{"id":268,"date":"2018-11-29T18:20:05","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T18:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nevadabrothelassociation.com\/?p=268"},"modified":"2018-11-29T18:20:05","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T18:20:05","slug":"nevada-brothel-owner-launches-sex-industry-advocacy-and-education-nonprofit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nevadabrothelassociation.com\/nevada-brothel-owner-launches-sex-industry-advocacy-and-education-nonprofit\/","title":{"rendered":"Nevada brothel owner launches sex industry advocacy and education nonprofit"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Brian Bahouth)<\/em> – For nearly 30 years, Nevada brothel owner Dennis Hof was largely the public face of Nevada\u2019s all but unique system of legalized and regulated sex work. In the wake of Mr. Hof\u2019s death in October of this year, the proprietor of Bella\u2019s Hacienda Ranch in Wells, Nevada has formed a sex industry advocacy and education organization working to guide and remodel the state\u2019s legal sex industry, the Onesta Foundation.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

In Wells, Nevada, across the railroad tracks from City Hall and Saint Thomas Aquinas church are two legal brothels, Donna\u2019s and Bella\u2019s Hacienda Ranch. Bella Cummins is an ambitious entrepreneur and sole proprietor of her namesake brothel. She also owns Bella\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

I asked Bella Cummins about her history as a brothel owner in Wells.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the initial days, survival was determined by your ability to keep a low profile,\u201d Cummins said. \u201cYou were literally supposed to keep your head below the sagebrush so you didn\u2019t get it shot off. Being a madame was unpopular. It was judged. And that\u2019s the reason houses were always built across the tracks from town.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey loved it when we came across and spent our money \u2026 but that was it,\u201d said Cummins. \u201cI learned that lesson very well, so I\u2019ve spent the past 33 years or so being very silent.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Hof came into the industry and worked along with probably other gentlemen to become very vocal, to have a presence,\u201d Cummins said. \u201cAnd that never meant that they were ever really accepted as what you would call first class citizens. They probably didn\u2019t care. They were counting money, making money, and got away with it for a couple of decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d Cummins said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs 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 \u2026 master at helping them do in an even shorter period of time what they came here to do and then get out,\u201d Cummins said.<\/p>\n

Several factors have added up to undermine Cummins\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIllegal activities in the women\u2019s illegal sex industry, it just cauliflowered, it just went poof like this,\u201d said Cummins waving her arms above her head. \u201cSuddenly, what used to be \u2026 I\u2019m 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter probably too many decades I decided that I should speak up,\u201d Cummins said. \u201cBecause I had a different philosophy about the industry from what let\u2019s say it looked like Dennis Hof might be representing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cummins said her \u201ctake on the industry\u201d is essentially different than Dennis Hof\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis take on the industry was sex \u2026 sex maybe never exactly in-service in how it moved women forward. His was about sex,\u201d Cummins said with emphasis. \u201cRight down to it, whether it was porn or nudeness or whatever, it was just straight \u2026 I\u2019m going to call it unadulterated sex.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor 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\u2019ve got, and the gal that he has chosen says, \u2018perfect.\u2019 Then it\u2019s an agree, and everybody is going to be happy, and then it\u2019s all behind a closed door. It\u2019s all very private. It brings an elegance to the industry versus that side that \u2026 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\u2019t a second class type of situation. It\u2019s first class. It just gets to be done correctly.\u201d Cummins said and smiled.<\/p>\n

The Onesta Foundation<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I asked Bella Cummins if the death of Dennis Hof was an opportunity for Nevada\u2019s legal sex industry to better reflect the thinking of the Onesta Foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that there is a huge possibility,\u201d Cummins said. \u201cI 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, \u2018thank you Dennis and let\u2019s head this direction.\u2019 Let\u2019s take it and bring an understanding of how we are sex therapists and counsellors, and how about advocates for clean, safe, fun, sex,\u201d Cummins said. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Cummins, the Onesta Foundation is intended to give the legal sex industry in Nevada a new face.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnesta is designed to give the industry a mouth, a mouthpiece, a megaphone. Never to blow peoples\u2019 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, \u2018we never came here to see how hard we can work, we came here to enjoy being human, and sometimes yes, it\u2019s ingesting food or wine or having great sexual experiences,\u201d Cummins explained.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the beginning of time, the desires need to be met,\u201d Cummins said. \u201cAnd they need to be met mostly by men because of the way men are wired. We are herd animals. It\u2019s us, its women who think it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the Onesta, when I say Onesta, I say we the Onesta, can bring the education. If we can get better regulation that\u2019s more in alignment with our constitutional rights as human beings, it\u2019ll be better.,\u201d Cummins said.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cend prostitution\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cAm I concerned that there is a bill out there? Sure. I believe we\u2019ve got some work to do and quickly, and we get to put forward this case that you\u2019re never just going to end the sex work in Nevada,\u201d Cummins said emphatically.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that it\u2019s 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\u2019s, 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,\u201d Cummins said.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published<\/a> by Nevada Capital News on November 29, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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