September 23, 2025 • 52 mins
Nevada is the only U.S. state with legal brothels—but is it working for sex workers? In this episode, Kaytlin Bailey sits down with Jupiter Jetson, who works in a legal brothel, Dr. Barbara Brents, sociologist and expert on legal brothels, and Amy-Marie Merrell, executive director of The Cupcake Girls. From outdated STI testing laws to the dangers of arrest outside the brothel, we explore why Nevada's model is not the answer—and what could be instead.
You can listen to our episode about the history of how Nevada brothels came to be regulated the way that they are in this episode from Season 4.
For more information, and sources visit our website. You can buy Sex Work Today, Erotic Labor in the 21st Century, an anthology edited by Dr. Barbara Brents, Bernadette Barton and Angela Jones.
You can follow Jupiter Jetson on Instagram.
Please support The Cupcake Girls by donating to their work and you can follow Amy-Marie Merrell on Instagram.
This episode was made possible through recurring tax deductible contributions from listeners like you. We’d also like to thank our Season 6 sponsors M e g a P e r s o n a l s, Assembly Four, Tryst, A Great Idea, and the New Moon Network.
The Oldest Profession Podcast is produced by Old Pros, a non-profit media organization that uses storytelling to advocate for sex worker rights.
If you value our mission, please consider making a tax deductible donation. To learn more visit us at oldprosonline.org, which is also where you can get Old Pros t-shirts, sweatshirts, totes, stickers, and more. Of course, proceeds from our shop support our work at Old Pros.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to The Oldest Profession Podcast, I’m your host Kaytlin Bailey and today we are
(00:01):
talking about the legal brothels in Nevada. Now we’ve already done an episode about the
history of how sex work came to be legalized and very regulated in Nevada.
But in this episode, we're going to talk about what it's actually like to work in one of those legal
brothels and why legalization, broadly speaking, and for sure, the regulatory system that's come
up around the Nevada model isn't something that sex workers are asking for.
Let’s get into it.
[opening music]
JJ
So generally, I'll wake up, check, you know, get breakfast, check the emails, do a little bit of, like,
hamster wheel running, and get ready for whatever appointments I have that day, which I
usually have to check a couple times throughout the day because the office coordinates my
schedule.
And then from there, my day could look like, you know, giving a massage and then spending the
rest of my day hanging out. My day could be ending at sunrise with me, you know, cleaning up,
you know, an all night rager. It just depends on what's on the agenda.
KB
That's Jupiter Jetson telling us about an average workday at the brothel she's worked at happily
for years. Jupiter, can you introduce yourself?
JJ
Well, my name is Jupiter Jetson. I am an adult actress, and I've been a legally licensed
courtesan at Sheri's Ranch, a legal brothel in Nevada since 2018.
(00:22):
KB
So can you tell us a little bit like, you know, listeners who haven't worked in a legal brothel
before, just, like, walk us through the process of, like, how you came to be, a legal courtesan.
JJ
I came, I came to it by way of a Cracked article. Like the website cracked.com And I had a little
bit of a foray into sex work in my, like, you know, late teens, early 20s. I was a dancer. Did some
BDSM work. But I got out of it, and I'd never gotten back into it until I read this article that I had
expected to be from the perspective of, like a Dutch worker or a German worker, because it was
about the legalized sex industry. And, to my surprise, it was a worker in the Nevada system.
In terms of applying to work at a legal brothel is actually pretty simple. They're all a little bit
different depending on the brothel, but they all usually resemble a form on a portion of the
ranch’s website where you fill out. Sometimes it's just an email address and they tell you what
information to send, but it's, you know, essentially the same information you would give on a
dating profile.
You know, name, age, weight, height. You send a couple of selfies. And maybe if you've been in
the industry for a while, you might send in some professional photos. But my first pictures were
just some bathroom selfies of me, and a blurb about myself and sent to an email address.
And there's no rhyme or reason as to how long it takes to hear back from them. It could be one
day, it could be one year. It just depends on where you're at in the cycle.
It was much more fast paced. In, in my experience. And like within a month of reading the
article, I was working at a brothel.
(00:43):
KB
That makes sense. And then once that happens, do you have to do anything before you show
up to the brothel or do you…
JJ
So yes and no. They give you like a packing list and that you need to make sure that you have
all of the supplies you need, because you are responsible for providing all of your own work
supplies, whether that's costumes, lube, condoms, the special purse that you have to bring. But
in terms of the testing and background checking, none of that happens until after you arrive for
your first tour, which is anywhere from 7 to 14 days.
Generally speaking, your first tour is usually one week, but some ranches do two. And it's when
you arrive that you do your STI testing and then you're seen after you've passed your STI test,
you're seen by the sheriff and you're fingerprinted, background checked, and you pay your fee,
and then you're cleared to work.
KB
Okay. So sorry. First question. Special purse?
JJ
Yeah. At least, Sherry's, we have to have, like, essentially stadium rules. You have to have a
clear bag.
KB
There are actually a lot of requirements to even be able to work in a legally licensed brothel in
Nevada. For example, you have to be over the age of 21. You have to be a US citizen or have
(01:04):
the right to legally work in the United States. And you have to be willing to undergo not just an
initial health screening, but regular, sometimes invasive STI tests, which we'll be talking a lot
more about later.
You have to be willing to register with the sheriff's department for your work card, where you'll be
subjected to a background check, and if you've been convicted of crimes, you might not be
eligible to work in a legal brothel.
You also have to be able to come up with money for travel, and also all of these various
registration and testing fees that you'll be asked to cover upfront before you're ever allowed to
work. And in addition to navigating all of the state and county bureaucracy and rules and
regulations, you also have to be willing to comply with the brothel rules, some of which, for
example, insist that you live on the premises while you're working, that you're not allowed to see
clients outside of the brothel, and they might have some pretty specific rules around how you
interact with or negotiate with your clients.
And that works for some people.
JJ
And I am very happy with the fact that it is the ranch that has a reputation for being kind of the
most corporate of all of the ranches. And so it is which lends itself to a very comfortable working
experience. And it's a very respectful working experience.
Everything that we book, all of our, all of our business is kept private. And we are also given the
freedom to choose how we conduct our business.
We are given the option of, you know, deciding whether we want to be someone who mostly,
(01:25):
you know, attracts our customer base online or if we want to be people who are hustling in
person in the bar. It also, in terms of corporate, there's a lot of rules. There's a lot of, very clear
cut rules about how we conduct ourselves in terms of, like, hustling in the bar, how we, you
know, approach clients, how long we sit with clients before, we have to walk away and let
another lady have a chance to talk to them.
And it's really more so to respect not stepping on each other's toes. These are the rules that are
in place in general, have either a goal of protecting the privacy of either you or the client or
protecting, you know, the sanity of the house so that people aren't having, having it out with
each other because you sat with that person for 15 minutes, you know, like, nobody has time for
that.
KB
I learned so much from this conversation with Jupiter and other sex workers who have chosen
to make their livelihoods in these brothels, and it really is a system that works well for many of
the people who choose to work there. But to get a broader sociological context, I called up Dr.
Barbara Brents.
Barbara, thank you so much for being here.
BB
I’m very excited to be here. This is my favorite podcast, so thank you very much. I'm Barb
Brents. I'm a professor in the sociology department at the University of Nevada Las Vegas,
where I've been for the last 37 years. I do research on sex work and focusing on the brothel
industry, and I teach, courses on sexuality and political sociology.
(01:46):
KB
For our listeners who might not be familiar, can you tell us a little bit about, like, what sociology
is like? What do you study as a sociologist? I know, I'm so sorry.
BB
No, it's the best question in the world. Sociology studies the interaction between personal
experience and the social world… in sociology, we look at how social structures and culture
have effects on groups of people and why groups of people act the way they do in different
contexts.
