demand

Japan standbar

Recently I appreciated a comment made on a post about hostesses at the Harlot’s Parlour. I wrote to the commenter and asked if he’d like to see his words in a post here, and Richard Jeffrey Newman said yes. The sex industry brims with stories like these, but they rarely reach the public’s eyes or ears. The sex industry’s confusions and ambiguities are well represented here: a commercial sex site where real people have real feelings for each other, both kindly and cruel, despite apparent roles of sex worker and client.

        Your post brings back memories of the 15 months or so that I spent as an English teacher in South Korea between 1988 and 1989, especially Ms. Park, the hostess in the standbar (karaoke) near where I lived that I and some of my fellow teachers went to regularly. We always sat at Ms. Park’s station and then, after I started going sometimes by myself, partly because I enjoyed spending time with her and partly because they let me jam with the band and making music made me happy, she and I became friends to the degree that we were able, given the language barrier and the fact that we only saw each other at her place of work for a few hours once or twice a week.

Once, she asked if she could come to my apartment when she was finished working, and I was happy to say yes. It meant a lot to me that she had asked, because it meant that she wanted whatever would happen between us when she got to my place to be something other than the commercial exchange that took place when I paid for the beer and plate of food she brought me a price that was set to include the slow dancing and flirting and surreptitious and not-so-surreptitious touching that was part of her job as a hostess. I knew that part of her job was also to have sex with men who paid her for it, but as the rules had been explained to me (and I suppose that if this explanation was wrong, then my whole comment is sort of meaningless) if a customer proposed sex to a hostess and she agreed, he had to pay for it; if she proposed sex to him, however, he did not.

I didn’t then, and I do not now, object to the buying and selling of sex per se, though I have never felt the desire to do either myself. Still, I have often wondered whether or not I would have paid if that had been the only way that Ms. Park and I could have been together. Because I wanted her as well. The fact that she asked me meant I didn’t have to find out, though as it happened she never came to my apartment either. And here, as far as I can tell is why: Ms. Park smiled at me when I said yes in a way that I will never forget; it was such a simple, happy smile. A few minutes later, however, an older Korean man walked over to us and struck up a conversation with me. He asked what I was doing in Korea, where I was teaching and made other small talk for a few minutes before he nodded in Ms. Park’s direction and asked if me if I liked her. I said yes. “She has beautiful labia, you know,” he continued, looking directly at her before turning his eyes again on me. I said something that politely let him know I was not interested in his company and turned back to Ms. Park who suddenly refused to look me in the eye. For the rest of the night, she refused to look me in the eye. I don’t know what the relationship was between Ms. Park and that man, other than the obvious, but what he said shamed her that night in a way that she was unable to recover from.

When I went back the next week, and the week after that, and after that, she was her usual self. Almost. She never brought up the question of her coming to my place again, and something told me not to ask, that if I did ask she would say yes, but that she would be saying yes not as the woman who stepped outside of the buying and selling of sex to tell me that she wanted me. Rather, she’d be saying yes as a sex worker for whom sex with me would be work, and that was something I had no desire to pay for.

I have, of course, no way of knowing if my sense of things was accurate, and perhaps I was/am romanticizing and/or rationalizing, but it was what I felt and your post made me think about it for the first time in a long time, and so I thought I’d share it here.

Richard Jeffrey Newman, September 2009

How is it feminist, if the goal is improving society and achieving more equality amongst human beings, to focus on crime and punishment? Published in 2001, this article provoked horror in some sectors. Although I wouldn’t write it exactly the same way now, I stand by its ideas. If Gender Equality is one of feminism’s goals, how can we imagine it without reducing everything to black and white, perpetrator and victim, crime, crime, crime?

Sex workers and Violence Against Women: Utopic Visions or Battle of the Sexes?

