Judging RedEye by its Covers

Last week, Chicagoans learned about a proposed law that would tax strip clubs $5 per customer to fund rape crisis services in Illinois. News quickly went viral about the law. State Senator Toi Hutchinson and Lt. Governor Sheila Simon support the bill, which is an advocacy effort of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault. CAASE supports this proposed tax, and we have a lot of work to do addressing how our local media talk about this issue and violence against women in general. RedEye, Chicago’s free newspaper, broke the story with a cover that looked like this:

RedEye set the tone and brought the conversation down to the basest level possible. A caption could have been: “Women in strip clubs are simply body parts you can buy and tax.”

Senator Hutchinson did a great job re-framing the conversation in a press conference. “This is an important conversation,” she said. “There’s a connection between this industry and the objectification of women that allows rape to continue, and that’s a fact." She continued: “Women are whole human beings with hearts and spirits and minds. We’re not a collection of body parts that are for sale." She must have been facing some smirks in the audience, because she added, "This is nothing to laugh about. It’s up to every one of us that the conversation is where it ought to be.”

Violence against women is routinely trivialized and glamorized in order to sell, sell, sell. (If you’re not familiar with this problem, see the awesome new film, Miss Representation.) Women in the commercial sex trade are snickered at, blamed, dehumanized. So what does the media have to say about all this?

Today on WBEZ, a media panel (Scott Smith of Chicago Magazine and Jen Sabella of Huffington Post Chicago) talked briefly about the use of the word “ass” on the RedEye cover and the image of a woman’s feet in apparent “stripper shoes.” They quickly summarized that the cover was tailored to RedEye’s audience, a group that will only pick up and read the most salacious stories. Smith likened it to the old timey days of news boys hawking headlines to sell papers, when the veracity of the message on the cover didn't matter, really, as long as it motivated people to read a well-researched story.

Of course, he’s right. This is absolutely how RedEye is operating, or we never would have seen that cover. The inside story was fair and informative, but covers matter too.

That cover should have been about the perpetration of sexual violence. It should have been about how women in strip clubs (and women who live near the clubs) experience harassment and sexual assault. It should have been about efforts to end exploitation. Let's demand that our local media elevate the conversation.  Tell the RedEye that it matters to you what they put on their covers, in their pages, and on their website. Send an email or a letter to the editor urging them not to objectify women or trivialize sexual violence (email ritaredeye@tribune.com).

See the whole press conference (CAASE's Lynne Johnson speaks about our End Demand Illinois campaign!) with Senator Hutchinson and Lt. Governor Simon below, and stay tuned for more.

Strip Club Owners Took $3 Million in Fees from Women Dancers

News broke today that strip club owners in Elgin, Illinois, allegedly earned more than $3 million in fees from women who danced in their venue. They are under investigation for not reporting this money for taxes. Sadly, the fact that this much money was earned in a strip club is not surprising. Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation urges the community to become aware of the exploitation that occurs in strip clubs throughout Chicagoland. From the Chicago Tribune:

"Buttitta and his son received about $3,704,959 from “house” fees they collected from women for each shift they worked as dancers at Blackjacks, according to the U.S. attorney's office."

Some people believe that stripping makes women rich. Instead, they are often indebted to the club indefinitely. From our fact sheet:

As soon as a woman begins dancing at a club, it can cost her money rather than being a lucrative job. Many of the women who dance at strip clubs or strip for a house-call company are hired as independent contractors instead of as employees and are therefore not paid a salary or hourly wages. Despite this classification, the clubs maintain enormous control over the women, setting their schedules and hours and setting the prices a dancer can charge for table or private dances.

Additionally, the women often pay the club stage fees or “rent,” sometimes as high as $150 per night. In addition, women pay the club a commission of up to 20% from private dances and tips. Many clubs also require dancers to “tip out”—sharing a percentage of what they earn with the bartender, waitresses, bouncers, house mother, and DJ.

Strip clubs and other indoor venues are also recruiting grounds for pimps and traffickers. In this video, Olivia describes how she was forced into the sex trade after taking a job as a dancer at a Chicago strip club. 

Take action by signing up for our End Demand Illinois action alerts here. 

To learn more about the harms that strip clubs cause to women, please visit our fact sheets.

Kristof Takes on Pimps, Backpage.com

Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times posted a column today about pimps who are using websites like Backpage.com to facilitate the trafficking of girls as young as 13. We’re heartened that the issue of domestic sex trafficking is receiving more attention and that pimps are being seen for what they really are--traffickers. Kristof calls for the shut down of websites that are making it easy on pimps:

“It’s true that there’s some risk that pimps will migrate to new Web sites, possibly based overseas, that are less cooperative. But, on balance, that’s a risk worth taking. The present system is failing. Pimps aren’t the shrewdest marketers, and eliminating a hub for trafficking should at least chip away at the problem.“

Kristof points out that ordering a girl for sex off the internet is as easy as ordering a pizza. That's not the first time we've heard that comparison, and he's sadly very right: When Rachel Durchslag, CAASE's executive director, interviewed 113 johns in Chicago, on purchaser said: "I usually call for a girl, you know, like a pizza.” There are so many disturbing things happening there--a girl being a commodity, available to order--it's important to know that johns are a driving force as much as pimps are.
 

Kristof identifies the issue of encouraging law enforcement to go after pimps in the first place, and we are fortunate locally that Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez and Sheriff Tom Dart are embracing the End Demand approach. We’ve seen signs of progress in Illinois, with local stings that led to the arrests of more than 10 traffickers and 27 johns.

