AIBU to not want brothels legalised?

[RoseanneDownton]

A lot of people aren't aware that our government is currently considering changing the laws on prostitution so that it will be legal to set up huge brothels.

They did this in Germany, not envisaging that they would end up with chains of 'megabrothels' in which 400,000 girls are needed to meet the demand. These poor girls are awfully degraded and have little control over anything. They are obliged to accept any man and do anything he wants, or get excluded by the owner. The majority have to be lured (or worse!) from other countries, as there aren't enough German women to 'service' the ever-increasing numbers of 'customers'.

Surely I am not the only MumsNetter who can't bear the thought of my daughters and grand-daughters being recruited into such places once they are legal in the UK. The thought of them having to go with an endless stream of strange, random men off the street really turns my stomach.

It's obvious to me that naive young girls will be persuaded that this is an 'easy way' to pay their student fees, get a deposit for a flat etc.

The other thing is, women have been fighting for equality for over 100 years, and this feels like a huge step backwards. I don't see how we can ever persuade men to respect women as equals when they can buy and sell us for sexual use.

It seems to me that the girls and women who will end up in the brothels are going to be the vulnerable and the desperate. It just seems like a way for men to exploit this vulnerability for their own selfish ends, and that's wrong.

Most ordinary folk don't think prostitution is any of their business, and to be honest, if it's just a 'discreet housewife' seeing a few 'gentlemen friends', I'm not bothered, either. But this national lack of interest means that those who want to open big brothels here are currently able to put a lot of pressure on the government behind our backs.

AIBU to not want brothels legalised, but to want to leave the law as it is?

No you are entirely right.

Unfortunately you are going to be inundated with YABVU from 'feminists' who think 'sex workers' are making a 'lifestyle' choice like choosing to working in Morrisons checkout or setting up a dogwalking business. It's bollocks and the only ones it benefits are those who (ab)use prostitutes. Same old shit.

I agree completely.

YANBU.

Will all young women be given this choice when going to the job market or have their benefits reduced?

Equality means major brothels for accessing sexual satisfaction from young men.

It's all about men accessing young females. It isn't a life choice, not if it's within mega brothels. This should never be normalised. It is exploitation and not freedom. A young child may well have been sent up the chimney by his/her choice, but it was done out of economic necessity.

Women are not to be seen as something to exploit sexually. We are humans and sexual exploitation is fine and dandy if it extends to 16 plus males as well.

My son is a handsome boy. Should I encourage him to be a prostitute?

Agree with OP and IBelieve

This would be bad for women, and the sex workers are still going to be exploited and open to abuse by men buying sex.

The model where it's legal to be a prostitute, but illegal for a man to buy sex / use a prostitute, would seem on the face of it to offer a lot more control and protection to sex workers than legalising the use of brothels.

If it is normalised should we all encourage our sexually attractive teenage children to do this? Boys and girls?

Of course not!

Gamer that "protection" is not protection but the ultimate in control
yes, my understanding is that this is what happens in the Nevada brothels, ostensibly the women are self employed but in reality they are heavily under the control of the management

They aren't trying to legalise it, they are trying to decriminalise it.

Very different.

In Germany brothels are legal. In New Zealand brothel keeping has been decriminalised. This is the most successful model and one we should strive for in the UK. In NZ there have been vast improvements in the safety and rights of sex workers simply by reassuring them that they and their customers won't be arrested.

This is very different to the Swedish model, which reassures sex workers they won't be arrested but tells their customers they will. This brings with it a whole new set of risks for the sex worker - without significantly reducing demand, it drives the industry underground.

Women are murdered in the UK every year because two women or more working together for safety in a flat is a criminal offence. The current Brothel keeping laws in the UK are incredibly dangerous and the government appear to finally be recognising that. They took a great deal of convincing I should add, but the evidence is overwhelming.

Sex workers in the UK have voices and this is what they want. Do not speak over them.

And it's worth pointing out while I am here the rather glaringly obviously links if you care to do a quick search for them between the Catholic Church (and specifically the Magdalene laundries) and some of the high profile campaigners so staunchly against decriminalisation of the sex industry in the UK and Ireland. The stats they use are vastly skewed and inflated and do not represent the majority of sex workers in the UK who are not trafficked, forced or addicted to drugs.

Completely agree with op, Ibelieve and others.

People are seriously deluding themselves (perhaps watched a bit too much empowering 'call girl' shows) if they think most women would choose that.

Imagine the most grotty, disgusting, repulsive man you can. I can't imagine myself or my daughter choosing to fuck him unlrss we were shit out of luck desperate.

