Shame on universities that legitimise sex work - excellent Times article from Libby Purves

I just came on to see if there was a thread on this. It really is a good article.
I have felt really angered by those (usually men) who complain that we just don't understand that this is about helping women keep safe. Its not. And Libby explains this very well.

Hats off to LP and Diane Abbott for calling this out. Agree that it always seems to be men who disagree with this stance… funny that! The worst are the overprivileged wankers who argue that it’s “no different to stacking shelves” etc, to which I would say read this: ellyarrow.wordpress.com/2021/11/06/disproportionate-and-unique-health-risks-for-women-in-prostitution/

(TW as it makes for incredibly grim reading, but is spot on and annihilates that line of argument)

Rather ironic name for the author to have. 🤭

That's a comment worthy of a 12-year-old boy, Whitevan. It's not that rare a surname, and it's pronounced Pur-viss.

And she's been knocking around as a sensible journalist and op Ed writer for as long as I can remember (a very long time!).

And novelist, and also wrote the only 'parenting' book that made me laugh ('How not to be a perfect parent', iirc)

I loved that book, Errol, and I was so saddened to hear that her charming, overbright, intense little boy had died as a very young man.

A couple of Uni's offer help and support to their students who happen to be sex workers and the entire country loses its shit.

This, I believe.

www.thestudentsexworkproject.co.uk/

And this
www.durhamsu.com/resources/supporting-student-sex-workers-3b0b

LOTTERY MAGAZINE PROMOTING STUDENT PROSTITUTION

Before I begin, in 1982 I got paid £25 a week to go to Art College to Study Graphic Design. My friend got a job in Graphic Design thanks to this Free Education in England. Thatcher's Government. Today, 2022, Students are getting in debt to get an Education and worse brainwashed into STUDENT PROSTITUTION by Universities and the Media to pay for their Education. I know this for a fact because I complained to my old Male MP about the Lottery Magazine promoting Student Prostitution with Swansea University! See attached.

I have complained to my female MP Tonia Antoniazzi about Student Prostitution many times. I believe she is a good MP because she got a revolting Lego Bondage image taken off the Internet for me when I got ignored by Elite men. Sadly, I feel Tonia MP is held back because of Elite Men Bullies in Government who believe women are just s-xual objects.

Our Safe Spaces have been deleted because girls and women are not valued in the UK by our Male Run Government. Female victims of s-xual abuse are not protected or listened to. Tonia Antoniazzi MP has found that the UK Police are putting Transwomen on Birth Women Crime Reports. She has asked for this to change so we have our own Crime Reports. Please watch the video:

@MumzeeWarrior
I have signed this petition against Student Prostitution Brainwashing, sadly many people refuse to acknowledge that this is real and is happening:

You talk about brainwashing but Libby Purves doesn't give a reference for her statement that men who pay for sex are more likely to rape than other men. "Men who buy it, whether online or physically are significantly more likely than other men to rape or commit other violence against women."

I have tried to find this 'research across the world' and I found something on the Nordic Model Now! site. This gives a reference to research done in the US by Melissa Farley who is a Radical Feminist.

The main flaw in her research is that men were asked in one of the set of question they were given if they had raped a woman. This is part of the Sexual Experiences Survey. Yet we are not told the answers to this question.

Journalists like Libby Purves should feel shame for propagating false statistics. Do you really think that students are going to fall for this?

I understand a while back a Canadian court dismissed Melissa Farley's statements on prostitution as problematic.

And IMO research that involves surveys where we aren't told exactly what the questions and all the answers are, can be problematic. If we don't have all the details then whoever is doing the "research" can twist and interpret answers anyway they want.

Are the previous two posters really supporting the promotion of prostitution to female teenagers? We see you.

MargaritaPie is a well-known poster on the feminist boards, who inevitably appears at the slightest mention of prostitution to promote a pro-prostitution agenda.

If there is a thread about prostitution - especially one about how damaging it is to be marketing prostitution to young women as a fabulous empowered career choice - then you can bet your ass (figuratively speaking) that they will be on it within a few posts, trying to convince us all that selling sex is a wonderful thing.

From my understanding people go to university to get an academic and social education, broaden their knowledge of themselves and the world around them and give them employment prospects than they otherwise wouldn't have. Is that right? I didn't go to university so I may be wrong

If I am right, why do women in particular need to go to university to learn about prostitution when 8 year olds are trafficked off the streets into prostitution with no education what so ever, when women who don't even speak the language be kidnapped and forced to work in brothels?

