Corbyn - "I'm in favour of decriminalising the sex industry"

"the English Collective of Prostitutes, which campaigns for decriminalisation, voiced its support for Mr Corbyn's comments."

from a similar article from the BBC:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35724897

The Guardian article conveniently misses this out (agenda much?), but this is worth mentioning. I think it's reasonable to say that the prostitutes themselves will know better on the matter than any politician.

HomerIliad- have you read the thread?

quote from article"In 2014, Northern Ireland became the first part of the UK to impose a ban on paying for sex."

And since then, 1 client and 3 prostitutes have been arrested. (Selling sex is still illegal under the Nordic model if prostitutes work together).

www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/first-arrest-made-under-new-ni-offence-of-paying-for-sex-34173495.html

No. The reasons why not have already been set out.

Good morning. So, having given this more thought, this is clearly a complex issue which divides society, women and feminists. What do you think of the following idea:

Decriminalise the practice of two or more women working in the same building; introduce the Nordic model for street prostitution; along with an anti-prostitution/violence campaign aimed at men?

This would enable women who wanted to work in numbers for safety to do so, whilst moving the burden of criminal responsibility onto men.

Legalization =!= decriminalization.

Thanks, Sea.

Well - all your comments have convinced me that I was wrong to agree that it should be decriminalised.

Absolutely what Lurcio and Whenever said! applause. And also, what Julie Bindel said (love that woman).

If it's a job like any other, would you put it on your CV? No? Why not? The Belle du Jours don't put it on their CVs because they know it doesn't belong there, and the vast majority of prostitutes don't put it there because they don't get to lead the kind of lives in which CVs feature, as Whenever describes above.

Because it's not a job like any other, and we all know it. And it's time the blame for that was taken away from the women doing the job and attached firmly to where it belongs, to the men who pay them. That's what "civilised" looks like, Jeremy.

Well quite, Barefoot, no one would suggest that someone asking if a nurse or plumber had thought of changing careers was committing an act of violence, would they?

Odd; if it's just a job, why. Shouldn't an alternative career be suggested without that being violence?

Bloody hell, weeonion - the Orwellian double think these people will engage in is just staggering.

He also said that any advisor / worker who engages with women in prostitution and asks if they have thought of exiting now or in future, is committing an act of violence. Really!!!

I was recently in a meeting with Alex feiss Bryce. He said that "real""punters dont commit violence or assault. Violence and assault is perpetrated by pseudo punters / criminals pretending to be punters.

Yes, I agree, Lass - there are (I suspect a small minority) prostitutes who do exercise a genuinely free choice, but that choice can and should be restricted because of the overall damage to society, just as we ban commercial surrogacy, payment for kidneys, etc.

I'm with you on that, lass - there are plenty of restrictions on what people can do with their bodies and to others - you can't pay someone to donate blood or bone marrow to you, I think there are quite strict limits on allowing someone to assault you even with consent.

And what Lurcio said, all of it.

I should also add that I am very suspicious of the legalisation brigade because you have to ask what activities they are proposing to legalise which are not already legal. As I noted above, prostitution, in and of itself, is not illegal in Britain. So what could possibly be made legal that is currently illegal?

Soliciting? If this means the freedom for women to put themselves in extremely dangerous situations by walking the streets, what is gained for women by this legalisation?

Pimping? Men living off the earnings of women doing a dangerous and unpleasant job? Again, how does that benefit women?

The only possible situation where one might be able to make the case that a relaxation in current lwas would minimize harm might be that of two women sharing a flat and working as prostitutes.

So one has to ask, when almost everything about further legalisation seems to be to do with things that will in fact benefit men - male punters, male pimps - why do proponents of full decriminalisation hide behind women's safety?

This is spot on, and also acknowledges the truth which is that actually a number of women choose to be prostitutes. They come on here now and again saying it's all dandy. Not all prostitutes are victims, but saying that is no doubt unfeminist as well.

Much like the councillors of Leeds, I have known many sex workers (although in a rather different capacity I would imagine) and the uncomfortable truth is that sex work is only a choice if you think all choices are made in a vacuum.

Suppose you have grown up being abused by your step father. You then go into care, where you are again abused. You have periods of running away, with other girls you meet in care. There is no one in your life who truly loves you, or takes care of you. You meet slightly older girls, who introduce you to weed and then cocaine.
They also show you how you can get money, and the drugs help numb you, and your past experiences of learning how to leave your body for a while, help you to cope with sex acts with strangers. You find heroin works too.
Pretty soon, your are very addicted to drugs.
You have no qualifications, and more importantly no belief in yourself that you could do anything else. No one has ever treated you with respect, not ever.
So, you are out on the street, and it's very dangerous. You also risk arrest, prosecution.
Of course you want what you do to be decriminalised. And you want to feel more respectable, better, safer.

What I have just typed is just a typical life story of a sex worker. There are better stories, and worse, but the common thread in all sex workers stories ( and I include so called escorts and strippers here) is something going badly wrong in childhood, and then the spiral into further despondency, addiction and victimhood.

All choices are not good choices, and choices where you feel you have no other choice, are not choices at all. And just becausd you don't think you are a victim, does not mean you are not one.

The people banging the oh-so-predictable "it's women's choice, you want to take away their free choice, so in fact you're the ones being misogynistic" drum conveniently imagine all prostition is Belle du Jour

I don't think you can just ignore the counter-argument of "telling women what to do".

Whether you believe the Belle du Jour narrative or not it gets thrown out.

It's easy enough to counter on a greater good basis, regardless of whether or not an individual prostitute may have benefitted financially and consider she has not been harmed.

Lass, Palmer posted that at 1951 after iliad's post at 1938. Hence my querying what he meant at 1938.

However, I've disengaged with him now, for danger of turning this into a meta debate on language rather than issues!

Brilliant post Lurcio.

Well said.

The people banging the oh-so-predictable "it's women's choice, you want to take away their free choice, so in fact you're the ones being misogynistic" drum conveniently imagine all prostition is Belle du Jour.

Leeds is trialling a "tolerance zone". The (male) councillors who set it up are putting out self-congratulatory articles in the press about how wonderful it is. Meanwhile, this is the reality of life (or rather, death) for street prostitutes, even under a set-up supposedly keeping them safer. Because a substantial proportion of their clients are violent criminals. It is intrinsic to sex work that it is dangerous, because the sort of men who buy sex are for the most part misogynists who dehumanise the bodies they abuse, some of whom are also violent up to and including murder. Legalising soliciting (prostitution is already legal in this country) does not change the type of man who wants to buy sex.

And street prostitution - seriously? You think any woman makes a meaningful choice, not driven by extreme poverty and/or drug addiction, to take part in street prostitution?

And as for the complete crock of shit that is "it's a job just like any other, a prostitute uses her vagina just as a shelf stacker uses his/her hands, or a singer uses her vocal cords..." If you have ever uttered such nonsense, ask yourself whether you then think such jobs should be advertised in the local job centre, whether a woman should be threatened with having her benefits withdrawn if she refused to take a job as a prostitute, ask yourself in what way her experiences (if she then "chose" prostitution over starvation) would be anything other than state-sanctioned rape?

Oh, and as for "prostitution has always been with us..." Well, so have rape, murder, violent assault, child abuse... Slavery is still practised in many parts of the world. We don't see their long history and continued existence as grounds for legalisation. The law is about what we as a society believe people ought to be allowed to do, not what they are (at their most brutish and animalistic) capable of doing.