BBC and framing of slavery & sexual exploitation

Menuplant asks ” I don't believe a single punter has ever been prosecuted for paying for sex with a trafficked woman………It would be great to know if any have, if anyone knows” .

in this parliamentary answer here figures are given for offences under section 53A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

However these differ from figures obtained by FOI requests to police forces ( published in Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 10.1111/hojo.12060) The requests made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to all 43 police forces across England and Wales has demonstrated that the majority have not used s. 14 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009. This raises questions about the need for this law and/or the inherent difficulties the police have in identifying women who have been trafficked for sexual exploitation. It also makes the one force which says that it has used it some 81 times to make arrests, all the more interesting. Given that this police force has utilised the law in what appears to be an inappropriate manner, further research and questions need to be raised about this incorrect application of the law to offences already covered under existing legislation.

These figures differ again from those obtained by Andrea Matolsci in her Bristol University PHD thesis also using FOI requests Section 53A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (inserted by section 14 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009) on ‘paying for the sexual services of a prostitute subject to coercion etc

So it appears that while there have been arrests and convictions under this law it is not clear how many.

planter class white men who had casual sex with enslaved African American women

'Casual sex'? FFS.

Oh, don't worry about slaves and sex slavery!

That's all just "hookup culture."

From wikipedia on "hookup culture":

"Historians D'Emilio and Freedman put the beginning of casual sex, including college hookups, further back in history, to the early 1800s, and explain the phenomenon as shaped by historical and cultural forces.[15] They give as examples planter class white men who had casual sex with enslaved African American women, and white male college students who had casual sex with both white and black women. Lisa Wade, a sociologist, documents that 19th-century white fraternity men often had what would be called hookup sex with prostitutes, poor women, and the women they had enslaved."

Raping your slaves, raping exploited women in brothels or who have a huge economic disparity with you, all "casual sex" "hookup culture" now. There are forces at work to absolutely eliminate even the concept of female sexual and reproductive exploitation.

If sex work is work like any other, shouldn't worker protection laws apply?

I can't speak for the UK, but in the US we have OSHA laws regarding the exposure to bodily fluids that require people at risk of such exposure wear full personal protection gear -- goggles, gloves, mask, etc.

Wouldn't a sex worker be required to do the same? If not, why not? Is her personal safety on the job worth less than the personal safety of any other worker?

I know brothels and cannabis cultivation are illegal and so people don't think they are in plain sight. I just want to say they are in plain sight.

We have rows of houses and nobody knows who owns them. They are let out by agencies. One will be let, the electricity abstracted (massive fire risk by the way) and set up for a crop. The smell; the deliveries and general comings and goings are all done in plain sight. Then there's 'taxing' where one group of violent men try to steal the crop off another group of similar men and they fight it out in a residential street for all to see.

This area has a number of streets well known for exploitation of women. The streets are all well used routes in and out and it's totally impossible to miss the women who are there. The women I saw when I started were only in their 20s and 30s. I'd guess that over 1/2 are now dead 10 years on.

Ive only ever dealt with a couple of brothels one was in a residential estate and the other was above a row of occupied shops. Both in plain sight.

It is ridiculous to say slaves in brothels or cannabis farms are in "plain sight

I don't think that phrase is meant to be taken wholly literally.

A heck of a lot of people buy and smoke weed. They know it comes from farms. It's also pretty well known that they are often worked by people who are in very bad positions, even if they are unaware that they are slaves - and the latter is not hard to find out if you look into it. Brothels and sex work in general are the same, even people who don't participate know its around and the fact that a lot of the women are trafficked is probably better known than with cannabis farms.

What they seem to be saying is that there is a kind of wilful or deliberate blindness involved in remaining unaware.

Slavery by definition isn't "work" in the normal way.

Have also met lots of prostitutes and everyone of them a) started by 16 and b) was abused in some way as a child. Prostitution is the continuation of abuse. It should never been sanctioned by the establishment.
Even my kid who is going on 14 said to me about prostitution and porn "people do it because they get paid. They don't really want to be doing it, so it's like rape because rape is sex when you don't want it."
I never told him that-they discussed consent at school and he came to it on his own. He's smarter than some grown punters eh?

