The invisible men project

I saw the one about the pregnant woman earlier today . Heart-breaking.

The latest few posts on the project really don't show the men involved in a good light, or even capable of showing basic human decency.

But hey, it's all fine, the women want to be there, heavily pregnant, in pain, unhappy or whatever, because wino says they love it.

How tedious.

I agree running. It's also clear that these people are not used to discussing anything else. They're just caught up in an echo chamber where they are fed and promote what they think is evidence and argument but they can't or won't think critically. They think repetition of buzzwords and demanding everyone read or listen to stuff they can't even summarise or validate is debate.

vested interest, exactly, Running.

I don't understand why the world is so invested in believing the accounts of those with the vested interest, and ignoring and dismissing the ones without. There's nothing in it for an anti sex industry person to speak out. No money, no kudos (ha!), no validation of a 'hobby'. It wouldn't happen in any other industry

I don't believe that inwino is not a punter, a pimp, or someone with a vested interest in prostitution. No poster would argue so tediously, for so long on such a subject otherwise.

And you are very arrogant to presume that we haven't reached our decisions with the help of evidence, personal accounts, reading about the subject, engaging with it. Just because our conclusions are not yours, inwino, doesn't mean that we haven't done our research.

"Well as I thought-closed minds, eyes and fingers in the ears again." The same could be said for you.

God you are tedious

Well as I thought-closed minds, eyes and fingers in the ears again. Because you KNOW-because your political analysis has led you to swallow the line taken by likes of Catherine Mackinnon Sheila Jeffreys and Melissa Farley that no one could choose to prostitute, that prostitution is violence against women or prostitution is rape that is paid for and that any prostitute who protests otherwise must be either coerced by her pimp, drugged or suffering from false consciousness or as Farley says ??To the extent that any woman is assumed to have freely chosen prostitution, then it follows that enjoyment of domination and rape are in her nature? These are articles of faith-like believing in a flat earth-or of examples of pre-scientific reasoning, as Popper put it ?conclusions formed in the absence of evidence or lacking in the critical ingredient of falsifiability?

How is such flat earth faith maintained? By refusing to consider evidence, by trying to rubbish such evidence by saying it is propaganda, or trying to rubbish the authors or suggest it might be funded by lobby groups or have a vested interest. Or trying to claim that those who point to the evidence have not read it and don?t understand it But consider the evidence? Oh no can?t do that as it might just might undermine the faith. So let?s go on in our little flat earth universe where the sun goes around the earth-better not look out the window as that might put our faith in jeopardy.

And Flora-you have embarrassed yourself by refusing to consider evidence-by not knowing that ?Survey Monkey? is a tool for analysing on-line surveys, for claiming that a report commission by the NZ parliament was lobbying-things you might have known if you just opened your eyes for a second.

wino you have taken nearly 2 weeks to try and find something, anything which backs up your view of prostitution. You have once again failed to do so.

I have no doubt though, that this will start another round of:

1. HUGE copy/pasted posts, most of which you probably haven't read, with horrendous formatting which makes my eyes bleed (metaphorically).

2.What will then happen is that Flora and When will spend their valuable time showing you, with examples and endless patience why you're wrong.

1. You'll then disappear for a bit and

1. come back with more drivel.

To save everyone's time, could we just skip to #3 and stay there?

wino you've already demonstrates you know nothing about agency so you're just embarrassing yourself now.

If you want to learn something of the truth of prostitution in the UK-this is a good place to start. It is a general lecture entitled Sex work today: myths, morals and health (29 Nov 2012) by Graham Scambler-professor of the sociology of Medicine at University College London and dispels many of the myths-around prostitution including the one that prostitutes lack agency and cannot choose to prostitute.

bump

inwino the Invisible Men project provides an insight into the mindset of punters. Your posts here provide an insight into how volunteer pimp-lobbyists misunderstand and/or misrepresent research and use jargon they don't understand to try to convince women that prostituion is not harmful. Your understanding of agency goes no further than choosey-choice. All you have done is present statistics that confirm that prostitution is inherently dangerous with an unacceptable level of rape and violence from punters even where legalised and indoors. We knew that already.

