the IMF, Dominique Stauss-Kahn is seeking redemption with a new consulting company, the lecture circuit and a uniquely French legal defense to settle a criminal inquiry that exposed his hidden life as a libertine.

Strauss-Kahn, 63, a silver-haired economist, is seeking to throw out criminal charges in an inquiry into ties to a prostitution ring in northern France with the legal argument that the authorities are unfairly trying to “criminalize lust.”

That defense and the investigation, which is facing a critical judicial hearing in late November, have offered a keyhole view into a clandestine practice in certain powerful circles of French society: secret soirees with lawyers, judges, police officials, journalists and musicians that start with a fine meal and end with naked guests and public sex with multiple partners.

In France, “Libertinage” has a long history in the culture, dating from a 16th-century religious sect of libertines. But the most perplexing question in the Strauss-Kahn affair is how a career politician with ambition to lead one of Europe’s most powerful nations was blinded to the possibility that his zest for sex parties could present a liability, or risk blackmail.

The exclusive orgies called “parties fines” — lavish Champagne affairs costing around $13,000 each — were organized as a roving international circuit from Paris to Washington by businessmen seeking to ingratiate themselves with Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Some of that money, according to a lawyer for the main host, ultimately paid for prostitutes because of a shortage of women at the mixed soirees orchestrated largely for the benefit of Strauss-Kahn, who sometimes sought sex with three or four women.

On October 11, 2012, Strauss-Kahn broke a long silence to acknowledge that perhaps his double life as an unrestrained libertine was a little outré.

“I long thought that I could lead my life as I wanted,” he said in an interview with the French magazine Le Point. “And that includes free behavior between consenting adults. There are numerous parties that exist like this in Paris, and you would be surprised to encounter certain people. I was naïve.”

“I was too out of step with French society,” he added. “I was wrong.”

But whether his downfall will have a lasting impact on the culture of sexual privilege and impunity for powerful men in France remains uncertain. He declined to be interviewed for this article.

This month Strauss-Kahn won a major legal battle after a French prosecutor dropped part of the investigation into an alleged sexual assault at a hotel in Washington. A Belgian prostitute recanted her earlier accusation, saying the encounter was just rough sex play, but Strauss-Khan is still a suspect for involvement in a prostitution ring.

Buoyed by that first victory, Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers predict he will triumph in France, where having sex with prostitutes is not illegal, although soliciting and pimping are.

In essence, they argue, there is nothing criminal about the sexual life of a libertine, according to Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lead lawyer, Henri Leclerc.

That defense may not satisfy the charges in a New York civil lawsuit filed by Nafissatou Diallo, who accused Mr. Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault last year in a New York hotel where she was a chambermaid. Lawyers representing both sides deny there are financial negotiations under way.

“His travels will eventually bring him to a courthouse in the Bronx, where he will face justice,” Kenneth Thompson, the lawyer representing Ms. Diallo, said in an interview.

All of Strauss-Kahn’s current legal woes in New York and France mixed together last year, with devastating results.

Strauss-Kahn’s name first surfaced in the French inquiry by chance, in May 2011. French investigators were tapping the telephones of Dominique Alderweireld, an owner of Belgian sex clubs who is also a suspect in the prostitution ring.

In one conversation between Alderweireld and a longtime childhood friend, René Kojfer, who worked at the Carlton Hotel in Lille, the men were gossiping about Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s recent New York arrest, according to lawyers involved in the case.

They then recalled a freewheeling luncheon in 2009 at a Paris restaurant called L’Aventure, and Kojfer discussed whether they could make money by offering information about that day to Ms. Diallo’s lawyer, Mr. Thompson, who was never called, the lawyers said.

At L’Aventure, Strauss-Kahn and a few friends gathered in a private basement club, carpeted in purple and black tiger stripes, with a female Belgian escort and Alderweireld’s companion, Béatrice Legrain, who recalled that lunch in an interview.

She said that Mr. Strauss-Kahn, energized by Viagra, had sex with the escort and then followed Ms. Legrain to the bathroom, grabbing her and demanding sex. But she said she rebuffed him and it “wasn’t a big deal.” Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer declined to comment.

