can someone explain the 'harm reduction' approach to prostitution

Good post Beachcomber. Maybe it's more palatable to think people go into prostitution of their own free will and if it turns out bad for them, well it was their choice. Maybe it's easier to accept the idea of prostitutes preying on helpless men rather than it being a customer and profit driven industry.

Lougie, in your post, you suggest that for prostitutes theres 'the initial decision that's made, the line crossed.'

Most often that line is when they are raped as children, followed by grooming for sexual exploitation, being convinced they're only good for sex, bought and sold. 'Choice' as we might know it rarely comes into it.

Lougle many, possibly most, of the women in prostitution have pimps. They are not acting independently. It is extremely difficult to have accurate figures on the % of women who are pimped - many women do not identify their pimp as a pimp, they will say that he is their partner or boyfriend. Huge numbers of women are trafficked into prostitution.

Sorry but I think you have got things the wrong way round - women and children wouldn't be pimped and trafficked into prostitution if there wasn't a market for sexually abusing them.

The women do not create the market - the johns, pimps and the traffickers do, because the institution of prostitution is big business and there is a lot of money to be made from pimping out women. The pimps need to find women to provide 'raw material' for the market either by manipulating women, grooming them or using violence to control them (because most women do not want to be prostituted).

That is how prostitution works - it is a big business that is mostly run by traffickers and organised crime.

MsAnnTeak the situation you write about is common here. I am deeply unpopular amongst a certain group of expat women here for employing my hope help under conditions similar to those found in the UK (eg sick pay, maternity pay, proper notice period, proper holiday terms, defined hours of work, paid overtime) as well as paying them a decent wage and providing benefits such as medical insurance and further education. They think I am upsetting the applecart.

Trafficking for domestic servitude is rife here. As is treating your home help as slaves.

Its all symptomatic of the denigrated position of women, especially poor uneducated women, in society as a whole.

Lougle what choices do you think these women have, especially in countries with no welfare state or decent education system? What other jobs can they do?

How do we explain the fact that there are many vulnerable, destitute, even homeless women who do not enter prostitution? Surely there is a bit of personal responsibility involved? Men couldn't pay for sex if it wasn't available to be paid for

I can see that once in the 'market' it can be very hard to get out, but all children are taught about sexual health, sexual assault, drug abuse, etc., so there is an initial choice that is made, a line that is crossed, which isn't the making of the first client, is it?

Contributions noted and would like to hear your thoughts and the following. Another long thread was discussing equality in the home and division of housework is a bugbear. Traditionally it's the women who does the majority of the chores but if you have enough money you can hire help.

Returned from the Middle East last week and chatted with some fascinating women.

One topic did upset me when discussing domestic labour, which many affluent women have. Low paid, foreign, contracted for a year, ticket home at the end of the year if your emploers were happy with you, stranded at the airport if they don't quite often. Living in what I describe as a hut consisting on a bed, shower, wardrobe and sink, a human kennel really.

In order to stamp out trafficking and illegally bringing in domestic labour, a decree went out which had severe consequences for anyone found having none legitimate staff.
Within a few weeks many of these women had disappeared. They haven't returned to their home countries, rumour had it they were driven out to the dessert and disposed of.

The plight of women and children who are trafficked and often sexually and physically abused for domestic servitude is well documented. It's mentioned as a route in to sexual slavery and prostitution. Many are of the belief they are going to foreign countries to become nannies, or maids.

Do many people frown upon using women to look after families and clean houses for a pittance of pay ?

SGB women can have as much free sex as they wish, so why would they pay for it ?

Men have been aware of the fact for centuries but in order to ensure as much as possible the children they were raising were their own, chastity and modesty in females were promoted and female behaviour was conditioned. Though it wasn't necessary to regulate the sexual behaviour of women past childbearing age it was felt that to allow such behaviour to go unregualted it would promote the wrong message to those who were younger.

If a women was promiscious she could be locked away, the family name blackened and they were shamed, ostracised from the circles she moved in. Women would keep other women in check by frowing upon any sexually deviant behaviour and feel good about how virtuous they were.

Surely the pressure you describe is also the product of our patriarchal social, economic and political system that values men more than women, with the message that women can be regarded as commodities to be bought and sold for consumption by men.

If you can wave a magic wand and eradicate the patriarchy along with all the traditions, assumptions, practices and social conditioning that flows from it, creating in an instant a world where all people are valued as human beings, I might be able to see your argument.

But unless you or someone else has that magic wand, I can't see that world being around the corner. It is still the context within we all live and the environment we all have to negotiate on a daily basis.

And, I can't see why exerting pressure of a different kind on women to disassociate sex from love, "give" sex freely to men (however, whenever and whoever wants it,) and regard the selling of sexual services as no more unusual than selling a Big Mac with fries will in any way liberate, empower or protect them.

