In the News

(Amy Alonzo | Mason Valley News) – Lyon County voters resoundingly told county commissioners they want to keep the county’s five brothels up and running. Responding to an advisory question on the November ballot, about 17,000 voters told commissioners to keep the brothels open while just 4,000 said they wanted them to close. County commissioners have not yet taken any action on the matter.

The issue came to a head after the anti-prostitution and sex trafficking group No Little Girl filed a petition to place a referendum on the county’s ballot giving voters the option of outlawing brothels or freezing the county’s brothel ordinance. Commissioners opted to place their own question on the ballot to prevent the county’s brothel ordinance from possibly being frozen.

There are four brothels in Lyon County, all in the Mound House area. Their owner, Dennis Hof, died in October, but Hof’s associates formed the Nevada Brothel Association earlier this month. Suzette Cole, who is managing Hof’s Lyon County brothels, was named director. The group plans to fight a proposed bill in the upcoming legislative session that aims to end legal prostitution in Nevada. Sen. Joe Hardy, R-Boulder City, has drafted a bill that addresses legalized prostitution and the issue of human trafficking.

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(Associated Press) — Associates of the late Nevada brothel owner Dennis Hof are preparing to revive the brothel industry’s political voice in Nevada.

The Nevada Brothel Association announced its formation Friday. The industry’s longtime lobbyist retired in 2015, leaving no unified voice for the state’s brothel owners.

The PAC filed with the Nevada Secretary of State’s office in November and named Suzette Cole, the manager of Hof’s four Lyon County brothels, as director.

Association spokesman Chuck Muth says a failed effort to outlaw brothels in Lyon County spurred the group’s formation. He says the association plans to fight a bill in the upcoming Nevada legislative session that proposed to end legal prostitution in the state.

The association plans to reach out to other brothel owners to join.

Hof died in October, weeks before he won a state Assembly election.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Carson City, Nevada) – Associates of late Nevada State Assemblyman Dennis Hof (R-District 36) have re-registered the “Nevada Brothel Association” as a state political action committee (PAC) in advance of the 2019 Nevada Legislature.

The new PAC was formed by Suzette Cole, general manager of Assemblyman Hof’s business operations in Lyon County, along with Alice Little and Ruby Rae – two legal courtesans who led the successful “Save Our Brothels” campaign to defeat an anti-brothel question on November’s ballot.

“We perform a valuable and safe service that’s been stigmatized and misrepresented for many, many years,” said Rae.  “What we learned from fighting Lyon County Question 1 was that it’s extremely important and productive to reach out to the community and tell our side of the story.

“We invited our opponents to debate us in a series of town hall meetings, but they refused.  So the forums were more educational; where we just answered questions from the audience.  And we ended up winning with 80 percent of the vote.”

Little notes that legal brothels are an important defense against sex trafficking, an issue regularly brought up by those wishing to shut them down.

“It’s ILLEGAL sex work that exploits children,” Little pointed out. “It’s ILLEGAL sex work that traffics. It’s ILLEGAL sex work that sees women exploited and abused by pimps.  We don’t have that in legal brothels.”

The original Nevada Brothel Association was established in 1985 in an effort to combat legislative threats to outlaw Nevada’s legal brothels.  A year later, the association hired the legendary George Flint to serve as its lobbyist at the Nevada Legislature.

With Mr. Flint’s retirement in 2015, the association disbanded.

Assemblyman Hof’s former campaign manager, Chuck Muth, is the PAC’s registered agent and serving as the group’s spokesman.

“While the effort to ban legal brothels in Lyon County failed this year, a new legislative threat seeking to ban prostitution statewide has emerged,” said Muth. “With Assemblyman Hof no longer here to speak for and defend the industry, it’s necessary for others to step up and carry the torch.  That’s why we decided to bring back the Nevada Brothel Association.”

The original founding members of the new association include the four Hof-owned properties in Lyon County – the Bunny Ranch, Kit Kat Ranch, Love Ranch and Sagebrush Ranch.  The group plans to reach out to and invite other brothel operators to join before the start of the 2019 Nevada legislative session.

