Archives for October 2018

(Michelle Rindells & Joey Lovato | Nevada Independent) – Workers from the Moonlite Bunny Ranch were just two days out from the death of Dennis Hof — the brash figurehead of legal prostitution in Nevada — when they took to a stage in Mound House to defend the existence of brothels.

At the first in a series of educational forums about a potential Lyon County brothel ban, there was a moment of silence for Hof, who died in his sleep just days after his 72nd birthday. He was a polarizing figure whose name will still appear as a Republican Assembly candidate on the November ballot, and one who raised the profile of brothels through an HBO reality show called “Cathouse” and a book called “The Art of the Pimp.”

“He took us from guilt and shame to glamour and fame. He made our brothels transparent,” said sex worker Air Force Amy, who has been in the industry for 28 years — most of them for Hof.

Some former brothel workers have publicly criticized the establishments for everything from a degrading environment to poor money-making prospects and a lack of resources for those seeking to leave. Hof was open about the fact that he had sex with many of the women who worked at his businesses, and some say that was not consensual or that the women felt pressured to have sex with him to advance their careers.

But current sex worker Alice Little remembered Hof as the person who gave her business advice and who helped her pick out a new car after her old one was totaled.

“He was such a visionary and he had such a passion for this industry, and anybody who knew him or was around him could feel it,” she said at the forum Thursday. “It just radiated from him and that’s why we’re here, to honor his legacy and to protect it, most importantly.”

Hof’s death leaves questions about the future of legal prostitution, especially in Lyon County, where all four brothels were owned by Hof. For now, control of the brothels has been transferred to the co-signers of the licenses, including longtime madam Suzette Cole. District Attorney Stephen Rye said his office is still reviewing whether there are any problems with such an ownership transfer and whether new license holders will have to go through a separate licensing proceeding.

It could mean a change in operations and in image for the brothels themselves. Hof was facing an ongoing sex assault investigation through the Nevada Department of Public Safety at the time of his death. Now, at least for the time being, the brothel will be run by a woman.

“Suzette taking over is the best possible outcome because she’s a woman and I love that. So she’s strong, she’s very independent, and I feel that’s very inspiring,” said Ruby Rae, one of the legal sex workers who defended the profession at the forum. “I think that we’re kind of… in this space in society where there’s a lot of things like #MeToo, so strong women in positions of power is really important.”

Hof’s former campaign adviser, Chuck Muth, moderated the forum (organizers said they invited brothel ban proponents but they did not accept the invitation). He posed arguments from the opposition to Little and Rae.

Here are excerpts from the conversation:

Will the ban make prostitution go away?

Lyon County voters are weighing in on an advisory question, which county commissioners can take into consideration later if they choose to enact a brothel ban. But Little was adamant that no ban could stop prostitution in general.

“Sex workers have been a part of society since the dawn of human time… and now we’re finally doing things the right way by legalizing it, regulating it, and making it beneficial to the community,” Little said. “If that’s taken away, sex work is not going to go away, but what will come back is all the problems associated with illegal prostitution and gone will be all the benefits of legal sex work and that would just be a real shame.”

Are comparisons between legal prostitution and human trafficking fair?

Brothel ban proponents have sought to draw a connection between legal prostitution and illegal prostitution, pointing to a study that shows illegal activity increases in places where legal activity is allowed.

But Little and Rae said they feel conflating the two is unfair to voters. Rae points out that she can continue pursuing her master’s degree at UNR “and this other job that I love;” she said the only exploitation she feels is from the opposition.

“We’re not trafficked. We are not forced. We’re here because we want to be, and I think that we are grown women who are able to make their own choices, and I just want to be supported in making my own decisions and my own choices,” Rae said.

She said she’ll eventually stop working at the brothel to move and pursue a Ph.D. Her ultimate goal is to become a professor at UNR, and she plans to teach courses for the next three semesters.

Little said she used to work as an EMT and as a jockey at a race track. Her family and friends know what she does for a living and are “incredibly, incredibly proud to support me in what I do.”