Back in the late 1990s, there wasn't anybody doing much research at all on the Nevada
brothels. Little research that had been done was done by men. Well, to be fair, it was mostly
men in the academy anyway, doing research, but it was mostly from a deviance perspective.
KB
A deviance perspective.
BB
At the time and even a little bit today, the brothels are very private. Different brothels have
different philosophies, I guess. But for the most part, they believe that you lay low. Nobody
wants to know who's coming in and who's going, because privacy is a big part of what you're
selling. Discretion. So it was difficult to get in to do the research.
KB
Barbara, take us back to the beginning. Tell us just about the history of sex work in Nevada.
BB
(02:07):
Well the Wild West, the white settling of the West, the western U.S., the gold rush, all that
brought a lot of new people into these areas, these boom towns, and it was a service industry
settling these boomtowns from which the brothels first emerged. There was lots of sex workers
selling sexual services, as well as other services in these small mining towns.
I mean, same brothel, same woman who would be running a saloon would also maybe be
selling sex or encouraging other people to sell sex, as well as having a sewing business on the
side and a restaurant on the side.
Boomtowns in Nevada were pretty late. The biggest boomtown had a population much larger
than Las Vegas at that time, as early as the, you know, 19 teens and the 1920s.
So, we really established ourselves as a state with the sex industry, along with gambling and all
sorts of entertainment for men who were working the mines, who were far away from home. And
it was a rough life. Got to do some for fun. As the towns grew, a lot of them kept their brothels,
kept their red light districts.
KB
So sex workers built Nevada.
BB
So there's an interesting story that I have to tell about Ely, Nevada, where there was a big
copper mine and there were these two company towns that the mining companies built. And just
outside of these company towns was the town where all the vice was (02:25):
the saloons and the
brothels and such.
And not surprisingly, this town was where the IWW came to organize the workers in these
mining towns. So vice and the unions were all, like, hand-in-hand. When the company came in
and tried to shut down the prostitution, they actually arrested some people in that town for sex
trafficking. So it's the battle against sex work and the battle against union organizing went
hand-in-hand and in a lot of ways.
Over time, the eastern United States, as they started exporting their Progressive Era laws and
rules and mindset about women's proper place, tried to pass a number of laws curtailing the sex
industry. And the, a lot of people resisted that.
I think it was really World War Two that finally tried to shut down a lot of the sex industry that
was happening. They managed to shut down the Reno Stockade, which was the red light district
in Reno. They shut down Block 16 in Las Vegas, which was the red light district in Las Vegas.
And, in the rural areas, they fought back and reopened some of these places.
So as things emerged, it was not so much red light districts, but brothels that in and businesses
that were able to lobby to get zoning regulations such that they could exist where they were
existing.
In 1946, that was where they reopened a lot of brothels in the rural areas. And but refused to
reopen them in the cities. But there are some places where brothels existed and continued.
In the 1960s and 70s, there is a story of this guy, Joe Conforte, who you may have heard of,
who ran a brothel in northern Nevada, on the intersection of three different counties. And there
(02:46):
was a sheriff that was after closing him down. And whenever the sheriff went after him, he'd roll
his brothel that was in a trailer into another county.
So, eventually this brothel owner managed to convince the county commission to fine him and
charge him for policing the area around the brothels. And so they charged him a one time fee,
but then he kept sort of paying it. After a few years, the county commission said, you know, we
should probably make this legal, this payment legal. So they passed in 1970, the first county
brothel licensing ordinance.
And then a three person county commission voted 2 to 1 to pass the first brothel licensing. So
Joe Conforte was empowered to then go to other brothels and others and other counties to try
to convince them. He came to Las Vegas, I think, and the rumor was that he was going to try
and open a brothel in Las Vegas.
But at that time, the local casino owners, who were busy trying to look legitimate, they're trying
to look classy and classiness, classy sexuality did not equal what red light districts looked like.
So they and the local officials lobbied the legislature to try to pass a bill to eliminate all
prostitution. The local counties that had brothels said, hey, dudes, we're getting a lot of money
from this, this is, there's nothing wrong with this.
And they a compromise was a bill passed in 1971 that made prostitution illegal in counties over
200,000, which at that time only included Las Vegas, and through various court battles and stuff
that backed up and dealt with the nuisance bills and all sorts of legal things over the next 5 or 10
years ended up saying, okay, counties, you have a choice, you can you can license your
brothels if you want to. Many counties had referendums. Most of them said, yeah, we want, we
(03:07):
want prostitution.
We have, it's a model by which the rural areas tenaciously hold on to whatever way they can
keep legal sex work in a context of all these forces against it. It's a mindset of you can't tell us
what we can do. And that's why these brothels continue to exist.
KB
So what that means is that when prostitution was put to a vote in these rural counties, voters
said, we want this. I think it's absolutely amazing because, like, when I think of rural, I think of
conservative. But these legal brothels are really only allowed to exist out in these remote areas.
And it's fascinating to me that the people that live there, that grew up there continue to turn out
and show up and literally vote to protect these brothels. I mean, it seems like in the places
where they exist, they are beloved by their communities.
[break]
BB
So the zoning ordinances sort of made brothels okay, wherever the buildings already were and
sort of granted licenses in those areas. So all the licenses today are site specific and to my
knowledge, only one has created a new site in the whole time since the 1970s.
KB
All right. So it sounds like part of why these brothels and the laws around them are so broadly
appealing is that they promise to contain and control sex workers and specifically to control
them as though they were a contagion.
So let's take a little bit of time now to talk about the health code policies, how they were
(03:28):
originally written, and how they have or haven't evolved.
BB
The way the laws work, you have to, it's the health codes that end up being the most
problematic. And a lot of the problem is that there's no organization like the New Zealand
Prostitutes’ Collective in New Zealand that can give you what the actual rules are. It's all the
owners.
KB
Let's hear from Jupiter on what this actually looks like.
JJ
So the STI testing in a brothel in Nevada, is answering to two separate and technically
speaking, I guess, four separate sets of code. Because you have your county, which is going to
be setting the exact parameters for that county, but it all trickles back to the overarching state
code, which is decided by both health code and legal code. But in terms of the STI testing, that
is health code that we are governed by, and we are only required to be tested for four separate
pathogens, which would be HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia.
And according to the overarching state code, we, because of three words “via endocervical
swab,” we in the year of our Lord 2025 still have to get in stirrups every seven days that we are
working. Because unfortunately, in 1971, when these laws were getting slapped through, they
didn't have urinary NAAT collection that was reliable. So they didn't write it into the law that
someday, someday we’ll be able to pee in a cup and know whether or not we have the clap.
So because of that, we are still just openfacing it every seven days that we are working in a
(03:49):
brothel.
KB
That sounds painful, humiliating, exhausting, and silly for everyone involved, right?
JJ
I started this whole journey because I also, as I mentioned, I do porn as well, and it was when I
started doing porn that I realized, wait a minute, I'm peeing in a cup for talent testing. Why can't I
pee in a cup for the brothel?
JJ
And why am I paying twice for the same tests? This is kind of insane. And that's when I realized
it was because of the three words. Because we haven't updated any of the codes since 1972 or
1973, unless it was to add things. Well, that's not true. Nye County struck the 24 hour
exemption, and retest laws. So, that was actually dope.
It was a bunch of people who were organizing it. Got repealed during the 2020 shut down,
actually. But unfortunately, while we are allowed to leave campus, we're allowed to, like, if I have
to run up to Walmart, I can run up to Walmart, it is still corporate policy that we have to sleep
there.
I do know that in Lyon County, it is common practice for ladies to have apartments off campus
and work by appointment. So I would imagine that they also do not have that statute. But I can't
speak for the other counties. I genuinely don't know.
KB
Hold on. Did I hear you correctly? They're only testing you for four things?