Laura Mª Agustín

Development, 44.3, 107-110 (2001)

Sexual exploitation and prostitution

In the movement to construct a discourse of ‘violence against women’, and thus to raise consciousness about kinds of mistreatment which before were invisible, the stage has been reached where defining crime and achieving punishment appears to be the goal. While it is progressive to raise consciousness about violence and exploitation in an attempt to deter the commitment of crimes, I hope to show that the present emphasis on discipline is very far from a utopic vision and that we should now begin to move toward other suggestions for solutions.

The following argument uses the example of prostitution or ‘sexual exploitation’ as an instance of ‘violence against women’, but the approach can apply to any attempt to deal with not only definitions of gender and sexual violence but with proposals to deal with them. When applied to adult prostitution, the term ‘sexual exploitation’ attempts to change language to make ‘voluntary’ prostitution impossible. For those who wish to ‘abolish’ prostitution, therefore, this change in terms represents progress, for now language itself will not be complicit with the violence involved. For those who may or may not want to ‘abolish’ prostitution but who in the present put the priority on improving the everyday lot of prostitutes, this language change totalizes a variety of situations involving different levels of personal will and makes it more difficult to propose practical solutions. When applied to the prostitution of children, the term ‘sexual exploitation’ represents a project to change perceptions about childhood. For those who believe that the current western model of childhood as a time of innocence should become the ‘right’ of all children in the world, this term is very important.

Criminalization of clients

Efforts to change sexist, racist and other discriminatory forms of language have long been a focus of projects of social justice in western societies, and the push to define ‘violence against women’ clearly forms part of this movement. Along with this, we see a strong move to have actions that fall within these new definitions proclaimed as crimes and their perpetrators punished. If prostitution is globally redefined as sexual exploitation (by ‘globally’ I mean that no distinctions are made according to whether prostitutes say they ‘chose’ sex work to any extent), therefore, all those who purchase sexual services, called usually ‘clients’, become ‘exploiters’. Read the rest of this entry »

Joylynn Chong’s Collection

Another handling of sex tourism, this time from a travel-promotion site that celebrates ‘mixed marriages’ and multiculturalism in Phuket, Thailand. Most of what we get to read on the subject are condemnations of the men without any attempt to understand the different stories and social contexts involved, so this typology of western men who marry Thai women is interesting, if biased. This is a man’s account; I’ve highlighted some suggestive bits. Note how sex-industry and non-sex-industry interactions are treated with the same even tone.

Thai Wives in Phuket

Phuket News, 28 August 2009

Here on the beautiful island of Phuket in Thailand, there are a great number of mixed Thai-Western marriages. It is turning into quite a phenomenon. Around Phuket’s schools and playgrounds it is common to see mixed-race children happily playing with the 100% Thai kids. They are usually easy to spot with fairer skin, western features and non-black hair. A whole generation of culturally diverse, multi-lingual children is growing up and will soon be quite an asset to Phuket’s tourist industry.

This phenomenon of mixed marriages in Phuket has really exploded over the last decade. Of course, the major reason is the expansion of Phuket’s tourist trade. When you have more than a million western visitors a year, it is natural that some of them will meet and fall in love with local people. Especially when the local people are so appealing. But there must be more to it than that. The tourist resorts around the Mediterranean, Caribbean and US also receive millions of foreign visitors a year. There are mixed-nationality marriages at these resorts but not thousands in a small area like there are in Phuket.

One thing stands out when you look at Phuket’s ex-pat population -the vast majority of us are men. Probably around 90% of the ex-pat population is male. That is not the case when you look at the breakdown of tourist visitors where the split is only 60-40 in favour of males. So while there are many women visiting Thailand, only a small percentage of them decide to settle here. It is probably a similar percentage to those that settle at other holiday resorts. But the men are marrying Thai women and settling here in great numbers. There is an obvious conclusion to draw. There are a lot of men coming to Phuket to actively seek wives. They are not just falling in love while on holiday - they are coming with the pre-planned intent of finding a doe-eyed Thai beauty to be their spouse.