Modern slaves in the UK, often said to be hiding in plain sight, are working in our nail bars, on construction sites, in brothels, on cannabis farms and in agriculture

It is ridiculous to say slaves in brothels or cannabis farms are in "plain sight". Those are both illegal. Every single person coming into contact with a person in a brothel or a cannabis farm knows that but the vast majority of the UK population, men and women, will never see inside a brothel or a cannabis farm or know where one is.

Re: not knowing the solution - seems to me we’ve never tried the obvious approach of bringing the full force of moral disgust, social disapproval and criminal prosecution to bear on the people responsible ie the purchasers of sex.
I wonder why that might be?

I’m not sure I go along with the idea that sex work is rape
necessarily, as I think that is philosophically unsound. I do however think society as a whole has every right to regulate it if not make it outright illegal. Given that it is so fundamentally dangerous wether you define it as work or not is entirely beside the point. The number of prostitutes who are beaten and even murdered is so great we can’t not regulate it in some way.

Even the very happiest of hookers I’ve seen will even advocate that brothels being illegal makes their work more dangerous. Point being is that if your safety is such a concern above and beyond even median rates of gender based violence that’s got to be the biggest issue on the table surely?

I don’t think we should even get to discussion on the question of wether sex work is work until the violence underlying the entire debate is resolved. What underpins this is a general attitude towards women as a class where women at the bottom are seen as fair game for pretty reprehensible treatment.

The question always seems to focus on a woman’s choices, and never on the choices of the men who make the choice to be violent to them. I can’t think of a more ass-backwards way of discussing the issue.

On a practical level, I think it makes sense to put all forms of slavery together. Although personally I would like to see an end to all prostitution, it's not going to happen, and singling coerced prostitution out as different to other forms of slavery could just lead to the same old rebuff of, 'oh they're nearly all happy hookers the number getting exploited are minimal'
There are so many people willing to stand up and defend prostitution (not all of them men) but very few people will stand up and try to legitimise slavery (at least publicly for now!) so it might be more effective to phrase it this way.

mrsterrypratchett every time I speak to someone who routinely comes into contact with exploited women they say exactly the same things but still this myth of 'sex work' continues. You've worked down in Brighton I'm working up north near Manchester. I've met people the length of the country and we all say the same thing. I do think in the future we will see brothels legalised here in the UK and that will be a very sad day.

@Lasttobepickedatgames I also come into contact with a lot of women who do this. And a couple of young men. Addiction, force by a man and desperation are the motives I see. I haven't met one who say, "I really love sex with any random I meet?"

I have met a couple of women through a sex workers' resource near me who go on about legalization a lot. But I didn't know them when if they did it so I have no idea.

I also used to read the Bad Date file at work which helped women know which violent rapists and scumbags were currently circling. Anyone reading that would have been in no illusion that prostitution is anything other than violently misogynist and extremely dangerous.

You write pretty words but they're full of misdirection and lies.

Oh, fuck off. If you can't engage then you have a problem.

You have not addressed the point that forced sex 'work' is rape
And that the men paying for this are rapists
Not that even when aware, from what is seen on review sites, that do not care.

The article is about modern slavery, there is really no question that being forced into slavery including sex is rape. Whether all sex for money is rape is another question, one which reasonable adults disagree on, even reasonable feminists.

I don't know what your problem is that you have to resort to name-calling and insinuation because someone thinks its ok for an article to address slavery without trying to decide which particular form of slavery is the worst. There is more than enough material about modern slavery so that an article will struggle to cover even part of the story, its natural that they would focus on certain elements.

Only passing comment because I do come into contact with 'sex workers' or exploited women as they should be called.

I have met a couple of women who state they do it of their own free choice and make a reasonable income from it. Both were uk citizens and had no obvious vulnerability. They would say they are 'sex workers' and argue it's a job like any other.

I have mostly met what I would describe as exploited women who have been treated as a commodity. The majority have been UK citizens who have been subject to some kind of abuse (usually sexual) throughout their entire lives. It's not 'work' it's a means of obtaining money quickly and often that money is not theirs but is shared with their abuser. They tend to describe it as 'going out' or give the name of the street they use so 'I'll be up B street'. I've never once heard any one of them say they are a 'sex worker' so it's wrong they are having this term forced upon them.

Obviously it's nicer to think about the small number women who say they are 'sex workers'. It eases the guilt. The 'sex workers' are also more likely to be articulate and put forward a good argument that men want to support. The end result is a lot of misery and abuse for some of the most vulnerable women in our society.

It's shit because I can see the problem but I can't see the answer.