Legalised prostitution in Germany: from "Paradise" to hell.

Why was the prostitution thread deleted? Surely that is in the feminism remit. Was it derailed?

The deletion message just said "goady". One of the last posts before it went was my lemon cake recipe.

I think social /sexual conservatives are coming at it from a morality about the sexual act angle which is definitely not where all of the feminist objections to prostitution are based

The "old fashioned" stance is that women are, as they have always been, the property of men

I think that's a rather unfair assessment. I'm not remotely religious but I have seen criticism of prostitution from religious and/or conservatives from the point of view of the damage to human dignity.

It was a quote from a really shocking article on flat rate brothels in Germany in 2013 which made me rethink what liberal feminism had been telling me about "sex work". www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficking-persists-despite-legality-of-prostitution-in-germany-a-902533-4.html

In particular this quote about the differences in the way young boys grow up seeing women in countries that don't have the Swedish model

"Nowadays, a little boy in Sweden grows up with the fact that buying sex is a crime. A little boy in the Netherlands grows up with the knowledge that women sit in display windows and can be ordered like mass-produced goods."

Meanwhile right here in the UK you can buy this book aimed at 4 - 8 year olds:

"Illustrating the myriad ways that mothers provide for their children - piloting airplanes, washing floors, or dancing at a strip club - this book is the first to depict a sex-worker parent in a positive light by introducing the idea of bodily labour. We're reminded that, while every mama's work looks different, every mama works to make their baby's world better."

Yay progress! Rainbows and sparkles and unicorns!

I often wonder why these "feminists" clambering so hard for sex work to be seen as a job like any other don't take it up themselves. Great career choice, right? Liberating and empowering? A good choice for their daughters and friends? Or is it perhaps only those other women - you know, the ones with significant histories of sexual abuse, drug addiction, poverty, and no access to education - who get to be "liberated" by that particular job?

And they often have that approach which assumes anything that looks like sexual conservatism, or really social conservatism generally, must be about oppression or prudery. Old-fashioned. It doesn't seem to occur to them that some of those old-fashioned ideas might have been about protecting people

I think social /sexual conservatives are coming at it from a morality about the sexual act angle which is definitely not where all of the feminist objections to prostitution are based.

The "old fashioned" stance is that women are, as they have always been, the property of men. Sure the way that property is used by men might vary between times and places. And these places which keep women abused and scrabbling to earn a living at the bottom whilst providing cheap sex and fat salaries to punters and brothel owners, thus upholding the traditional imbalances of power, sound pretty old fashioned to me.

truthisarevolutionaryact
Everywhere I look the march of the predators and sleazebags is evident

"The march of the predators and sleaze bags"
I like it, very apt.

I'll use that phrase as a rebuttal to being told we're prudes.

I’m pretty sure Filia is GC and that GC women will be attending that.

The current situation with regards to prostitution is horrific and all tied up with the trans shit in the global assault on women’s rights.

The Nazis ran brothels in their death camps:

"they had to provide sex to selected prisoners every evening between 8 and 10 p.m., and on Sunday afternoons."

www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-nazis-brothels/new-book-reveals-horror-of-nazi-camp-brothels-idUSTRE57G45X20090817

Sounds familiar.

I was not aware of this having entered the school system in Germany. I know Germany and Austria well, and I will say developments over the past decades have been disturbing. There were always brothels, but now there are ‚Laufhäuser‘, flat rate brothels, which is like an ‚all you can eat‘ for sex. Sex is way cheaper than a generation ago.

I guess the idea of pro-Familia might be to destigmatize prostitutes? I sure wonder how such a curriculum plays in inner cities like Berlin Neukölln, with high percentages of Muslim kids. If I were an immigrant parent and heard this is what my kid learns at a state run school, I sure as hell wouldn‘t want my kid to integrate into a society that produces such a curriculum. Just sayin‘.

Everywhere I look the march of the predators and sleazebags is evident. It's hard to be pragmatic about it when you know that they sit down with our elected representatives and are not only heard but funded and praised.

I ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole on prostitution, and came across this article

www.feministcurrent.com/2018/10/16/dennis-hof-dead-legacy-lives-advocate-legalize-prostitution/

from that article

In the United States, mainstream feminism has adopted a position unequivocally in favour of legalization, evidenced by the pro-prostitution stance taken by all feminist websites, from Jezebel to Broadly to The Establishment. Feminist critiques of the sex industry and arguments in favour of the Nordic model are not permitted, and those who do engage said critiques are marginalized, smeared, and ostracized. According to American third wave “feminism,” the notion that men should not have the right to buy access to women’s bodies is much more harmful than the actual exploitation and abuse men actually perpetrate on women in the trade

^^ this

if you advocate for prostitution, you put the desire of men to have sex without the need to obtain consent above women's right to bodily autonomy.

I'm really pleased you reposted this Lamaha, it shocked me to my core when I read it and I've been thinking about it ever since.

it's a dystopia for the women inside those mega brothels. they have to pay the same entrance fee as the punters, plus cleaning fees, and probably rent for a bed in a dorm. they have to have sex with 4 people per day just to break even against the fees. it's obscene.

Wow, I am really kind of shocked by that article. I would not have thought it could get that bad without someone saying, this is abusive.

I think people who want to follow this model are just so naive. And they often have that approach which assumes anything that looks like sexual conservatism, or really social conservatism generally, must be about oppression or prudery. Old-fashioned. It doesn't seem to occur to them that some of those old-fashioned ideas might have been about protecting people. To me this points to an educational problem.

Why was the prostitution thread deleted? Surely that is in the feminism remit. Was it derailed? I do't know why I am asking - before the trans issues there was porn and prostitution and EVERY. SINGLE. thread was brigaded and derailed and full of NAMLTing and 'women's choice' all over the shop. That is the story of feminism, shut up and NAMLT.

OP,
Tricky one but my instinct is that it's important for women to meet and discuss the myriad of injustices etc without constantly having to focus on the trans issue.
While I agree that this is the greatest threat to women in terms of obliterating our collective identity and allowing men to take over all women's resources, sport etc I also think we need some space to focus on all the other things that affect women. Women have set up numerous political / direct action groups but - just as the lengthy thread about the police confiscating women's phones when they report sexual assaults evidences - there's a shed load of other issues that we must also address? Just a thought.

that education stuff is insane.