I mean seriously, men who pay don't care where or who they're sticking their dick into, what do these young women need to learn apart from the obvious short term and long term harm it will cause them?

I do think universities should offer support to students who are sex workers. It looks like that is the position Durham takes- support, not endorsement?

Not sure what the Leicester policy details though

@Liveliferun
Are the previous two posters really supporting the promotion of prostitution to female teenagers? We see you.

What we are supporting is a sensible debate on this issue. Students are intelligent and when a journalist depends upon some research to support their beliefs but doesn't give a reference for it then they smell a rat.

If you wanted to see if there was a correlation between prostitution and rape what you would do is get a big group of men and ask them a number of questions. One question would be 'Have you ever paid for sex?' Another question would be 'Have you ever raped a woman?' If a larger proportion of men who had answered yes to the first question also answered yes to the second question then you would have your correlation.

Correlation is not the same as causation though, so if you think that by trying to ban sex work you will decrease the number of rapes you would be wrong. Attempts to ban sex work are often counterproductive anyway. Yes, I do have the data to back up that statement.

What happened with the Melissa Farley research is that they had 2 groups of men. One group was men who have paid for sex but also regular porn viewers or enjoyed erotic dancing. That's the first problem because you don't know if it is sex work, porn or stripping that might be correlated with rape.

The main problem though is that both groups of men were asked a series of questions and one set of questions (SES) included the question about rape. Yet Farley doesn't say that more men in one group admitted to rape than in the other group. Probably because they didn't. Instead she gives us a generalised index of sexual aggression which may have nothing to do with rape and what men said they might do to a woman if they thought they might get away with it. Which means nothing.

@nightwakingmoon
If there is a thread about prostitution - especially one about how damaging it is to be marketing prostitution to young women as a fabulous empowered career choice - then you can bet your ass (figuratively speaking) that they will be on it within a few posts, trying to convince us all that selling sex is a wonderful thing.

People who want to legalise drugs get accused of promoting drugs. People who want to legalise or decriminalise prostitution get accused of promoting prostitution. I am not promoting either, it's just that I can see that in both cases the main problems are caused by illegality. Why do so many people die of heroin overdoses? It's because heroin addicts are unable to buy heroin of consistent purity. They can never be sure what dose they are taking and if they take too much then they stop breathing. I could go on, but this isn't a thread about drugs.

Telling young people to just say no has never worked. Giving them information is better. Correct information, that is, not false statistics. Can you not see how we are enraged when people say that Libby Purves is this wonderful person who cares so much for the young people? She can't even be bothered to check her statistics. There are investigative journalists who expose falsehoods, but Purves doesn't want to be one of those.

I have never used the word 'empowered' in the context of prostitution and I don't remember MargaritaPie ever using it. It's only people like you who use that word. I don't think that sex work is any more or less empowering than waitressing. Could it be a career choice? For a few, yes. For more it could be one way of funding themselves through university. That's for them to decide, weighing up factors such as how much does it pay, how many hours do you have to work and what you have to do. Like any job. As for the last factor, sex work doesn't always mean penetration, it can mean massage with 'hand relief' or webcam.

The most important factor is safety. That's why I believe that women should be allowed to work together. They make the rules and they keep the profits. I would want my daughter to go to a university where instead of telling them what to do it tells them the facts about drugs and prostitution that will help them to stay alive.

@hhh333hhh

The essential problem is that you are perpetuating a central contradiction in terms. We all agree that if prostitution is harmful, women should be protected from the harms as much as possible (the exact method may differ: traditional feminists want to help women to exit prostitution and end prostitution as much as possible; “choice” feminists want to make women working in prostitution safe while doing it. Yes?)

Except you can’t have it two ways. Your arguments can only appeal to any traditional feminists if you agree with us that prostitution is a social evil. If you are determined to argue the two contradictory approaches that (a) decriminalisation is a better way to deal with the harms, but that also (b) there are no harms anyway because most of it is a bit of light hand relief and a good choice for young women to find their way through university, you realise that you are completely contradicting your own premises, don’t you?

