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Will someone give Ashton Kutcher a glass of orange juice? Because he's officially the Anita Bryant of sex workers. How did Mr. Dude, Where's My Car? turn into Mr. Dude, Think of the Children? By pushing bogus statistics about children in the United States being forced into prostitution. Combating underage prostitution is Kutcher's new cause, and he told CNN's Piers Morgan, "There are between 100,000 and 300,000 child sex slaves in the United States today."
Wow, that's a big number. Just for perspective: The city of Everett has about 100,000 people; Tacoma around 200,000. Enough child prostitutes to populate entire cities would be a bad thing—if it were true. But it's not. The often-quoted figure came from professors Richard Estes and Neil Weiner. It is not the number of child prostitutes; it is the number of children Estes and Weiner consider "at risk" to be sexually exploited. Any kid who runs away from home, even briefly, is in that number, as are transgender youth, gang members, youth living near a national border who have a car, and anyone Estes and Weiner deems an "outsider."
Stranger Personals
Village Voice Media published a scathing article about Kutcher's crusade (printed locally by VVM-owned Seattle Weekly), highlighting the misrepresentation of an elastic figure from a questionable study. When asked by the Village Voice how many actual kids are forcibly taken into the sex industry, Estes answered, "That number would be very small... a few hundred people." VVM proposed its own figure: 827. According to VVM, that's the average number of underage prostitutes arrested annually nationwide.
Obviously, 827 is far fewer than 100,000. However, arrest records alone aren't a credible yardstick, and VVM is disingenuous to pretend otherwise. But you see, VVM is not merely a disinterested observer. Buoyed by its success in shutting down Craigslist's adult services section, the fundamentalist-feminist complex is pressuring another adult site, Backpage.com—which is owned by Village Voice Media. VVM is defending itself from accusations of negligence in preventing child prostitution on its site.
Regardless of VVM's motivations, no one really knows how many child prostitutes there are: not law enforcement, not scholars, and certainly not "rescue" organizations. They should stop saying they do. Their response to this: "Well, any child being sexually exploited is too many, so it doesn't matter if we inflated the number." I agree with the first part—but truth does matter. Unscrupulous people use those bogus statistics to get government grants. There are only so many tax dollars to go around. We just slashed millions of dollars from a federal nutrition program for children. Who's rescuing those kids?
Children being sexually exploited is reprehensible. But the people for whom Kutcher shills use scare tactics not only to fund their industry, but also to institute "proactive policing" of adult sites—meaning: censor and pressure them out of existence. Americans have given up a lot of freedom and privacy to people who say it's for our own safety. I'm dismayed to see the protection of children becoming, like patriotism, the last refuge of scoundrels. 
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Wow, that's just... wow. Extraordinary and nonsensical. Thank you for shedding some light o these so-called statistics.
I'm always weary of any statistics in the media, but it's still shocking to see such blatant lies uncovered. I can understand rounded-up numbers or surveys that aren't fully representative, but this case is obviously someone profiting off of people's goodwill.
Makes you wonder what else is a complete lie.
I'm getting really fed up with all the psuedo-science and statistics that get used to push nanny laws or used to incite fear so some company can profit off of it "for the greater good"
VV currently works with law enforcement to report and remove possible ads that involve minors. The prostitution industry also works hard to police itself because every case of a 16 or 17 year old involved in prostitution (who can legally have sex with adults but become both criminals and victims simultaneously if they receive anything of value) is used as an excuse for violent raids and arrest. Internet advertising has done more to clean up the sex work industry than the last 100 years of prosecution.
In this economic climate, we have to focus on tactics that actually work! It wasn't that long ago that the City of Seattle executed a violent raid (rifles out, SWAT gear on, women tossed to the ground and handcuffed on the floor). One of the women (who enjoyed her job because of the flexibility and excellent pay that she used to take care of her young child instead of relying on public assistance) had an asthma attack and police spent minutes ignoring her and then debating whether they should allow her into her purse to get her inhaler. They had spent months paying officers to go in and get handjobs to bust an establishment that had been operating peacefully in the neighborhood for 8 YEARS. Did prostitution stop in Seattle because of the hundreds of paid personnel involved? Of course not. They are still in the exact same location but now they go to work in fear instead of the comfort and security everyone enjoyed peacefully previously. All the women there were US citizens over 18 who had decided that sex work was their best option. Many had advanced degrees or were students, some were high school dropouts, most were single mothers and all of them were making more than $100/hour working a flexible part time job.
Let's waste money raiding a McDonald's. Ridiculous labor law violations and tons of single mothers who have to take food home from work to supplement the unliveable wage they receive. I got my first job at one at 15. No one called that trafficking.
People get turned off when they discover they've been lied to, and this issue is too important to lie about, even if your aim is noble.
I would think that the Seattle Police have a rough idea of how many juvenile prostitutes are in the city. I haven't seen the major release this number. Do they arrest them? The johns? Does the Mayor have these numbers? If not why not?
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Misrepresentation of the facts or worse, representing conjecture as fact is disingenuous and lowers the discussion to the level of politics. Thanks for speaking out to shine a light on misguided efforts.
The more the citizenry focuses on non-problem problems touted by "experts" like actors, athletes, etc the less the people running things have to explain their lame-ass choices.
Is child-exploitation a problem? Absolutely. But child prostitution is a raindrop in an unquiet sea compared to forced-child labor (where were *your* clothes made and by whom?), de-funding primary education, and kicking hungry kids off food subsidy programs because our elected officials can't balance their checkbooks.
Know what pisses me off more than some dipshit idiot alarmist conservative pricks judging me and calling me names? In all that sky-is-falling, fear-mongering, false-alarm raising bullshit nothing changes. Nobody's kids get helped. It's just a lot of talk and fighting. Words don't make a difference actions do. Raising baseless fears and overstating the problem doesn't help get at-risk kids the services they need. Being real is what helps people. It's like, don't pretend you care about the kids when all you care about is judging people that are different from you.
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While I think labelling it a "fundamentalist-feminist COMPLEX" might be a bit exaggerated, there certainly are those feminists who are lampooned as "Women Against Everything". And who unfortunately seem to wield a lot of power when their ideas line up with the religious fundamentalists.
I certainly don't think Matisse was trying to label all feminists as "fundamentalists" - quite the converse. But, yes, I see how it could be ambiguous in the context - maybe slightly more clarification that the label is supposed to a distinguishing one rather than a general one (describing all feminists) wouldn't hurt.
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