Decreasing the Demand in our Everyday Lives

Anyone who knows basic economics knows that if the demand increases then the supply has to increase. Heck, anyone with common sense can understand this.

So how can we decrease the demand for sex trafficking in our everyday lives? How can we decrease the number of women, men and children who are being forced or coerced into sex slavery?

Well let me tell you.

1. Educate ourselves on how many individuals are being exploited
2. Stop buying sex
3. Stop objectifying women which justifies buying sex
4. Stop supporting legalized prostitution

It’s true that there are women and men who aren’t being forced into selling sex. However, a majority of the individuals the Reno Police Department runs into are.

Sergeant Ron Chalmers of the RPD, who heads the Regional Street Enforcement Team, said that as many as 80 to 90 percent of the prostitutes they come into contact with are actually being exploited. This means they are making little if any money because they’re turning it in to a pimp at the end of the night.

The act of buying sex is also something that our society has deemed acceptable. It is not a biological need as some people would like to claim. Sure sexual intimacy is innate in us, but buying sex from strangers is not, especially when many of them are modern-day slaves.

Like I said, buying sex is a societal concept that we’ve turned into a norm and we justify it by treating women as objects. So what are some simple ways we can stop justifying the buying of women?

All right, I’m going to say something unpopular but it needs to be said; stop watching porn.

“As evidenced by one experiment…desensitization to the sexual objectification of women can occur quickly through repeated exposure to pornography,” according to the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology.

Even though we would all like to believe that every woman we see in porn enjoys being there, Jenna Jameson can attest that this is rarely the case. The world’s most famous and successful “porn star,” stated in her autobiography, “ The job of a porn star is not a calling – or even an option – for most women.”

So let’s stop supporting it.

The last way we can decrease the demand for sex trafficking is by ceasing to support legal prostitution. According to the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, since Victoria, Australia legalized prostitution, “Trafficking has increased to supply the new brothels.”

An investigative report by Victoria’s Age newspaper in 1999 found that the largest growth in the sex industry since legalizing prostitution was in the illegal division. The over 100 unlicensed brothels outnumbered the “legitimate” sex establishments in 1999 and had tripled in 12 months.

Therefore legalizing prostitution didn’t serve its purpose as it was supposed to, “minimize harm,” and the explosion of illegal brothels only increased the demand for sex slaves.

On the flip side of the coin, according to the American Bar Association, since Sweden criminalized prostitution and raised penalties for sex traffickers and buyers, “The National Criminal Investigation Department has received signals from Europol and national police forces in other European countries that Sweden no longer is an attractive market for traffickers.”

Bottom line? We can decrease the number of women and children who are being forced into the sex industry by refusing to buy sex and refusing to justify the buying of sex. Prostitution, legal or illegal, and pornography are not victimless and only increase the need for modern-day slaves.

Alex Mosher is a third-year journalism student at the University of Nevada. She loves writing and is passionate about serving the people in the city of Reno, Nevada. When she can do that with writing through exposing issues, it’s a win-win!

What does legalization of prostitution mean?

Legal prostitution is state-sponsored prostitution. Legal prostitution means that the state of Nevada legally permits the buying and selling of women in prostitution. Nevada’s counties collect taxes from the sales of women to men who buy them (johns or tricks).

In Nevada legal prostitution, the counties are the pimps, collecting taxes. In legal prostitution the john is welcomed as a legitimate consumer. Since we know that prostitution always harms women, the legalized buying and selling women is in effect the promotion of and profiting from women’s poverty, childhood sexual abuse, sexual harassment and sexual exploitation.

Similar in effect to legal prostitution, decriminalized prostitution is even more extreme.
It means that all laws regarding prostitution would be removed. In other words, buying a woman would be the social and legal equivalent to buying toilet paper. Prostitution in all its forms – street, brothel, escort, massage – would be legally permitted. Pimps and traffickers the world over would become Nevada’s new businessmen, Johns would be welcomed consumers.

Regardless of its legal status, prostitution is extremely harmful to those in it.

Legalization of prostitution does not decrease the physical and the emotional safety of women in prostitution. Wherever legal prostitution exists, nearby illegal prostitution increases.

There is no way to make prostitution “a little bit better” any more than it is possible to make domestic violence “a little bit better.” Prostitution is a profoundly harmful institution. Who does it harm the most? The woman who is prostituting is hurt the worst. She is hurt psychologically as well as physically. There is scientific evidence for this.

Should we arrest women in prostitution? No.