(04:10):
JJ
So, like, we're not being tested for Mgen. We're not being, yeah, like we're not being tested for
any number of things that, you know, as the science evolves, it's helpful to be tested for these
things. And we're just now. Because we can't even if we want to, we can't get these, these
statutes changed without taking it to a legislative session.
KB
Right. And of course it's not a priority for legislators generally because they're not the ones
suffering from this. And, like, I wonder, don't the brothels also want this to be cheaper,
JJ
It's not a priority for the brothel because it's, it's not broken. It's not causing them. They don't
have to chase paperwork. They don't have to poke girls to remember to go to their local testing
center before they come in. You know, they have everybody in one place.
Everybody's getting tested at the same time, which means that everyone's getting their results
at the same time. Like, I, you know, from a business owner standpoint, I, I don't necessarily see
the motivation to change or to advocate for change. And, you know, I guess therein also lies
some of the issues with legalization as a system to rely on is that you are also dealing with what
is best for somebody else's bottom line.
Again, I have had a pampered, happy princess experience in the industry. But even so, you
know, if I didn't have to give up my freedom for weeks on end and live in essentially what is a
really slutty sorority house for weeks on end, in order to make a living, I wouldn't do that.
I would much rather have a life where I can have a dog, you know? But I have to choose
(04:31):
between having a fuzz friend or having a career, because my only option is to go to a rural
desert brothel.
KB
If you don't want to be arrested.
JJ
Exactly.
[ break]
AM
So brothels are a business. They are there to make money, and they're working as hard as they
can to make sure that they're hitting their bottom line. A lot of the times, like a lot of different
businesses, you'll have some businesses that are run really, really well. And then you have
some businesses that are cutting corners, are not necessarily following the laws to a T or,
following basic human decency.
KB
Amy, thank you so much for joining us today. Can you take just a second and introduce
yourself? Who are you? What kind of work do you do?
AM
Yeah, my name is Amy-Marie Merrell. My pronouns are she/her, and I'm the co-executive
director at The Cupcake Girls, a organization that's doing anti-trafficking work differently in the
United States. And I got into this work when I was 16, actually. I was homeschooled my whole
life. And my first friends outside of my family and our church were sex workers.
(04:52):
I started a job at a local bookstore and met a sex worker who very quickly told me that she was
actually experiencing sexual assaults from a few police officers in our town and was going after
the city to receive justice. And through that relationship, I really had this idea of the world
change for me.
Cupcake Girls was founded in 2011. There used to be something called the XXX Church. It was
a Christian church that was reaching out to people that were in the sex industry. And the founder
of The Cupcake Girls was involved in that. And when the XXX Church pulled out of Las Vegas,
the founders stayed in Las Vegas and really wanted to make sure that resources were still
available to the people that XXX Church had been reaching out to.
And so, they formed a non-religious nonprofit called the Cupcake Girls. And we got our name
because we would walk into strip clubs and brothels with a big pink box of cupcakes, and
people would yell out, “The cupcake girls are here.” And so that's how we got our name. But the
idea was always, if somebody had a need, we wanted to match that need with a resource.
And so if somebody needed a dentist, every single dentist in Las Vegas would have been called
until we found somebody who would give a service to our participants at a discounted or
pro-bono rate.
We asked them, you know, what is your stance on sex work? Do you believe in the
decriminalization of sex work? What's your office like? Do you have multiple people working at
one time? Are we able to have an advocate go with our participant to their appointments?
What's your stance on porn? Like, a lot of conversations that people probably wouldn't have with
their dentist, right. But we wanted to make sure that we were having in advance so that when
(05:13):
we have somebody going into that space, we knew that it was safe. And we still do that to this
day.
I stepped into the role as executive director of The Cupcake Girls nationally in July of 2021. And
the first thing, like next morning, we took a stance on, decriminalizing sex work.
AM
It's really, really important to me that, as an anti-trafficking org, we understand, that the only and
best way to eradicate sex trafficking is to decriminalize sex work, period. We have to make sure
that we are supporting sex workers, that sex workers are seen, that they're heard, that their
work is uplifted and not stigmatized and not discriminated against.
And we went back and I personally called over 700 donors, which is why we lost so many
donors, because I called them and I said, “This is who we are, this is what we're about, this is
not what we're about. Are you comfortable giving us your money?” And many, many, many
people said absolutely not. And many, many people said absolutely, like 100%.
And the people that said absolutely, 100%, they are still our donors to this day. And thankfully,
we've also received support from the industry, lots of people in the entertainment industry, adult
entertainment industry that were like, oh, hell yeah. Like, I'll fuck with you guys. Like, this is
pretty cool. And yeah, it's been, it's been a wild, wild journey.
KB
Sounds like it! You've been providing services to sex workers in Nevada for a long time. What's
it like? What's the climate for sex worker rights like in the only state in the country with legal
prostitution?
(05:34):
AM
So I think it's important to make sure that folks about Nevada is it is a very red state. People
think like, oh, it's Sin city, and there's brothels everywhere there. There are brothels in a very
small part of Nevada, sex work is legal in a very small part of Nevada. And if you are even,
walking around looking like you may be engaged in sex work anywhere on The Strip, you will be
arrested.
The first week that I moved here in March 2021, I think it was March 22nd, 2021. It was my first
day at work in Nevada, and I got invited to go speak on this Senate bill, Senate Bill 164, and
some sex workers had gotten together with Senator Melanie Scheible and all that they were
trying to do was make sure that Nevada stopped arresting people that were being forced,
coerced, or manipulated into sex work.
They were asking the police, with this Senate bill, please stop arresting these people. You're
causing more harm to these people. And so I thought, like, coming especially coming out of
Portland, Oregon, where we had talked with the district attorney there years ago and said, hey,
please stop arresting sex workers. And he was like, yeah, totally. I'm going to stop pressing
charges when they arrest them. So we had less arrests, right?
And so when I came here, I was like, oh, this is going to be easy. You know, they've got legal
brothels. They have all these strip clubs. Like, this is going to be easy. We'll go into this meeting.
Yeah, sure. I go into the meeting and they call it Metro here, the police department, came out in
full force. They had so many people there giving public comments, saying, no, we need to arrest
these people to keep them safe. They have to be arrested. I was in shock.
(05:55):
It it literally was jarring to me hearing testimony after testimony after testimony of people saying
like, yeah, like we have to arrest them to get them away from their pimps, but we have to arrest
them so that they can have rest from their trafficking experience, or we have to arrest them so
they have access to resources, just like the most wild things I've ever heard.
And, one person got on and said, “You have to understand, taxpayers don't want to see
prostitutes walking around on our streets.” And then I said, “Sir, you do realize that sex workers
are also paying taxes? Everyone's paying taxes.” He got so pissed off. Red in the face left the
call. It was wild to me. They didn't even know that.
They didn't know that sex workers pay taxes. And trying to explain to them, hey, when you're
arresting people, that does not give them access to the resources. They're getting the big pile of
people, paper resources handed to them after they leave, when they go into jail, the person
who's trafficking them, they can totally just wait outside on Tuesday to pick them up.
They know where to get them, and then they go right back to the exact same spot.
KB
Now with a criminal record, right?
AM
Now with a criminal record. And the thing that we see so often and that I said in that in that
meeting too, is okay when the person is arrested, what happens? They're kids who've been with
a babysitter while the kids go to Child Haven, which is essentially this big, huge foster care
organization here, it's essentially an orphanage. And it has so many flaws. They are they are
understaffed. They have zero volunteers coming in. They're consistently having calls like, hey,
(06:16):
can somebody come hold babies? Like, it's terrifying. And so then these, these mamas, they
have to like go fight to get their kids back. And they're amazing moms. They're going out to work
for their kids, right.
There are just so many issues with it. And so that was my first understanding that Nevada does
not get it. Nevada is confused about sex work and trafficking. Nevada is confused about the
difference between consent and coercion. Nevada arrests everyone. Nevada loves arresting, we
see all the time, our participants are kicked out of casinos but but also not kicked out of casinos.
