Harassment of Escorts, Exotic Dancers, and Sex Workers in SL?

I can understand that in RL in places that it is legal and stuff..

Heck remember a couple of years back when that one woman in Germany went into what she thought was a bar?It ended up being a brothel..so she said no i can't take this job..well her unemployment or whatever they have in germany benefits would be cut off if she turned down the job because it is a job accepted in society there..so this mans wife ended up working in a brothel..I thought that was terrible..but they should get everything any worker does i think..

But i don't think something like that should apply in SL..none of that even really lines up with the things escorts and dancers and other people go through in here..
I escorted for awhile ..mainly for the fantasy and really it was boooring..i danced for a couple of years and you always had people saying things or trying to trick you into doing things or making promises then not keeping them after they got what they wanted..but you never get aids or broken legs or babies or anything more than mad when you get tricked..

i've went into business with people in sl and me thinking it was just going to be about business but then finding out that because they felt they were helping me i was supposed to be doing extra things for them..
all i did was end it and moved along..i had hurt feelings and became mad but there was nothing scaring from it like those girls get in RL..

So i don't know..maybe this girl thinks they can get rights like this in here or something..
I just know that RL law doesn't look at them as being actual escorts..this is why they can escort in sl and it be legal here..

i wonder maybe if it was just a troll drop hahahahaha

Nor do I, but I hope the reasoning isn't how it *should* apply in SL, cuz then I'll have to scoff heavily. The fact that every unpleasant or uncomfortable situation for a sex worker in SL can't be controlled is pretty much a given. Shit happens.. but remaining in that situation is nothing less than a conscious choice. If it's a club owners policy to get freebies, then either assume the position and keep working there, or don't and move on to a better place. It's the owners place, and the owners rules, but it's *their* choice. If they work for a place where they're not supposed to turn down any customer, then it was *their* choice to work there knowing that, and even more so if they keep doing it after it becomes a problem. Everyone in that industry has the option to say "oh F that" at any time and walk away. For that reason I have no sympathy for those who say they're caught up in sex coersion, or are being used by owners or pimps or whatever. Stop being the enabler then. Nobody ever said they don't have the right to play ball on their own terms, but it's their accepting of less than those terms that creates their problem in the first place.

There are no sex workers in SL, because there is no sex in SL. It is people behind their keyboards, typing, sometimes talking, sometimes masturbating (usually at least the paying part is). In case of "harrassment and violence" tick the red X in the top corner of your screen.

How about the "rights" of the customers? All monies have to be paid up front, but there are no public quality standards with which the sex workers have to conform, and I haven't yet seen anyone advertising their services with a money back guarantee.

And of course with LL refusing to get involved in inter-avatar commercial disputes how easy is it for the sex worker to take the money and run? OK, it usually means that there is a remote likelihood of repeat business (although I know some suckers who believe the "I crashed" or even "*You* crashed" excuses and come back to be ripped off more) but with multiple disposable (or recyclable) avatars is the sex worker going to worry?

The escort business is not what is was of course. When I joined it was mostly cybering in text, but then voice came along, which killed off most of the guys playing girls in the business, and then the webcam scams kicked in. Almost all of the high-class escorts I knew have either left or settled down and taken up knitting in sl - which is what they were usually doing in rl while giving guys a good time anyway! That's the problem if you pay for it, whereas if you're getting it for free there must be some personal motivation involved.

Pep (remembers fondly a girl being forcibly told by the owner to give him a good time, so we went up to a skybox and discussed the good time we had mutually had the night before. )

Ceka - the German case is reprehensible. That's government in action? What about being able to object on moral or even health endangerment grounds? I hear things like this and am very glad to live where I do.

Dana - if enablers could "stop being an enabler" they wouldn't be an enabler in the first place.

Pep - has a point about customer rights as well, if it's to be a legal 'industry' in SL.

I've heard that German brothel rumor before, but mostly from the likes of Fox News, and Snopes says it's false: http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp#

I saw it in here in a thread a long time ago..someone posted a link to the article and then people were answering in the thread like that is how it is there..so i don't know..it seemed real and popped into my head when i saw this thread..So i don't know..i really didn't look into it much more than the information in that thread..

