Punish the men who pay for sex

[cupcaske123]

Great article on the dangers of sex work and Labour's pledge to halve violence against women.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/25/punish-the-men-who-pay-for-sex-rather-than-the-women-lured-into-that-life

"if it was true we would see a much higher number of sex workers from wealthy and middle class backgrounds"

Have you not heard of university students doing sex work? Or do you not believe it happens?

In Rachel Moran's book she writes about women from privileged backgrounds who did sex work.

Winston Churchill's son Randolph married a woman called Pamela Digby. She has been described as a courtesan which is a bit unfair. She did have a number of relationships with extremely wealthy men though.

Winston Churchill spent lots of time with Doris Delavigne. Her brother was the grandfather of Cara and Poppy Delavigne. She came from a middle class background and her ambition was to marry a lord. Which she did, becoming Doris Castlerosse. On the way to achieving her ambition she had sex with many men for money.

if it was true we would see a much higher number of sex workers from wealthy and middle class backgrounds"

I think a pp has imagined the words "than zero" into this sentence.

Punters have their own forums and it is interesting to read what they have to say about things like trafficking. One thread started with a man asking the question 'how can you tell if they have been trafficked?'.

There were a few replies where men stated what are the signs when you should report it to the police. Someone said you have to be careful because if you report it to the police the women will be deported and their lives ruined.

He pointed out that there are quite large numbers of Chinese women in Britain who come here quite willingly to make money they will use back home to improve their lives. They are not coerced but the people who organise them will still be convicted of trafficking. A trafficking conviction has nothing to do with coercion.

So to say that punters don't care if women are coerced and that therefore they are just as bad as rapists is wrong. Also, there is a law against men paying for sex with a coerced woman. Very few men have been convicted. You might say that is because the law isn't being enforced, but it is more evidence to me that coercion is rare.

What's the weather like on your planet?

My planet is planet Earth. I understand it much better than you do. So do experts such as Elizabeth Pisani and all the other experts I listed previously.

I want you to know that you're unwelcome on my thread. I can't stop you posting but I hope you're ignored.

Surely sex workers' perceptions of their own self interest (as opposed to other peoples' opinions imposed on their behalf) should be the single most important factor affecting policy about the industry?

"Also, there is a law against paying for sex with a coerced woman [or man]."

AFAIK there have been literally zero convictions of this? If anyone has any ideas of how to actually enforce this if it were happening I'm sure the police would be happy to hear it.

Fun fact- Around 2010 the late MSP Trish Godman wanted the Nordic Model for Scotland with a few extra restrictions (all her proposals failed thankfully). This included making it illegal for taxi drivers to provide a service to clients or sexworkers who were travelling to meet for paid sex with the other. Anyone got any ideas how taxi drivers are supposed to know exactly?

It's easy to pass laws that "sound good", but in reality some things are not exactly practical or even possible to enforce.

IKR. I have no words to describe that post other than wow.

Sure, which is why selling sex should not be illegal.
They should be free to pursue their own self interest. That doesn't mean punters should have equal freedom to prey on people who are often in a vulnerable position.

Very few men have been convicted. You might say that is because the law isn't being enforced, but it is more evidence to me that coercion is rare.

I don't know if saying a poster is ignorant is allowed but the sheer ignorance of this is astounding.

Single figure percentages of rapes are convicted in the UK. That includes the additionally violent rapes of strangers where the rapist can be identified, with a wholesome, sympathetic victim.

Prostituted women aren't stupid. They know their chances of getting a conviction are as close to zero as it could be. They do tell each other though, and workers, about the violence they experience from punters. We used to keep a folder at work with the number plates, descriptions and identifying things about the numerous violent men the women encountered. They could check it to attempt to avoid them. It was not a small folder.

They don't have descriptions and identifying features of their 'boyfriends' though. We'd see the bruises and cuts when they didn't earn enough.

Have you read the accounts of the German megabrothels? I suggest you do. It's not Belle De Jour.

Surely sex workers' perceptions of their own self interest (as opposed to other peoples' opinions imposed on their behalf) should be the single most important factor affecting policy about the industry?

It's a job that is impossible to make safe. Really, only surgeons are required to insert part of themselves into part of another living person. There are some precautions taken there and it is life and limb. The only reason we even consider it being legal is because men's pleasure is so exalted in our society.

The women are my sisters. But how we perceive women in society is different where buying our bodies is an option. There's a reason sexual assaults increase around strip clubs.

The Nordic Model penalises sex workers in other ways.

-It is still illegal to work in a brothel, even if they aren't working at the same time or same day.

-In some Nordic Model countries such as Sweden sex workers cannot legally rent property. If they are caught selling sex the landlord is legally required to evict them.

So to avoid breaking any laws in Sweden at least, a sex worker must be working alone and can't be renting her property.

-In some countries such as Sweden if a sex worker says she is willing and denies being trafficked she is seen as a victim of self-harm and may be required to have Social Services, who then decide if she is fit to continue looking after her children.

-In Sweden establishments such as pubs are legally allowed to deny entry to women they think "looks like a prostitute". In one case several Asian looking women (who weren't sex workers at all) were denied entry because the bouncer thought they were prostitutes. It went to court and the judge sided with the bouncer. Thus women who aren't sex workers are harmed too, particularly those who look foreign.

www.thelocal.se/20130912/50200

Christina, I have not spoken of the Nordic model. I'm not a fan of it. Not everybody who wants to punish punters is in favour of that model.
Thank you for the info though.