Like, depending on what guests they have in the casino, depending on what guests they have in
the hotel, because the casinos want sex workers there, but they don't want them there.
KB
Yeah. Well, because there, it's a zero sum game. The casinos are operating, they're in the
fiefdom right of the federal government. And so the deal is that if the casino allows any activity
that the federal government actually doesn't want happening, that they can revoke their gaming
license with no notice. And so, like, that's why you can walk to a dispensary in Vegas and buy
weed, but if you smoke it on the street, you'll be arrested. And if you smoke it in a casino, you'll
be asked to leave. The only place you can actually smoke weed in Nevada is like in a private
home, which is insane because it's a tourist town where people buy weed all the time. It's like
it's confusing.
AM
There's just there's so many oddities surrounding Nevada and the way that it handles sex work
and sex workers, and it creates this really unstable environment where it's easy for the
(06:37):
government to be making money off of the arrest of the poorest, most oppressed people in our
state. It's really devastating, actually.
We probably get about four to five calls a year from people that either don't understand that they
are in a trafficking situation, or don't understand that they are being forced to stay at the brothel,
that they can leave. They're not being given the whole picture. If you are somebody who is in
the United States undocumented, and you are being forced into a situation where you must pay
to perform sexual acts, you actually qualify for a special visa in the United States, where you
can stay in the United States. And brothel owners know this and that information is not being
given to the participants.
So it's important that Cupcake Girls exist so that we can step into those spaces and give that
information to the people that are being exploited.
KB
Yeah. All of that sounds really tricky to navigate. Like outside the brothel and also the brothels,
which are hard in their own way. And if I'm understanding you guys correctly, working outside of
the brothel in Nevada means that you are much more likely to get arrested than anywhere else
in the country. And it sounds like there's a lot of tricky rules and registrations that sex workers
that do choose to work in the legal brothels have to navigate. You and your organization provide
services to both. What do sex workers in Nevada need? What kind of services do you find
Cupcake Girls being called to facilitate?
AM
Yeah. We have one of the main resources that Cupcake Girls gets requests for is family
(06:58):
lawyers, family law, because the people that we're working with are going through a divorce and
their partner, who is totally fine with them doing sex work when they were profiting from it, all of
a sudden isn't interested in celebrating that anymore.
And now takes all of that information and brings it against them in court. And so we have so
many folks that have their partners using that information against them. And it's really
unfortunate because in our society, people are really excited to just jump on that. We had
somebody really, really recently, and in the state of Nevada, it's an equal rights state. So that
means that they don't side with either parent.
Almost always in the custody issues, it's brought up that the partner who is doing sex work or
has done sex work is unfit. And they're not able to bring any evidence. We just had somebody,
amazing mom that is on the PTA at her kiddos school, shows up early every morning, helps out,
volunteers, shows up on time every day.
The other parent who does not do sex work and is going after them in court never ever has
picked up from school, never has dropped off, isn't purchasing the clothes. The parent who does
sex work has the receipts of all the clothes, receipts of all the food, is paying for, is caring for
child, is paying the rent, and the other parent who isn't doing sex work is doing nothing.
And the parent who has been caring for the child actively because they are doing sex work are
actively losing this custody case, and they will end up losing their children, or preparing for that.
And that's not an anomaly. That's something that we see all the time.
I think the other thing that we see often that I think is worth mentioning is with those sheriff's
cards, it does come up in a background check. And so when folks are trying to get into housing,
(07:19):
when folks are trying to get jobs, that becomes an issue. We have somebody that…
JJ
So in terms of putting yourself on record, when you are making the choice to put yourself on
record as a sex worker, that is one of the most intimidating barriers to working in a legal brothel.
I recently, for personal reasons, conducted an FBI background check of myself and got my
printed background. And I can say with confidence now that it does not show up on an FBI
background check. It's not something that is registered in that system. It’s not in the criminal
systems.
Now, I don't know if somebody was motivated. I do know that in, I believe it was 2018, it may
have been 2019. There's an attorney who works a lot with the anti-groups, Jason Guinasso. And
he had on behalf of the No Little Girl organization put in a FOIA request for the names and
addresses of all of the workers in Lyon County. And he was, roundly told, to piss off. So I, I don't
necessarily know how findable all of this information truly is.
KB
It's fascinating to me, and I think important to understand, that Nevada started as a vice state.
And it's a state that doubled down on the regulation, containment and control of vice really early
in the state's history, starting with gambling.
And that culture of licensing vice industries has led to this sort of strange situation where in
order to work as a sex worker, you have to put yourself on this stigmatized list. So you are, on
the one hand, protecting yourself from arrest. But opening up this new vulnerability of having
this undeniable and presumably subpoenable-proof that you've done this stigmatized and often
(07:40):
criminalized thing.
AM
We have people that will come to us and say that, CPS was called on them because they went
to a pediatrician and the kid had mentioned that mama works at Chicken Ranch. And the
pediatrician knew what that was. And, and, you know, there are a lot of different ways of thinking
when it comes to how open to be with your kid about the work that you do.
And honestly, I think it's really beautiful when you can have a transparent relationship with your
child and that they can know the environment and the person that they're living with. I think that
there's a lot of comfortability there, a lot of safety there for the child, and I do not condemn that
at all. I think, of course, there's always, like, age-appropriate conversation to be had, but there's
nothing wrong with your child knowing where you work.
And I think it's really disgusting that CPS would be called on a parent because of where they
work, especially because it is legal. But I also think it's indicative of like where we're at when it
comes to stigma and fear of sex work and sex workers.
BB
You know, those of us who've been around sex workers know that, that they’re professionals
and have an interest in doing their job well.
And the best brothel owners are recognizing that and try to empower them. And I think as I've
watched gender norms and sexuality norms change over the last 30 years, that has benefited
sex workers in the brothels. When I first started testifying in front of the legislature on these
things, the only time you'd see a sex worker up there testifying was when they were up there
(08:01):
with a brothel manager and sort of a, see, this is what sex workers look like.
Now, sex worker organizations are up there testifying. Brothel workers are up there testifying.
Now, sometimes they do so at their own peril, because they may not want them to be so vocal,
but they're increasingly being vocal.
I think a lot of the problems of what they can't do in the legal brothels is, problems of
independent contractor rules in the state where workers don't have any rights, in the country
where workers don't have any rights.
In New Zealand, the mindset is that we are going to treat sex workers like any other workers.
We're going to, we're going to actually give them special rights to protect them. We're going to
regulate brothels like any other business. And so the regulations that exist there are special for
sex workers, and it is regulated, but it's in a context where sex workers need to be able to do
their job.
Whereas in, in these rural brothel areas, this is a system that has been carved out in the middle
of a criminalized, heavy criminalized system. To make sure it works for us…
JJ
So I, I'm fairly young in my, my advocacy journey. But, I mean the, the biggest issue that I've
been working on personally is just trying to get the STI testing standards for the Nevada
brothels brought into the 21st century.
I am largely benefitted by the legalized system. I'm actually very passionately
pro-decriminalization. Just because, you know, while I have been greatly served by a system of
legalization because I am just entirely too cowardly to work outside of a legal framework, like I
(08:22):
am terrified of cops. Absolutely not. I can't, I can't, like, I just, I know who I am, but it's, it's a
system that doesn't let everybody who is able to be in the sex industry be legally and safely in
the sex industry because there are millions of people who, how do I say this?
Anyone can get into the industry if they are motivated to. There is a market for absolutely
everybody, but there isn't room for absolutely everybody inside of a brothel. And you have to
convince a brothel owner that you are going to be a profitable use of space in order to make a
career in the legal sector. So I actually am hopefully going to be doing a lot more work in the
decrim space, in for, you know, in the coming future. But right now, I'm just trying to get us out of
stirrups in the brothels.
