Nordic model demand in Daily Mail

[quote jennywhitehorses]@HecatesCatsInFancyHats

Which could absolutely happen under the Nordic Model. Excellent.

So the two Romanian women in their 20s who were given 9 month sentences in Nordic model Ireland weren't really arrested? See my previous link to the nemspaper article. Other women have been arrested in both north and south Ireland, and in every Nordic model country. The Nordic model is a cruel and hypocritical system.[/quote]
There have been very few arrests of women in Nordic Model countries and where there have it is complicated by immigration/trafficking issues. Legalising the sale of women is not the answer. Ironing out the issues in Ireland is the answer. In Norway where there was pressure to revoke the law the government changed their mind because it was proven to be working very effectively and reducing the amount of prostitution in the country. Criminalising the punters is the answer. Removing all laws pertaining to prostitution so that anyone can buy and sell women is not.

[quote jennywhitehorses]@Sophoclesthefox

I was just watching a YouTube video with some stats that highlight that men who buy womens bodies, punters, are eight times more likely to be rapists.

And which country is this? It wouldn't be surprising in America where men are criminalized for paying for sex.[/quote]
That sounds surprisingly close to the feminist view that paying for sex is akin to rape, because consent can’t be bought. Well done, Jenny!

Decent men don’t buy sex. Decent men don’t see women’s bodies s disposable items for purchase.

@Sophoclesthefox

I was just watching a YouTube video with some stats that highlight that men who buy womens bodies, punters, are eight times more likely to be rapists.

And which country is this? It wouldn't be surprising in America where men are criminalized for paying for sex.

@HecatesCatsInFancyHats

Which could absolutely happen under the Nordic Model. Excellent.

So the two Romanian women in their 20s who were given 9 month sentences in Nordic model Ireland weren't really arrested? See my previous link to the nemspaper article. Other women have been arrested in both north and south Ireland, and in every Nordic model country. The Nordic model is a cruel and hypocritical system.

@Helleofabore

The word ‘ally’ does so much work in these sentences.

Jim Wells invented the statistic that 127 prostitutes have been murdered in the Nethelands since legalization. He has got into trouble for his views on abortion and homosexuality. He is an evangelical Christian, a creationist.

Rachel Moran goes on national radio and repeats the false statistic. Kat Banyard repeats it in her recent book. Julie Bindel quotes 'Mr Wells' in her recent book but steers clear of the statistic, probably because she knows it is false.

Ruhama invent the statistic that 38% of Irish prostitutes have attempted suicide. Rachel Moran repeats it in her book. You would think she would have checked it or the publishers. But they can't be arsed: why spoil a juicy statistic.

And they all campaigned for the Nordic model in Ireland north and south. The two official reports do not say that it has achieved any of its key objectives, just the opposite.

I’m shuddering reading your posts, jenny. I suppose I’m meant to feel ashamed of being a prude or something? Actually, I’m imagining the reality for women in the world you describe.

I was just watching a YouTube video with some stats that highlight that men who buy womens bodies, punters, are eight times more likely to be rapists.

I’m imagining how safe I would feel in a line of work whose clientele were disproportionately rapists, where that work required me to be naked and vulnerable with them.

It’s not a rosy picture.

Let them work together for safety without fear of arrest.

Which could absolutely happen under the Nordic Model. Excellent.

Many sex workers do make a living without penetration. Some professional Thai masseurs are willing to provide a basic sexual service to their clients, they use their hands to bring him to orgasm. A dominatrix often does not offer penetration. Some others don't do penetration, I know of one old woman who doesn't do it.

If you read the book Paid For by Rachel Moran she wrote that for the first couple of years she didn't do penetration. Then in 1993 there was a change in the law in Ireland which restricted the activities of prostitutes. After that she did penetration but only sporadically. She preferred to do just domination and did only that when she could. She never once had anal sex.

So to say that the job requires a person to allow penetration is not true. Some do, some don't. If it doesn't disgust them and they want to make enough money to set themselves up for life then they do it. Often they won't if they have a boyfriend. If you restrict the activities of sex workers by counterproductive laws then they often end up doing things that they previously avoided: that's something we should think about before blithely demanding a change in the law.

There are ways we can make prostitution safe. It is already safe in some areas, such as the walk ups of Soho. It is wrong to say that prostitution is inherently unsafe then block what women want to do to make themselves safe. Let them work together for safety without fear of arrest.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

People who disagree with me are prudes, etc. Not that interesting.

