Peering into the sex industry

Earlier this month I mentioned that over the summer I had the opportunity to chat with a legal pimp and former illegal prostitute. Half a year later, I published the resultant article in today's Badger Herald.

The world of prostitution is not something I had ever really pondered before this past summer. And I must say that I was rather lucky to be pitched both sides of the legalization debate by two of the industry's most noted and respected experts: Moonlight Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof and Sex Industry Survivors Anonymous head Ann Bissell. They are both remarkably persuasive, charismatic individuals and they both clearly care deeply about the worlds in which they are emerged.

But if there is one thing that truly surprised me as I researched this article, it was the prevalence of prostitution in society. I grew up in Washington, DC and certainly saw my fair share of working girls on various downtown street corners. Yet I always assumed – naively and wrongly – that this was largely an urban phenomenon and that in rural and even suburban America a 'dime trick' was still the slang reference for a bad magic performance.

How wrong I was.

As I note in the article:

Through websites like Craig’s List, which allow consumers to post advertisements for any number of services — including those of the erotic variety — prostitutes and johns have never had such an easy time finding each other for illegal rendezvous.

I don't profess to know how things were 10 years ago, before Al Gore invented the Internet, but I was horrified at the number of online ads for sexual services I encountered in researching this article. Many of these Internet-based prostitutes offered to travel for their clientèle and would even post calendars of their upcoming tours, just like a rock band.

(Forgive me for excluding links at this point, but I am a touch uneasy directing traffic toward websites that wantonly advertise an illegal and inherently dangerous service.)

It's been several months since I finished the primary research for this article and it is has been surprisingly easy to return to my self-sheltered world of naiveté. Sure, I see Mr. Hof on television or in the news every now and then. And when I went back to Washington, DC for a week over the holiday season, I once again saw the downtown street corners to which I long ago turned numb.

But if there is one thing I have learned, it is that the sex industry is far more pervasive in scope than most people realize. And whether we care to take note or not, the reality is that even here in Wisconsin, it is always right under our nose.

Then again, sometimes ignorance truly is bliss.