Prostitution is a recession-proof business

Statistics from the international non-governmental organisation, Coalition Against the Trafficking of Women, suggest that there are about 150,000 prostitutes working in Malaysia, with over 10,000 in the Klang Valley.According to information from the women rescued by local women’s aid NGO Tenaganita, a prostitute usually works a seven-day week, charging RM150 an hour.

“Serving an average of eight clients a day, she ends up making RM1,200 daily and possibly RM36,000 a month,” the New Strait Times quoted Aegile Fernandez, anti-human trafficking coordinator of the NGO who has had experience making women escape the sex industry for more than 20 years, as saying.

“But that is just full-time sex workers who enter the trade willingly. If the girls are forced into the trade via human trafficking, she gets nothing except a traumatic experience,” Aegile added.The syndicate running the brothels is said to usually have up to 100 girls under them, meaning that they could rake in about RM120,000 a day and a whopping RM3.6 million a month.Information from pimps operating in the country suggests that Malaysia has hundreds of such syndicates, each operating several brothels in their designated areas. Many brothels in Malaysia double as “health centres” offering massage services.JJ, a pimp for more than 10 years, says that clients are willing to pay from RM60 to RM100 for an hour of massage, followed by an additional RM150 for sex.“Prostitutes who double as massage ladies also get a fee from their handlers for massage services, usually about RM20 per customer,” JJ says.So, in addition to as much as RM36,000 monthly from sex alone, a prostitute can add on another RM9,000 for offering “half services”, bringing her monthly untaxed income to a whopping RM45,000.“Don’t forget their RM200 a day wages for massaging an average of 10 customers. That’s a legitimate RM5,200 a month or RM62,400 a year. They can choose to pay tax on that, but most don’t,” says JJ.He has also revealed that each sex worker pays RM3,000 a month to pimps “as tax or rent for using our centres to do business and for protection from aggressive customers.”According to him, prostitution is a recession-proof business.“Things didn’t slow down for us during the 1997 Asian financial crisis or any of the recessions before that. Sex, like food, is a necessity,” he said. (ANI)

SEXtech

TechSexual Communications.This might include using text, IM, email, video or other technologies. These communications might be with a specific other or with the general public (for example, maintaining an anonymous or public sex blog where you present yourself and your sex life in a particular way).Using Technology to Create Sexual Opportunities.An ever-increasing number of social networking services (for computers and mobile) are designed to make finding sexual partners and negotiating sexual interactions easier. By allowing people from around the world to connect based on sexual interests, many technologies facilitate sexual opportunities between people who previously would have been unlikely to find partners with matched interests. Technology also creates more solo sexual opportunities by allowing individuals to access sexual material in a safer, faster, easier way.Using Technology for "In Real Life" Sexual Activities.Technology can do more than just help us make time for sex or find a sexual partner, tech has a role in both solo and partnered sex play. From the newest pharmaceutical drugs to programmable sex toys and special positioning devices, we use technology in our sex play to change enhance and support sexual pleasure.Using Technology to Explore Sexual Identity and Orientation.The relative anonymity that technology affords us in communication has changed the way we can present ourselves to the world. It is relatively easy to develop alternate personas online and experience sexual interactions through a different orientation or identity than the one you have in your face-to-face interactions. Many people have long-term work and personal relationship with people they’ve never met in person and sometimes have never spoken with, reducing the power of impressions and stereotypes based on visual and audio cues. Virtual spaces that make use of avatars allow users to develop rich and meaningful identities that they can carry over into other parts of their lives, or not.Technology for Sexual Education.Some people’s interest in sex tech is less personal and more professional and political. Sexuality educators have been relatively slow in adopting new technologies but this is changing. Sex:Tech is an annual conference that focuses on using technologies for sexual health education and the number of websites offering sex education for youth and adults continues to grow as does the adoption of social networking technologies for sex education purposes.Technology for Sexual Entertainment.People may have finally come around to the realization that the Internet isn’t just for porn, but it’s still a popular way to find sexual entertainment. Viewing online pornography, playing sex video games visiting virtual strip clubs -- some people would also consider the virtual sex they have a form of entertainment (while for others virtual sex is tied to relationships and carries more meaning). The history of sex tech shows that whenever a new form of technology is introduced, people use it for sexual entertainment almost immediately.Technology for Sexual/Reproductive Health.What we can do with new health/medical technologies has greatly expanded our reproductive options, and sex tech includes technology for fertility testing and treatment. In another area of sexual health, technology is being used to enhance treatments for sexual dysfunctions, though almost exclusively through pharmaceutical technologies. Unfortunately as sex researchers and therapists have also been slow in adopting new technologies, the use of sex tech to influence sexual dysfunctions and sexual pleasure through social, cognitive and behavior means has yet to be explored in any depth.