KB
When I talk to people about decriminalizing sex work, they will often say to me, oh, like the
brothels in Nevada. And I think it's really important for our listeners and anybody in the sex
worker rights movement to be able to explain to people why, no, not like the brothels in Nevada.
I find that one fact helps make all of this. Everything that you've heard from Amy at The
Cupcake Girls and Jupiter from the brothel, and Barbara, who's been studying this for decades.
And that's this Nevada, the only state in the country with legal, regulated prostitution, has the
highest arrest rate per capita for prostitution-related offenses. And that's how I know that this is
not a policy that is serving sex workers, because it's putting more of us behind bars.
[ending music]
Welcome back to The Oldest Profession Podcast, I’m your host Kaytlin Bailey and today we are
(00:01):
talking about the legal brothels in Nevada. Now we’ve already done an episode about the
history of how sex work came to be legalized and very regulated in Nevada.
But in this episode, we're going to talk about what it's actually like to work in one of those legal
brothels and why legalization, broadly speaking, and for sure, the regulatory system that's come
up around the Nevada model isn't something that sex workers are asking for.
Let’s get into it.
[opening music]
JJ
So generally, I'll wake up, check, you know, get breakfast, check the emails, do a little bit of, like,
hamster wheel running, and get ready for whatever appointments I have that day, which I
usually have to check a couple times throughout the day because the office coordinates my
schedule.
And then from there, my day could look like, you know, giving a massage and then spending the
rest of my day hanging out. My day could be ending at sunrise with me, you know, cleaning up,
you know, an all night rager. It just depends on what's on the agenda.
KB
That's Jupiter Jetson telling us about an average workday at the brothel she's worked at happily
for years. Jupiter, can you introduce yourself?
JJ
Well, my name is Jupiter Jetson. I am an adult actress, and I've been a legally licensed
courtesan at Sheri's Ranch, a legal brothel in Nevada since 2018.
(00:22):
KB
So can you tell us a little bit like, you know, listeners who haven't worked in a legal brothel
before, just, like, walk us through the process of, like, how you came to be, a legal courtesan.
JJ
I came, I came to it by way of a Cracked article. Like the website cracked.com And I had a little
bit of a foray into sex work in my, like, you know, late teens, early 20s. I was a dancer. Did some
BDSM work. But I got out of it, and I'd never gotten back into it until I read this article that I had
expected to be from the perspective of, like a Dutch worker or a German worker, because it was
about the legalized sex industry. And, to my surprise, it was a worker in the Nevada system.
In terms of applying to work at a legal brothel is actually pretty simple. They're all a little bit
different depending on the brothel, but they all usually resemble a form on a portion of the
ranch’s website where you fill out. Sometimes it's just an email address and they tell you what
information to send, but it's, you know, essentially the same information you would give on a
dating profile.
You know, name, age, weight, height. You send a couple of selfies. And maybe if you've been in
the industry for a while, you might send in some professional photos. But my first pictures were
just some bathroom selfies of me, and a blurb about myself and sent to an email address.
And there's no rhyme or reason as to how long it takes to hear back from them. It could be one
day, it could be one year. It just depends on where you're at in the cycle.
It was much more fast paced. In, in my experience. And like within a month of reading the
article, I was working at a brothel.
(00:43):
KB
That makes sense. And then once that happens, do you have to do anything before you show
up to the brothel or do you…
JJ
So yes and no. They give you like a packing list and that you need to make sure that you have
all of the supplies you need, because you are responsible for providing all of your own work
supplies, whether that's costumes, lube, condoms, the special purse that you have to bring. But
in terms of the testing and background checking, none of that happens until after you arrive for
your first tour, which is anywhere from 7 to 14 days.
Generally speaking, your first tour is usually one week, but some ranches do two. And it's when
you arrive that you do your STI testing and then you're seen after you've passed your STI test,
you're seen by the sheriff and you're fingerprinted, background checked, and you pay your fee,
and then you're cleared to work.
KB
Okay. So sorry. First question. Special purse?
JJ
Yeah. At least, Sherry's, we have to have, like, essentially stadium rules. You have to have a
clear bag.
KB
There are actually a lot of requirements to even be able to work in a legally licensed brothel in
Nevada. For example, you have to be over the age of 21. You have to be a US citizen or have
(01:04):
the right to legally work in the United States. And you have to be willing to undergo not just an
initial health screening, but regular, sometimes invasive STI tests, which we'll be talking a lot
more about later.
You have to be willing to register with the sheriff's department for your work card, where you'll be
subjected to a background check, and if you've been convicted of crimes, you might not be
eligible to work in a legal brothel.
You also have to be able to come up with money for travel, and also all of these various
registration and testing fees that you'll be asked to cover upfront before you're ever allowed to
work. And in addition to navigating all of the state and county bureaucracy and rules and
regulations, you also have to be willing to comply with the brothel rules, some of which, for
example, insist that you live on the premises while you're working, that you're not allowed to see
clients outside of the brothel, and they might have some pretty specific rules around how you
interact with or negotiate with your clients.
And that works for some people.
JJ
And I am very happy with the fact that it is the ranch that has a reputation for being kind of the
most corporate of all of the ranches. And so it is which lends itself to a very comfortable working
experience. And it's a very respectful working experience.
Everything that we book, all of our, all of our business is kept private. And we are also given the
freedom to choose how we conduct our business.
We are given the option of, you know, deciding whether we want to be someone who mostly,
(01:25):
you know, attracts our customer base online or if we want to be people who are hustling in
person in the bar. It also, in terms of corporate, there's a lot of rules. There's a lot of, very clear
cut rules about how we conduct ourselves in terms of, like, hustling in the bar, how we, you
know, approach clients, how long we sit with clients before, we have to walk away and let
another lady have a chance to talk to them.
And it's really more so to respect not stepping on each other's toes. These are the rules that are
in place in general, have either a goal of protecting the privacy of either you or the client or
protecting, you know, the sanity of the house so that people aren't having, having it out with
each other because you sat with that person for 15 minutes, you know, like, nobody has time for
that.
KB
I learned so much from this conversation with Jupiter and other sex workers who have chosen
to make their livelihoods in these brothels, and it really is a system that works well for many of
the people who choose to work there. But to get a broader sociological context, I called up Dr.
Barbara Brents.
Barbara, thank you so much for being here.
BB
I’m very excited to be here. This is my favorite podcast, so thank you very much. I'm Barb
Brents. I'm a professor in the sociology department at the University of Nevada Las Vegas,
where I've been for the last 37 years. I do research on sex work and focusing on the brothel
industry, and I teach, courses on sexuality and political sociology.
(01:46):
KB
For our listeners who might not be familiar, can you tell us a little bit about, like, what sociology
is like? What do you study as a sociologist? I know, I'm so sorry.
BB
No, it's the best question in the world. Sociology studies the interaction between personal
experience and the social world… in sociology, we look at how social structures and culture
have effects on groups of people and why groups of people act the way they do in different
contexts.
Back in the late 1990s, there wasn't anybody doing much research at all on the Nevada
brothels. Little research that had been done was done by men. Well, to be fair, it was mostly
men in the academy anyway, doing research, but it was mostly from a deviance perspective.
KB
A deviance perspective.
BB
At the time and even a little bit today, the brothels are very private. Different brothels have
different philosophies, I guess. But for the most part, they believe that you lay low. Nobody
wants to know who's coming in and who's going, because privacy is a big part of what you're
selling. Discretion. So it was difficult to get in to do the research.
KB
Barbara, take us back to the beginning. Tell us just about the history of sex work in Nevada.
BB
(02:07):
Well the Wild West, the white settling of the West, the western U.S., the gold rush, all that
brought a lot of new people into these areas, these boom towns, and it was a service industry
settling these boomtowns from which the brothels first emerged. There was lots of sex workers
selling sexual services, as well as other services in these small mining towns.