Oh for goodness sake! Taking cocaine and heroin isn't a good thing either, but people still do it. Shall we just tut and say "that's bad" and ignore it or try and deal with the problem to make taking these drugs safer with the eventual aim of getting the person off drugs? It's exactly the same with prostitution. Would you rather just tut at sex workers who work the streets at 1am and get beaten up in the back of an alley after being subjected to violent oral sex, saying 'prostitution is bad and shouldn't happen, tut, tut, tut' or would you rather do something to make the working lives of sex workers safer with the eventual aim of giving them prospects outside of selling their body for money?

Oh come on, Boogers the (verty few) women who make 1000s a night are not the issue here. And we are not talking Pretty Woman here. We need to stop enabling men to abuse women. And mega -brothels are just big rat holes for fucking and abuse

And yes to the point made above re the location of such brothels. I'm pretty certain that most would object to them being in their neighbourhood, what with all those high class blokes floating about

Sex workers in the UK have voices and this is what they want. Do not speak over them.

I think this is key.

Really. When was a census taken of all the shit holes over the country? How do we know that any such expressed opinion has not been coerced.

Don't speak over the unspoken and unheard voices of the abused

do we have to accept that prostitution is inevitable and so the best we can do is try to mitigate and minimize the harms caused by it?

I am with you OP.

You know all these people who who claim JSA and are forced to apply for all sorts of unsuitable (for their circumstances) jobs and are sanctioned if they refuse to apply or deliberately muck up the interview? Well, legalise brothels and you will have women being sanctioned for refusing to apply to work in a brothel.

It is not only the organised and vocal punter and madam lobby that should be heard on the issue of whether we want to be a country where women are for sale.

Sex workers in the UK have voices and this is what they want. Do not speak over them.

Do they encourage their children to do the same?

Sex workers in the UK have voices and this is what they want. Do not speak over them.

Do they encourage their children to follow in their profession?

Other women also have voices and this is often forgotten. The idea that commodifying women's bodies on a massive scale, as in Germany, does anything but take us back in time is laughable.

www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/home-affairs-committee/news-parliament-2015/prostitution-report-published-16-17/

Here's the interim report if anyone's interested. And I'm a bit at the idea we shouldn't listen to sex workers on the subject of whether they're being coerced on the ground that we can't be sure they're not being coerced....

Do they encourage their children in their profession?

I taught my children all sorts of skills that will help them go forward in life. Baking was one but strangely not how to take bukkake from 50 men or more.

Perhaps mumsnet can give us a short video on bukkake?

Men who use prostitutes hate women. They may not think they do but they do. We cannot allow the hatred, dehumanization and rape of women to become an industry.

What I would like would be the Nordic model with added: taskforces specifically going after traffickers, halfway houses for prostituted women (and others) with drugs counselling and career help, dedicated prostitution social workers and every prostitute who keeps working to be given a panic button that will summon the police who will instantly arrest the man she is with. After all just using her is a crime no matter what else he did. Police will receive special training in this and the focus will be her safety.

This would be ideal but I can't see our fucking government investing in anything atm especially something as seedy as abused women.

I'm sure they'd rather go the Germany route for the tax revenues.

Do they encourage their children to follow in their profession?

furthermore would any of the men who happily pay for sex with prostitutes want their children to be sex workers

I'm a bit at the idea that we should only listen to the prostitutes who brand themselves as "sex workers" and ignore the realities of thr likelihood of most prostitutes contributing to a government consultation.

Selling sex is not currently illegal. Related activities are (e.g. kerb-crawling, soliciting, and brothel-keeping).
And as for "Sex workers in the UK have voices and this is what they want. Do not speak over them" what happens in relation to this will affect all women, in my view, so we all haver a right to speak about it.

I don't exactly welcome the change either, but I think I could accept legalisation which was designed to exclude the German model: for example, limiting legalisation to up to 3 women working together in partnership, excluding all third-party ownership of the business and excluding becoming a limited company.

The problem I forsee if this idea does go further is working out when and to what extent people can object to a brothel being set up near their domestic or commercial premises. It's bad enough living near an off-licence, this would be 100x worse. That's the reality of prostitution: the women are okay, but the punters (particularly en masse) are not.

I'm not talking about coercion. Sure, families have professional lines, and as any ful kno, selling sex is the oldest profession. Pity there are no doctorates involved in this profession.

doinitfin but if you think that not enough people have been interviewed (not sure what this is based on) the answer is surely to try to contact those who have been missed, rather than decide what's best for them?

And as manhowdy says, the report tentatively recommends NZ style decriminalisation not German style legalisation.