When we talk about prostitution, we should focus on the buyers

www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/amp/entry/woman-tells-mps-selling-sex-is-easiest-way-to-survive-after-struggling-with-universal-credit_uk_5d011254e4b0dc17ef02768e/

Another.

I remember reading as well that the impact with UC driving women to work as prostitutes out of desperation had driven down prices.

Women driven to sex work (prostitution) due to UC

www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/newsbeat-49013769

Two things from me: the myth of the nice-guy punter is shattered by reading their comments, either on one of the invisible men blogs or on something like punternet. The more women they pay for, the more they feel entitled to and the more demanding they become. Even reading their gleeful accounts of sticking it in alternate holes (infections! Nice) is revolting. The fact these cretins are indulged by this industry actually affects all the other women in their lives. Why try to resolve conflict in your marriage if you can rape a 15 year old Romanian girl to let off some steam instead? If the boss is a ball-breaking woman, you don't even need to find porn of someone who looks like her, just take out your frustrations on a prostituted woman. Imagine how poisonous these men become, when each time women's humanity becomes inconvenient, he can pay to damage one of us. How will a man like that see women as human?

Secondly, there's no public benefit to any kind of expansion of the sex trade. In cold hard business terms, there's nothing in it for the government, or for taxpayers. Germany is indeed a total fucking disaster. And Ireland got scammed by the "turn out the blue light" campaign which turned out to be run by pimps. There's very little honesty in the industry, the biggest surveys all report 90% on average want to exit the industry but can't. What exactly do we get out of reinforcing men's feelings of sexual entitlement? The rape rate isn't lower. It is a fairly antisocial business. There are lots of links with organised crime and with drug trafficking, and people trafficking.

Basically - being able to pay to abuse women isn't going to make men nicer people, and being able to have it on your doorstep isn't going to improve any community. It all comes down to whether you accept men's sexual desires are needs/urges and that society is somehow better off "feeding the beast". At this point there's normally some lonely disabled guy literally wheeled out for points - but accepting any man is entitled to, deserving of, or is impoverished by not having sex just frames "sex" as a commodity rather than two human being bumping uglies.

Nobody should be able to pay to abuse another human being, and nobody ever died from not having sex. OP is 100% right, we need to focus on these men and shame the fuck out of them.

Not trying to compare and I acknowledged it's a completely different debate. Just posted that because someone mentioned drug abuse.

btw it isn't "women for sale". They are selling their services.

As for drugs such as heroin that in itself is another topic.

please, please don't start with a comparison between decriminalising the sale of women and decriminalising the sale of drugs. please. Thanks so much!

"Kerbcrawling" (buying sex from street prostitutes) has been illegal in the UK since 2007. There are already laws in place to prosecute men who do this or try to do this (even just driving around looking for a street prostitute is illegal).

As for drugs such as heroin that in itself is another topic. I'm not certain what approach would be best for that but Portugal is interesting- in Portugal they have decriminalised all recreational drugs which means small amounts of anything for personal use will not carry any criminal penalties (selling controlled drugs is of course, still illegal and enforced). Drug abuse and addiction is seen in Portugal as a medical issue, not a criminal one and in the 20 years of having this law they appear to have had a lot of success.

"Women were evening forced into prostitution because it was made legal and was seen as "sex work is work" so brothels had the same right as any other employer to use the jobcentre database. Women had the choice of sex work or completely poverty, because they lost their unemployment benefits."

Source for this? This is completely false.

I also see the whole argument of swiw as an iceberg.

Porn does fuel a desire to be abusive to women. Men are physically abusive to women and girls. The quotes show that men buy and abuse prostitutes and seek those who will "allow" more abuse. There's an obsession with young and petite; aka children.

Women who may be "working" have rights to draw lines and boundaries. They're the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface there's a bigger hidden issue.

As a pp mentioned, supply and demand will drive the sale of unboundaried trafficked women under ground.

We only have to look at porn and porn hub to see the same.

Unfortunately there's never going to be a complete answer as the whole concept is based on men paying for something that women aren't giving willingly, but at least the Nordic model helps those women who are victims rather than criminalising them.

And worth noting that war fare is also one of the oldest professions, and will be around as long as humans are.

And that rape is and always has been part of war.

Women were and are commodities.

We criminalise anyone who causes bodily harm. But not when it's a woman being raped for money.