In his own interview, Alderweireld made light of the “petit” episode at L’Aventure. His lawyer, Sorin Margulis, took a more scornful view: “It’s more an act of Louis XIV.”

The investigation into the prostitution ring in Lille ultimately swept up 10 suspects, including Strauss-Kahn. They knew each other largely through their membership as French Freemasons, according to Karl Vandamme, a defense lawyer who represents Fabrice Paszkowski, the owner of a medical supply company who played a crucial role in organizing the sex parties.

“Libertines are people like you and me: people who have a normal life,” said Vandamme, who said his client invested around $65,000 in party expenses, betting on the political rise of Strauss-Kahn.

The banker, he said, would typically arrive late for the more than a dozen parties, held over a period of about five years. There was a rhythm to the gatherings, with everyone dressed for a sit-down dinner, he said. Then over time, couples separated, “kisses were exchanged between one woman and another and between a husband and the wife of a friend” until the guests “all ended up nude.”

Hubert Delarue, the lawyer for Mr. Kojfer, also accused of involvement in the prostitution ring, predicted that most of the suspects would be cleared. Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers argue that he was unaware that some of the women were prostitutes because they were all naked by the time he arrived late, and the party hosts contend they reaped no profits.

“Prostitution was more regulated before,” Mr. Delarue said, “but it was for a certain type of population. Today among all those women, there are occasional prostitutes, and sometimes they’re top models who try to make ends meet. They aren’t miserable women on the sidewalk.”

Strauss-Kahn’s double life is not surprising to some Parisians.

“He’s not the only libertine man in the political world,” said Olivia Cattan, who leads an anti-sexism association called Words of Women and believes the case reflects a code of silence. “It is linked to power, and women are often complicit when it can guarantee them a job.”

While Mr. Strauss-Kahn awaits the outcome of his legal cases, he is shaping a new role for himself after being disowned by his Socialist party.

In the last two months he registered Parnasse, a consulting firm named for the Left Bank neighborhood of Montparnasse, where he moved after separating from his wife, Anne Sinclair, in August.

He has delivered lectures in South Korea, Morocco, England and Ukraine, offering a euro zone rescue plan for wealthy countries to share some gains from favorable interest rate spreads with poorer nations.

“He’s a man of incredible moral strength,” said Michel Taubmann, his biographer. “I saw this man resisting, avoiding a fall. Never have I have seen him desperate. He knows he is innocent and wants to move forward.”

Strauss-Kahn has pleaded publicly for the media to “leave me in peace,” but he cannot escape his notoriety.

In the works is a French play, “Suite 2806” — inspired by the episode in the New York hotel room with the housekeeper — and, separately, a movie directed by Abel Ferrara with Gérard Depardieu.

And in a tribute to the whole affair, two French entrepreneurs are promoting a saffron-flavored soda to mix for cocktails at fashionable Paris bars. They are branding it as an aphrodisiac with a memorable label: Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s initials, DSK.

Only 14,000 Registered Prostitutes in Switzerland

Geneva is one of the world’s most expensive cities, where a room in the center of town rents for $3,000 a month. Given such a steep price, what’s a working person to do? Fed up with the exorbitant rent she pays for her workspace, Geneva resident Angelina became proactive: last month, she formed a trade union for self-employed contractors like herself. The organization, the first of its kind in Switzerland, represents several hundred members of the world’s oldest profession: sex workers.

A handful of European cities have similar unions, but since Switzerland has some of the most liberal prostitution laws in the world, it is a mecca for foreign sex workers, mostly from South America, Eastern Europe, and EU nations. The Sex Workers’ Syndicate, as the new union is called, will liaise with city authorities to improve work conditions and the earning potential of Geneva’s 800 registered prostitutes.

In the past several years, the number of “official” sex workers in the country has increased to 14,000, not including specially trained “sexual assistants” for disabled people.

As other countries are cracking down on their sex industry–Amsterdam’s authorities are closing hundreds of notorious windows in its red-light district, and France’s new socialist government plans to outlaw prostitution – sex professionals are seeking better opportunities in Switzerland. Another perk is that citizens of European Union don’t need a work permit for the first three months, as long as they register with local police and comply with tax laws.

