Shame, Wow!

Published March 31, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT

Vince Shlomi, the guy who hocks the ShamWow and Slap Chop on infomercials and the Internet had a violent altercation with a prostitute in a Miami hotel room, a 26-year-old named Sasha Harris, as The Smoking Gun mentioned over the weekend.

Shlomi claims in his affidavit that when he kissed Harris, she bit his tongue. According to the Smoking Gun,

Shlomi then punched Harris several times until she released his tongue... during the 4 AM fight Harris sustained facial fractures and lacerations all over her face.

This story, sadly, is not out of the ordinary. It has only gotten a lot of press because it features a quasi-celebrity who sells cooking and cleaning products in a memorable and annoying way.

It is important to note while that no indications have been made in any media coverage that the woman was in prostitution against her will, she was still violently beaten as a result. No woman deserves to be brutalized, regardless of her occupation. Commercial sex is still a very dangerous industry, even for those who enter it willingly with their eyes wide open. And a woman does not need to be trafficked into prostitution to suffer many of the ill effects of the industry- depression, higher drug and alcohol use and abuse, higher suicide and homicide rates, increased risk of STDs, and increased risk of rape and battery.

We knew this guy was obnoxious. Now we know he's also abusive. What I want to know is how we can help the woman, and the many women like her who are victimized through prostitution.

Image from honestinfomercialreviews.com

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Comments (7)

Could we help her by pressuring the companies that sell the Sham Wow and Slap Chop (a sadly ironic name) to drop him as a spokesperson?
Here's the contact info for sham wow: ronny@squareoneent.com

To contact slap chop, you can use their online customer service form; they don't have a "contact us" link:
https://www.picustomerservice.com/customerserviceform.asp

Romy

Posted by Romy Carver on 03/31/2009 @ 12:46PM PT
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I dont think we're gonna have to put much pressure on the company. This has been all over the news. He's toast. Still, doesnt hurt to let them know we're watching what they do.

Posted by Slim Chance on 03/31/2009 @ 04:48PM PT
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I read about this a few days ago. It is really awful. You are absolutely right - no woman deserves to be brutalized like that. No human being, really.

What I found most interesting about this unfortunate story, was that he claims she bit his tongue. This stood out to me and I'm kind of surprised you didn't mention more about it. My first reaction to this claim was: Is he lying? The article I read referred to both Shlomi and Harris being "battered and bruised," but they did not specify to any visible wounds on his tongue, and I have heard nothing else about it. Second reaction: Was she forced into prostitution? Because I would assume that a woman who bites a man's tongue when he tries to kiss her is not there by her own free will. If she had freely chosen to be a prostitute, and freely chosen him as a john, I'm assuming she wouldn't bite his tongue like that. I also wondered why the media did not bring this up - the possibility of her being a victim of human trafficking, I mean.

Posted by D W on 04/01/2009 @ 09:11AM PT
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I find your post to be very insightful. However, one question that puzzled me was this: if she did bite his tongue, why had she not behaved like this in the past? Perhaps she had, and only now, it became public information, due to Shlomi's fame. Or perhaps she was aware of Shlomi's status and saw this as an opportunity to escape. If she did instigate the violence, I have a hard time giving Shlomi too much blame for his "self-defense" (?). In this case, the real fault lies with those that enslave women in prostitution rings against their will.

Posted by Lana Bode on 04/04/2009 @ 07:33AM PT
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The great majority of prostituted women have been put in that position by men, starting from when they were children - often very young children. They are likely to have been physically and sexually abused otherwise. They have been conditioned to accept their sexual slavery and/or intimidated into staying in their prostituted state. This means that men who take advantage of such women are, in a very real sense, rapists, even though they pay and the women "consent".
For many other prostituted women, they lack economic options in a society in which men, predominantly, have assured that many of us - women especially - will be in that position. So using these women sexually is also a form of rape. There normally need be no physical battering to maintain this, though occasional use of such battering serves to remind prostituted women of their "place".
For those who have taken a close look at master-slave relationships in the antebellum South, the parallels are striking.

Posted by Richa [no last name] on 04/03/2009 @ 11:04AM PT
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Legalize prostitution so women in her situation have the same rights to police protection and investigations can get underway into this possible forced prostitution. If she was afraid of being arrested because she was forced into prostitution she would not be afraid to reach out to authorities and end her suffering.

Posted by Lauren Marie on 04/08/2009 @ 12:37AM PT
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Amanda wrote,
" What I want to know is how we can help the woman, and the many women like her who are victimized through prostitution."

I agree with Lauren Marie's comments, and I have some comments to add. In order to guarantee safety in prostitution, we would need to make the world a perfectly safe place and guarantee safety in the world outside of prostitution as well. Unfortunately, we're no where near that point yet. Nonetheless, there are still harm reduction measures that can be taken to decrease violence in prostitution. An essential step is eliminating prohibitionist policies against prostitution that push prostitution further underground and encourage violence. We need to decriminalize prostitution as part of the fight against violence. I'm in the process of researching rates of violence in prostitution between criminalized and non-criminalized systems of prostitution, and rates are much higher under criminalized systems. There's also qualitative evidence based on anecdotes from sex workers regarding their experiences which express how criminalizing prostitution encourages violence. However, this doesn't mean that criminalizing prostitution is "the" sole cause of violence, but rather, it is "a" cause.
Also, we need to recognize violence in prostitution as a form of violence rather than treating it like it's just an inherent part of prostitution or "part of the job description." We need to move toward harm reductionist approaches to prostitution and away from a prohibitionist approaches.

Posted by Passionate Activist on 04/09/2009 @ 10:03AM PT
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Amanda has been a full-time abolitionist for six years. During that time, she has created reports, documentaries and training materials on human trafficking in the United States and around the world.