For more information, please visit www.NevadaBrothelAssociation.com

(Brian Bahouth) – For nearly 30 years, Nevada brothel owner Dennis Hof was largely the public face of Nevada’s all but unique system of legalized and regulated sex work. In the wake of Mr. Hof’s death in October of this year, the proprietor of Bella’s Hacienda Ranch in Wells, Nevada has formed a sex industry advocacy and education organization working to guide and remodel the state’s legal sex industry, the Onesta Foundation.

To learn more, I visited Bella Cummins, executive director of the Onesta Foundation, at her home near Reno and recorded the following interview with Cummins and Steve Funk, secretary of the Onesta Foundation.

* * *

In Wells, Nevada, across the railroad tracks from City Hall and Saint Thomas Aquinas church are two legal brothels, Donna’s and Bella’s Hacienda Ranch. Bella Cummins is an ambitious entrepreneur and sole proprietor of her namesake brothel. She also owns Bella’s Restaurant and Espresso in Wells with her daughter, and now Cummins has added a new title to her colorful resume, executive director of the nonprofit Onesta Foundation, a sex industry advocacy and education organization.

I asked Bella Cummins about her history as a brothel owner in Wells.

“In the initial days, survival was determined by your ability to keep a low profile,” Cummins said. “You were literally supposed to keep your head below the sagebrush so you didn’t get it shot off. Being a madame was unpopular. It was judged. And that’s the reason houses were always built across the tracks from town.”

For Cummins, that her business is forced to be separate from the town is a symbol of the stigma that still haunts the legal sex industry.

“They loved it when we came across and spent our money … but that was it,” said Cummins. “I learned that lesson very well, so I’ve spent the past 33 years or so being very silent.”

By marked contrast, recently deceased brothel owner Dennis Hof was an eager and successful promoter of his businesses and was a noted spokesperson for the legal sex industry in Nevada.

“Mr. Hof came into the industry and worked along with probably other gentlemen to become very vocal, to have a presence,” Cummins said. “And that never meant that they were ever really accepted as what you would call first class citizens. They probably didn’t care. They were counting money, making money, and got away with it for a couple of decades.

“I opted to believe that I could keep the low profile and still have a really profitable business training young women to be entrepreneurs for a period of time in the sex industry, and then a percentage of them went on to do other entrepreneurial adventures, and successfully, and other went on to do that and now work for someone else. Still very entrepreneurial. They work as if they own the company, so a lot of that was very successful for me without anybody knowing that was part of my in-service to the industry. Because their careers are short, or should be,” Cummins said.

Cummins has been guiding young sex industry workers for more than three decades and said her success is a factor of her ability to adapt and improve on a personal level.

“As a madame, my longevity is determined by my freshness, my ability to evolve as a person and be even a better teacher, better leader, better … master at helping them do in an even shorter period of time what they came here to do and then get out,” Cummins said.

Several factors have added up to undermine Cummins’ business in recent years and challenged her ability to adapt. The decline in the use of CB radios has had an effect, but for Cummins, the advent of social media has resulted in an explosion in the illegal sex trade.

“Illegal activities in the women’s illegal sex industry, it just cauliflowered, it just went poof like this,” said Cummins waving her arms above her head. “Suddenly, what used to be … I’m going to call it smaller percentiles, seemed to boom because people thought they could do it, they could get away with it, they could screen people, they could be everything for themselves and of course, keep all the money.”

The many factors affecting her business motivated Cummins to rethink her low-profile approach and speak up. She said she realized that keeping a low-profile never prevented her from being attacked.

“After probably too many decades I decided that I should speak up,” Cummins said. “Because I had a different philosophy about the industry from what let’s say it looked like Dennis Hof might be representing.”

Cummins said her “take on the industry” is essentially different than Dennis Hof’s.

“His take on the industry was sex … sex maybe never exactly in-service in how it moved women forward. His was about sex,” Cummins said with emphasis. “Right down to it, whether it was porn or nudeness or whatever, it was just straight … I’m going to call it unadulterated sex.”