I didn't say that people who disagree with me are prudes. Women like Sheila Jeffreys who live like nuns not having sex with anyone and who ally themselves with nuns and evangelicals are motivated by disgust and fear of basic human sexuality.

I misquoted Jeffreys earlier. I typed "It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with men" when it should have been "It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with women." That just emphasizes that Radical Feminist activists don't usually have sex with anyone.

If you say that you are disgusted by prostitution and pornography that's fine. What's unforgivable is when people invent statistics to try to change laws with little concern for the effects of what they are doing.

It doesn't injure chefs to prepare food when they're not hungry.

Most prostitutes are not injured by what they do. I know in your head you associate sex with aggression and death but there is no evidence that all prostitutes are harmed. Women are harmed by coercion, by drug addiction, by arrest, by eviction and being separated from their children. There are ways to help them but it's never to give the police more powers.

I cannot believe that people are arguing for prostitution to be legal. And do not seem the accept any arguments that it damages women. I am Nordic Model all the way.

But maybe we have been having the wrong line of arguments for the whole?

I think that women in prostitution really are asexual. As such, forcing them to go against their convictions that they do not want sex is damaging.

As for the buyers, I think they should get off with each other. That would also save them money. And for those who say that there predominantly are male buyers, how do you know this? There may be some gender fluid ones. And we are constantly being told to disregard genital preferences. Why can’t the men keen on prostitutes do the same?

Radical Feminists still ally themselves with some very nasty people

I think that people who read statements like this these days must be rolling their eyes at what has become tired old trope.

The word ‘ally’ does so much work in these sentences.

Excellent post Potholes.

Jenny - there's something rather entitled about you giving me a feminist reading list. I can't quite put my finger on what it is.

[quote PurgatoryOfPotholes]People who disagree with me are prudes, etc. Not that interesting.

It doesn't injure chefs to prepare food when they're not hungry.

[Extract]

"1) No job title is threateningly flung in the faces of women and girls all over the world the way “whore” and its many synonyms in many languages are used to commit verbal abuse.

2. Prostitution is often compared to coal mining. Harms to coal miners are accidents that safety equipment aims to reduce; harms to prostituted women are intentionally inflicted on them. Pornography commonly portraysharming womenas an attractive goal for consumers.

3. Prostitution is often compared to low-paid McJob work. Fast food employees don’t need specialized social services to “help” them quit the way prostitution survivors need protecting from pimps. When prostituted women escape they are more often in the same situation as domestic violence victims, fleeing from imminent harm with only the clothes on their back and the fear of being recaptured in their minds.

4. Prostitution is often compared to cleaning toilets. Being forced by economic necessity to clean toilets every day would be deeply unpleasant but it isn’t rape and it doesn’t leave people with PTSD, sexually transmitted diseases, or unwanted pregnancies. Anyone who has both cleaned a toilet and engaged in sex could explain the vast differences in these two activities.

5. Prostitution is not service work, it is bodily exploitation. The sex, race, and age of who provides a legitimate service doesn’t matter for cashiers, plumbers, accountants, cab drivers, etc. the way it matters to prostitute-using men who won’t accept sexual services from a man’s body when they want a woman’s body or from an elderly woman’s body when they want a young girl’s body.

6. There is no occupation that can be done while the worker is unconscious. Prostitutes are often drugged, passed out from unendurable pain, or have head trauma inflicted on them before and during being sexually assaulted.

7. Prostitution is not an entertainment media profession like modeling or acting. Actresses pretend to have sex, prostituted women are not pretending having sex and the harm to their bodies and minds is evidence of exploitation, not an occupation. There is no trafficking ring forcing teenage girls to perform Shakespeare for men’s leisure.

8. Basic work safety conditions are impossible to reconcile with prostitution. Laws aboutoccupational exposure(“reasonably anticipated skin, eye, mucous membrane, or parenteral contact with blood or other potentially infectious materials”) mandate latex gloves, eye goggles, face masks, and aprons to protect employees. Prostitution can never beOSHAcompliant."

www.feministcurrent.com/2018/12/17/prostitution-not-work-crib-sheet/[/quote]
I'm keeping that for future use too.

everyone knows that prostitution is inherently dangerous, unpleasant work.