I mean, same brothel, same woman who would be running a saloon would also maybe be
selling sex or encouraging other people to sell sex, as well as having a sewing business on the
side and a restaurant on the side.
Boomtowns in Nevada were pretty late. The biggest boomtown had a population much larger
than Las Vegas at that time, as early as the, you know, 19 teens and the 1920s.
So, we really established ourselves as a state with the sex industry, along with gambling and all
sorts of entertainment for men who were working the mines, who were far away from home. And
it was a rough life. Got to do some for fun. As the towns grew, a lot of them kept their brothels,
kept their red light districts.
KB
So sex workers built Nevada.
BB
So there's an interesting story that I have to tell about Ely, Nevada, where there was a big
copper mine and there were these two company towns that the mining companies built. And just
outside of these company towns was the town where all the vice was (02:25):
the saloons and the
brothels and such.
And not surprisingly, this town was where the IWW came to organize the workers in these
mining towns. So vice and the unions were all, like, hand-in-hand. When the company came in
and tried to shut down the prostitution, they actually arrested some people in that town for sex
trafficking. So it's the battle against sex work and the battle against union organizing went
hand-in-hand and in a lot of ways.
Over time, the eastern United States, as they started exporting their Progressive Era laws and
rules and mindset about women's proper place, tried to pass a number of laws curtailing the sex
industry. And the, a lot of people resisted that.
I think it was really World War Two that finally tried to shut down a lot of the sex industry that
was happening. They managed to shut down the Reno Stockade, which was the red light district
in Reno. They shut down Block 16 in Las Vegas, which was the red light district in Las Vegas.
And, in the rural areas, they fought back and reopened some of these places.
So as things emerged, it was not so much red light districts, but brothels that in and businesses
that were able to lobby to get zoning regulations such that they could exist where they were
existing.
In 1946, that was where they reopened a lot of brothels in the rural areas. And but refused to
reopen them in the cities. But there are some places where brothels existed and continued.
In the 1960s and 70s, there is a story of this guy, Joe Conforte, who you may have heard of,
who ran a brothel in northern Nevada, on the intersection of three different counties. And there
(02:46):
was a sheriff that was after closing him down. And whenever the sheriff went after him, he'd roll
his brothel that was in a trailer into another county.
So, eventually this brothel owner managed to convince the county commission to fine him and
charge him for policing the area around the brothels. And so they charged him a one time fee,
but then he kept sort of paying it. After a few years, the county commission said, you know, we
should probably make this legal, this payment legal. So they passed in 1970, the first county
brothel licensing ordinance.
And then a three person county commission voted 2 to 1 to pass the first brothel licensing. So
Joe Conforte was empowered to then go to other brothels and others and other counties to try
to convince them. He came to Las Vegas, I think, and the rumor was that he was going to try
and open a brothel in Las Vegas.
But at that time, the local casino owners, who were busy trying to look legitimate, they're trying
to look classy and classiness, classy sexuality did not equal what red light districts looked like.
So they and the local officials lobbied the legislature to try to pass a bill to eliminate all
prostitution. The local counties that had brothels said, hey, dudes, we're getting a lot of money
from this, this is, there's nothing wrong with this.
And they a compromise was a bill passed in 1971 that made prostitution illegal in counties over
200,000, which at that time only included Las Vegas, and through various court battles and stuff
that backed up and dealt with the nuisance bills and all sorts of legal things over the next 5 or 10
years ended up saying, okay, counties, you have a choice, you can you can license your
brothels if you want to. Many counties had referendums. Most of them said, yeah, we want, we
(03:07):
want prostitution.
We have, it's a model by which the rural areas tenaciously hold on to whatever way they can
keep legal sex work in a context of all these forces against it. It's a mindset of you can't tell us
what we can do. And that's why these brothels continue to exist.
KB
So what that means is that when prostitution was put to a vote in these rural counties, voters
said, we want this. I think it's absolutely amazing because, like, when I think of rural, I think of
conservative. But these legal brothels are really only allowed to exist out in these remote areas.
And it's fascinating to me that the people that live there, that grew up there continue to turn out
and show up and literally vote to protect these brothels. I mean, it seems like in the places
where they exist, they are beloved by their communities.
[break]
BB
So the zoning ordinances sort of made brothels okay, wherever the buildings already were and
sort of granted licenses in those areas. So all the licenses today are site specific and to my
knowledge, only one has created a new site in the whole time since the 1970s.
KB
All right. So it sounds like part of why these brothels and the laws around them are so broadly
appealing is that they promise to contain and control sex workers and specifically to control
them as though they were a contagion.
So let's take a little bit of time now to talk about the health code policies, how they were
(03:28):
originally written, and how they have or haven't evolved.
BB
The way the laws work, you have to, it's the health codes that end up being the most
problematic. And a lot of the problem is that there's no organization like the New Zealand
Prostitutes’ Collective in New Zealand that can give you what the actual rules are. It's all the
owners.
KB
Let's hear from Jupiter on what this actually looks like.
JJ
So the STI testing in a brothel in Nevada, is answering to two separate and technically
speaking, I guess, four separate sets of code. Because you have your county, which is going to
be setting the exact parameters for that county, but it all trickles back to the overarching state
code, which is decided by both health code and legal code. But in terms of the STI testing, that
is health code that we are governed by, and we are only required to be tested for four separate
pathogens, which would be HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia.
And according to the overarching state code, we, because of three words “via endocervical
swab,” we in the year of our Lord 2025 still have to get in stirrups every seven days that we are
working. Because unfortunately, in 1971, when these laws were getting slapped through, they
didn't have urinary NAAT collection that was reliable. So they didn't write it into the law that
someday, someday we’ll be able to pee in a cup and know whether or not we have the clap.
So because of that, we are still just openfacing it every seven days that we are working in a
(03:49):
brothel.
KB
That sounds painful, humiliating, exhausting, and silly for everyone involved, right?
JJ
I started this whole journey because I also, as I mentioned, I do porn as well, and it was when I
started doing porn that I realized, wait a minute, I'm peeing in a cup for talent testing. Why can't I
pee in a cup for the brothel?
JJ
And why am I paying twice for the same tests? This is kind of insane. And that's when I realized
it was because of the three words. Because we haven't updated any of the codes since 1972 or
1973, unless it was to add things. Well, that's not true. Nye County struck the 24 hour
exemption, and retest laws. So, that was actually dope.
It was a bunch of people who were organizing it. Got repealed during the 2020 shut down,
actually. But unfortunately, while we are allowed to leave campus, we're allowed to, like, if I have
to run up to Walmart, I can run up to Walmart, it is still corporate policy that we have to sleep
there.
I do know that in Lyon County, it is common practice for ladies to have apartments off campus
and work by appointment. So I would imagine that they also do not have that statute. But I can't
speak for the other counties. I genuinely don't know.
KB
Hold on. Did I hear you correctly? They're only testing you for four things?
(04:10):
JJ
So, like, we're not being tested for Mgen. We're not being, yeah, like we're not being tested for
any number of things that, you know, as the science evolves, it's helpful to be tested for these
things. And we're just now. Because we can't even if we want to, we can't get these, these
statutes changed without taking it to a legislative session.
KB
Right. And of course it's not a priority for legislators generally because they're not the ones
suffering from this. And, like, I wonder, don't the brothels also want this to be cheaper,
JJ
It's not a priority for the brothel because it's, it's not broken. It's not causing them. They don't
have to chase paperwork. They don't have to poke girls to remember to go to their local testing
center before they come in. You know, they have everybody in one place.