“Is my life so terrible? I’ve got two dogs, a couple of cats. I’ve got a couple ponies and a mini pig that has her own bedroom because she’s really spoiled,” Little said. “I am really not being exploited. I chose to come here, and I choose to stay here. I make a choice every single day when I go to work, when I go to the doctor, when I show up for my appointments. All of those are choices that I am able to make with my own volition and freedom.”

‘No Little Girl’ campaign

Proponents of a brothel ban have launched a campaign under the slogan “No Little Girl” — implying that no little girl grows up wishing to be a prostitute someday.

The brothel workers pushed back on the idea, which they called “gross.” They said they made the decision to enter sex work as full-grown women.

“The whole girl thing — I’m not a girl, I’m woman,” Rae said. “And when you kind of say like no little girl grows up wanting to be a prostitute, I mean, yeah — you’re probably right. I didn’t know what I wanted to be. I thought unicorns were real and the tooth fairy really existed.”

Little added that sex work was less demanding on the body than other professions such as mining, and she said she enjoys the flexibility she has in her work life.

“I have the ability to give myself a raise by choosing to extend my clientele basis. I have the ability to give myself a vacation whenever I so want,” she said. “No little girl wants to grow up without having freedom and control over her own scheduling. I got to grow up to have complete control over my life and that’s a privilege and it’s one that I plan to defend.”

They also chafed at the idea that all women who go into brothels are coming from abusive situations, saying the notion is one of the ways sex workers are “oppressed” by stigma.

“The stereotype of the sex worker that comes from a broken home or from a bad childhood or rough upbringing, that all comes from stigma,” Rae said. “Not all of us come from that and even if some of us do, that shouldn’t be something that takes away our choice to do the job, because some women do find it empowering and a way to cope with trauma.”

Will eliminating brothels save Lyon County money?

Brothels in Lyon County bring several hundred thousand dollars in licensing revenue each year. But it also costs money for the sheriff to screen applicants, issue work cards and monitor the brothels for compliance.

The Lyon County sheriff’s office recommended county commissioners add extra personnel and buy new equipment so they can better screen applicants who might be subject to human trafficking or part of a criminal enterprise.

Little argued that eliminating the brothels would not save money.

“They instead would have to instill a new vice squad to handle all the illegal prostitution flowing into the county because we no longer have the legal system preventing it,” she said. “Can you imagine how much that’s going to cost, $500,000, $600,000 plus easily. Not to mention the fact that there’s going to be a tremendous loss of all the taxation in this county.”

Are legal prostitutes victims?

Proponents of the brothel ban have pushed the idea that women in brothels are being sold — most notably through an advertising campaign that portrays the women curled up in a fetal position and shrink-wrapped like meat.

“I think that they want to push victimhood on us and make us believe that we’re victims because it fits their narrative and their agenda, but what they don’t understand is when you do have strong women who feel empowered by their jobs, that means that we’re not going to give into that,” Rae said. “I feel like they’re kind of using me as a pawn actually, but I do feel like they’re trying to just maneuver whichever way they can into making girls feel like we should be ashamed of doing this.”

She said the only way she feels like a victim is on the point that she might lose her job if the brothels shut down.

“I am very strong and independent and I don’t need any man to do anything for me, which is why I love this job,” Rae said. “It really allows me financially and everything else to really pursue my degrees and my passions and not have to rely on a man or not even have to think about getting married or anything like that.”

Little said she and other sex workers have the freedom to be in relationships or not.

“What’s so particularly unique about our industry is that it’s one of the very few in which women are more financially successful than men,” she said. “They’re the one who’s bringing home the bacon as one would say and it’s a very different narrative, and frankly, it’s a very positive feminist and modern narrative that I think is important to protect.”

She also pushed back against the idea that sex workers are selling themselves. They’re only selling a service, they said.

“We are caretakers for society, fulfilling the need, the very, very real need for intimacy, companionship, sex education,” Little said. “One of the benefits of seeing a legal sex worker is not to buy a legal sex worker, because we’re not up for sale. No amount of money could purchase me or any one of my coworkers. That’s not what this is about.”