It really does come down to what other job role requires allowing a person to penetrate you for their pleasure. I cannot really understand anyone ignoring the uniqueness of the role and the inherent risk. There IS no comparison.

Do any of these Decrim advocates ever go up to the staff at McDonald's and say "You should be sucking penises for cash instead".

I wonder why not?

Maybe because it's grossly insulting and despite the endless pretence otherwise (like pretending 50 year old prostitutes earn more money upthread), everyone knows that prostitution is inherently dangerous, unpleasant work.

People who disagree with me are prudes, etc. Not that interesting.

It doesn't injure chefs to prepare food when they're not hungry.

[Extract]

"1) No job title is threateningly flung in the faces of women and girls all over the world the way “whore” and its many synonyms in many languages are used to commit verbal abuse.

2. Prostitution is often compared to coal mining. Harms to coal miners are accidents that safety equipment aims to reduce; harms to prostituted women are intentionally inflicted on them. Pornography commonly portraysharming womenas an attractive goal for consumers.

3. Prostitution is often compared to low-paid McJob work. Fast food employees don’t need specialized social services to “help” them quit the way prostitution survivors need protecting from pimps. When prostituted women escape they are more often in the same situation as domestic violence victims, fleeing from imminent harm with only the clothes on their back and the fear of being recaptured in their minds.

4. Prostitution is often compared to cleaning toilets. Being forced by economic necessity to clean toilets every day would be deeply unpleasant but it isn’t rape and it doesn’t leave people with PTSD, sexually transmitted diseases, or unwanted pregnancies. Anyone who has both cleaned a toilet and engaged in sex could explain the vast differences in these two activities.

5. Prostitution is not service work, it is bodily exploitation. The sex, race, and age of who provides a legitimate service doesn’t matter for cashiers, plumbers, accountants, cab drivers, etc. the way it matters to prostitute-using men who won’t accept sexual services from a man’s body when they want a woman’s body or from an elderly woman’s body when they want a young girl’s body.

6. There is no occupation that can be done while the worker is unconscious. Prostitutes are often drugged, passed out from unendurable pain, or have head trauma inflicted on them before and during being sexually assaulted.

7. Prostitution is not an entertainment media profession like modeling or acting. Actresses pretend to have sex, prostituted women are not pretending having sex and the harm to their bodies and minds is evidence of exploitation, not an occupation. There is no trafficking ring forcing teenage girls to perform Shakespeare for men’s leisure.

8. Basic work safety conditions are impossible to reconcile with prostitution. Laws aboutoccupational exposure(“reasonably anticipated skin, eye, mucous membrane, or parenteral contact with blood or other potentially infectious materials”) mandate latex gloves, eye goggles, face masks, and aprons to protect employees. Prostitution can never beOSHAcompliant."

www.feministcurrent.com/2018/12/17/prostitution-not-work-crib-sheet/

@HecatesCatsInFancyHats

That is your opinion. As a feminist am entitled to view prostitution as the sale of women to men for men's sexual pleasure, which I do. I believe this degrades the position of women in wider society. It is interesting that you never address that point.

There are two types of feminist. The Radical Feminist and the sex-positive (or prosex) feminist. To sex-positive feminists the idea that a woman or a woman's body is being sold doesn't make sense. What is being sold is a service. Sexual pleasure is not seen as something different in nature from any other pleasure. Music, food and sex are three of the great pleasures in life. Sex is not something that degrades people. It doesn't remove their dignity, status or honour.

Sheila Jeffreys is a Radical Feminist and was mentioned earlier in this thread. Like other Radical Feminists she believes that all women should be feminists and all feminists should not have sex with men. She is a political lesbian which doesn't necessarily mean she has sex with other women but does mean that she doesn't have sex with men. She said "all feminists can and should be lesbians. Our definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with men."

You can also read the book 'Intercourse' by Andrea Dworkin. So you have to ask why they want to stop prostitution. Is it because they care so much about the happiness of prostitutes or is it because they think it's an easy way to stop lots of men from having sex with women?

The foreword to one version of Andrea Dworkin's book 'Intercourse' is by Ariel Levy. This quotation is from page xx.

"If the antiporn crusade was a losing battle, it was also a costly one: it divided, some would say destroyed, the women's movement. The term "prosex feminist" was coined by women who wanted to distance themselves from the antiporn faction. Of course, all feminists thought they were being prosex and fighting for freedom, but when it came to sex, freedom means different things to different people. Screaming fights became a regular element of feminist conferences in the 1980s, and perhaps the single most divisive issue was an ordinance crafted by Dworkin and MacKinnon.

