NoPornNorthampton in conjunction with Our Voices Matter is putting up over 300 posters (download full-size PDF) throughout Pioneer Valley this week. Contact Daily Hampshire Gazette/Valley Advocate Publisher Jim Foudy and ask him to drop massage/escort ads from the Valley Advocate.
Not For Sale Media Project: Downloadable Posters
MSNBC Investigates Human Trafficking and Prostitution in the US; Valley Advocate Advertises “Foreign Fantasies” Where “Everything Goes”
Prostitution looks chic, but truth is ugly (Chicago Tribune, 4/27/08)
Puncturing Alan Dershowitz’s Delusions about Prostitution
Springfield Republican: “Woman’s murder in Boston hotel linked to Craigslist advertising of massage services” (4/16/09)
Letter to Gazette: “Urges Valley Advocate to stop running escort ads”(11/7/09)
The Gazette writes of past suffering in its Oct. 26 editorial, “Slavery’s unfinished story,” but you can find present-day exploitation in the Gazette’s sister publication – the Valley Advocate – and its massage/escort advertising section. Many of these ads appear to involve prostitution…
As reported by the Chicago Tribune in April 2008, a comprehensive 2004 mortality study, conducted by the American Journal of Epidemiology, shows that workplace homicide rates for women working in prostitution are 51 times that of the next most dangerous occupation for women (which is working in a liquor store) and the average age of death of the women studied was 34.
In one study, 75 percent of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide and prostituted women comprised 15 percent of all completed suicides reported by hospitals…
Escort Prostitution: A Response to Tom Vannah, Editor of the Valley Advocate
Gazette: “Hadley prostitution was linked to sprawling criminal enterprise” (2/10/10)
…Experts say where there’s human trafficking, there’s prostitution, the sale of unlicensed tobacco, narcotics, gun running, extortion, violence and drugs.
The sex trade, they say, often finances the other crimes…
Press Release: “Nevada Attorney General Masto Announces Ninth Circuit Court Decision Limiting Brothel Advertising” (3/14/10)
…the Nevada advertising restrictions are valid — because narrowly tailored to advance the interest in limiting commodification of sex — even if we assume that the speech in question is accorded commercial speech protection, rather than ousted from any protection under the illegal transaction exception…
Increased advertising of commercial sex throughout the state of Nevada would increase the extent to which sex is presented to the public as a commodity for sale. The advertising restrictions advance the interest in limiting this commodification in two closely related ways. First, they eliminate the public’s exposure — in some areas entirely, and in others in large part — to advertisements that are in themselves an aspect of the commodifying of sex. As the harm protected against occurs in part from the proposal of the transaction, banning or restricting the advertising directly reduces the harm.
Polaris Project: “The Washington Post: A Paper Pimp?” (Part One)
Polaris Project: “The Washington Post: A Paper Pimp?” (Part Two)
Orlando Weekly Drops Adult-Services Ads in Wake of Police Sting; “Operation Weekly Shame”
…Orlando Weekly Inc., which had been accused of aiding prostitution through its advertising, made the deal with prosecutors, who dropped 18 charges against the company, including a count of racketeering…
“New York Press No Longer Marketing Arm for Prostitution/Trafficking”
Another Victory for NOW-NYC: New York Magazine Drops Sex Ads
One would think that this would be exactly the kind of exploitation the Voice would revel in exposing. But because the Voice is free, it apparently needs the revenue brought in by, this week, 10 pages of these ads.
And so its press release yammers on about how our freedoms are “under attack by the Bush administration,” and makes NOW sound like the Taliban, and finally trots out the same pathetic excuse New York once made: “If there is evidence that any advertiser in our pages engaged in…sex slavery…” Blah blah blah.
It’s hard to be part of the solution, when you’re part of the problem.