Is legal prostitution stifling economic growth?

The women argued that Northern Nevada’s rapid growth — especially that of brothel owner Lance Gilman’s Tahoe Reno Industrial Center (TRIC) — is proof that brothels aren’t bad for business.

“I mean look at the Mustang Ranch, Tesla. Business are not not coming here because of the brothels,” Rae said. “I think the number one reason, what you and I read, was sewer or water or something like that, utilities, so it has nothing to do with the brothels. They’re just trying to pin it on that to further their agenda.”

Are prostitutes prevented from leaving the premises?

Little said some counties have what’s referred to as a lockdown policy, in which women arrive for the beginning of their “tour” and are not allowed to leave until the end of the tour. But she said Lyon County brothels afford sex workers more freedom than anywhere else.

“Dennis was very adamant about us being able to have freedom and to be able to leave and live our lives outside of the brothel, and that was very important and that’s very important to me. I would have never chosen to work somewhere where I couldn’t do that,” said Rae, who added that she needed the freedom to pursue her degrees.

Rae also said she can refuse clients and rejected an appointment earlier that week because she didn’t like something a prospective client said to her.

“We have the ability to set our own schedules. We have the ability to market ourselves the way that we choose. We have the ability to show or hide our faces publicly as we want,” she said. “We have 100 percent complete control over our own businesses. That’s what we are, independent contractors, business professionals within a business.”

Is being a legal prostitute safe?

Little and Rae pointed to a number of factors designed to keep sex workers safe.

Customers to the Bunny Ranch must be buzzed in through a gate, will have their ID checked and then have their bags checked upon arrival.

Visitors who are disrespectful during the “lineup” — when prostitutes line up so a potential client can choose their favorite — will be asked to leave, the women said.

There are also panic buttons in the rooms, although Hof was subject to a lawsuit from one prostitute who said the buttons were not working at the time of an alleged assault in 2003.

“All of these things, these legal protections, are in place for a reason. They prevent folks that have ill intentions from even seeking them in the first place,” Little said. “As a result, we have some of the most amazing human beings from around the globe visiting us here.”

The precautions of the legal system also help the client, they said.

“There’s always going to be men who are wanting to purchase the services of a sex worker. That’s never going to go away, so safety for them is coming to the Bunny Ranch and other legal brothels because we are tested weekly,” Rae said. “If you go to a bar and you’re picking up somebody from there and you don’t use protection or whatever, that is so much less safe.”

Who are the clients?

Rae said some of her clients have disabilities or want her to teach them new things.

“I have a lot of men who just are very inexperienced or virgins. They just have not had a lot of sexual experience in their lives thus far and they are embarrassed by that, and they feel some type of shame, even,” Rae said. “They want to be validated and understood and that’s really important, and I wouldn’t want to see that taken away from them because it really fills a void in a space and it serves a purpose.”

Little said her clients range in age from their 20s to their 70s, and include couples and people from all walks of life.

“A lot of our time spent with our guests is getting to know them, having these amazingly intellectual conversations over dinner where we’re sharing thoughts and feelings and ideas, where I’m getting to know them and they’re getting to know me, too,” she said.

What happens if the ban passes?

Even if Lyon County’s Question 1 passes, it’s only an advisory measure and would not ban brothels unless commissioners took action. Little said that if the ban passes, she expects lengthy litigation all the way up to the Supreme Court.

“Personally, if the brothels were to close, I’m going to chain myself to that front gate,” she said. “Good luck getting me out of that place. I’m staying.”

Muth said it’s important for the advisory question to not just be defeated, but to be “crushed” because of efforts to enact a statewide ban that are percolating in the Legislature.

“Senator Joe Hardy has already introduced a bill to ban prostitution statewide and if it passes here in Lyon County, it’s only going to embolden them to pass a statewide ban,” he said.