Many men seem to be dissatisfied with their experiences of women in their home country. Society has changed rapidly in the west over the last few decades. Women have become more confident and assertive. They can be intimidating to approach and fast with a withering put-down. They are much more demanding in their relationships and expect a lot of concessions from their partners. Many men do not like it. They still want the fifties ideal of a feminine, doting wife. So they come to Thailand in search of the answer to their problem. Here, they believe they can still find women who are beautiful, feminine and attentive to their husband’s needs.

It is dangerous to generalise too much about the men who marry Thai girls and settle in Phuket. They all have their own story. Just the same, there are common patterns. You can place a lot of these men into three broad groups:

Group 1. There are those that come to Phuket for ‘normal’ reasons such as work or a break from work. It is natural that some of these people will meet and fall in love with locals. This happens all over the world. There is no doubt that Thai women are very charming so perhaps it is more common here than elsewhere.

Group 2. Then there are those who fall in love with their bargirl. The girls who work in the sex industry are good at selling themselves; it is their job. It is amazing how many men fall for a Thai girl who they only planned to take back to their hotel for the night. It is not usually the hardened sex-tourists who fall. They tend to pick up a new girl every night with no emotional attachment. It is the new guys. The men who come to Phuket for the first time, not quite knowing what to expect. They probably have an idea that they are going to pick up a prostitute but they don’t know how it works. They end up doing the GFE (girl friend experience - see Phuket Naughty Nightlife). That is picking up a bar girl and then keeping her for the entire length of the holiday. They act as if they are boyfriend-girlfriend. The girl gets plenty of time to weave her magic. She tugs the guy’s heartstrings with her life story until he is brimming with sympathy. She gives him lots of affection and by the end of his holiday, he is in love.

Group 3. Then there are those who come with the pre-planned intent of finding a wife. They have thought about it and come to the reasoned conclusion that a Thai wife would make their life better. Some of these guys will look for their new wife around the sex venues of Patong. Others want to stay away from the sex industry girls. They may try dating agencies or internet matching services. Some of them will try to meet ‘good’ Thai women away from the tourist resorts. Their approaches may vary but the conclusion is the same - they think a life in Phuket with a Thai wife would be better than their current life back home.

Whatever the reasons, the mixed Thai-Western marriage is now an established part of Phuket’s scenery. Not all of these Western men find their dream wife. Many of these marriages run into problems but that is true of marriages the world over. There can be extra problems related to marriages between people from different cultures. Still a lot of western men are very happy with their choice.

I notice that more of these reports from around the world are asking pimps for information, particularly about money issues. The voice of the pimp usually brags, claims terrific success, high earnings. Sex workers sound like passive objects indeed. Take, for example, the report from Malaysia. But rather than discount everything these businessmen say, I listen to the logistical information they provide. Note in this story about Beirut how arrangements are made between tourists and sex workers - not so different from those mentioned in a recent post about seamen, ships in port and party girls. Note, too, that the first sex tourist mentioned is a young Saudi woman who enjoys freedom and night life in Beirut: no mention of paying for sex in her case.

The concept of sex tourism is another that gets thrown around without much investigation about what it means in specific circumstances. Many people on holiday feel like experimenting, want to go wild, enjoy breaking their hometown’s sexual norms. Paying may be involved, but payments may be made to guides, translators and natives who present as pick-ups. To say sex tourist is to imply that someone conspired to travel abroad for the express purpose of having sex; more often tourists buy all sorts of services, sometimes including sex, and sometimes not getting what they bargained for.

I talked not long ago about different prices for sex workers from different ethnic groups, in relation to a sign in Hong Kong. This issue arises here, too.

Beirut’s seamy side offers sex and fun for Arab tourists

22 August 2009, dpa

Beirut: On the surface, the Mediterranean coastal city of Beirut is an upmarket tourist destination, offering Arab tourists good weather, good food, and good times. But beyond the tables heavy with food and the shining lights, Beirut’s greatest attraction is sex. Arab tourists flock in the thousands to Lebanon from Gulf countries every summer. More and more, Arab men seem to be attracted by the growing opportunities to engage in sex tourism.

