The Chris Moeller Archives

The prostitute

Algren once wrote of the working girl gone in front of the judge….

“We have to keep Chicago strong and America mighty,” I heard his Honor proclaim before sentencing the girl with a record for addiction. “A year and a day! Take her away!” 

Blinking out of the window of an Ogden Avenue trolley at the sunlight she hadn’t seen for almost a year. “I guess I was lucky I done that time,” the girl philosophized. “Chicago still looks pretty strong and America looks mighty mighty.”

I’m mesmerized by a local story about an attorney, Katherine “Katie” Sears, who is going public with the fact that she makes a supplemental income working as a legal prostitute in Nevada-- that is, Nevada the state, not Nevada, Iowa, but there is one of those.

In Ankeny, Iowa, she’s a wife, mother to two young boys, and her wish is to shine a light on the mostly-illicit profession in hopes that it will eventually be decriminalized everywhere. She frames the question rather plainly, and most convincingly, “You can say, ‘No sex without a condom.’ You can say, ‘No sex until we’re married.’ But you can’t say, ‘No sex until you pay me?’ And that feels like it really undermines what consent means.”

Sears is a partner in a firm with her husband, John Sears. They specialize in criminal defense. It’s Clark and Sears, PLLC, in downtown Des Moines and Ankeny. She arranged a story with KCCI-TV outing herself, as it were. She tells the station that she makes an excellent living (“made $55,000 [once] in three weeks”), never fears for her safety, and is required to have frequent health check-ups.

In rural parts of Nevada, where she works, the profession is legal. She feels that this fact reduces sex trafficking. At home in Iowa, as an attorney, she takes on prostitution cases pro bono. This is addressed in a blog post on the law firm’s website from back in December. Evidently, her confessions online back then escaped media attention all this time. (Not unlike a confession on this blog.) She writes as an outreach to potential clients… “I’ve spent two years as a prostitute in a legal brothel (and a few years as a stripper) and I loved my job. I’m more familiar with the realities of sex work than the lay person is. I support your choices and your bodily autonomy and I promise not to make you feel like a criminal… because you aren’t.”

On the streets of Des Moines and throughout Iowa, prostitutes-- in the shadows-- turn tricks for a couple hundred dollars. Politicians turn their tricks for no less than a $100k contribution. It’s economics of scale. And a rigged ballgame. Prosecution of this particular “crime” targets the underclass, making it very American indeed. And it’s hardly the only capitalist venture we prefer to keep unregulated.

Its day is coming however, and Sears is in a unique position to light the way as she demonstrates great courage. Half a century ago, gambling was illegal in almost all of the United States. So was marijuana use. And abortion. And pornography. And homosexual relations. The constitutional right to privacy, established in broad terms by the Supreme Court in 1965, has invalidated limits on freedom particularly in the sexual realm, and public attitudes have advanced at a lightning pace. Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii has stated on the campaign trail this year that sex work should not be a crime for a consenting adult.

Sexism has always been a factor in keeping the practice illegal. Criminalizing keeps economic and legal power in the hands of men. What women would benefit in financial terms could never be matched by men. In fact, it’s arguably the fastest economic model that exists for transferring wealth from men to women. Prostitutes of an independent character have always possessed a power that instills fear in the Respectables. Algren grouped them in among “members of a species so high on the food chain, it made its own rules." Inside another text, he wrote,"She does not send for men: they seek her out. And the simple irrefutable fact is that she has been essential to every society, has outlasted every society, is essential to our own and will outlast our own.” Perversely, but perhaps unsurprisingly, predominantly-male lawmaking bodies have hidden behind anti-trafficking laws as a way to combat prostitution, yet health statistics show an inverse result and are readily available.

Though submitting ourselves to scientific study has never been our strong suit, those stats show prostitutes are as many as 18 times more likely to be murdered than non-prostitutes their same age and race. Those operating in the shadows are likewise more reluctant to report being victims of violence and we can accurately surmise that this is because of the illegal nature of the trade. They’re less likely to use condoms or be tested for sexually-transmitted disease. A regulated workforce is always a safer and healthier one. Any political or social movement that claims to be working towards the goal of ending human trafficking and violence towards women must also endorse the decriminalization of prostitution or else that movement should not be taken seriously. We’re not doing anything to help the coerced women that are prostituting themselves by making consenting sex work a crime.

posted by CM @ 8:41 PM