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(Barbara Brents) – Dennis Hof was a showman who capitalized on the caricature bestowed by his business – the world’s greatest pimp. He would love the attention his death is getting.

But let’s not confuse his flamboyant thorn-in-your side image with what he actually did for the state: brought Nevada’s legal brothels into the modern sexual economy.

Yes, there is a sexual economy. The travel and entertainment industries would not be the world’s largest employers without the selling and buying of sex and sexuality. Yes, there is a seedy, even dangerous side. But the seedy side is a shrinking part of a multi-billion-dollar industry. The same way gambling has become sanitized, so too has sex. And Nevada is at the cutting edge, thanks in large part to Hof.

For all else he was or wasn’t, Hof was a businessman who grew his business because he treated it like a business. A key part of that was respecting the sex workers far more than had been common practice in years past in Nevada’s brothels.

Dennis Hof first took over the Moonlite Bunny Ranch in 1992, when Joe Conforte (remember him?) lost his even more infamous Mustang Ranch and fled to Brazil to escape money laundering and tax evasion charges.

Joe Richards, later convicted of attempting to bribe a Nye County commissioner, was the Southern Nevada brothel kingpin at that time. He had a reputation of running a rough brothel for women and getting favors from the Nye County Commission. Hof bought two of his brothels in 2010.

Back then, local governments were just beginning to modernize their business codes to deal with brothels (and prevent shysters like Conforte from returning, sort of like how we got rid of the mob in gambling). There were good and bad owners and managers, but policies like regularly searching them and holding their possessions, strict curfews, limiting phone use and three-week mandatory contracts were common. Brothel owners were just wrapping their heads around independent contractor rules. Many brothels were nothing more than old trailers with even older furniture, appealing to working-class truckers and miners and the occasional politician.

When our research team was interviewing owners in the late 1990s, Hof was the only one who talked first and foremost about the women’s rights. Like other owners, he made clear that his workers could turn down any customer any time, but he also trained them how to say no. He provided incentives rather than fines, taught sales techniques from other businesses. All this, he said in a 2000 interview, “creates a much better environment, because what you end up with is a willing buyer, a willing seller, and a good party — and the basis for a repeat customer.”

Hof used to refer to owners such as Conforte and Richards as “old school, hardcore prostitution.” He chastised them for having sex with their workers. (As Hof bought more brothels, his attitude toward sex with the workers changed, unfortunately. I suspect that with fewer choices among owners, it was harder for workers to report abuses.)

Since then, more brothels have modernized, putting in spas, tanning beds, exercise equipment and upgrading the kitchen staff. More brothels allow women to go home after their shifts. Owners have to treat the workers better in order to compete. Most owners still shun the high profile Hof maintained, but he did make treating the women better a more common priority.

There are lots of ways the brothels can still be improved, but much of the policy discussion thus far has missed one important point. There are some very smart, very powerful, very angry female workers and managers who don’t want to lose their jobs.

We should enlist the occasion of Hof’s departure to further modernize brothel codes and refine work card oversight, taking lessons from all the other countries in the world that oversee brothels and other independent sex workers.

Let’s give employees and independent contractors the right to report sexual harassment or assault charges in a way that gives everyone a fair hearing. Let’s remove the unfair curfews placed on sex workers in some counties, end policies that control workers’ presence in town while on contract with the brothels and create mechanisms so workers can report abuses of independent contractor laws. Let’s use some of the same techniques we used to clean up gambling and make the sex industry a better, safer and less exploitative place for workers.

And who knows better how to do this than the brothel workers themselves? Let’s treat the sex workers with the respect they deserve and let them help write the policy that affects their lives.

Barbara G. Brents, Ph.D, is a sociology professor at UNLV. She is co-author of “The State of Sex: Tourism Sex and Sin in the New American Heartland” on Nevada’s brothel industry.  This column was originally published by the Nevada Independent on October 23, 2018.

(Lux Alptraum) – “No little girl grows up wanting to be a prostitute,” declares the homepage of the No Little Girl campaign, a recently launched attempt to criminalize sex work in two of the seven Nevada counties where it’s currently legal.