Kritiq: mightn't the difference in the numbers of women and men who pay for sex have more to do with the way in which women are still pressured to associate sex with love and to restrict the amount of it they allow men to have with them?

And, I would add the commercial sexual exploitation of men and boys who are also trafficked and prostituted.

Sorry SGB, I can't buy that.

Both men and women pay both men and women for cooking elaborate meals.

Both men and women pay both men and women for playing musical instruments.

It is common for men to pay women for sex. It is rare for women to pay men for sex.

This says to me that there IS an inherent difference between the buying and selling of sex from the buying and selling of other commodities.

I agree with Beachcomber that if there is stigma attached to buying and selling sex, it should rest with the punters, pimps, trafickers and others who profit from exploitation of other human beings. Those who profit are primarily men.

I don't "get" that creating better PR for prostitution will benefit prostituted women in any meaningful way. If anything, it would only contribute to further normalisation of the sexual exploitation and abuse of women and girls.

I agree totally that the women in prostitution should not be stigmatized.

It is the johns, pimps and traffickers who should be stigmatized. As they are in the Swedish model for example.

And that works because it changes attitudes at a societal level to the acceptability of using women in prostitution - people start to see it for the gendered violence and exploitation it really is. And that has the knock on effect of lowering the demand for trafficked 15 year olds and all the other vulnerable women and children who form the vast vast majority of prostitutes.

But it isn't inherently wrong to pay someone money for engaging in sexual activity with you any more than it's wrong to take or give money for the playing of a musical instrument or the cooking of a very elaborate meal, both things which people do for the sheer pleasure of it as well as sometimes as a way of earning money. One way of reducing the harm that can be associated with sex work would be to reduce the stigma. This would also help those who want to find another job after having done sex work: if you're going to be percieved as a failure, a victim, a druggie or a deluded traitor to your sex for having accepted money for sexual services it's harder to get alternative employment, should you want it.

SGB, human beings aren't "entitled" to sex with another person. I would put sex with another person in the category of "want" rather than "need." One can obtain sexual enjoyment through masturbation (not involving any other person) or with another person where there is full, free consent and there is no question of one person having greater power or control over the other.

If there were equal numbers of women buying sex from men and men buying sex from women, I could buy your argument. The fact that the transaction is 99% of the time one way, and there is no reliable way to ensure that all women in all situations are not under political, social or economic pressure to provide sexual services for men means that prostitution can never be regarded as just a "lifestyle choice."

Harm reduction, in the model being described here, is about minimising the risks to men in purchasing sex and purporting to minimise risks to prostituted women as well. However, there is only evidence for the former and not evidence of the latter.

Nothing wrong at all with it being easy to access sex with consenting unexploited women who are making a free choice to share their body with the man of their choice.

That's not what prostitution is about, though, is it.

I take issue with the idea that a problem with prostitution is that it makes it 'easy' for men to access sex.

What's actually wrong with it being easy to access sex, if you want sex? Why should sexual enjoyment be something that you have to struggle to obtain? This does seem to be at the core of the abolitionist mindset: not the harm done to the unwilling who have been coerced into sex work, nor the abuse done by a percentage of men to sex workers or to women they claim they thought were sex workers, but the fact that men are getting sexual pleasure 'too easily'.

I live in Thailand, where prostitution, and indeed use of prostitutes, is rife. My DDs school is on a lovely street that turns into a red light zone at night. I live 5 mins away from a notorious red light street, no matter how affluent or nice the area, its always a spit away. Bangkok is like that.

I have a lot of conversations about prostitution. I volunteer in an HIV project that largely serves the prostitute and child of prostitute population. I see first hand the effects of prostitution (and its why i would never ever raise a teenage child in this city)

Harm reduction is an abhorrent concept. It means that we put men's needs for sex above the need for a woman to live free from harm.

There is no real free choice - women are either driven here by economic necessity (no welfare state here) or trafficked. And don't even get me started on the children. Born to prostitutes, live with prostitutes, auctioned off at an early stage to the highest bidder. It's sick.

Interesting posts Mighty Nice and Boss of Me. It would seem that there is a high level of segmenting and "othering" going on for men who on one hand say they love and respect women but either endorse or are meh about prostitution. Asking whether they would be content for their mothers, daughters, sisters or wives to "choose" this as a career forces them to de-segment their views, which makes them uncomfortable at the very least.

In my view, harm reduction as it relates to prostitution is legitimate only in so much as it involves supporting prostituted women to be as safe as possible in the circumstances and be supported should they decide to leave prostitution. I don't buy the bull that providing condoms encourages prostitution - it gives women at least some means of protecting themselves from infection and pregnancy. Similarly, I don't believe needle exchanges encourage drug use - just reduce the risk associated with using dirty needles.

But, I'm aware that the term "harm reduction" has been stretched when it comes to sexual exploitation to often include dodgy assumptions that "allowing" prostitution reduces the risk to non prostitute women (nope, no evidence at all of that,) and that legalising and regulating prostitution reduces risks for prostitutes (nope, haven't seen any evidence of that either.)