Don't know a lot about this area but following the discussion with interest.

The OP was about images; images are subtly and overtly coercive to humans. That's how advertising works. Specifically, making a product desirable.

Shift the focus to the buyers and it's immediately less sexy. Highlights reality. Destroys the fantasy.

Sadly I read the quotes imagining that some men would find reading them erotic, thanks to porn.

Also that's why straw man arguments about "focus on the cake buyer,"
"listen to lives experiences" and "sex work is work" don't work; the woman or girl is the product, not the designer, manufacturer, business owner or any other aspect of "normal work."

The only analogy with "work providing a service" is, a pp said, in the military, in active war fare. As providing that service has the potential to harm.

Women were evening forced into prostitution because it was made legal and was seen as "sex work is work" so brothels had the same right as any other employer to use the jobcentre database. Women had the choice of sex work or completely poverty, because they lost their unemployment benefits.

That's beyond chilling.

I'm not sure I follow your point NG, but being "dangerous" eg assault, theft, rape, sexual assault, trafficking, acting in a threatening manner or anything like that towards anyone (including sex workers) is already illegal in all UK jurisdictions; and sex workers have just as much right as anyone else does to make a police report and be taken seriously if they are victims. Above I posted a link about a sex worker in NZ (which has full decrim) who successfully sued for sexual harassment.

I really don't think that the idea that reducing demand- by dissuading men from doing it who would if they knew there were no consequences- and leaving the ones who are more dangerous and don't care- thus increasing risk for women- holds water.

I've seen that argument before and it always feels very wonky.

I think what's meant is that percentage wise there will be less dangerous punters.

So eg (totally made up numbers)

Say if there's no consequence 1000 men pay for sex. 100 of them are violent. That's 10% of women selling sex harmed

With consequence only 100 pay for sex and they are the dangerous ones who don't care. So that's 100%. Which is a worse %. But it's still 100 women harmed.

The argument that watering down the victim pool makes the (fixed-ish) amount of dangerous men somehow less dangerous doesn't make sense. All it means is that the odds of being in their path are reduced.

This is the same argument with women's safety full stop. And comes from a starting point that nothing, or very little, can be done about dangerous men. That's a really dodgy starting point.

@MargaritaPie you haven’t responded once to the point that many former sex workers support the Nordic model and don’t support decrim. They have the benefit of the genuine insight you get when you have left an abusive situation and are looking back and I think their views should, if anything, carry more weight than someone still trapped in it who has convinced herself that this is empowering just to survive. I don’t believe current sex workers all speak with one voice either and the ones who are most prominent in the movement are not the women addicted to heroin working the streets and decrim will do nothing to improve their safety.

The point made about language policing is so true. People who push this agenda resort to policing language as well as levelling hideous insults on women who are genuinely concerned about the dangers of the sex industry - SWERF, bigot etc. If you were so sure of your argument you wouldn’t need to.

Tell me too, do you so vociferously stand up for the ‘rights’ of those who perform other dangerous or degrading work? Should we be standing up for the rights of children to work in sweat shops? The rights of cockle-pickers to risk their lives every time the tide comes in? Maybe we should protect those children involved in county-lines drug dealing? Or should we legalise the organ-trade? I’m guessing not. If sex work is work, most people don’t run a high risk of being raped or murdered at work so I think the sex industry needs to become H&S compliant. Obviously won’t affect the genuinely poor and desperate like the Suffolk Strangler victims. Don’t think the brothels or clubs where the ‘let’s unionise’ lot work employ smackheads somehow.

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/feb/22/amnesty-international-leaders-offer-to-resign-over-bullying-workplace-culture

Not to mention the recent debacle when Amnesty ‘supported’ the Polish women’s strike about access to abortion but curiously avoided the word ‘women’.

See also:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/22/pimp-amnesty-prostitution-policy-sex-trade-decriminalise-brothel-keepers

As for Amnesty and other non-profit organisations that support decriminalisation:

• you mean that Amnesty that started in the Cold War to support political prisoners?
• that Amnesty that has since lost much of its purpose but gained a whole lot of middle-class degree-holding employees on its payroll?
• that Amnesty whose Irish branch recently told gender-critical women they have no right to political representation?
• that Amnesty whose own members resisted a pro-decrim policy that was imposed from above?
• that Amnesty (reported in Guardian) whose UK branch recently faced allegations of bullying and financial meltdown?