Next to the tagline is a photo of an angry little girl blowing a whistle; the campaign’s literature is filled with story after story of the kind of violence and exploitation that this young girl is presumably blowing the whistle on. “Prostitution can’t be made ‘a little better’ any more than domestic violence can be made ‘a little better,’” the campaign’s FAQ argues, couching sex work itself as a fundamentally exploitative industry in which women are preyed on and trapped.

Yet for actual sex workers, the workplace described by No Little Girl bears little to no resemblance to the brothels they earn a living in. Rather than feeling exploited, abused, and assaulted, many workers describe the brothels as paths to economic freedom. “Since starting my career as a legal prostitute in Nevada, I can truthfully say it was one of the best decisions I have made,” writes brothel worker Ruby Rae in an opinion piece in the Nevada Independent, urging readers to oppose any attempts to roll back sex work legalization in Nevada.

No Little Girl is currently collecting signatures to get its anti-sex work initiatives on the November ballots. When I spoke with Jason D. Guinasso, a Reno lawyer working on the campaign, he told me that each petition had attracted a little more than 1,000 signatures. If the campaign collects a few thousand more, the petitions will be sent to their respective county commissions, who will either choose to act on them or turn the issue over to county voters this November — the counties on the ballot house many of the state’s brothels, meaning a successful referendum would eliminate half of Nevada’s legal brothels. The group could take its campaign to the statewide level if successful.

For many people, the world of sex work is a completely foreign one, something you only see in salacious movies or alarmist documentaries. When your only contact with sex workers is as the butt of a joke or subject of a tragic story, it’s easy to buy into narratives like No Little Girl’s.

But as someone who has known many sex workers, both personally and professionally — I am a former editor of the sex industry-focused blog Fleshbot — it’s easy to see the vast gap between the reality of sex workers’ lives and the bleak fiction peddled by the anti-sex work industry. While not all sex workers are as effusive about their work as Ruby Rae, few identify with the exploited women put forth by campaigns like No Little Girl. Doing a little digging into the broad claims put forth by this campaign quickly reveals how baseless they actually are.

The war on sex work continues on multiple fronts. Anti-sex trafficking groups successfully lobbied to pass the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or FOSTA-SESTA, laws that hurt sex traffickers online by holding platforms responsible for content that promotes sex work. In theory, FOSTA-SESTA helps the government hold websites accountable for providing safe havens for sex traffickers; in practice, the law has led platforms across the internet to crack down on anything even remotely related to sex work (and sometimes even just sex), eradicating message boards and resources that sex workers use to screen clients, share safety tips, and get out of unsafe and nonconsensual sex work situations.

But No Little Girl has now set its sights on eliminating one of the few forms of legal sex work in the United States. All in all, it’s a dark time for sex workers fighting for the legal recognition that would actually reduce exploitation.

The attack on legal sex work in Nevada is based on bad data

The No Little Girl campaign has argued that Nevada’s brothels have a negative effect on the state. In reality, research shows that the lives of Nevada citizens have improved due to the legalization of sex work in the state. Nevada’s system isn’t perfect — but it’s a considerable improvement over the national policy of criminalization.

No Little Girl has three major arguments for shutting down the legal brothel industry: Brothels do not significantly contribute to their counties’ economies while deterring other businesses from setting up shop; they increase violence against women who don’t work in the sex industry; and they’re inherently abusive (because, as the campaign’s tagline reminds visitors, “no little girl grows up wanting to be a prostitute”).

At first glance, these arguments may seem sound. But combing through the data — even the data the organization links to on its site — suggests that many of No Little Girl’s claims are exaggerated at best and misleading at worst.

For starters, No Little Girl neglects to discuss the financial impact of the jobs these brothels create in its reports, as well as the tourism they bring to their respective counties. (Dennis Hof, owner of many prominent brothels in Lyon County, estimates that between taxes, fees, and tourism, the brothels contribute $10 million to the local economy.) County officials have repeatedly gone on record to talk about the business opportunities brothels bring to counties that would likely be economically depressed without them.