Lebanon has long been known to cater to all desires: a place where Arab tourists can break taboos they must contend with in their home countries. Some just want some freedom. Hind, an 18-year-old Saudi girl, is spending her summer in Lebanon, enjoying the chance to show off her striking red lipstick, large black eyes and black veil. She cruises in her three-wheel all-terrain vehicle at midnight in the overcrowded main streets of Aley, a town 30 kilometres from Beirut, where most of the cafes and restaurants are packed with Gulf tourists and Lebanese expatriates.  “For me this is total freedom, I can meet people and enjoy the night life as well,” Hind told the German Press Agency dpa.

But much of the growing tourism industry is still focused on men interested in sex. One man from Saudi Arabia, who requested not to be identified told dpa, “in Beirut there is good life, good weather, good service and most of all beautiful girls.” Lebanese women - with their outgoing characters, love of life and, most of all, their trendy European looks - have in recent years become central to attracting more Arab tourists into the country.

One of the hottest spots for such tourism is Maameltein, the red- light district of Lebanon, 20 kilometres north of Beirut. It’s a place where Arab tourists can watch beautiful women from Belarus, Ukraine, and Romania performing naked on stage. A night out with one of the dancers can cost 1,000 dollars.

One pimp in Maameltein, who asked to be identified as Carlos, told dpa that there’s no shortage of women, either local or from Europe, in Maameltein. ‘The rates vary, the Eastern European girls are the most highly paid, Lebanese come next, and then Iraqis,’ Carlos said. ‘During the summer our main clients are men from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf states, while in winter we have many Lebanese clients,’ he said. In his late 40s, Carlos is often described as the best pimp in the district, catering to a clientele of mostly rich Saudi men.

Touring Maameltein with Carlos, one can see dozens of cars packed with young and middle-aged Gulf tourists cruising the area to get what Carlos describes as a ‘good catch.’ During the drive, Carlos receives calls from his clients. ‘My friend, I need three Ukrainian and one Lebanese for tonight to come to a party at my residence,’ Carlos quoted the caller, whom he said was from Saudi Arabia. This would cost ‘between 5,000 and 6,000 dollars per night because this is delivery to the residence,’ he said, puffing a large cigar.

Elsewhere, many of the women are Iraqis who have fled their wartorn country and discovered prostitution as an easy way to earn money. ‘I fled to Lebanon after the war in Iraq, with my mother and sister after my father and two brothers were killed,’ said one woman who wanted to be identified as Noura. ‘We were without money, so we started working here.’ Noura, her mother and sister work in three different bars. I know this is not a good job but we want to live and this is the easiest way to earn a living,’ she said, waving goodbye as her client arrived.

Noura’s pimp, who asked to be identified as Kamal, said Iraqi women find that ‘this is their only means of survival, especially if they have no other training or skills in which to support themselves.’ Asked the rate for an Iraqi woman, Kamal says: ‘If they are virgins and it is their first time, I can get a good price: between 1,000 and 1,500 dollars. If they are experienced, then it’s between 400 and 500 dollars.’ As for Lebanese women, ‘we sell them only to foreign men for fear that one day their families would know about their secret job,’ added Kamal. ‘I can tell you this has been a good season this year for us here,’ Kamal said as he drove away.

Prostitution in Lebanon is practised undercover after a 1998 law forbidding brothels. Legal licenses are limited to places offering sex shows. Read the rest of this entry »

The tradition of inviting prostitutes onto ships at anchor is old. Nowadays, many of these invitations apply to ships anchored some distance from actual ports. Migration regulations being what they are, many seamen cannot go ashore - visas might never be granted or be too much trouble to try to apply for. Therefore, it’s common for recreation to be brought on board. A few years back I visited the Caribbean coasts of Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Colombia, where I met people who try to make money when ships arrive and seamen want to party. Someone on the ship rings up a contact on shore who puts out the call to meet at a certain small boat that will sail out to the side of the freighter. A lot of these are young women, some are young men, some are older and a lot of them are poor. Climbing up the precarious rope ladder above the sea onto the deck is a necessary requirement.