Affluent and willing customers are another incentive: according to Don Juan, an information health service for “consumers of sex,” one in five Swiss men between 20 and 65 – the second highest rate in Europe – visit a prostitute at least once in their lives.

That may be why the Swiss have taken a pragmatic approach to prostitution: legalize it and bring it out into the open, so it can be regulated and controlled to prevent exploitation, human trafficking, sexually transmitted diseases, links with criminal networks, and other problems that are rife in nations where sex commerce is forbidden.

As a result of this liberal policy, there is no stigma attached to sex work in Switzerland; in fact, it is considered a legitimate service industry, whose members pay taxes and contribute to their Social Security funds. But unlike their counterparts in other sectors, they must register with public health authorities and undergo regular health checks. “We’ve always tried to create a welcoming and safe environment for legal sex workers,” Patrick Pulh, a spokesman for Geneva’s police force said.

Angelina, who uses only one name professionally, hails from Colombia and has been plying her trade in Geneva for the past six years. She says that local prostitutes have mostly positive interactions with the law enforcement. But despite Switzerland’s protections, she says that sex work is not easy street: unscrupulous landlords charge extremely high rents for premises in the city’s red-light district of Paquis. Another common complaint is the unfair competition from undocumented foreign prostitutes who undercut the official minimum rate of $100 for basic services. “These girls charge less but also have lower standards,” Angelina claims. “The livelihood of those who work legally is impacted, and so is the quality of service clients receive from the ‘cheaper’ women.”

Similar complaints have been voiced in Zurich, Switzerland’s largest city and undisputed sex capital, where, according to police figures, there are 11 prostitutes per 1,000 residents – one of the highest ratios in the industrialized world. It is no secret that the city’s largest brothel is owned by a local politician, a member of the city council in the Zurich suburb of Uetikon. According to a recent article in the Tages Anzeiger newspaper, he charges sex workers just over $100 a day for rooms used for “erotic services.”

But Zurich prostitutes will soon have brand new digs. Next spring, the city will construct a series of drive-in garages on the outskirts of town, where sex workers can receive their clients discreetly, away from residential neighborhoods. Earlier this year, Zurich voters approved their municipal council’s proposal to build these so-called “sex boxes,” allocating $2.4 million of public funds for the project, which will be monitored by social services and offer on-site medical care.

Over in Geneva, Angelina has already used her new status as head of the union to set up an appointment with the mayor to discuss ways of improving the members’ work conditions, and especially the rent issue. She also plans to organize free French language courses for foreign sex workers “so that they can integrate and communicate with more ease.” Those are, apparently, union rules.

Should the Customers or the Prostitutes or Both Be Punished?

A Misguided Moral Crusade

By Noy Thrupkaew

September 22, 2012/ NYT

Beaten. Burned. Branded with a bar code or with a pimp’s name carved into her thigh. Thrown into the trunk of a car for punishment. Forced to provide sexual services for countless callous and violent men. This is the dominant image of young people in the sex trade, and it is fueling deeply flawed campaigns against prostitution.

Galvanized by public outrage and advocacy groups, policy makers have started to push to eradicate all prostitution, not just the trafficking of children into the sex trade. Under the catchphrase “no demand, no supply,” they advocate increasing criminal penalties against men who buy sex — a move they believe will upend the market that fuels prostitution and sex trafficking.

These tactics have gained significant momentum, prompting an initiative by the National Association of Attorneys General, law-enforcement stings and sweeps across the country, and even attempts to prosecute clients as traffickers. The problem is that the “end demand” campaign will harm trafficking victims and sex workers more than it helps them.

In a ballroom at Boston’s upscale Westin Copley Place Hotel this spring, more than 250 law-enforcement officers, advocates and survivors of the sex trade, sat riveted, some openly weeping, as they watched a video of a young woman in a dreary motel room, taking her clothes off, telling her grim life story to one uncaring, unhearing man after another. The videos’s final message: If men didn’t buy her, pimps couldn’t sell her.