There is much more to be done, however, and you can help address this problem in Illinois. Through our End Demand Illinois campaign, prevention curriculum for young men and direct legal services for survivors of the sex trade, CAASE is working to hold perpetrators accountable and advocating for supportive services for survivors of the sex trade. You can:

1. Sign up for the End Demand Illinois Action Alerts to keep up with the latest news and advocacy efforts. If you're already signed up, share Kristof's article with a friend and ask them to sign up!

2. Bring CAASE’s curriculum for young men to a high school near you. Our instructor talks to the students about the realities of the commercial sex trade and human trafficking. Young men are asked to consider how pressures to “be a man” can influence their decisions to patronize the sex trade.


3. Make a donation to support CAASE’s work, which includes legal services for survivors of the sex trade.

For more information visit www.caase.org and www.enddemandillinois.org

Police help 15-year-old girl who was trafficked in Chicago

Recently in Chicago, local law enforcement discovered a 15-year-old girl who had been lured into prostitution by two adults. The story is terrifying but had a just outcome: After the couple recruited the girl on the street, initiated her and tried to pimp her out, a police officer recognized that the girl was a minor. She was treated as a crime victim worthy of services and even helped identify her traffickers. It was discovered that the offender was already out on bond for involuntary servitude of a minor.

The Illinois Safe Children Act, passed last year, ensures that all minors are immune from prosecution for prostitution in our state. We send kudos to law enforcement for looking beneath the surface to recognize that this young woman needed help and that there were others behind the scenes seeking to profit. The Chicago Police Department’s Human Trafficking Task Force along with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, Salvation Army’s STOP-IT program and DCFS all helped with this sting—many thanks to them for their collaborative response to human trafficking in our community.

The End Demand Illinois campaign seeks to hold pimps, traffickers and johns accountable for the harm they cause. The people who profit from the commercial sex trade are creating a demand for young women like the one in this story. Stand up against demand for the sex trade—visit www.enddemandillinois.org and sign up for our action alerts.

Looking beneath the surface only takes a minute.

We’ve all seen the mug shots lining the margins of online news sites. Women are charged with prostitution. Sometimes they are in the city, but more often than not, they’re in the suburbs. Not on the street, but busted in a sting in a massage parlor or spa. And our gut reaction at CAASE is to wonder “Did anyone look beneath the surface? Did anyone ask that woman if she was there by choice?”

When you see these stories, do a short screening for yourself. Does the reporter ask the police about the potential of trafficking in the case? Were the sting efforts targeting purchasers (johns) and traffickers (pimps) or only the prostituted women? Is there a plan for holding the business accountable, or figuring out who was really profiting? Or might the arrested women soon be replaced with others? Why are there only photos of prostituted women, but no photos of the johns? Were there efforts to arrest johns?

If not, they’re ignoring demand—the people who perpetrate harm and profit from the sex trade.

If you don’t see reporters and law enforcement looking beneath the surface to address demand, it’s up to you to call them out. Leave a comment. Write a letter. Ask your local law enforcement and elected officials to address demand for the sex trade. Join our campaign and tell Illinois that we must end demand. Visit www.enddemandillinois.org

Sample letters and other information can also be found in our media response guide.

Photo by Elea Chang

What Did You Think of "Saved on the Strip"?

I watched Hookers, Saved on the Strip on Discovery Channel last night. It’s a new reality TV show about Annie Lobert, a survivor of prostitution (above). I wanted to weigh in about my reaction to the show and hear what you all have to say about it.

First of all, I want to acknowledge that the show perpetuates a lot of stereotypes about women in prostitution. It’s set in Las Vegas, and the B-roll used to tell Annie’s story includes many shots of women wearing fishnet stockings and looking generally happy and glamorous. This made me cringe—the vast majority of women in prostitution in the U.S. are having sex to survive, and they certainly aren’t wearing six-inch heels. Real women in prostitution live in our own community—from Naperville to Elmhurst to Chicago—not just in “sin city.”

However, I think the show tackles a lot of issues that women right here in Chicago are facing as they try to exit prostitution. She touches on issues pertaining to violence, pimps, the legal system and more. I think it’s very brave of Annie and the other survivors on the show to tell their stories. They’re educating the public about the harms of prostitution and trying to help other women. Here are a couple things that stood out to me as being as being informative and pertinent to Chicago:

From what I could tell, Annie was a minor when she was recruited into prostitution. She was lured into it by someone she knew. This is really, really sad and also a very common experience for women in prostitution. Until recently in Illinois, girls could be charged with prostitution even though they were minors, and adults were paying to have sex with them. Our End Demand Illinois campaign advocated for a law that ends this practice: The Illinois Safe Children Act is changing the way law enforcement in our state treat survivors of domestic sex trafficking. Instead of being treated like criminals, youth survivors of prostitution are seen as being worthy of service and treatment.

Annie is also showing how the arrest and re-arrest of women in prostitution makes it incredibly difficult for women to leave the sex trade. This practice ignores the cause of this problem—the people who are buying sex and creating a demand for prostitution. Regina, a survivor on the show, was working to have her criminal record sealed so that she could apply for a job outside of the sex trade. She found this process incredibly difficult and wondered aloud if returning to stripping wouldn’t just be easier on her. This was a really sad moment in the show. Our culture’s stigmatization and legal treatment of women in prostitution is so harmful and cyclical. The End Demand Illinois campaign seeks to stop this cycle by shifting law enforcement’s attention to the cause of the problem—the men who are buying sex—and to stop the arrest and re-arrest of women.

To learn more about how to end the demand for prostitution, visit CAASE's resource page.