Parties last days, fun is had by some, money is paid to some, and sometimes these groups overlap. A lot of it is about drink, drugs, food and music. Most people who board ships to share leave with sailors do not call themselves prostitutes or sex workers. They are party girls who like long hedonistic sieges and who accept gifts when it’s time to go home, and they are known the world over.

To meet seafarers who do have permission to disembark, sex workers and folks with no such identity make their way to port bars when ships come in, sometimes migrating from the interior.

This story is an odd mix that I’m posting because we rarely see anything like it from West Africa. The demand for sex workers’ rights is encouraging, but what about those chairpersons? If anyone has corroborating information, please share it.

Sex workers hold elections

Spectator,  8 August 2009

Accra: Spectator investigations have revealed that a well organised sex trade is currently in place in some parts of the capital, an indication that sex workers are gunning to legitimise the flesh trade to demand their rights.

Indeed, the infamous ladies of the night have been observed to be organising their vocation in a more closely knit fashion and some of the emerging groups have held elections to select executive officers to run and co-ordinate affairs of members.

Talking to The Spectator, one of the sex workers (with a fixed address), on condition of anonymity, said the elected officers of the group she belongs to include a chairperson, a secretary and a treasurer, supported by a disciplinary committee. “The executives have been constituted as a result of challenges we face in this business,” she said. According to her, if she was seen talking to the press she would be slapped with a fine of GH¢50 and two bottles of schnapps for divulging information to an outsider.

In an answer as to the type of customers they serviced, she said most of the customers belong to the lower income group who are faced with accommodation problems.”People who sleep in groups or in the open and therefore cannot host women, find solace in our rooms,” she said.

She, however, admitted that apart from such groups, other people like married men who are fed up with their wives visit their abode and never regret it. Some of the customers, she said, preferred to bond with the women they liked most and visited them as friends, but such customers are bad business and cannot be entertained.” According to her, when such a customer wanted a different woman for a change and matters were not handled carefully “it often erupted into full-scale-verbal exchanges and even degenerated into blows”.

The sex worker said sometimes the low patronage of their services was an indication that a customer has become fed up with his regular woman. Under such circumstances the magajia’s (chairperson’s) duty is to liaise with other clients facing the same form of disinterest for a swap of partners. “This strategy makes us look fresh to the new man and business picks up again,” she said, adding that “the trade is such that when a fresh young lady also appears on the scene and all the attention of customers is on her, she is given a directive by the magajia to close ‘business’ early so that other people will get their fair share of the cake. “Failure to comply with the directive means an automatic transfer from the base to another place so that other people’s businesses will not suffer,” she added, implying that there are some forms of stringent business edicts that cannot be defied.

Another revelation was that all the sex workers who happen to have either husbands or serious boyfriends must make them stay away during business hours and admit them only after mid-night to warm the bed of their partners. “There is no room for maternity leave as our rooms are hot cakes for other potential sex workers,” said the woman. “Both pregnant and lactating mothers are made to find elsewhere because when children are brought into the picture it brings about many difficulties.” According to her, “Children beyond a certain age are encouraged to excuse their mothers by hanging around with neighbours when a session is in progress or taking a stroll until business is over”. She said if they are young and fast asleep in the room, they are not bothered and business could still go on with out any fuss.

When asked whether she knew her HIV status, the lady answered in the negative, contending that “having stayed in the business for long, I am too much afraid to go for voluntary counseling and testing (VCT)”. She said in the past, they charged special rates for ‘raw’ sex, but ever since the menace of HIV/AIDS dawned on them, no matter the money or the status of the person, “we fit you with a condom before any sex act takes place.”