Confused. Your answer doesn't seem to have anything to do with my question.

its not that difficult
prostitutes self interest includes their perceptions of their own safety and also their desire or need to make money (possibly not for themselves0
so their view of any legal constraints will be viewed through that lens
it shouldn't be beyond the wit of woman to devise laws which punish men who use prostitutes and also allow them to 'work' in the safest way possible whilst also providing exit strategies
as MrsTP says, the fact that this is tolerated at all speaks volumes about how men's sexual desires are prioritised above all else

Exactly. Couldn't have said it better myself.

You don't want people to know what the experts have to say on this issue? People know what the mass media have to say about it (Daily Mail, Channel 4) but they don't know what the experts have to say. This is about women's lives, and I'm not having someone like you harming women by your ignorance, pretending that you want to save them.

If you don't want people giving another point of view then perhaps Mumsnet isn't the right place for you. I have heard that there are closed Facebook groups where you will have no fear of contradiction.

I know that you think that I'm probably a trafficker, a pimp or a punter. When you fail to win an argument using information and reasoning you get personal. Have you ever considered that I might be one of these experts?

I informed to you that many women are against the Nordic model and for decrim. You thought it must be male traffickers etc. I gave you a long list of women experts. Your reaction to that is to get the hump and get personal.

I'm not interested in anything you have to say.

That is very disturbing, especially because there are ways to prevent heroin overdose. A prescription for methadone will take away cravings for heroin.

In addition, methadone is pure and of consistent strength. Heroin overdose occurs when someone takes more than they intend because they don't know the strength of what they have just bought.

Their breathing decreases and they die of lack of oxygen. This however can be prevented by naloxone, which quickly restores breathing.

People on methadone sometimes choose to buy street heroin too. They don't do it because of cravings, they do it because they want to feel high.

It is illegal to sell heroin, but locking people up and throwing away the key has not worked. It is illegal for men to pay for sex with a woman who has been coerced, but that will not help either.

If you are a counsellor you should know this because it will help you to assist someone who is in danger of heroin overdose or a member of their family. Bear in mind that twice as many men die of heroin overdoses, so there isn't much reason to link it to prostitution.

I don't think many counsellors keep naloxone in their consulting rooms
methadone is clearly not always the answer to heroin addiction- and any woman who is an addict will know she can fund a habit through prostitution, this is less easy for men to do, so while overdosing isn't necessarily linked to prostitution, I think that for women there will be a high correlation between addiction (their own or their pimps) and prostitution
therefore, IMO they are not consenting and they are not 'working'

Are you aware that there has been no murders of sex workers in Soho since the 1940s? There are always two women in the flat but only ever one man. The only reason they can get away with it legally is because one of the women is the 'maid'. The maid is not a 'madam' or a pimp. The people who get most of the money are the owners of the flats in Soho, they charge hundreds of pounds a day.

There was one sex worker who had a flat in Soho but the police stopped her, they sometimes do that. She was later killed. She was safe in Soho but that wasn't allowed. There was one woman in Soho called Camille Gordon, but she wasn't a sex worker, she worked at a 'clip joint'.

You consider yourself a sister to the women, but they don't consider you a sister. The women of Soho don't consider you a sister because you will make them less safe. You insist that it can't be made safe, but it can be. It's easy enough, but women like you stand in the way.

You don't stand with these women, you stand with the Christian Evangelicals, the Roman Catholic nuns, the Radical Feminist extremists and the suburban Daily Mail readers.

Sexual assaults don't increase around strip clubs. The expert statistician Dr Brooke Magnanti showed that in one of her books. You should read it.

I agree with you that drug addicts aren't consenting. A man who pays for sex with a drug addict should be locked up. I don't know if the law we already have that says a man shouldn't pay for sex with a coerced woman will cover that but it should do.

I know all about the megabrothels in Germany. We can both agree that the German system is bad. The New Zealand system isn't like the German system. Even the Netherlands system isn't like the German system.

If you want to know what prostitution is like for most prostitutes then a good place to start is 'Paid For' by Rachel Moran. Ignore the ideology and the false statistics, look at her actual experiences. Although you should realise that Ireland today is not the same as Ireland in the 1990s.

She has very little to say about pimps (except that she used to be one). There was nothing about their boyfriends giving them cuts and bruises when they didn't earn enough. The world that you are familiar with is the world of drug addicts, and most prostitutes are not drug addicts.

You might say that if locking up punters helps this minority then it is worth it, even if the majority don't want it. But it's not going to help them. We know what will help them. By all means lock up men who pay for sex with addicts, they can't consent.

@SuePine69 the Amsterdam authorities want to move towards more of a German megabrothel system though. This is because the red light district within Amsterdam attracts rowdy stag parties etc and they don't like it. There has been lots of hand wringing along the lines of "why are the sex tourists so crude." so they want to get rid of the city centre prostitution altogether and ship all the prostitutes out into one single purpose built building. The prostitutes are very unhappy about this because they argue it will be less safe/they will have less freedom (probably true) , and it is as if the authorities view prostituon as shameful/something to marginalised (they do, they always have done). Understandably all the areas they put forward for this mega mega brothel have had strong local opposition.

And that's just the legal prostitution. There are frequently police raids on illegal brothels in places brothels shouldn't be.

So, while the Nordic model might criminalise women working together etc even super liberal, pro sex work places like the Netherlands end up massively restricting how and where women can work. And ultimately criminalising women who try to be safe. Because no one wants the prostitutes where they are because that leads to punters and, astoubdingly, they aren't actually nice people a lot of the time. But the authorities do still want money from the punters so dystopia mega brothel it is!