It's Hard Out There For the Pimped

Rudy Carrasco passes on this reflection on one of the songs in "Hustle and Flow" about the life of a pimp. Somehow we got it into our collective heads that being a pimp is funny and cool, but I've seen enough cracked-out prostitutes in the park to know that being a pimp is evil.

From the article:

Eighty percent of the women were sexually assaulted by pimps via sadistic sex; 71% of pimps use drugs to control the women; and 34% of the women received death threats from pimps personally or to their family.
—- Raymond, Hughes, Gomez, “Sex Trafficking In the United States, Coalition Against Trafficking of Women Study,” March 2001
Sixty-eight percent of girls entered prostitution before age 16.
—- Silbert and Pines “Entrance into Prostitution,” YOUTH AND SOCIETY 1982 (San Fransisco)
Forty-six percent of women in prostitution attempted suicide.
—- Parriot, “Health of Twin Cities Women in Prostitution,” May 1994
The mortality rate of women in prostitution, adjusted for age and race, is more than 200 times greater than the population at large.
—- Potterat, Brewer “Mortality in a Long-term Open Cohort of Prostituted Women,” AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY, 2004. (Colorado)