The greens and prostitutes

Sorry Jessica - are you saying women like Kim shouldn't either be doing what they are as they should think of social effects foremost? Or am I being dopey and missing your point? On phone so not as easy to concentrate (or spell)!

I'm not really familiar with Rebecca Motte. I just know of Rachel Moran and have heard some of the things she has said (much of which sounds alien and bizarre to me) and then a few refutations by people who have an agenda to discredit her.

I think there are plenty of perfectly believable accounts by unhappy prostitutes out there. Rachel Moran's just seem to have a level of hysteria akin to The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (which some people still believe to be true to this day.)

lion, can I make a (fake) analogy?

I like taking drugs, and I think they should all be legal. However, I accept that in the hands of some (many?) people drugs can be very harmful. So I accept that they are illegal, and accept the limits to my personal freedom because I see the damage it can (and does) do to the society I live in.

Disclaimer: this is not a view i personally hold, but one which could be said to be true a non-addicted drug user.

That is why I mentioned teiring earlier-unpalatable and probably stigmatising as it could be. There needs to be a line drawn between women who are relatively well off, educated, not addicted and fully compliant in prostitution who are free to charge a high price for the most respectable sale of securities (juxtaposition of an oxymoron I know) and women being sold like lollipops with no chance to escape. I don't even know if it is possible but one shouldn't be able to speak for the other. At this point we seem to go back to the argument about why men are entitled to this but as pp if women like Kim are happy to perpetuate the role then do we really have a right to dictate to her, as unsisterly as we may feel her actions and career choice are in society?

I personally don't use handmaiden, any more than I would use "patriarchy's bitch" or similar.

But I see your point better now - selling sex, if you have the free choice to make decent money another way, is propagating patriarchy and is probably one of the easier pieces of the jigsaw to crumble.

I would love to see a world where prostitution, stripping, lap dancing were seen as being as abhorrent and unacceptable as drink driving or forcing others to put up with passive smoking.

I don't know if that space would be filled. I mean bluntly I really don't have much time for the happy hookers. Isn't " handmaiden" the term used for women who are happy to prop patriarchy and indeed here who are profiting from it?

Clearly that cannot apply to trafficked and enslaved women, whether the enslavement is literal or figuratively due to poverty.

Still, I don't think I follow your point. Do you mean if there were no £300 an hour (or whatever!) "happy hookers" then that market "space" wouldn't be taken by other sellers of sex?

It just makes no sense that I would be legal and the client would not.

I think it's a way of sidelining the unpalatable fact that some prostitution, although clearly not all, would cease to exist if the intelligent, resourceful, happy hooker wasn't selling. It's a bit unsisterly to say that.

The example of selling cigs and booze to children isn't really the same. There's no agonising about devising a system whereby children should still be able to acquire illegal fags and booze.

Forgot the link

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/08/criminsalise-buying-not-selling-sex

Indeed. Melissa Farley (who authored this paper) has been accused of focusing on highly marginalised groups of prostituted women and so skewing her results, particularly by sociologist Ronald Weitzer. It's so weird that a man would seek to underplay the harm perpetrated by men against women... why would he do that?!?!

Thanks rosie. That rather suggests that even if the majority of men say they want a prostitute who is enjoying herself, the vast majority of the men either don't care, or don't stop and think whether she is actually there willingly as opposed to just pretending.

Jessica it's really difficult to measure, but there is this study if you want to read...

www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdf/Prostitutionin9Countries.pdf

"71% were physically assaulted in prostitution; 63% were raped; 89% of these respondents wanted to escape prostitution, but did not have other options for survival. A total of 75% had been homeless at some point in their lives; 68% met criteria for PTSD"

Kim... out of interest, do you have the same doubts about Rebecca Mott? She tells of similar, if not more awful experiences.

Does anyone know what proportion of prostitutes are there willingly (in the same sense that I willingly go to my job) as opposed to being coerced in some way (addiction, poverty, trafficking etc)?

I know I could do my own research, but does anyone have the stats to hand?

I imagine that the men want the woman to seem happy because they want to feel as though they're the best she ever had. The whole process is an ego boost. They feel they have the right to buy the act of happiness along with the body parts to complete this. It may nay them feel guilty if she clearly isn't enjoying it hence the negative feedback -how dare she remind him she isn't infatuated by him and is only there for the cash?

This is an interesting article pointing out a couple of areas that could be improved in Sweden.

In many societies it is women who are believed to have dangerous and voracious sexual appetites that must be controlled, not men.

This was true in England until relatively recently, and even more recently in Ireland. Women who were found to be sexually incontinent were locked up forever in institutions in England, right up until the 50's, and we are all very aware of what happened to women who found themselves pregnant and unmarried in Ireland. Look at the way women are treated in Saudi if they are found to be engaging in a relationship which might, in the outer bounds of reality, be seen as adulterous. The punishments for women behaving as sexual animals have always been harsh, and yet men still apparently 'need' the outlet of prostituted women. It makes zero sense.

kim I take your point about some johns complaining about prostitutes being passive. I haven't read these punter websites (and don't really want to from the sounds of things!) though I'm aware they exist. I guess there are a range of things johns want.

I also accept that not everyone wants an emotional connection with their sexual partner, though many people do and I don't think it's a bad thing (it's certainly conducive to stable relationships and good parenting, though of course not everyone wants to or is able to reproduce sexually).

I've heard these accusations against Rachel Moran before and they're pretty suspicious. I mean apart from anything else, why would she lie about her experiences??? Surely not to sell books, since a Belle de Jour style account would be far more likely to get her a book deal and even a TV show. Do her critics think she just has some vendetta against the sex industry? In which case, why would she feel that way, unless she'd suffered as a result of it? Unless of course they think she's a pearl clutching prude... It would hardly be the first time feminists have been accused of this! These aspersions cast on her character just don't make sense to me (and really upset her, from what I've heard).

And this issue of why women don't buy sex. I'm very suspicious of evolutionist arguments here - as I said to mary a way up thread, attitudes towards innate sexual tendencies are historically and culturally variable. In many societies it is women who are believed to have dangerous and voracious sexual appetites that must be controlled, not men. Any difference in attitudes must therefore be a product of socialisation and our modern form of patriarchy, including this idea that women want emotional intimacy and men want anonymous sex. Male ideas about sex are desperately in need of change, since they so often lead to rape! Maybe the stereotypically female attitude should be what we work towards.

I know I've said this before, but thanks so much for engaging on this. It's really good of you.

Is it? Thanks.

I don't know.

It is illegal to sell an organ in this country.

I don't think it's impossible. I'm not sure how the Nordic model works but is it okay for a prostitutes to advertise etc.

I mean, "exactly that" only one party is criminalised and that's the buyer.

But I think that the philosophical essence of the Nordic model is exactly that.

Just as I imagine it's not a crime to sell a kidney, but it is a crime to buy one. It's not impossible to set things up that way.