Sometimes organisations lose their way but trade on their reputations.

For more info regarding the New Zealand model - Michelle Mara is a survivor of the sex trade in NZ and has written about the ways decriminalisation made things worse on the Nordic Model Now website and was interviewed by Meghan Murphy on her podcast.

www.feministcurrent.com/2020/04/13/podcast-michelle-mara-on-the-truth-about-the-decriminalized-sex-trade-in-new-zealand/

[quote leafinthewind]@ACatWhoBinds I'm interested in this because I'm generally a liberal, and think that making things illegal is often an unhelpful policy response. I'm broadly in favour of the legalisation of cannabis. I could support legalisation of class A drugs, for example, if it were backed with sufficient government intervention e.g. controlled sales through pharmacies. I recognise though, that there would STILL be illegal sales/imports. So the problem would continue to exist - it would just be a slightly different problem.

I've tried applying the same philosophy to prostitution. If it were legalised, with legal controls/checks to protect sex workers, would that improve things? Wouldn't there still be an illegal sex trade, serving men who didn't want to wear a condom or who wanted to be violent during the transaction?

I genuinely want to be liberal, but I don't think it would help in this case. I completely agree that we shouldn't be prosecuting women (that is, that sex work should be decriminalised) but I don't see the problem with the Nordic approach, which combines decriminalisation for women with prosecution for men. Well, I see the problem - that sex work will continue to be dangerous for the women involved - but I don't see a better way of approaching it.[/quote]
Do a little research on Germany where they have legalised it. It is a massive, ugly problem for the entire country now and hard to roll back. Loads of money being made but obviously not by the women.

“Sex work is work”- well, so what? Child labour is work. Sweatshops are work. Slavery is work. I don’t understand why this phrase is bandied about like it’s the end of the argument.

Yes exactly, WeeBisom, that’s what gets me too about this silly slogan! Like the rest of us think prostitution is a religion or an Olympic sport ...

In my own opinion, criminalising clients may reduce the client-base of sex workers somewhat but the clients who would actually be violent or commit other crimes wouldn't be deterred. If a client doesn't care about laws against rape/assault/robbery etc then he is hardly going to care about a law against paying for sexual services is he? This type of client will still exist under the Nordic model, and since sex-workers will have a smaller client-pool as well as potentially having less ways to "screen" their clients like they can with legalisation/decrim then they may end up having to take greater risks by accepting bookings from clients who may pose a threat.

quote from article: "in 2019, 10 sex workers were killed in France in the span of six months. Critics say that the Nordic model and its criminalisation of clients is to blame."

www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/long-read-how-nordic-model-france-changed-everything-sex-workers/

In 2018, a transwoman sex-worker was murdered. quote from article: "One of the reasons for the increased exposure to violence, prostitutes say, is clients now demand to have sex in out of the way places, where the police are unlikely to be patrolling." and "Clients feel more entitled to impose their conditions, because they view themselves as bearing the legal risk".

www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/world/europe/france-prostitution-violence.html

Violence against sex workers has increased in Ireland since they introduced the Nordic Model. Sources:

uglymugs.ie/2018/04/03/increase-violence-sex-workers/
(Ugly-Mugs is a sexworker-run charity)

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/republic-of-ireland/crime-against-sex-workers-almost-doubles-since-law-change-37957334.html

We have to ask a different set of questions. The questions are not about Mary, they're about John. They include things like, why does John beat Mary? Why is domestic violence still a big problem in the US and all over the world? What's going on? Why do so many men abuse physically, emotionally, verbally, and other ways, the women and girls, and the men and boys, that they claim to love? What's going on with men? Why do so many adult men sexually abuse little girls and boys? Why is that a common problem in our society and all over the world today? Why do we hear over and over again about new scandals erupting in major institutions like the Catholic Church or the Penn State football program or the Boy Scouts of America, on and on and on? And then local communities all over the country and all over the world. We hear about it all the time. The sexual abuse of children. What's going on with men? Why do so many men rape women in our society and around the world? Why do so many men rape other men? What is going on with men? And then what is the role of the various institutions in our society that are helping to produce abusive men at pandemic rates?

www.ted.com/talks/jackson_katz_violence_against_women_it_s_a_men_s_issue/transcript?language=en