Statistical Nonsense About Sex Workers
One of the clearest markers for “this story in the press about sex work or sex workers is lazy bullshit” is that oft-cited statistic about 13 being the average age of entry into sex work. A statistic that never comes with a citation, it’s just one of those things that every lazy journalist “knows”, and everybody else with a brain who thinks about it for more than ninety seconds knows cannot possibly be true.
Think about it. If 13 were the average age, there would have to be a whole lot of younger, even prepubescent child sex workers out there. They would be turning up on the nightly news in droves every time the police announce another “rescue” sweep of sex worker arrests. And yet, strangely, on the rare occasions that police do “rescue” (arrest) an underage sex worker, it’s always an older teen nearing adulthood. If the “13 is the average age of entry” statistic were true, that would not be the case.
Don’t take my word for it. After we all suffered for years from the idiocy of that endlessly-repeated bogus statistic, Chris Hall (the Literate Perversions guy) has written a detailed take-down in The Atlantic. I hope every journalist who continues to lazily parrot the bogus statistic in future gets jammed with a thousand instances of this link via FaceBook, Twitter, email, and every social media channel they use.
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The Atlantic article is making the same assumption that I think you have. I.e. that by “average” the statistic is referring to the *mean* (add up all the responses and divide by the number of responses). From the quoted paragraph, it’s more likely they by “average” the researchers meant *mode* (the number, in this case age, given most commonly). So if you have 100 prostitutes and the age of first intercourse ranges from 11 to 20, then the *mean* will necessarily be higher than 13. But the *mode* might actually be 13, if that was the most common age given. And in a sample of 100 people, you wouldn’t need that many people to give the same age to make it most common.
In research like this, the mode is more useful than the mean, because of the effect that a couple of outliers would have on the mean. One person whose age at first intercourse was 30 would really skew the mean, but not effect the mode at all.
I’m not defending lazy perpetuation of a bad statistic, or defending using research on one population as an excuse to demonize a much larger population. I’m just trying to say that the stat may not be as farfetched on its face as it seems.
I take your point but I find it really implausible that the researchers would say “average” if they meant “mode”. And anyway, nobody is criticizing that actual research, which was focused on a small population of underage sex workers. Whichever type of average the researchers were using, the average age of entry of a group of underage sex workers doesn’t say anything useful about the average age of entry for the occupation as a whole.
When I took statistics, and research classes, “average” could always have meant: mode, median, or mean (the “average” you’re thinking of). You had to read the research to know which one it was, or sometimes all three were listed. They’re all just ways of summarizing data.
The middle third of your post, as well as the beginning of the Atlantic article, is all about the mathematical absurdity of the stat. As I said before, I’m just pointing out that it’s not statistically impossible.
That doesn’t let anyone off the hook for misusing the stat due to laziness, prejudice, or malice.
“They also did interviews directly with [abused] children, both on the streets and in the custody of law enforcement or social services. Here, the information collected was even sparser; in 17 major U.S. cities, they interviewed a total of 210 children.”
That is a substantial selection bias. How many of these abused children could possibly report that at 25, after a pleasant childhood, they then started working in the sex industry?
If your entire sample set is abused youth, shockingly, you will find that your statistics relate to… well… youth. Extrapolating to the sex industry as a whole can not be found in a study titled, “The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U. S., Canada and Mexico” that wholly fails to address (by stated intent) all adult sex workers.
If they are only referring to the
U.S./England it’s highly unlikely. If they are including 3rd world; it quite possible. You see kids of 5/6 being sold in Thailand (special a few months back with a guy bought young kids to free them).
What sells:
A. sex workers unite to get health care and a union (Vegas, maybe
San Francisco, etc).
B. Exploited children released after being found in pimp’s basement.
That’s what you will read in the news. Sex workers will never go away. Making it safer for them; and ultimately for their clients as well, is the more rational approach.
These are — supposedly — statistics about the United States. Except of course that they are made-up, and not actually statistics.