For these modern-day abolitionists, ending all prostitution is the only solution. As Lina Nealon, director of Demand Abolition, told the gathered participants through tears, “Because of the work you are doing, my 2-year-old daughter and my soon-to-be-born daughter will find the idea of buying people for sex as incomprehensible as separate water fountains are to me.”

End-demand advocates’ prototypical victim — an abused teenage girl raised in the blight of the inner city and forced into the sex trade by an older man — does exist. But they disregard the fact that individuals, including boys, men and transgender people, enter the sex trade for a variety of reasons. The pimped girl who has inflamed the public’s imagination needs government services and protection, not to be made into a symbolic figure in an ideological battle to eradicate the entire sex industry, which, like many other sectors, includes adults laboring in conditions ranging from upscale to exploitative, from freely chosen to forced.

Unfortunately, despite their righteous anger, the end-demand crowd is quick to dismiss what many sex workers actually have to say. Some activists have gone so far as to brand those who criticize their campaign as “house slaves” unable to recognize their own oppression.

The end-demand crusade is premised on the idea that all prostitution is inherently exploitative. Some end-demand advocates came to their position from their work against pornography in the 1980s; others worked with a coalition of conservatives and evangelical Christians during George W. Bush’s presidency to abolish prostitution. Not surprisingly, these abolitionists ignore the legal distinctions between prostitution and human trafficking. Federal law states that trafficking for forced prostitution occurs only when a commercial sex act is induced through force, fraud or coercion, or when the person induced to perform it is under 18. Indeed, not all prostitution is trafficking, and not all trafficking — as those exploited and sexually assaulted in homes, fields and factories across our nation know too well — is prostitution.

Although it emerged out of anti-trafficking rhetoric, the end-demand campaign is actually a movement to change prostitution policy from our current legal framework — the criminalization of both buying and selling sex — to the “Swedish model,” in which selling sex is not illegal, but buying sex is a criminal offense. (Two other models exist: full legalization with government regulation and registration of sex workers, as in the Netherlands, and full decriminalization of both buying and selling sex with minimal state oversight, as in New Zealand.)

Based on an appealing, proactive vision of gender justice, the Swedish model has caught on in Iceland and Norway — even though it hasn’t panned out as planned in Sweden, where street-level prostitution dropped temporarily after the law took effect in 1999, only to climb again. Sweden’s sex workers say they are forced to rush negotiations and have to rely more on intermediaries to access wary clients. Prostitution hasn’t gone away; it’s simply gone underground.

Translating Swedish laws into an American context presents even more problems. America lacks the extensive services of Sweden’s social welfare state, which are vital to anyone leaving the sex trade. And American politicians don’t want to be seen as soft on crime or morally lax, making it unlikely that selling sex could ever be decriminalized here.

In this environment, any uptick in law-enforcement actions aimed at buyers inevitably results in increased criminalization of those selling sex. New York City’s “Operation Losing Proposition” earlier this year resulted in nearly 200 arrests; the operation allegedly targeted the demand side of prostitution, but it netted 10 individuals who sell sex as well. Attempting to implement the Swedish law in our punitive environment would most likely mean the criminalization of even more of those it’s intended to help — without a Scandinavian-style safety net for those leaving the life.

“You will see that in any country, when you criminalize both parts, the police go for the women,” said Kasja Wahlberg, a Swedish detective and the country’s rapporteur on human trafficking. According to Meagan Morris, a Colorado researcher who has studied law-enforcement approaches to prostitution, even so-called “victim-centered” approaches disproportionately hurt women, leaving them more vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation because they have criminal records, which limit their access to affordable housing and sustainable-wage jobs.

End-demand strategies could also lead to more pressure on sex workers from pimps and traffickers. “Pimps don’t accept the rationale that there’s a new law and fewer johns now,” said Paul Holmes, a counter-trafficking expert and former Scotland Yard official. “So if a girl is working 16 hours, she’ll have to work 20, and under more brutality. You’ll also drive the trade underground, which makes it more dangerous for them and more difficult for us.”