Interesting. I researched this topic quickly and it seems to be true.

http://blog99.de/hartz-iv-frauen-mussen-als-prostituierte-arbeiten/

To sum up this article: In Germany prostitution is legalized and considered a regular job just like any other job. Since brothels pay taxes and health care benefits, they are entitled to search for employees using the government institutions, just like any other company.

It makes perfect sense: You can't have it both way. You either legalize prostitution or you don't.

Does that story cite actual verifiable incidents where people were forced to work as prostitutes, or is it just another step in "the telephone game"?

The blog post refers to this newspaper article:

http://www.taz.de/index.php?id=archivseite&dig=2004/12/18/a0077

No specific verifiable incident is being mentioned, but it says at the end of the article that "It did happen in some specific cases" (that women were proposed to work at a brothel, as a desk clerk however, not as a prostitute). No names are mentionend though.

By "proposed" do you mean "required"? The hook in the original story is that the woman was required to do sex work or lose her benefits. That's the part that I keep hearing and disbelieving every time this comes up.

She also clarified desk clerk, not prostitute.

OMG. A fate worse than death.

I agree, Dana, with your basic premise here: SL is NOT RL, for all sorts of reasons, and an attempt to simply impose RL conditions, regulations, and so forth here, without regard to those differences, would be pointless and stupid.

That said, however . . .

Personally, I don't see much in the list of "rights" contained within the Declaration that one could really object to, unless they were interpreted in an absurdly literal way. Protecting the "honour and reputation" of sex workers, for instance, is surely just a way of saying "stop calling us filthy whores," and would be, in practice, about as effective as a regulation against calling lawyers "sharks," or calling a used car salesman a . . . um, used car salesman.

Let's grant, then, that the consequences of violations of these "rights" in SL are certainly less dramatic or severe here than in RL.

Granted also that the victims of employer harassment are not under the kind of compulsion that RL sex workers are, and probably CAN simply tell their jerk of a pimp/brothel owner to eff off, without much to deal with in the way of consequences.

Granted, also, that SL is a private company, and not a public institution.

However, let me also suggest that the following is true:

-- The fact that SL is privately-owned shouldn't represent carte blanche for clearly unethical behaviour. Being privately-owned doesn't (and I believe) shouldn't mean immunity from the law in RL, after all. An employer in RL can't demand sexual favours either.

-- As an extension of the above . . . There has been a great deal of complaining about LL's unethical behaviour as a company in this forum of late. In other words, many of us here ARE holding LL to ethical standards of behaviour, even though they are private, and own this application. Why should those same standards not be applied to private businesses within SL?

-- Sleazy unethical behaviour in SL may have fewer consequences, and not be as effective a means of compulsion as in RL, but it is STILL sleazy unethical behaviour. The penalties for such behaviour should be, of course, much less severe than for the analogous infraction in RL, but why is it out of line to call for SOME kind of penalty? The CS as it stands if FULL of penalties for unethical behaviour as it stands.

-- The virtual economy in SL has a very real dimension. Brothel owners and pimps CAN make real money here. And so, apparently, can sex workers. So there are REAL financial implications to the way in which the sex trade operates here, and also, for that reason, some REAL levers that can be used by employers to coerce their employees. Denying someone a job unless they "service" the employer (or Pep) is to threaten that person, at least potentially, with a loss of REAL income. There are necessary rules that help safeguard a landowner's assets in SL; why should the "assets" (ahem) of a sex worker not be similarly safeguarded?

-- The suggestion has been made in this thread, I think correctly, that sex work here is really the same as something like phone sex or sex cam work in RL. Cybering in text, voice, or on cam in SL DOES have a REAL monetary value, even if sex workers here are more poorly paid than their RL counterparts. The employer who demands sexual favours is demanding what amounts to a "kickback" that has REAL economic value. He (or she) is essentially stealing from the sex worker. We wouldn't tolerate this kind of behaviour from someone operating an online sex service in RL: why is it ok to do so here, in the context of a virtual business that is in other ways almost exactly the same as its RL counterpart?

-- The point has been made that the sex trade in SL could, at least be potentially, be used by RL pimps and sex traffickers. I have no idea if it ACTUALLY is being used in this way, but the fact that this potential exists surely means that we need to treat the sex trade here more seriously than LL does currently?

Soooooooo . . . Let me tentatively propose the following . . .