Everybody's getting tested at the same time, which means that everyone's getting their results
at the same time. Like, I, you know, from a business owner standpoint, I, I don't necessarily see
the motivation to change or to advocate for change. And, you know, I guess therein also lies
some of the issues with legalization as a system to rely on is that you are also dealing with what
is best for somebody else's bottom line.
Again, I have had a pampered, happy princess experience in the industry. But even so, you
know, if I didn't have to give up my freedom for weeks on end and live in essentially what is a
really slutty sorority house for weeks on end, in order to make a living, I wouldn't do that.
I would much rather have a life where I can have a dog, you know? But I have to choose
(04:31):
between having a fuzz friend or having a career, because my only option is to go to a rural
desert brothel.
KB
If you don't want to be arrested.
JJ
Exactly.
[ break]
AM
So brothels are a business. They are there to make money, and they're working as hard as they
can to make sure that they're hitting their bottom line. A lot of the times, like a lot of different
businesses, you'll have some businesses that are run really, really well. And then you have
some businesses that are cutting corners, are not necessarily following the laws to a T or,
following basic human decency.
KB
Amy, thank you so much for joining us today. Can you take just a second and introduce
yourself? Who are you? What kind of work do you do?
AM
Yeah, my name is Amy-Marie Merrell. My pronouns are she/her, and I'm the co-executive
director at The Cupcake Girls, a organization that's doing anti-trafficking work differently in the
United States. And I got into this work when I was 16, actually. I was homeschooled my whole
life. And my first friends outside of my family and our church were sex workers.
(04:52):
I started a job at a local bookstore and met a sex worker who very quickly told me that she was
actually experiencing sexual assaults from a few police officers in our town and was going after
the city to receive justice. And through that relationship, I really had this idea of the world
change for me.
Cupcake Girls was founded in 2011. There used to be something called the XXX Church. It was
a Christian church that was reaching out to people that were in the sex industry. And the founder
of The Cupcake Girls was involved in that. And when the XXX Church pulled out of Las Vegas,
the founders stayed in Las Vegas and really wanted to make sure that resources were still
available to the people that XXX Church had been reaching out to.
And so, they formed a non-religious nonprofit called the Cupcake Girls. And we got our name
because we would walk into strip clubs and brothels with a big pink box of cupcakes, and
people would yell out, “The cupcake girls are here.” And so that's how we got our name. But the
idea was always, if somebody had a need, we wanted to match that need with a resource.
And so if somebody needed a dentist, every single dentist in Las Vegas would have been called
until we found somebody who would give a service to our participants at a discounted or
pro-bono rate.
We asked them, you know, what is your stance on sex work? Do you believe in the
decriminalization of sex work? What's your office like? Do you have multiple people working at
one time? Are we able to have an advocate go with our participant to their appointments?
What's your stance on porn? Like, a lot of conversations that people probably wouldn't have with
their dentist, right. But we wanted to make sure that we were having in advance so that when
(05:13):
we have somebody going into that space, we knew that it was safe. And we still do that to this
day.
I stepped into the role as executive director of The Cupcake Girls nationally in July of 2021. And
the first thing, like next morning, we took a stance on, decriminalizing sex work.
AM
It's really, really important to me that, as an anti-trafficking org, we understand, that the only and
best way to eradicate sex trafficking is to decriminalize sex work, period. We have to make sure
that we are supporting sex workers, that sex workers are seen, that they're heard, that their
work is uplifted and not stigmatized and not discriminated against.
And we went back and I personally called over 700 donors, which is why we lost so many
donors, because I called them and I said, “This is who we are, this is what we're about, this is
not what we're about. Are you comfortable giving us your money?” And many, many, many
people said absolutely not. And many, many people said absolutely, like 100%.
And the people that said absolutely, 100%, they are still our donors to this day. And thankfully,
we've also received support from the industry, lots of people in the entertainment industry, adult
entertainment industry that were like, oh, hell yeah. Like, I'll fuck with you guys. Like, this is
pretty cool. And yeah, it's been, it's been a wild, wild journey.
KB
Sounds like it! You've been providing services to sex workers in Nevada for a long time. What's
it like? What's the climate for sex worker rights like in the only state in the country with legal
prostitution?
(05:34):
AM
So I think it's important to make sure that folks about Nevada is it is a very red state. People
think like, oh, it's Sin city, and there's brothels everywhere there. There are brothels in a very
small part of Nevada, sex work is legal in a very small part of Nevada. And if you are even,
walking around looking like you may be engaged in sex work anywhere on The Strip, you will be
arrested.
The first week that I moved here in March 2021, I think it was March 22nd, 2021. It was my first
day at work in Nevada, and I got invited to go speak on this Senate bill, Senate Bill 164, and
some sex workers had gotten together with Senator Melanie Scheible and all that they were
trying to do was make sure that Nevada stopped arresting people that were being forced,
coerced, or manipulated into sex work.
They were asking the police, with this Senate bill, please stop arresting these people. You're
causing more harm to these people. And so I thought, like, coming especially coming out of
Portland, Oregon, where we had talked with the district attorney there years ago and said, hey,
please stop arresting sex workers. And he was like, yeah, totally. I'm going to stop pressing
charges when they arrest them. So we had less arrests, right?
And so when I came here, I was like, oh, this is going to be easy. You know, they've got legal
brothels. They have all these strip clubs. Like, this is going to be easy. We'll go into this meeting.
Yeah, sure. I go into the meeting and they call it Metro here, the police department, came out in
full force. They had so many people there giving public comments, saying, no, we need to arrest
these people to keep them safe. They have to be arrested. I was in shock.
(05:55):
It it literally was jarring to me hearing testimony after testimony after testimony of people saying
like, yeah, like we have to arrest them to get them away from their pimps, but we have to arrest
them so that they can have rest from their trafficking experience, or we have to arrest them so
they have access to resources, just like the most wild things I've ever heard.
And, one person got on and said, “You have to understand, taxpayers don't want to see
prostitutes walking around on our streets.” And then I said, “Sir, you do realize that sex workers
are also paying taxes? Everyone's paying taxes.” He got so pissed off. Red in the face left the
call. It was wild to me. They didn't even know that.
They didn't know that sex workers pay taxes. And trying to explain to them, hey, when you're
arresting people, that does not give them access to the resources. They're getting the big pile of
people, paper resources handed to them after they leave, when they go into jail, the person
who's trafficking them, they can totally just wait outside on Tuesday to pick them up.
They know where to get them, and then they go right back to the exact same spot.
KB
Now with a criminal record, right?
AM
Now with a criminal record. And the thing that we see so often and that I said in that in that
meeting too, is okay when the person is arrested, what happens? They're kids who've been with
a babysitter while the kids go to Child Haven, which is essentially this big, huge foster care
organization here, it's essentially an orphanage. And it has so many flaws. They are they are
understaffed. They have zero volunteers coming in. They're consistently having calls like, hey,
(06:16):
can somebody come hold babies? Like, it's terrifying. And so then these, these mamas, they
have to like go fight to get their kids back. And they're amazing moms. They're going out to work
for their kids, right.
There are just so many issues with it. And so that was my first understanding that Nevada does
not get it. Nevada is confused about sex work and trafficking. Nevada is confused about the
difference between consent and coercion. Nevada arrests everyone. Nevada loves arresting, we
see all the time, our participants are kicked out of casinos but but also not kicked out of casinos.
Like, depending on what guests they have in the casino, depending on what guests they have in
the hotel, because the casinos want sex workers there, but they don't want them there.
KB
Yeah. Well, because there, it's a zero sum game. The casinos are operating, they're in the
fiefdom right of the federal government. And so the deal is that if the casino allows any activity
that the federal government actually doesn't want happening, that they can revoke their gaming
license with no notice. And so, like, that's why you can walk to a dispensary in Vegas and buy
weed, but if you smoke it on the street, you'll be arrested. And if you smoke it in a casino, you'll
be asked to leave. The only place you can actually smoke weed in Nevada is like in a private
home, which is insane because it's a tourist town where people buy weed all the time. It's like
it's confusing.
