"Criminalizing clients does not protect sex workers, according to a recent study"

Did you read the article?

Trafficking does exist of course but the results of the above mentioned operation, the largest ever in Britain, didn't quite seem to be consistent with sources which claim "80% of prostitutes are trafficked" or that there are "thousands of trafficked victims".

However there have been a ton of men imprisoned for sex trafficking offences.

"This x2 plus studies have shown that ~80% of prostitutes are trafficked"

That's not what Operation Pentameter found: a six month operation involving all police forces in Britain, Gov. depts and specialist agencies carrying out surprise raids on brothels and suspected brothels and premises where sex workers worked looking for trafficked victims and traffickers. Summary it was a failure. Some police forces didn't even find anyone to arrest at all and were actually found out to have made-up arrest figures out of embarrassment so they didn't look bad.

www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails
"Inquiry fails to find single trafficker who forced anybody into prostitution"

Who knows. She's always been outspoken and has delivered some groundbreaking actions and books etc.

None of us are perfect - of course anything she says gets jumped on one way or another, especially if it seems a bit, Huh???

Yes,
It was definitely stated the worst way possible if we give her benefit of doubt. I did know she was victim of violent rape that left her for dead with broken bones, internal bleeding etc. Maybe she’s just not happy with things like stealthing getting added to the “it is also rape” list.

But I would have said something like we need to have levels of rape. Like you can have levels of assault with higher penalties. So rape, rape with bodily harm, rape with grevious bodily harm, aggravated rape(use of deadly weapon), etc.

Yes not helpful.

Bizarrely I can see what she's getting at though.

As a rape victim herself... For a lot of women even famous feminists it takes a lot of processing.

If rape is always a massive damaging act that is the worst thing possible a man can do to a woman, how do you get over it? It's easier to think well it was bad but I'm not going to process it like that and I understand her thinking there. It's all highly personal and in her position was an I'll thought out thing to say. But then she's known for that as well!

And it doesn’t help when reknowned feminists like Germaine Greer speak out and say rape is not violence and women need to quit complaining about it.

“she said rape should be viewed more as “lazy, careless and insensitive” and that the punishment should be lowered.”
“Instead of thinking of rape as a spectacularly violent crime, and some rapes are, think about it as non-consensual … that is bad sex. Sex where there is no communication, no tenderness, no mention of love”

“It is moments like these, I can hear the feminists screaming at me, ‘you’re trivializing rape!’” Greer said. “Well, I’ll tell you what. You might want to believe that the penis is a lethal weapon and that all women live in fear of that lethal weapon, well that’s b---. It’s not true. We don’t live in terror of the penis. A man can’t kill you with his penis.””

Look at what happened with warboys. The met missed multiple opportunities. They were even given his reg number fgs!

The police didn't believe the women because a black cab driver wouldn't do that.

The pattern repeats over and over and over.

Women and girls who are seen by society/ men as 'lesser' get a shit deal across the board all over the world.

Ireland- the mother and baby homes
England- Rotherham etc. The Yorkshire ripper

I mean I could give tons but surely it's not in question that women who are at the 'bottom of the heap' get a shit time and especially it seems when it's things related to sex.

I tend to think that the argument that criminalising buyers of sex makes it less safe for women (if it’s true) is only a spin off the arguments that were made about criminalising rapists. I remember when date rape, rape by deceit/fraud and marital rape, were not rape. Not legally or considered to be. The arguments trotted out when we fought to get these forced sex situations to be recognised as rape included:

If you make date forced sex, rape then you put the woman’s life in danger because her date is more likely to rape her and then kill her so he won’t get caught for rape.

If you make marital forced sex, rape then women in DV situations will likely be killed by their partners to cover up rape or keep them from going to the police.

If you make sex by fraud/deceit rape then women...

You get the idea. It’s all a fallacy based on the idea that prohibiting men access to women’s bodies will cause them to be even more violent and kill more women.

[quote NiceGerbil]The inquiry seems to think the police fucked up

www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1191108[/quote]
That's not controversial. But the question is why. Is it because they do't give a shit about First Nations women like the post early in the thread suggested, and some activists suggest? There isn't a lot of evidence for that - it wasn't something that affected only those women.

The conclusion was that the causes were complex, and the proposed solution suggests that it was at least in part the way the police force was structured - Vancouver had too many different forces within the city.

