Mercury Rising 鳯女

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Kristof’s War On The Village Voice: Still Ignoring Holes In His Own Case

Posted by Phoenix Woman on April 1, 2012

Nicholas Kristof, in the course of attacking a local and national competitor of the media empire that gives him his paychecks, tries yet again to smear the Village Voice (which has debunked his prior reporting time and again) as the Root of All Sexual Evil:

THE biggest forum for sex trafficking of under-age girls in the United States appears to be a Web site called Backpage.com.

This emporium for girls and women — some under age or forced into prostitution — is in turn owned by an opaque private company called Village Voice Media.

Why is Kristof so hot against Village Voice Media? Probably because they’ve repeatedly exposed his and other writers’ pushing factually-unsupported myths like The Great Super Bowl Hooker Invasions and an alleged underage sex traffic epidemic that legitimate and honestly-run studies simply haven’t found to exist. (In fact, Backpage.com works intensively with law enforcement and is considered a valued tool in fighting the sort of sexual exploitation Kristof claims to oppose.)

This entry was posted on April 1, 2012 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. Tagged: , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to “Kristof’s War On The Village Voice: Still Ignoring Holes In His Own Case”

  1. jo6pac said

    April 2, 2012 at 9:01 am

    I see were gs sold their share of said media and more than likely to another holding company they own.

  2. Wege said

    April 2, 2012 at 10:04 am

    I haven’t read Kristof since his articles on global sex trafficking. New York City is home to massive amounts of human sex trafficking, and a NY Times columnist had to go to India before he could find his outrage? Well, I think Kristof heard that from many of his readers, and decided to launch his ill-considered jihad against VV’s Backpage.com.

    Sex trafficking needs to be legalized and then tightly regulated. Any other approach enables a pimp-driven system that ruthlessly exploits sex workers. Personal ads allow prostitutes to work independently, without pimps or madams (who also use these ads but at risk to their business as PW mentions).

    The only good thing to come of Kristof’s misplaced concern is the fact that Goldman Sachs is now dumping their shares of Village Voice Media which, hopefully, will make VVM a little less douchey.

    • Phoenix Woman said

      April 2, 2012 at 11:54 am

      What’s interesting is that the typical focus is on underage females presumed to have been sold/coerced/etc.,, and controlled by pimps, yet nearly half the underage sex workers are boys — and virtually nothing’s being to help them; meanwhile, only 10% of the kids have pimps — the vast majority are freelancers as a recent study showed:

      • Nearly half of the kids — about 45 percent — were boys.

      • Only 10 percent were involved with a “market facilitator” (e.g., a pimp).

      • About 45 percent got into the “business” through friends.

      • More than 90 percent were U.S.- born (56 percent were New York City natives).

      • On average, they started hooking at age fifteen.

      • Most serviced men — preferably white and wealthy.

      • Most deals were struck on the street.

      • Almost 70 percent of the kids said they’d sought assistance at a youth-service agency at least once.

      • Nearly all of the youths — 95 percent — said they exchanged sex for money because it was the surest way to support themselves.

      In other words, the typical kid who is commercially exploited for sex in New York City is not a tween girl, has not been sold into sexual slavery and is not held captive by a pimp.

      Nearly all the boys and girls involved in the city’s sex trade are going it alone.

      Ric Curtis and Meredith Dank were amazed by what their research had revealed. But they were completely unprepared for the way law-enforcement officials and child-advocacy groups reacted to John Jay’s groundbreaking study.

      “I remember going to a meeting in Manhattan where they had a lot of prosecutors there whose job was to prosecute pimps,” Curtis recalls. “They were sort of complaining about the fact that their offices were very well staffed but their workload was — not very daunting, let’s say. They had a couple cases, and at every meeting you go to they’d pull out the cherry-picked case of this pimp they had busted, and they’d tell the same story at every meeting. They too were bothered by the fact that they couldn’t find any pimps, any girls.

      “So I come along and say, ‘I found 300 kids’ — they’re all perky — but then I say, ‘I’m sorry, but only 10 percent had pimps.’

      “It was like a fart in church. Because basically I was saying their office was a waste of time and money“

      • Wege said

        April 2, 2012 at 3:37 pm

        I use the term pimp very broadly. Years ago I briefly drove an independent contractor to some of her gigs. Initially I was impressed that she and her friends were truly freelancers, but as time passed I realized her pimp was her meth dealer. No, he didn’t set up calls or give her protection, but she was still turning tricks to pay for his meth (cash from her tricks, or freebies for the dealer — pretty much the same thing, imho).

        You can probably carry that analogy too far, but when colleges demand high tuition fees, doesn’t that make them the pimps for those legendary “college students” working as call girls (and boys)?

        Selling boys is something I don’t know anything about, but I’ve always wondered about the Jeff Gannon/Johnny Gosch stories.

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