AM
There's just there's so many oddities surrounding Nevada and the way that it handles sex work
and sex workers, and it creates this really unstable environment where it's easy for the
(06:37):
government to be making money off of the arrest of the poorest, most oppressed people in our
state. It's really devastating, actually.
We probably get about four to five calls a year from people that either don't understand that they
are in a trafficking situation, or don't understand that they are being forced to stay at the brothel,
that they can leave. They're not being given the whole picture. If you are somebody who is in
the United States undocumented, and you are being forced into a situation where you must pay
to perform sexual acts, you actually qualify for a special visa in the United States, where you
can stay in the United States. And brothel owners know this and that information is not being
given to the participants.
So it's important that Cupcake Girls exist so that we can step into those spaces and give that
information to the people that are being exploited.
KB
Yeah. All of that sounds really tricky to navigate. Like outside the brothel and also the brothels,
which are hard in their own way. And if I'm understanding you guys correctly, working outside of
the brothel in Nevada means that you are much more likely to get arrested than anywhere else
in the country. And it sounds like there's a lot of tricky rules and registrations that sex workers
that do choose to work in the legal brothels have to navigate. You and your organization provide
services to both. What do sex workers in Nevada need? What kind of services do you find
Cupcake Girls being called to facilitate?
AM
Yeah. We have one of the main resources that Cupcake Girls gets requests for is family
(06:58):
lawyers, family law, because the people that we're working with are going through a divorce and
their partner, who is totally fine with them doing sex work when they were profiting from it, all of
a sudden isn't interested in celebrating that anymore.
And now takes all of that information and brings it against them in court. And so we have so
many folks that have their partners using that information against them. And it's really
unfortunate because in our society, people are really excited to just jump on that. We had
somebody really, really recently, and in the state of Nevada, it's an equal rights state. So that
means that they don't side with either parent.
Almost always in the custody issues, it's brought up that the partner who is doing sex work or
has done sex work is unfit. And they're not able to bring any evidence. We just had somebody,
amazing mom that is on the PTA at her kiddos school, shows up early every morning, helps out,
volunteers, shows up on time every day.
The other parent who does not do sex work and is going after them in court never ever has
picked up from school, never has dropped off, isn't purchasing the clothes. The parent who does
sex work has the receipts of all the clothes, receipts of all the food, is paying for, is caring for
child, is paying the rent, and the other parent who isn't doing sex work is doing nothing.
And the parent who has been caring for the child actively because they are doing sex work are
actively losing this custody case, and they will end up losing their children, or preparing for that.
And that's not an anomaly. That's something that we see all the time.
I think the other thing that we see often that I think is worth mentioning is with those sheriff's
cards, it does come up in a background check. And so when folks are trying to get into housing,
(07:19):
when folks are trying to get jobs, that becomes an issue. We have somebody that…
JJ
So in terms of putting yourself on record, when you are making the choice to put yourself on
record as a sex worker, that is one of the most intimidating barriers to working in a legal brothel.
I recently, for personal reasons, conducted an FBI background check of myself and got my
printed background. And I can say with confidence now that it does not show up on an FBI
background check. It's not something that is registered in that system. It’s not in the criminal
systems.
Now, I don't know if somebody was motivated. I do know that in, I believe it was 2018, it may
have been 2019. There's an attorney who works a lot with the anti-groups, Jason Guinasso. And
he had on behalf of the No Little Girl organization put in a FOIA request for the names and
addresses of all of the workers in Lyon County. And he was, roundly told, to piss off. So I, I don't
necessarily know how findable all of this information truly is.
KB
It's fascinating to me, and I think important to understand, that Nevada started as a vice state.
And it's a state that doubled down on the regulation, containment and control of vice really early
in the state's history, starting with gambling.
And that culture of licensing vice industries has led to this sort of strange situation where in
order to work as a sex worker, you have to put yourself on this stigmatized list. So you are, on
the one hand, protecting yourself from arrest. But opening up this new vulnerability of having
this undeniable and presumably subpoenable-proof that you've done this stigmatized and often
(07:40):
criminalized thing.
AM
We have people that will come to us and say that, CPS was called on them because they went
to a pediatrician and the kid had mentioned that mama works at Chicken Ranch. And the
pediatrician knew what that was. And, and, you know, there are a lot of different ways of thinking
when it comes to how open to be with your kid about the work that you do.
And honestly, I think it's really beautiful when you can have a transparent relationship with your
child and that they can know the environment and the person that they're living with. I think that
there's a lot of comfortability there, a lot of safety there for the child, and I do not condemn that
at all. I think, of course, there's always, like, age-appropriate conversation to be had, but there's
nothing wrong with your child knowing where you work.
And I think it's really disgusting that CPS would be called on a parent because of where they
work, especially because it is legal. But I also think it's indicative of like where we're at when it
comes to stigma and fear of sex work and sex workers.
BB
You know, those of us who've been around sex workers know that, that they’re professionals
and have an interest in doing their job well.
And the best brothel owners are recognizing that and try to empower them. And I think as I've
watched gender norms and sexuality norms change over the last 30 years, that has benefited
sex workers in the brothels. When I first started testifying in front of the legislature on these
things, the only time you'd see a sex worker up there testifying was when they were up there
(08:01):
with a brothel manager and sort of a, see, this is what sex workers look like.
Now, sex worker organizations are up there testifying. Brothel workers are up there testifying.
Now, sometimes they do so at their own peril, because they may not want them to be so vocal,
but they're increasingly being vocal.
I think a lot of the problems of what they can't do in the legal brothels is, problems of
independent contractor rules in the state where workers don't have any rights, in the country
where workers don't have any rights.
In New Zealand, the mindset is that we are going to treat sex workers like any other workers.
We're going to, we're going to actually give them special rights to protect them. We're going to
regulate brothels like any other business. And so the regulations that exist there are special for
sex workers, and it is regulated, but it's in a context where sex workers need to be able to do
their job.
Whereas in, in these rural brothel areas, this is a system that has been carved out in the middle
of a criminalized, heavy criminalized system. To make sure it works for us…
JJ
So I, I'm fairly young in my, my advocacy journey. But, I mean the, the biggest issue that I've
been working on personally is just trying to get the STI testing standards for the Nevada
brothels brought into the 21st century.
I am largely benefitted by the legalized system. I'm actually very passionately
pro-decriminalization. Just because, you know, while I have been greatly served by a system of
legalization because I am just entirely too cowardly to work outside of a legal framework, like I
(08:22):
am terrified of cops. Absolutely not. I can't, I can't, like, I just, I know who I am, but it's, it's a
system that doesn't let everybody who is able to be in the sex industry be legally and safely in
the sex industry because there are millions of people who, how do I say this?
Anyone can get into the industry if they are motivated to. There is a market for absolutely
everybody, but there isn't room for absolutely everybody inside of a brothel. And you have to
convince a brothel owner that you are going to be a profitable use of space in order to make a
career in the legal sector. So I actually am hopefully going to be doing a lot more work in the
decrim space, in for, you know, in the coming future. But right now, I'm just trying to get us out of
stirrups in the brothels.
KB
When I talk to people about decriminalizing sex work, they will often say to me, oh, like the
brothels in Nevada. And I think it's really important for our listeners and anybody in the sex
worker rights movement to be able to explain to people why, no, not like the brothels in Nevada.
I find that one fact helps make all of this. Everything that you've heard from Amy at The
Cupcake Girls and Jupiter from the brothel, and Barbara, who's been studying this for decades.
And that's this Nevada, the only state in the country with legal, regulated prostitution, has the
highest arrest rate per capita for prostitution-related offenses. And that's how I know that this is
not a policy that is serving sex workers, because it's putting more of us behind bars.
[ending music]
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