Even more misleading are No Little Girl’s charges that legal sex work makes a woman 26 times (or, as another statistic claims, 1,660 percent) more likely to be sexually assaulted than women in neighboring counties. While these stats are based on real FBI crime statistics, they only take into account a few years of data in just two Nevada counties. A broad look across all of Nevada — including counties with legal sex work where assault rates are low — show no correlation between assaults and the presence or absence of legal sex work.

Meanwhile, a number of studies of countries where sex work is legal have routinely found that legalization or decriminalization of sex work is often correlated with lower rates of sexual assault. When Rhode Island accidentally legalized indoor prostitution (a rewrite of its overly broad prostitution laws wound up deleting the language making it illegal) for a number of years, reported rapes declined by 31 percent after; when the Netherlands opened “tippelzones,” or areas where street prostitution is legal, reports of rape and sexual abuse declined by a similar percentage over the first two years.

This decline could be attributed to a number of other factors — including country culture or other laws related to sexual assault — but it’s worth noting.

But it’s No Little Girl’s comments on the safety and working conditions of the brothels themselves that truly twist the facts. The campaign cites statistics about abuse, assault, and PTSD from Melissa Farley, a researcher whose credibility has been called into question. Critics have noted that, among other things, Farley frequently presents misleading anecdotes and statistics — like a claim that street-based sex work increased 400 percent in Auckland after decriminalization — as fact.

Christina Parreira, a University of Nevada Las Vegas PhD candidate who’s researched the experiences of Nevada sex workers and is a brothel worker herself, tells me that No Little Girl’s description of working in the brothels is “not accurate at all.” Contrary to the campaign’s depiction of Nevada sex workers as broken and abused, Parreira says she has “a great life. I don’t come from an abusive family. … It’s so insulting for other women to tell me that [I don’t know what I want].”

Nevada’s laws aren’t perfect, but they are far better than the national policy

None of this is to say that a legalized brothel system is perfect or above reproach. Nevada’s regulations dramatically limit who can participate in the legal sex work system — if a brothel doesn’t hire you, you can’t work legally. Since few brothels are interested in hiring men or trans women, the system is effectively closed off to those groups. Additionally, some of the expenses and registration requirements can feel punitive and off-putting, making it harder for the most vulnerable women to work safely and legally within the system.

It’s these types of restrictions that have led many human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, to argue that sex work decriminalization — or the removal of criminal penalties for sex work, without additional regulation or restrictions on who can sell sex — is preferable to some legal sex work systems, such as those found in Nevada, Germany, Amsterdam, and Tunisia.

Yet in spite of its flaws, the Nevada brothel system is still leaps and bounds ahead of the criminal penalties most of the country imposes on all people who choose to exchange sex for money. Rather than rolling back the progress Nevada has achieved, we should be looking to the state as an inspiration for pursuing even more progressive policies that empower and uplift people who choose sex work as an occupation.

But so long as we allow our arguments about sex work to be led by morality rather than harm reduction, we’ll continue to fall prey to the kind of knee-jerk anti-sex work zealotry displayed by No Little Girl. And our sex work policies — and the safety of sex workers — will continue to suffer as a result.

Truly understanding the lives of sex workers, and the policies that help them, requires putting aside our personal feelings about sexuality and listening to the experiences of sex workers. It requires recognizing that sex work is work, even if it’s work we’re not interested in or willing to do ourselves. It requires understanding that eliminating sex work is no more feasible than eliminating abortion — people will find a way — and that making sex work safer should be our collective goal.

When we can’t do that, we wind up with half-baked arguments about the evils of sex work and policies that, sadly, do more harm than good.

Lux Alptraum is a writer whose work has been featured in the New York Times, Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, Hustler, and more. Her first book, Faking It: The Lies Women Tell About Sex — And The Truths They Reveal, comes out this November. This column was originally published at Vox.com on May 29, 2018