The question I always ask men (and its nearly always men) who say there is nothing wrong with prostiution is "would you be happy if your daughter were a prostitute? Would you tell your friends that this was her job" Funnily enough, it normally shuts them up.

Of course society will probably always abuse drugs. And scum will probably always use prostitutes. That doesn't mean we should make it easier for them to do so.

We can make life better for prostitutes without making it easier for the men who use them. Shouldn't that be the aim - help prostitutes deal with potential for harm (which is significant even in places where prostitution is legalised) without condoning the actions of the men who abuse them? Because using prostitutes is abusing women.

Prostitution may be legal, but the majority of associated activites (soliciting, running a brothel) aren't.

Re: Nevada having the 4th highest rape rate in the US, could it be the case that it has the highest declared rape rate in the US? What I mean is that sexual assault statistics don't correlate with actual incidence because of the fear of prosecution in many areas. Could it be that although the legalisation hasn't reduced rape rates, or perhaps just hasn't reduced them enough, they aren't actually any higher than other areas, but rather more reported?

Don't think it can be Nirvana but there have been measures put in place for harm reduction which is what the OP was mainly about and there has been a significant reduction in street prostitution with the women exiting (unless the services are lying and their results aren't as great as they are leading us to believe?)

As I said prostitution is legal here. I brought up the HIV as there were 2 differing schools of thoughts a, took a stance that it would be promoting drug abuse so did nothing, it was about not sending out the wrong message which they felt was more important and b, took the pragmatic approach, reducing harm and death. The drugs are bad message has been screamed out for years, they're cheaper and more widely available than back in the 80s and far more children have access to them. At what point do you think society will never abuse drugs ?

MsAnnTeak you make it sound as if the prostitutes in your area are now working in hooker nirvana, which I suspect to be very far from the truth.

I don't see how the HIV comparison holds. You can provide services for prostitutes to access to protect their health without legalising prostitution.

IMO legalising prostitution is all about making it easier for men to access sex and has very little to do with actually making life better for women. It sends the message to men that its OK to use prostitutes, it must be, because they aren't exploited, criminalised etc. Its all about soothing men's consciences.

Bollocks to that. If men exploit women via sex, we should say so. Not make them feel that its OK because the women may be very marginally better off than they were when prostitution was criminalised.

Prostitution is legal in the UK and the Operations Pentameter 1 & 2 showed there were reletively few cases of trafficking (in the true sense of the word) here.

Following the shock of the Ipswich murders police forces reviewed how they dealt with prostitution. In the area I live in the streetscene was about all the police had any idea of. Indoor prostitution presented negligable problems so they had no idea of what it consisted of.
Fortunately, the police and the local services which provide help for prostitutes work together and have pretty much cleaned up the outdoor scene by offering fast tracking to methodone programs (most of the street workers are drug dependent here) but have also offered advice and practical help in other areas. The majority of them have moved on and made new lives.
They keep a close eye on the indoor scene and are quick to pick up on any hint that there may be criminal activity. If prostitutes have been attacked or have a complaint against a punter they can report it, it will be taken up and the prostitute will be treat with dignity and respect.

There are clinics and support for people working in the sex industry, and women use them freely, can talk confidentially and if they suspected there was an underage girl, somebody working against their will, have a route to have it reported to the police.

Drugs, are illegal here and I think back to when HIV first hit the headlines. Edinburgh held the view that a needle exchange scheme be allowed. Glasgow on the otherhand believed by offering needle exchnge it was condoning and promoting the use of illegal drugs and refused to set up one. Result was Edinburgh had a much lower incidence of HIV and AIDS.
They both have different stances on the sex industry, Edinburgh tolerates and has a pragmatic approach, Glasgow an abolishonist stand on the subject. Even though they are 2 cities 40miles apart there are a huge difference in the ratesof murders, assaults and other crimes against prostitutes. Edinburgh has the lower.

Beachcomber raises a point about casinos. Casinos are a regulated form of gambling and though there are those who are addicted and end upin debt there are many who never visit them and many who go there and act responsibly. They have to obtain a licence issued by the local councils and they are very heavily taxed on their profits, you can also put yourself on a 'ban' list and bar yourself from all gambling venues.
By far the biggest problem with gambling is the unregulated, online gambling which seems to be saturating my TV adverts at the minute. The money often goes offshore, there are no limits on how much you can spend, some may be connected to organised crime and it's people gambling in secret, sometimes drunk and not monitored as they are in a casino and could well be children, or spending the cash of elderly vulnerable relatives.
There is gambling which goes on outside of both. My brother has a few of the lads round once in a while and they'll set up a few games of poker. Stakes are 10p and to date no one has killed another player, had any long term falling out or gone bankrupt through them.