Mandanad

On About.com there is a section devoted titled “Women’s Issues” and the subtitle is “Prostitution Statistics and Rape. According to About.com, Linda Lowen, the writer of the issue, is a former broadcast journalist specializing in women’s issues and she has won both local and national awards for her work. She has also created, produced, and hosted women’s issues radio and television programs for NPR and PBS station affiliates including the award-winning talk show “Women’s Voices.”

Linda wrote that for women who are prostitutes, “rape is just as traumatic as it is for women who are not in the business.” The statistics, according to Melissa Farley and Howard Barkan in the 1990s based on a study they did, show that “out of 130 San Francisco prostitutes, 82 percent reported being physically assaulted since entering prostitution. Of the 82 percent, 55 percent were assaulted by their customers, 83 percent were physically threatened by a weapon and 68 percent reported on having been raped by prostitutes.”

I just read an opinion blog which informs us of a private, liberal arts school in Lynchburg, Virginia called Randolph College. According to DNRonline.com on May 3, 2008, one of the subjects studied at the college is sexology and the students get a chance to go on field trips. One of these field trips led to the Chicken Ranch in Pahrump, NV., about 60 miles outside of Las Vegas.

The tuition for Lynchburg College is $34,860 a year. The writer of this opinion column thought it was hilarious what the college’s education is paying for compared with the more important things the students can and should be learning.

The school boasts of being well-known for its liberal arts and science degrees and according to the school’s website, http://www.lynchburg.edu/, “it is nationally recognized for going above and beyond in commitment to student success.”

I thought I would share this with my readers because I found it very amusing.

The website is http://www.dailynews-record.com/opinion_details.php?AID=16284&CHID=36.

 Corrections: I referred to Randolph College as Lynchburg College. Someone commented me and let me know I had done that and I am very sorry about the mistake. It is Randolph College in Lynchburg not Lynchburg College. Thanks for the comment.

Underage prostitution has become a problem in Las Vegas. Minnesota and Nevada were transporting women and underage girls between the two states. The leader of this prostitution ring, Darryl Taylor, was sentenced on April 16 on two counts of sex traficking and for allowing the underage girls to get jobs in strip clubs or escort services, according to Pioneer Press.

According to KTNV, Channel 13 News, Judge William Voy wants to make a safe place for underage prostitutes here in Las Vegas. This was reported by Channel 13 on April 21, 2008. The proposal is for a $2 million house. According to the Judge, the kids come out of the sexual lifestyle but when things get tough again, they fall right back into it. This plan would help the kids stay out of the hands of pimps and such. The Judge also wants the United States to help with this plan.

This is a developing story and it will be interesting finding out if Judge Voy’s plans go through and if the bill he’s fighting for passes.

For more on this, tune into Channel 13 Action News on http://www.ktnv.com/Global/story.asp?S=8206277 or you can go to http://swoplv.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/clark-county-judge-proposes-safe-house-for-underage-prostitutes/ to read blogs regarding prostitution cases in Clark County.

Today at the library, Suzie taught the Journalism 310 class how to search for things on the internet, specifically through UNLV Library website, www.unlvlibrary.edu.

The one thing I found very useful was using the Google website effectively. You can put whatever you’re searching for in the toolbox on Google and hit search, from then you can hit the link Advanced Search, add .org at the end of your search to get more government sites or more reliable sites; you can search by date, to get the recent stuff; also you can hit the News link on top of the Google page and get news stories on whatever you’re searching for.

We did have an in-class, group assignment. My group chose the Entertainment topic and we searched the Broadway megahit musical Jersey Boys which consist of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. They are performing at the Palazzo hotel and casino here in Las Vegas which is off the strip. The band is consisted of Bob Gaudio, Tommy Devito, Nick Massi and Frankie Valli. Nick Massi died of cancer on Dec 24, 2000 at the age of 73.

The musical opened on Nov 7, 2005 on Broadway. They won one Tony Award on 2006 for best musical performance.

1 in 4 teenage American girls has a sexually transmitted disease, according to the researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The most common one is a virus that can cause cervical cancer, and the second most common can cause infertility. Nearly half the black teens in the study had at least one sexually transmitted infection, versus 20 percent among both whites and Mexican-American teens.

http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20080312/HEALTH/339995142

“I was twenty seven years old, I had long blonde hair and drove a red car. People pulled up to me and asked, how much?” said Dr. Kathryn Hausbeck, Senior Associate Dean at UNLV.

Hausbeck is an associate professor of Sociology at UNLV. She is also a co-founder of the Sex and Body Industry Research Project (The SABIR Project) with Barb Brents.

“I was overwhelmed by how visible illegal prostitution is in Las Vegas. I assumed a lot of people were doing research on it, and when I started asking around I found that no one was doing research on it and I decided to do it. It was an area ripe for studying,” said Hausbeck.

Hausbeck found herself offended at being mistaken for a prostitute. “I was a little bit offended and asked myself why would I be offended? I shouldn’t judge them. I was not comfortable with that as a feminist,” said Hausbeck.

Legalizing prostitution in Las Vegas has been a topic for discussion for some time now and Hausbeck is not an advocate for legalization generally. “I have thoughts and opinions on it but legalization is tricky. States put certain rules in place and women end up down the chain. The model I support is the decriminalization model,” said Hausbeck.

“Decriminalization means that you protect women and others who may work as prostitutes. You protect their human rights, labor rights, you protect them as individuals, you empower them to work as independent contractors and don’t force them to be subservient to others,” said Hausbeck.

Hausbeck said, “Prostitution can be degrading to women but criminalization doesn’t solve the problem and it’s very expensive to tax payers. Criminalization is ineffective because there has never been a social system without prostitution.”

“Prostitution is just like any other business. The women need to be protected and empowered. But this doesn’t mean that there should be prostitutes in every corner, or that this needs to become the dominant industry,” said Hausbeck.

“The people I know best in the industry are the women who are doing great, are very educated and don’t need to be prostitutes”, said Hausbeck. “Of course, there are those who do it not of their own free will but for a whole set of other reasons, whether it is forced, drug addiction or so on. There are those who succeed and do well and are empowered by it and there are those who are not.”

Hausbeck also said, “when we talk about prostitution, we tend to talk about saving prostitutes, because we assume that other category violated, but there are a lot of women who choose it, who have very good reason in choosing it and are successful doing it.”

Hausbeck said, “We live in a world where really high paying jobs are few and far in between and women have come a long way.”

There was a live webinar last Tuesday on the NewsU website.

A Webinar is a live seminar on the web. This particular webinar’s topic was the Online Credibility Gap. There were two speakers, J. “Bart” Bartosek, editor of The Palm Beach Post in West Palm Beach, Fla and the Webinar host Howard Finberg, NewsU’s director and co-author of the ONA Digital Credibility Study in 2001.
The audience got a chance to ask questions live via a question box at the end. Also, there were close ended questions for the audience to answer throughout the webinar.

The webinar was about the relationship between editors and readers. The major issue discussed was if readers and editors agreed with each other in most instances and the answer was yes. There are a few things that the editors need to change to make their readers happier, but as a whole, they are on the right track.

According to Channel 8 news, Jacob Canto had an underage prostitution ring on the Strip. Canto is charged with child pandering, kidnapping and other charges. The girls in the ring were between 15 and 17 years old. Ceasars Palace and Mandalay Bay were the two places the girls were forced to work at.

More about this on http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=8103665&nav=168Y.