You have given me no reason to value your opinion of me.

Inwino

I have actually read a lot of the reviews on PN. I think the point is the culture of the site is misogynistic and gross. It is like Trip Advisor, but for people who use prostitutes. Sure, there is the odd punter who is less reprehensible than the others, but the dominant discourse is overwhelmingly dehumanising and bragging. Prostitutes are talked about with the same casual disregard as someone discussing a dirty bathtub in a hotel room.

It is about as low as it gets. Talk about false consciousnesses...

The real issue here is that radfems are 'insulting' to prostitutes. Excuse me, 'profoundly insulting'. Punternet, otoh, well, it's not representative is it? taken out of context. Etc

'I believe you should always listen to what they say rather than trying to impose your own values and claim they don?t really mean it.' said inwino. I concur

It is indeed abhorrent - so I wonder why you felt is necessary to make that point?

?how do you know that they are not representative of the punternet field reports? Have you read all of the punternet reports??
No-but as I pointed out up-thread others have taken a random sample (every tenth review) and a different picture emerges
And Sabrina it should be ?up to 50% of street workers ?looking at a large number of reports? have been raped?. The Church et al 2001 study of the UK suggests 20%. That is not to justify it or say it is ok ?it is abhorrent.

"Who is exploiting who?"

HOUSE!

Flora
?you claim?. views on prostitution? No wrong-not my field at all. What interests me is how campaigners with a political agenda have tried to hi-jack debates where evidence is available and not in their favour. How do they maintain this state of cognitive dissonance? Some examples are GM technology, fracking, arguments against evolution or for a young earth, homeopathy and there are others.

My interest in prostitution was sparked by basic consideration of numbers-a number of claims for numbers of trafficked for the sex trade did not seem to me to be plausible.(e.g.50,000 sexslaves in the UK). This led me to look at the claims by NGOs radical feminists about prostitution and what were the verifiable facts and what was opinion (or faith)-which lead me into the prostitution literature and claims made by abolitionists.

What I find interesting about the debate on agency is that there are some like Catherine McKinnon and Sheila Jeffreys who say no woman can choose to prostitute herself-despite many prostitutes claiming that they chose to prostitute. Are they suffering from ?false consciousness?? I think this line is profoundly insulting to those who say they chose prostitution. It may be that the choices of some are constrained by their situation-given a choice between minimum wage and prostitution some might choose prostitution, but there are certainly others whose situation was less desperate-yet they chose prostitution. Are they deluded? I believe you should always listen to what they say rather than trying to impose your own values and claim they don?t really mean it. Which is why I pointed to the Barbara Sullivan article-which you jumped on-demanding evidence which you then refused to consider.

You are an interesting case Flora as you exemplify the pathology I have seen in other debates-such as evolution or GM. Keep it up-I?m taking notes.

You talk about widespread ?abuse? of prostitution-now undoubtedly some are abused, used etc but there are also others who are taking money from men and making a good living out of it-they might feel they are taking advantage of the weaknesses of men. Who is exploiting who?
And it what way has the NZ report been shown to be unreliable-because the NZCP were involved in the identification of those to be questioned? Is the Danish work questionable because they used NGOs (some with an agenda to rescue women) operating drop in centres to help recruit respondents does that make that report unreliable? How do you suggest reaching a large number of a hidden stigmatized population. And how come the NZ data matches well the data from many other studies?

inwino - I see the point you're trying to make, I really do. You're trying to use a thinly disguised insult to demonstrate that the invisible man quotes are unrepresentative of all punters.

But, as I've tried to explain to you already - I don't have an agenda to make punters look bad - they do that themselves by paying for prostitutes and by putting reviews on PN. As though women are livestock. That is the despicable thing.

The Invisible Man wants to discuss some of the men's choices. It's not only the criminal actions described, (rape, not being sure if a woman is not trafficked), or even just the really horrible, disrespectful reviews, even the glowingly positive reviews make grim reading. The Invisible Man isn't even casting a judgement - they are asking a question - what about his choices?