Basically the whole of your argument rests on a superficial idea that decriminalisation is better for “keeping women safe” — but you also want to argue that it’s all choice and safe and a job like anything else anyway. Well, it won’t take, I’m afraid.

It also leads you into moral areas you clearly haven’t well thought through. Here’s a question I’ve asked @MargaritaPie before and got no answer:

• all your decrim argument rests on the basis of reducing stigma to women in “sex work” as a harm reduction measure.
• BUT - if sex work is so harmless anyway, just hand relief and chat lines and paying your way through uni, and women and girls are free to choose it as a job like any other, then you tell me why it shouldn’t be stigmatised?

@hhh333hhh

Another way of putting the question about men might be: if we accept that decrim is necessary because it is the best way of reducing harm to women; then we are accepting by default that prostitution is not good for women. So who is it good for - what’s the purpose of it? It’s good for men, then, we see.

So tell me, why would any self-respecting feminist accept the continued existence of something that is good for men but not good for women?

The obvious answer is a privileging of men above women, as getting what is good for them over what is good for women. And anyone arguing this, even if they are trying to obfuscate it with wibble about “keeping women safe”, is fundamentally on the side of men against women. And then to further augment the “harm reduction” noises with suggestions that young women actually take it up because it’s not that harmful really…

Why on earth should we accept any part of the idea that girls should take part time jobs that require us to think about “helping them stay alive”??!?! Who tf argues that? No genuine feminist, that’s for sure. But someone who either overtly or unconsciously buys into the idea that men should have what they want even if it is not good for women might.

"Except you can’t have it two ways"

It is perfectly possible to have complete discrimination whilst also supporting sexworkers who wish to leave the industry to do so. If that's what you meant.

"then you tell me why it shouldn’t be stigmatised"

IMO stigma isn't going to do sexworkers any favours.

"I personally know two families torn apart by discovering a husband or father’s prostitution addiction"

Many families are also torn apart by a spouse cheating on the other (not by seeing sexworkers, just cheating in general). I don't think this is something you can blame sexwork on, cheating can happen with or without the sex industry.

In other words, if a man is unfaithful and really wants to cheat he's going to do so with or without a sexworker.

"happy hooker, empowering"

I don't recall decrim supporters such as the many human rights, health, anti-STD, anti-trafficking and sexworker orgs use these terms. The only times I've personally seen them used is by Nordic-Model supporters who appear to be making out this is what decrim-supporters apparently think the sex industry is about. Or something.

Regarding which law model is in the best interest of those in the sex industry, I think it would be better to focus more on facts such as what makes them safer etc and puts them at less risk of harm etc.

"happy hooker, empowering"

I don't recall decrim supporters such as the many human rights, health, anti-STD, anti-trafficking and sexworker orgs use these terms. The only times I've personally seen them used is by Nordic-Model supporters who appear to be making out this is what decrim-supporters apparently think the sex industry is about. Or something.

Oh rubbish, Marg. This is very disingenuous. You yourself have on many many threads extolled the wisdom of Brooke Magnanti, who made a packet parlaying her supposed 18 months as a “high class escort girl” into a salacious anonymous column, “Belle du Jour”, and then a titillating and deliberately glamourising TV series starring Billie Piper, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, the main selling point of which was - as self described - to reinvent the trope of the happy hooker, “high class call girl” etc. etc.. And you have regularly quoted her as some great expert on prostitution (sorry, “sexwork” ) on these very boards. When she did nothing but trade in tropes of the happy hooker for profit. And you have on many threads held her up as an example of an “expert” in “sex work research”.

We see you, as a pp says. The faux concern for prostituted women only goes so far as minimising it so that “sex work” can carry on. Your whole post above drops with the self-same condescending contradictions that I describe above. If it’s all about reducing harm, then it isn’t good for women (or any of us) — so why are you so invested in excusing it (“oh men will gave affairs anyway blah blah”).

(Oh yes of course, that old argument that there is no difference at all between a man having an affair and paying a prostitution for sex. So why don’t we let men have a free for all of any immorality they like!)

The basic fact remains: if it causes harm to women (which by your own admission it does), why should we then enable or excuse it at all?

The only logical conclusion is that all your talk of harm reduction, as I said above, is just a front shilling for male privilege and the idea that it’s fine for make humans to buy female humans for their use. It’s all about normalising male privilege and access to women’s and girls’ bodies, and you know it.