That LL, as a private company that has an interest in the ethical treatment and safety of its customers (yes, I know, I know . . . keep the snickering down, please) should undertake some minimal regulation of the sex trade here, as is its right to do as a private company.

In particular, they should institute a policy that makes certain forms of harassment of sex workers offenses under the ToS or CS, as for example, the demanding of sexual favours from employees. The penalties should, of course, be commensurately less severe here than they would be in RL, but there should surely be penalties nonetheless. Demanding cybersex as a condition of employment surely constitutes a form of harassment under the CS as it exists anyway, but it would be worthwhile to make this more explicit. From a PR point of view, at the least, this would seem to me a wise move on LL's part: do they REALLY want it revealed that SL is harbouring virtual (or for that matter, RL) pimps who are blackmailing employees?

/me ducks hurriedly . . .

mhm i don't agree.. the voice and web-cam girls and boys( sometimes together) performing real sex in front of webcams seems enough sex to me...

Legalizing it and forcing someone into it, even in a tangential manner, aren't the same thing. I can imagine a lot of people would be horrified to work as a cashier in a pr0n or 'marital aid' shop, for instance.

One also hears of receptionists working in brothels being 'pressured' to entertain clients if the girls are too busy. Just ick, all around.

Yeah, right! Right after they have protected the rights of customers.

Pep (How about starting up a non-contributory pension scheme as well? )

Every time some sex scandal is reported in the news, there is a bump in registration numbers.

Addendum:

That LL should also undertake to ensure that sexual services rendered (especially to Pep) by sex workers should be of a length and quality appropriate to the financial outlay made by the customer.

(Wow, did you have a really bad experience at some point? Wanna talk about it? )

More than they do any other trade?

Should that be any greater a crime if it's done for sex workers than for any other workers? Should it make any difference what the relationship of the individuals concerned are?

Well . . . I think that LL SHOULD have more regulation to protect both consumers and businesses here, actually.

But an argument COULD be made that, sex being a somewhat more personal thing than money (for most of us, anyway), this kind of harassment is more serious than other forms of rip-off. We DO accept, generally, that sexual harassment can be more traumatic than other forms of harassment, do we not?

Something like sexual harassment in the workplace shouldn't be treated more or less leniently based on the type of business, though. Which is what I was getting at.

That's along the lines of what I think too. But isn't sexual harassment in any context already against TOS?

All the story actually says about this unnamed woman is that she was told to phone to arrange an interview with a prospective employer, and when she called them, she realised it was a brothel. Doesn't say anything about what the job centre said when she complained about this.

The Telegraph then goes on to quote "Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specialises in such cases," was "Miss Garweg believes that pressure on job centres to meet employment targets will soon result in them using their powers to cut the benefits of women who refuse jobs providing sexual services"
"They are already prepared to push women into jobs related to sexual services, but which don't count as prostitution,'' she said.
"Now that prostitution is no longer considered by the law to be immoral, there is really nothing but the goodwill of the job centres to stop them from pushing women into jobs they don't want to do."

It's not immediately clear, at least to me, whom -- if anyone -- Ms Garweg was advising, or why people were going all the way from Berlin, where these events took place, to Hamburg to instruct her, but it certainly looks like people getting upset about what *might* happen rather than about what actually *did* happen.

And, significantly, the only specific case mentioned in the article relates -- in contrast to all this stuff about unnamed people who might face sanctions -- to a Mr Ulrich Kueperkoch, who " wanted to open a brothel in Goerlitz, in former East Germany, but his local job centre withdrew his advertisement for 12 prostitutes, saying it would be impossible to find them," and who was intending " to take a claim for compensation to the highest court" (whether he did, and with what success, one does not know).

That is, the actual case of which we have any details concerns some who was cross that the employment agency wouldn't take his adverts.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1482371/If-you-dont-take-a-job-as-a-prostitute-we-can-stop-your-benefits.html

Without further and better particulars, I'm with Argent on this.

Do we have any evidence that anyone in Germany has, in fact, been told she must accept a job in a brothel because otherwise she'd lose her unemployment benefit? I, for one, find it very difficult to believe that no one, confronted with such an ultimatum, has told them what to do with their ultimatum and got on the phone to a news agency or an opposition MP.

Never needed to pay for it in sl; rl is a different thing - I'm married, so I pay and pay and pay . . .

Pep (Seems to me as if Cato might have found himself a job, monitoring length and quality. )