Bella Cummins wants to see an industry that reflects a more honest appraisal of the human need for sex and a positive change in the status of sex industry workers and businesses.

“For me, it was this necessary thing that we as human come to do. We come here to interact in all different ways, including sexually, safely, without manipulation, with integrity, with honesty, and if a gentleman comes in and says this is what I’ve got, and the gal that he has chosen says, ‘perfect.’ Then it’s an agree, and everybody is going to be happy, and then it’s all behind a closed door. It’s all very private. It brings an elegance to the industry versus that side that … my intention was to persuade Dennis to take a look at this other direction that all the other brothels had a choice to gather around, which was the Onesta Foundation of real humanness, of a real understanding of sexuality, and a belief that it wasn’t a second class type of situation. It’s first class. It just gets to be done correctly.” Cummins said and smiled.

The Onesta Foundation

According to the Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England edited by Diana Maury Robin, Anne R. Larsen, Carole Levin, during the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, the city of Venice, Italy was noted for its sex industry workers. There were many tiers of sex worker, from street walker to cortigna onesta or honest courtesan, a term reserved for a group of prestigious, well-educated courtesans who enjoyed the status of nobility and were noted members of elite society.

I asked Bella Cummins if the death of Dennis Hof was an opportunity for Nevada’s legal sex industry to better reflect the thinking of the Onesta Foundation.

“I believe that there is a huge possibility,” Cummins said. “I commend Dennis for his marketing, and I also believe that without him, maybe consciously knowing it, he has opened a door for us to say, ‘thank you Dennis and let’s head this direction.’ Let’s take it and bring an understanding of how we are sex therapists and counsellors, and how about advocates for clean, safe, fun, sex,” Cummins said. “And how about all of the psychological things that we all go through, and having someone that sees us in our now, in our moment, with no judgement.”

For Cummins, the Onesta Foundation is intended to give the legal sex industry in Nevada a new face.

“Onesta is designed to give the industry a mouth, a mouthpiece, a megaphone. Never to blow peoples’ hair back but to deliver information, to help remove the stereotyping because just for me to speak up, limits the ability for all the brothels to have the same say. I am willing to speak up about it and talk about it and laugh about it and be serious and say, ‘we never came here to see how hard we can work, we came here to enjoy being human, and sometimes yes, it’s ingesting food or wine or having great sexual experiences,” Cummins explained.

Cummins said even though her business is banished to the other side of the tracks, Onesta could help bring some much needed honesty to the role of the legal sex industry in society.

“From the beginning of time, the desires need to be met,” Cummins said. “And they need to be met mostly by men because of the way men are wired. We are herd animals. It’s us, its women who think it’s got to be a whole lot more. Guys are mostly looking for their release, and safe is the way to do it, and the Onest can be that organization that can do many things.

“If the Onesta, when I say Onesta, I say we the Onesta, can bring the education. If we can get better regulation that’s more in alignment with our constitutional rights as human beings, it’ll be better.,” Cummins said.

Even though a proposed brothel ban failed at the polls by a wide margin in Lyon County, Nevada in the 2018 election, the anti-legal sex industry sentiment exists. There is a Bill Draft Request filed for the 2019 Nevada Legislative session that would, “end prostitution” in the state of Nevada. Details of the measure are forthcoming, but how does Bella Cummins perceive the chore of changing public attitudes about the legal sex industry.

“Am I concerned that there is a bill out there? Sure. I believe we’ve got some work to do and quickly, and we get to put forward this case that you’re never just going to end the sex work in Nevada,” Cummins said emphatically.

Cummins said the next step for the Onesta Foundation would be to help educate Nevada lawmakers ahead of the the 2019 Legislative Session, and though Cummins said she had her ups and downs with Dennis Hof, she took time to thank him at the end of the interview.

“I believe that it’s important for me to acknowledge him for what he did do for the industry, even if part of it shed in the incorrect light on Bella’s, I believe there was no malice intended. That he was somehow working to move at least his part of the industry forward, and so for that, I believe that I would like to let him know that I thank him for than,” Cummins said.

This article was originally published by Nevada Capital News on November 29, 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.