In a way the article is very typical of the CBC and the way it treats issues like this (or gender issues): there is a clear identity related narrative they want to attach to it. So you'll notice there is very little about what these complex causes for the police to fail at picking up the pattern were, but a whole lot about how it comes from having let down women and a failure to recognise their rights, which is editorial comment and seems to have little relationship to the other material. If it's true, why not say how? What's the actual mechanism?

You'll never get a clear article on this, on something related to prostitution, or to gender ideology, out of the CBC. Which is a bit ironic as they don't seem to want to connect the narrative they like about sex work with the one they like about Native women being let down.

And I suppose our own experiences inform our attitude to sex work in general

Combined with a more underpinning sense of whether it's essentially a job like any other/ a consensus transaction between adults/ that sort of thing

Or an activity that reinforces certain attitudes of men/ society towards women and girls that damage us all one way or another, and that the direct harms (trafficking etc) are not worth it as a side effect

We go round and round on this.

Everyone wants things to be better and safer for women and girls.

One side thinks that will happen through decrim

One side thinks harm reduction by reducing demand is the way

Both want better services for these women, support, exit services, for police to take crimes they report seriously rather than victimising them

We're never going to agree.

The inquiry seems to think the police fucked up

www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1191108

It's not at all clear that the police didn't care, so much as they didn't think that there was some one person targeting the women - the area already had so many women who moved in and out that they thought it was just the normal transience of the population. They likely should have picked it up - but one of the problems of working in an area like that for a long time is you start to take it for granted.

On the other hand, there was a case some decades earlier, on the prairies, where a couple of police officers would take indigenous people they picked up and leave them on the outskirts of town in the night, incapacitated. Quite horrific and a not done thing in a place where it is well known being out in the night like that will kill you.

These are scenarios that all involve vulnerable people and we can ask why so many members of that community are vulnerable. But what lies behind the actions of two cops who were racists and sociopaths, and police officers that had worked too long in a difficult spot and missed something they shouldn't have, and a crazed serial killer who would murder any woman he could who might not be noticed, are not all somehow the same thing, that would respond to the same approach.

Those problems go well beyond issues around prostitution, and in terms of addressing them, it's difficult to see how the government could do so them simply by saying men were at fault, or even trying to take some action on that basis.

Disclaimer to my comment on Germany: the actual numbers of men and women working in prostitution are unknown, the rise is merely estimated. The only thing known with any certainty is that at least 90% are female and that around 75 to 80% are not German.

Just over 40,000 are now officially registered of which 19% are German. This registration is mandatory and supposed to protect prostituted women but the uptake has been low so far.

Canada is where there was a serial killer not so long ago who confessed to murdering 49 women working as prostitutes.

It went on so long as the women were indigenous and the police weren't interested in the missing person reports etc.

If I were thinking about how to help in Canada I'd be wanting to work a lot with the police to change their attitudes.

Also to provide support to the women.

I'm not sure decriminslising prostitution (is it illegal there not sure of the law) and decriminslising drugs is the way forward.

If the police are using laws as an excuse to harass vulnerable women, such it seems they are, then that is the primary issue to tackle imo.

Prostitution was not illegal in Germany prior to the 2002 law. So, although to someone who doesn't understand how the German Sittengesetz worked it seems like it has been legalised, it has actually been decriminalised.

And I find it odd, MargaritaPie that you are both arguing the German model isn't the one you want anyway AND doubt whether it's all that bad.

So, FAOD, yes, it's been horrific. So much so that a number of the prostituted women who campaigned to decriminalise prostition 25 years ago, and who celebrated the 2002 law now say that it was a disaster. So bad indeed that Germany passed another law in 2017, attempting to protect prostituted women and men. But that's not working either.

Germany is infamous now as the mega-brothel state, where you pay peanuts to fuck as many women as you like for as long as you like in any way you like. From street prostitution to luxury call girls, prices have dropped, attacks are up and access to justice has disappeared completely. Numbers of prostituted women have quadrupled, three quarters of that increase comes from trafficking mostly poor women and frequently underage girls.

By all means argue against the Nordic Model and for full decriminalisation. But if you want to look like you know what you're talking about I'd stay away from the state of prostitution in Germany. Especially when you know so little about it.

www.cgshe.ca/

Always look to the source of the information.