Story URL: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=122737
Story Retrieval Date: 2/9/2010 8:49:53 PM CST
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Tom Dart, fighter of prostitution, meet Sharon, prostitute
by Kate Gardiner
March 11, 2009
Sharon is a prostitute in Chicago. And, she said, she likes it.
“I started on April 20,” she said. “It was a lark … there was always the concept of the ‘Holy Whore,’ and that’s how I approached it – and I found something I like.”
Sharon is part of a small but growing movement in Chicago to legalize prostitution. The grassroots group, Sex Workers Outreach Project, or SWOP, endeavors more to inform the public about sex workers in Chicago, as well as to provide a safe space for workers who need to explore their problems with colleagues.
According to their group statement, SWOP's ultimate ambition would be to encourage society to move to less conservative legislation and enforcement.
But the group, and the idea itself, faces opposition on many fronts – from what supporters say is the conventional “who cares about hookers” to the enforcement-based legislation criminalizing prostitution.
The March 5 filing of a lawsuit by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart condemned the Web site craigslist.org for hosting an “erotic services” section.
In the complaint, Dart and his attorneys call the Web site “the largest source of prostitution in the country.” It has not helped the sex workers’ movement, though it brought prostitution to the front pages in Chicago and nationally.
Research into why people buy sex – and how they do it – has been under way in the city for at least 12 years, said Terrie McDermott, executive director of the Cook County Women’s Justice Services Center.
McDermott and her team say they’re attempting to intervene. Her goal: to leverage Cook County’s prostitutes from what she describes as an inevitable downward spiral into drugs and addiction and to restore their lives.
“The Trafficking Response Team is a direct response to craigslist and the explosion of internet exploitation of women,” she said. “It was more ‘What can we do about that?’ than sending police out there to arrest the women and have them wind up in the system.”
McDermott said her group has been investigating why women participate in prostitution.
“We know that about 40 percent of the women in jail in Cook County were involved in prostitution before age 18,” she said.
“And we know that 41 percent did it for money, 32 percent for drugs or alcohol, 17 percent for something to eat, 22 percent for places to stay and 19 percent to receive a gift.”
She said women get involved because of events in their past – because they were molested and feel that they can control the johns – or because they needed things or money and they knew no other way to earn them.
“Our intervention begins at the point of arrest,” McDermott said. “We provide staff, volunteers and advocates who connect the women with the basic services they need to make healthier choices. We’re helping them to restore themselves; they’ve been victims of violence, trauma and held captive in the lifestyle.”
Many of the people who support SWOP’s efforts, known as allies, said they have no interest in leaving a profession they enjoy and are good at – but that legalization could help to mitigate some of the risks associated with the various ways clients come to them, especially since the advent of craigslist and other Web sites.
Sharon said she has always used the same advertisement and marketing ploys to get clients from the Internet.
And she has never used any other tools to get clients.
“I worked off craigslist for more than three years,” she said. “I screened after the first year. And if they didn’t want to, I wouldn’t see them. I had a problem once. Someone came, and he gave me the willies. He made me uncomfortable by his very existence. So I carded him, and his identification was issued the day before. It turned out he’s this john who, after, pretends to be a cop and threatens to turn you in and [then] robs you.”
Sharon said the process is akin to dating, though somewhat riskier.
“I’m a single woman in the city,” she said. “I have to be careful anyway … to be a sex worker in the city, you have to be really careful.”
Sharon said she left craigslist after they started to make people pay for the erotic services advertisements. “I’ve only ever worked in the industry via the internet,” she said.
“It started to take off in 2001, and by 2005 when I started, it was all by email.”
“Craigslist was trying to be responsible after they started to get complaints,” she said. “I figured if I was going to pay, I might as well pay for [the site with better services].”
Samir Goswami is policy director for the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation. He said he’s trying to implement policy that is based on research he has done with johns, the men who buy sex from prostitutes, rather than arresting the women providing the service.
He said his group is trying to figure out how to prevent the sex workers from being arrested repeatedly.
“We’re making sure they’re educated on health risks, and notifying their households. Men who visit prostitutes are biohazards – if you sleep with a prostitute and then take that back to your household, you put your spouse at risk, for example.”
Goswami said his group is also developing curriculum that educates young men about the reasons they should not be buying sex.
“We interviewed 113 men last year who were arrested for buying sex,” he said. “We asked them about the cognitive processes behind their motivation, how they were introduced to the concept. And we’re assessing the misogyny of media exposure.”
“But the first thing that needs to happen is that the men need to feel that it’s illegal,” Goswami said.
“On average, less than 5 percent feel that it’s illegal, that they’ll be caught. We have to ratchet up the pressure on these customers. They have to know that law enforcement is serious … the way to enforce this is in relation to demand. We can’t just be arresting the prostitutes all the time.”
In its literature, SWOP-Chicago asserts that one of its goals is the decriminalization of sex work, because the group would like to change “the legal system that puts us at risk for violence and coercion.”
Goswami said that decriminalization is explicitly not the answer.
“If we legalize prostitution,” he said, “It’s not going to cut down on the violence, nor are our cops going to be reformers all of the sudden. If we did that, it would call for a cultural shift in law enforcement.”
Goswami and SWOP find themselves sharing an unlikely playing field: they agree that a serious cultural shift is necessary. “At the end of the day, women in prostitution are considered whores, second-class citizens,” he said. “That is what we have to change – we have to humanize people.”
In the meantime, Sharon, who asked to use a pseudonym to be interviewed for this story, said she has no intention of stopping her sex work.
“Everyone thinks it’s this dark, dirty, terrible lifestyle,” she said. “It’s not at all. Lots of people who have experience with it can’t talk about it without fear of it.”