Some of the flash points for the commercial sex workers who parade the streets in Accra are the Cantonment area especially near the Akufo-Addo Circle, Danquah Circle and surrounding areas and the Kwame Nkrumah Circle and its immediate environs. The sex workers hide in the dark and show themselves when they see men coming, with some boldly calling up saying, “Do you want to know the colour of my underwear?”

When a sex worker hooks a customer who doesn’t want to follow her home, she takes him to a cheap hotel where the customer pays a fee of between GH¢5 and GH¢10 for short time of about 30 minutes, so says this lady of the night. For those men who cannot afford that ‘luxury’ they are bundled into nearby kiosks, urinals or makeshift brothels operated by small drinking spots for quick service.

King Trinity Akpalie, executive director of Great Vision Africa, a non-governmental organisation based in Accra which is committed to promoting abstinence and faithfulness against the spread of HIV in Ghana has this to say: “Such people are living in a fool’s paradise with their reliance on condoms as a preventive measure against the HIV/AIDS virus”.

According to him, the American Foundation for AIDS Research had stated that 20 per cent of American condom users were infected with HIV due to misuse and manufacturers’ deficiency. Mr Akpalie said research indicated that the level of education of users influenced their ability to use condom correctly. “This puts the developing world; especially the low come groups, who are, predominantly illiterates and patronise the services of sex workers, at a higher risk of contracting the HIV virus while using condom,” he said.

Ghana’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) released in 2006, which monitored the situation of children, women and men in the assessment of condom use in Ghana came out with the finding that the likelihood of engaging in higher risk sex and using a condom increased with the people’s level of education. The survey said 25 per cent of women and 33 per cent of men aged between 15-49 with primary education used a condom during their last high-risk sex encounters in the year before the MICS, while 48 per cent of women and 60 per cent of men with secondary and higher levels of education used a condom.

Susukino by Daisuke Morita

The keyword here is demand, as in how much money are customers prepared to pay to have sex? Which businesses thrive because they are popular?

The Bank of Japan commissioned a report entitled Susukino, Recent Trends and Changes to a Pleasure District, hoping that, by counting brothels, it would be able to gauge the demand for services, a sector of the economy becoming more important as exports fail. The Pleasure District investigated is Susukino, in Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, Japan’s second largest island.

The report says Susukino is currently home to 264 sex businesses (soaplands and others), along with normal hotels, love hotels, restaurants, cafes, fast-food shops, discos, nightclubs, karaoke, cinemas and many kinds of bars. The creative and practical aspect of the bank’s report was its focus on services in general, in the form of entertainment, whether sex, food, drink or music.

Bloomberg.com , 6 August 2009

The number of sex parlors in the Susukino red-light district in Sapporo more than quadrupled in the past 20 years.

“Any study into services is most welcome,” said Martin Schulz, senior economist at Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo. “We’ve got hundreds of studies on exports and manufacturing. What’s needed is creative thinking on services and if that includes brothels, so be it.”

This story from last year illustrates how policies intended to repress prostitution result in prostitution moving and changing shape - not disappearing. Repression stops the particular and usually visible, which may be all that was desired but is rarely what campaigners say they want. Here, punters drive from northern Italy into southern Switzerland, where brothels are legal.

See a recent story about Goa, for example, where an entire red-light district was torn down, with the result that Goans now see commercial sex everywhere. Entrepreneurs in the sex industry adapt easily to changing conditions. See recent stories on Sonagachi in India and on Malaysia and Korea. I published an academic article on the irrationality of legal prostitution regimes last year.

Then there is the ever-present story showing that even when European sex businesses are legal, many or most workers are migrants. A report on prostitution in Ticino (in Italian) explains why undocumented migrants may not bother to register and become legal (when they are eligible),

Here’s the Swiss news story.

