femsev:

Sex trafficking laws assume that all underage sex workers are exploited young girls who have been forced into such work by a vicious pimp. But does this actually reflect the experience of most young, domestic sex workers? Using ethnographic research from Atlantic City and New York City, Anthony Marcus, Chris Thomas, and Amber Horning find that underage sex workers have much more agency in their relationships with pimps than many assume[…]

*rubs eyes*

Yup. It’s real.

It certainly is real! This is a fabulous article: when talking about children working in the industry, it really focuses on their individuality, consent and agency.
👍

In this context, I mean “agency” as in their free, individual choice, not “agency” as I usually mean it to mean “manager/employer/market facilitator”, or “pimp” as they so crudely put it in the article. That really surprised me, the writers are usually very good at using the correct language (e.g. “relationship” instead of the clearly problematic term “exploitation”, and “underage sex worker” instead of “child rape victim”).

“
There are, of course, violent and otherwise abusive pimps: approximately
5 percent of the pimps in the pimp study described such an approach to
pimping.”

The focus on self-identification is great – really, it’s up to the manager to say whether or not they identify as violent. It’s essentialist to assume their violence status for them based on their behaviour or criminal actions.

And indeed, in Figure 1, we see only 7.4% of underage sex workers identified as having a market facilitator.
(A total of 44.2% were initiated into the sex industry by a friend or a relative, but he/she/zxe chooses not to identify as a pimp. Much like when people used to assume Screwdriver Smith was my “handler” just because he kept assigning me contracts and telling me to “do the hit, Gaspar, or the council’ll find your teeth in the next fatberg they dig out of the fucking sewer”, when he was actually my very good friend!)

At all levels, pimps were constantly faced with the danger of being
abandoned for another pimp, an escort agency, or independent work. 

It’s rare that you see the dangers faced by the managers being acknowledged. There’s always a horrific danger that they could lose some of their income!
😧

I appreciate that. I’m also glad the researchers were very positive about the overwhelming 5.6% of underage sex workers who don’t want to leave the industry. I don’t want to leave the sexualised violence industry, so it’s good to see that it represents my interests.
🙂

And I bet
all the SKERFs will argue I’m not representative of these sex workers

because I’m 35 and live in a penthouse flat in Kensington and could probably work somewhere else if I liked, but that’s my choice – there’s nothing stopping any of these children from buying a flat here too, attending an elite university (Carradine College, Oxford, in my case), and networking with employers in other industries.
In fact, Dmitry’s old flat is on the market right now for £1.2 mil. He had to move suddenly and unexpectedly, so he’s lowered the price, hoping for a quick sale. Top floor, 47 Foucault Road. Snap it up, it’s a bargain!