While this is the official meaning of the word, in African American mythology, a pimp is much more. The archetype of the black pimp is a male trickster who preys on vulnerable women, a figure with notorious powers of seduction, coercion and mind control. Pimps dazzle women with their style, and skillfully manipulate them into doing what they want. And what a pimp wants more than anything else is money.

Lee, the prostitutes' rights advocate, says that the sex trade will always have its brokers and that even the legalization of prostitution would not drive pimps to extinction; pimping will always exist in some form.

Indeed, in a society based on often exploitive business relationships, prostitution and pimping have their parallels elsewhere, and some pimps see no difference between theirs and other professions.

"In China there is a brothel and a man runs it but he is not considered a pimp. He is considered a businessman. But not here."

Pimping is economic exploitation in its ugliest form, but it is a business that won't soon go bankrupt.