However well-intentioned law-enforcement strategies might be, they have been engineered with little attention to the wants and needs of sex workers — and to the violence many of them have faced from government employees.

A study in Illinois found that police account for 30 percent of all reported abuse, compared with just 4 percent arising from pimps. According to one young person cited in the Young Women’s Empowerment Project’s study: “I was going to meet a new john. It turned out to be a sting set up by the cops. He got violent with me, handcuffed me and then raped me. He cleaned me up for the police station, and I got sentenced to four months in jail for prostitution.”

In New York, a woman who was trafficked into the sex trade as a minor told me sometimes “the cops are the ones abusing you, taking your money, beating you up” and they offer no help “even if I get raped” by a john. “I’ve had to provide services more than once in exchange for not being arrested,” she added. “Who is really going to hold them accountable?”

THE best law-enforcement strategy to prevent trafficking into forced prostitution is not an end-demand campaign that harms current sex workers. What’s needed instead is a commitment to seriously investigate and prosecute traffickers and impose harsh punishment on those who rape and assault sex workers. Police departments also need public ombudsmen, tough internal-affairs bureaus and vigorous monitoring to combat corruption and abuse. If those in the sex trade felt comfortable reporting rape to the police rather than running from them, police departments would have a much easier time discovering cases of trafficking.

But law enforcement is only one part of the solution. Many young people living on the streets turn to “survival sex” in exchange for food or shelter — and many do so without an intermediary. “I ran away from all the drug activity at home at 11,” one woman in Chicago told me. “I had to do it just to have somewhere to sleep, something to eat.”

Nearly 90 percent of the minors profiled in a John Jay College study indicated they wanted to leave “the life” — but cited access to stable housing as one of the biggest obstacles. In New York City alone, almost 4,000 homeless youths lack stable housing, yet there are barely more than 100 long-term shelter beds to serve them.

Starting in 2008, staff members at the Queens County AIDS Center could barely get the door open on cold days: the office was packed with young people sleeping on the floor. One of them was Donna, a transgender 25-year-old who started selling sex at 13 after running away from abusive foster and group homes.

For people like Donna, ending demand for prostitution is not the answer; satisfying the demand for basic social services is. Shelter, job opportunities and a responsive and sensitive law-enforcement system are vital to those who want to leave the trade. “People call you a survivor after you leave the life,” Donna told me. “But I was a survivor when I was in it.” She added: “I didn’t really like prostituting. But then, I had no other way out.” 

Sex-Slaves Should be Permitted: Kuwaiti MP

A Kuwaiti woman who once ran for parliament has called for sex slavery to be legalised – and suggested that non-Muslim prisoners from war-torn countries would make suitable concubines.

Salwa al Mutairi argued buying a sex-slave would protect decent, devout and ‘virile’ Kuwaiti men from adultery because buying an imported sex partner would be tantamount to marriage.

And she even had an idea of where to ‘purchase’ these sex-salves – browsing through female prisoners of war in other countries.

The political activist and TV host even suggested that it would be a better life for women in warring countries as the might die of starvation.Mutairi claimed: ‘There was no shame in it and it is not haram’ (forbidden) under Islamic Sharia law.’

She gave the example of Haroun al-Rashid, an 8th century Muslim leader who ruled over an area covered by modern-day Iran, Iraq and Syria and was rumoured to have 2,000 concubines.

Mutairi recommended that offices could be opened to run the sex trade in the same way that recruitment agencies provide housemaids.

She suggested shopping for prisoners of war so as to protect Kuwaiti men from being tempted to commit adultery or being seduced by other women’s beauty.

‘For example, in the Chechnyan war, surely there are female Russian captives,’ she said.

‘So go and buy those and sell them here in Kuwait. Better than to have our men engage in forbidden sexual relations.’

Her unbelievable argument for her plan was that ‘captives’ might ‘just die of hunger over there’.

She insisted, ‘I don’t see any problem in this, no problem at all’.

In an attempt to consider the woman’s feelings in the arrangement, Mutari conceded that the enslaved women, however, should be at least 15.