Almost all women in prostitution are there as a last resort, they don’t “choose” prostitution the way someone chooses a career as an x-ray technician.

81% of the women in the Nevada legal brothels prostitution urgently want to escape it. For information about the Nevada legal brothels based on research supported by the US State Department Office of Trafficking in Persons, please obtain Prostitution & Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections which can be ordered from amazon.com. All proceeds from the book go to Prostitution Research & Education, a 20 year-old nonprofit organization.

Let’s focus on the real predators: the johns who assume that they are entitled to buy women for sex. These are the perpetrators of sexual exploitation and abuse who should be arrested, not the women who are bought.

Let’s shut down the legal brothels and instead offer women, men and children in prostitution real choices.

Women tell us that they need stable housing, social services, medical treatment, and job training in order to get out of prostitution. That’s what they should receive – not more restrictive coercion in the legal brothels which many women describe as “little prisons.”

Myths and Facts about Nevada Legal Prostitution

Using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Need to Make the Most Money

by RJ Martin

To really be successful at pimping you have to understand Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Need—players call it the “Pyramid.”

See, the pyramid is a triangle; you know what a triangle is, right? To categorize human need you divide the triangle into five different parts, each of which represents a basic need that all human beings have, including prostitutes. The largest area of the pyramid, the part at the bottom, shows the most pressing of human needs: food, air and water, called “physiological needs.”

Everyone needs these things to survive and everybody that is alive is getting them. You probably won’t be able to find a prostitute that is not getting her needs met in this respect, at least not in America. However, at every other level of the pyramid, there exists an opportunity for you to be a pimp. Because the pimp assesses prostitute need and then finds a way for the prostitute to get her needs met.

At the second level of the pyramid is the need for safety and security. You might be able to find a way in here. The prostitute may not feel safe. She plays a dangerous game. She is unsafe from crazy tricks, from unscrupulous police, and from intimidators masquerading as “pimps” (not like you), who might beat her or smear her make-up. To get in at this level you will say something along the lines of, “I want to protect you,” but that is usually not enough. You need to combine this need with a need from one of the other levels of the pyramid.

At the third level of the pyramid are the human needs for Love and Belongingness, such as the love of family and friends. Usually, the prostitute is not getting these needs met. That’s why the easiest way to get started pimping is to fall in love with a woman who is turning tricks.

She probably has a need for love that is not getting met. The average guy on the street does not see her as a logical prospect for a love relationship and her family doesn’t love her—they probably sexually abused her when she was a little girl and then lied about it… Her only friends are other prostitutes, who by and large are dishonest, confused and needy themselves.

This is where a good pimp can make a living—if he’s got the right stuff to be a pimp. All of these women need love. A lot of them are good-looking, resourceful and funny. If you can find a way to “have feelings” for them you will be rewarded financially….

If you think you can do this, you are ready to become an elevated pimp…

Of course, if you have good theatrical skills and knowledge of the Pyramid, you might be able to provide an illusion of love—that is, to make her think that you love her. …

As you get near the top of the pyramid, the area of need is less, but it still exists and may provide a way for you to be a pimp. At the fourth level, right underneath the top, is the need for “Ego-self-esteem.” Everybody wants to feel good about themselves and that is a hard thing for prostitutes to do. They need to feel respected—it’s not as pressing a need as the need for food and water, warmth or love, but it is the kind of thing that can ruin a person’s life if they don’t get it. That is why so many working girls are addicted to drugs. They feel bad about themselves so they shoot heroin everyday to forget about it. A lot of them were abused as children, most of them, in fact, and they have been feeling bad for a long time. You, as a pimp, will understand the pathway that brought her to be a prostitute and you’ll show some understanding and sympathy. …

At the top of the Pyramid is the need for self-actualization—the need to “be all that you can be.” It’s hard to find a way in at this level but it is possible if you provide a dream for the future—a way out. You explain that what she is doing now represents something temporary; that you know she is better than this so she is just doing it until you “get your insurance settlement,” inherit some money or make it as a rapper or a rock star.

If you meet the prostitute’s needs at different levels of the Pyramid, simultaneously, you will make money. You’ve got to meet needs at the third and second levels while you are trying to find a way in at the fifth level. Then you will have a devoted woman pulling for you. You will call her your “baby girl” or “hope-to-die-woman.” Once you have that, you will enjoy the benefits of being an elevated pimp and know that it is time to expand your empire. Your hope-to-die-woman will help you to recruit new women. She will think she is your business partner.