In 1983, when MacKinnon was a professor of law at the University of Minnesota and Dworkin was teaching a course there on pornography at MacKinnon's invitation, the two drafted a city ordinance positioning porn as a civil rights violation. Their legislation, which would allow people to sue pornographers for damages if they could show they had suffered harm from pornography's making or use, was twice passed in Minneapolis but vetoed by the mayor. Dworkin and MacKinnon were subsequently summoned by the conservative mayor of Indianapolis, Indiana, and their legislation was signed into law in 1984 by a city council opposed to core feminist goals like legal abortion and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. It was soon overturned by federal courts, but many feminists never forgave Dworkin and MacKinnon and antiporn feminists in general for getting into bed with the right wing."

Radical Feminists still ally themselves with some very nasty people like Jim Wells the Northern Ireland evangelical and Ruhama which was started in the Irish Republic by two orders of nuns both of whom were involved in Magdalene laundries. They all share the same false statistics. They all take statistics that apply only to drug-addicted street based sex workers and pretend that it applies to all sex workers. They all exaggerate the problem of trafficking but aren't so interested in modern day slavery in all of its forms. They all want to ban prostitution, pornography and erotic dancing.

They insist that prostitution and pornography are the cause of sexual violence against women in general, for which they have not the slightest shred of evidence. No wonder they are accused of prudishness. Some people approach sexual matters with curiosity and humour, others with disgust and horror. The latter probably grew up in repressed families where sex was taboo.

What other jobs require a person to allow another to penetrate their body for ANY reason?

I honestly don't want to keep repeating myself, but this is about whether or not legitimising prostitution via decriminalisation is a good thing for women and girls (it isn't). I know you want to keep repeating your propaganda about decriminalisation, go ahead. I don't buy it, but do carry on without addressing any of my key points.

@HecatesCatsInFancyHats

The whole point of the Nordic model is to eliminate prostitution. That is what they said it would do. If it doesn't do that then women suffer indefinitely from arrest and eviction. It just goes on forever.

You say that it has been reduced in Nordic countries. The usual statistic that is used to demonstrate that is a drop between 13% and 8% for the proportion of men who pay for sex. That is not the proportion of men who pay for sex though, it is something different, and it went back up to more than 10%. They don't tell you that though.

We know the figures for the proportion of men who pay for sex in Sweden. It went up from 1.3% to 1.8% in the same period. All of these figures are in the Mujaj and Netscher study of 2015. It's true that the figures went down after the 2008 financial crisis, but that's because of the financial crisis not the 1999 law.

If you're talking about the number of street prostitutes, that dropped to near zero in 1999 and gradually returned till in the capital two thirds had returned.

Street prostitution in Denmark and Norway increased, so that counts as a success. However, in London there is very little street prostitution now. None in Argyle Square or Tooting Bec Common as there used to be. There's supposed to be a Red Light District on Ilford Lane which is on the eastern boundary of greater London but there are no street prostitutes to be seen there in the daytime.

That's all due to ASBOs. If you want to close down a RLD it's not difficult. It's easier to find a street girl in Stockholm than in London. There are RLDs in Leeds and Manchester but why use the Swedish method when the British method works so well?

Also we know that there has been a reduction in street prostitution in Scotland, without any great efforts by the police. In the report the police accept that some of them may be working in less accessible areas and some may be working indoors: that's something the Swedish police refuse to accept.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

If it's a service and not herself being bought, then naturally the more experienced (i.e. older) in the trade a woman is, the more she will be able to charge. Surely?

Do you think that being a waitress is a real job? What about an entertainer? What about a lorry driver? How do you think a 55 year old lorry driver gets treated?

@HecatesCatsInFancyHats I think the difficulty here is that you are basing your arguments on logic, reason and, most problematic of all, some kind of morality. What a fucking world we have become.

Great post Arabella!!! That post says it all.

Margarita you fail to address the wider point that decriminalisation legitimises the sex trade by removing all laws pertaining to it and this is bad for ALL women. This is because you are entirely wedded to decriminalisation for whatever reason, but you will never discuss the impact that prostitution has on lowering the status of all women if some women's role is to exist as objects for men's pleasure.