Ticino’s brothels profit from Italy clampdown

15 September 2008, swissinfo, based on an article by Nicole della Pietra

Tough new measures introduced in Italy have sent many customers across the border to brothels in Switzerland. Prostitution is currently booming in Ticino, Switzerland’s Italian speaking canton. But many of the girls involved are illegal. The authorities say they are keeping a close eye on the situation. Half a dozen brothels line the road that links the north and south of the canton at Monte Ceneri. The establishments are doing brisk business, to which the stream of visitors attests. “There are more brothels here than houses,” remarks a young army recruit who has been posted to the Ceneri barracks.

Apart from a few Swiss soldiers and the odd local, most of the clients here and at other Ticino brothels are Italian – as can be seen by the huge number of cars with Italian number plates. Some places in the Lugano and Chiasso region, further south, have an even greater density of brothels. The small village of Melano (population 1,000) alone has four. Cross-border sex commuters are attracted by the closeness to the A2 motorway through the canton, the standards of comfort, security and hygiene and the competitive prices.

The Italian media have long been talking about the “Ticino phenomenon”. The prestigious La Stampa newspaper went so far as to describe the canton in an August article as “a brothel paradise” and “Mecca of luxury”, while highlighting establishments’ “discreet charm”.

Clients may enjoy a certain freedom in Ticino but the same cannot be said for Italy. Brothels have been illegal there for 50 years, which has led to a rise in street prostitution. The government, anxious to change the situation, issued a clampdown decree at the beginning of this year. In Lombardy, which borders Ticino, the authorities have decided to issue a €500 (SFr796) fine to kerb crawlers. And in Milan police have stepped up patrols of red light districts. Video surveillance and the internet are also being employed.

Swiss police believe that the Lombardy situation could have consequences for Ticino. “We don’t have any precise data yet but border regions are certainly going to have an influx of visitors from Italy,” said Alex Serfilippi, an inspector with a special unit which fights the proliferation of prostitution in the canton.

In the week in which swissinfo visited Ticino, two new establishments announced that they were opening for business – adding to the 37 places already in operation in the canton. The sex business adapts quickly to the needs of its clients and to offer and demand, say experts. “We only need to be absorbed by a big enquiry for a few days to see an immediate upsurge in the number of girls in the area,” explained Serfilippi. “We keep applying pressure every day as it’s the only way of stopping the phenomenon from growing even further,” he added.

The prostitution boom is a godsend for some of the area’s hotel and restaurant owners who have seen better days. Some have converted their businesses into brothels, complete with champagne bar and rooms for hire.

On average between five and 20 girls work in these types of establishments. Most come from eastern Europe, with a third coming from Latin America. “We have recently seen a massive increase in the number of Romanians,” added Serfilippi. The police officer estimates that there is a maximum of 600 prostitutes in the canton, of whom between 60 per cent and 80 per cent are illegal. Added to this are the dozens of saunas and massage parlours which each employ one or two young women. Since 2002 a total of 490 people have signed up to the cantonal prostitution register.

“It’s unfortunately extremely difficult, if not impossible, to provide precise figures for this very fluid milieu,” said Serfilippo. The crime expert and journalist Michel Venturelli believes that south of the Alps the number of prostitutes could be as high as 1,200. . .

There are all kinds of brothels appealing to different types of customers, as there are all kinds of bars and restaurants. This article highlights German businesses whose customers might appreciate ‘green’ initiatives or be unemployed. Like the other day’s photos of ordinary brothel buildings in the daylight, these ideas show how the sex industry can be part of everyday life.

German Sex Industry’s Bid To Bounce Back

Christel Kucharz, Passau, Germany, 14 July 2009

The sex industry in Germany has been hit hard by the global financial crisis, inspiring brothel owners to offer all kinds of perks to help boost business. Maison d’envie, a small brothel in Berlin, has come up with a rather unusual promotion for its clients: It has gone green. Customers who arrive on foot or by bicycle, or who can show their public transportation tickets are offered a $4.50 dollar discount off the usual $55 fee for 30 minutes.

The discounts are offered on the brothel’s Web site, which is for adults only, as Öko-Preis (eco price). Regina Goetz, the manager of Maison d’envie, told ABC News the environmentally friendly offer, which was established two weeks ago, is working fine, “On average, about 10 percent of our customers a day ask for the eco-price service.”

Asked what gave her the idea, she said, “I like the idea because it’s good for business, it’s good for the environment and it saves the customers the hassle to find parking, which is always difficult here. I hope the discount will help boost business, which is really bad these days.” . .

Villa Bijou Bar, a small brothel in Dresden, saw its average number of guests sinking from about 150 per week to about 80 so it came up with the idea to offer unemployed customers a 20 percent discount. Brothel manager, Silvia Rau, told local TV station MDR she hopes the new policy will bring customers back and also provide them with some comfort “in difficult times.”

The initiative, according to Rau, came from the prostitutes’ union, who proposed a discount measure as a way of helping the long-term jobless out of depression.

Prostitution in Germany is legal and the industry employs an estimated 400,000 to 450,000 people.

Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures

I have excerpted here some of the ethnographic material from a research article that has much more in it, on how Mexican migrant men’s loneliness affects their sexual behaviour. The article illustrates how ethnography can illuminate our understanding of the sex industry. It’s a description of one particular place in New York City and the activities of one specific group of young men from Puebla, Mexico. I’ve chosen to excerpt two kinds of material: 1) description of the site and dancing and 2) how male socialising may depend more on watching and talking than directly on sex.

Miguel Muñoz-Laboy, Jennifer S. Hirsch and Arturo Quispe-Lazaro. ‘Loneliness as a Sexual Risk Factor for Male Mexican Migrant Workers.’ American Journal of Public Health 2009, Vol 99, No. 5, 806-7.

‘. . . The signs on the outside of the La Garza club provided an accurate depiction of the differences between strip clubs or brothels and this type of social space. These signs said in both English and Spanish:

Every day beautiful dancers; Monday - Mexican nights tequilazo; Tuesday - all dancers in sexy babydolls; Wednesday - bikini nights; Thursday - sexy dancer nurses; Saturday - all dancers in micro-miniskirts; Sunday - school girls night; Happy Hour from 4 to 10pm, $3 beers and house drinks; no caps or hats, no sneakers, no jeans; decent place to dance; we are looking for dancers.

. . . La Garza was a 1-floor [table-dance] club with bathrooms in the basement, a 20-foot-long bar, 1 large-screen TV, 1 pool table that can only be used by VIPs, a dance floor in the center of the club, and 3 small seating sections around the dance floor. There is no entrance fee. Each dance costs $4 but clients can get a private dancer for $40 per hour.

. . . some couples danced physically close whereas others did not; some danced fast, others slow. However, reggaeton songs were danced almost the same across patrons; men were pressed against the columns or standing by the walls by the women dancers who would thrust their backs and buttocks against the men’s penis area (this is also known as grinding). Reggaeton was probably the most erotic dance in the club, and, yet, the most common behavior among men in the club was drinking and watching women dance, with other men, by themselves, or with other women.

. . . The men who attended La Garza can be divided into 3 main groups: (1) those that went mostly to dance with women, (2) those that mostly spoke and flirted with women and rarely danced and; (3) those that went to drink and watch, but rarely danced or spoke with the female dancers.

. . . [In] the second group . . . men paid women to speak with them for the duration of a single song (approximately 3 minutes) but most often they started their conversation in the middle of the previous song). They expressed that they had a better chance of getting together with any of the women by talking with them rather than by dancing and grinding. . . .  Men . . .talked about their experiences in places like La Garza as a way of being able to talk to women without the ‘complications’ of doing it at work or in the neighborhood. As expressed by research participants, these complications induded the difficulty of initiating a conversation with a strange woman, the need to avoid sexual harassment in the workplace, and prohibitions on men being able to talk to clients in many of the restaurant establishments in which they worked. . . .’