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

@SuePine69 I assume now you must be a man. Because mansplaining heroin to someone who has worked in treatment is total bullshittery. I carry naloxone. I know how to deal with overdose.

I don't know how you quantify an expert. But I'm happy to say I'm more of one than you.

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.

That is a bizarre and unwarranted personal attack, SuePine.

Now you're saying one woman's anecdotes about her life as a prostitute is more indicative of what's going on in general than statistics. On what basis do you decide stats are "false?" I'm guessing that any statistic which doesn't validate your narrative is false to you.

Strip clubs are significantly associated with an increase in violent crime in general, btw. But perhaps you will just dismiss the following as false.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33038901/

It makes sense, because seedy people tend to hang around strip clubs.

@biscuitandcake I have friends in the Netherlands and they told me that the messaging in Amsterdam to residents has been along the lines of
'we let these trafficked women work as prostitutes because it keeps our women safe'
which is on a whole new level of awful in so many ways

MrsTerryPratchett stated "There's a reason sexual assaults increase around strip clubs". I stated that this is not true. Your response was to give a link to a study that says "We found that rates of strip clubs were significantly associated with violent crime, but not SV [Sexual Violence], in all but one model (accounting for Saturday hours)".

So the study is saying that there is no increase in sexual violence. So I was right and you and MrsTerryPratchett were wrong. Now, there might be an increase in violent crime, but why would that be? It's probably correlation and not causation.

Some people were claiming that in Camden in London there had been an increase in rapes because of the lap dancing clubs there. They thought they had statistics to prove it. Dr Brooke Magnanti is an expert in statistics (as well as having personal experience of sex work). She looked at the statistics and showed they were totally false. She showed them up to be right idiots.

It's all there in one of her books. Either 'Sex, Lies & Statistics' or 'The Sex Myth'.

I could accuse you of a bizarre and unwarranted personal attack, but I won't.

It is important for people to know that nobody needs to die of heroin overdose. It is also important for people to know that nobody needs to have cravings that lead to them putting their lives at risk.

For some reason, you didn't want to tell anyone that. Probably because you want to make out that death is inevitable unless we have the Nordic model. It will all go away when we punish the men who pay for sex.

Violence against prostitutes increased in Ireland both North and South after the Nordic model was introduced there. Is that what you want here too? Last year a Romanian prostitute was murdered in Ireland. She was working alone. I'm sure her decision was influenced by the arrest, detention and deportation of two Romanian prostitutes in Ireland who were guilty of 'brothel-keeping' ie women working together for safety.

To add to this discussion, although payment for sex is legal in the UK, payments for sex are not enforceable under UK law. Police won't and can't enforce payment for sex; neither can/ will a judge. This means that a man can have sex with an escort (which is clearly conditional on the lady being paid) and then steal the money back by force - and there is NOTHING in the law that stops him doing that. I believe this should be prosecuted as rape as the woman only consents on the condition she gets paid. I believe this is something that needs addressing, as well as the fact that women are not permitted under British law to work as prostitutes together (from the same premises) for safety.

To add to this discussion, although payment for sex is legal in the UK, payments for sex are not enforceable under UK law. Police won't and can't enforce payment for sex; neither can/ will a judge. This means that a man can have sex with an escort (which is clearly conditional on the lady being paid) and then steal the money back by force - and there is NOTHING in the law that stops him doing that.

That doesn't make sense. If a man pays for sex in advance, then that's a completed transaction. The police may not be able to enforce payment for that transaction, but he has paid anyway.

The money then belongs to the person he paid it to. If he later steals it back by force, then he is simply stealing, which is a crime that most certainly is enforceable.

That's how it would appear to me, anyway.

Read my post again. I was not claiming it leads to an increase in SV. I just thought you might want to know it does lead to an increase in crime in general. I was not agreeing with MrsT re; strip clubs and SV.
I can see you love typing the words; "I was right." 🙄
I'll know better than to try to engage you in discussion again, since it appears you don't want a discussion. You just want to lecture and flatter your own ego.

steal the money back by force - sounds like the offence of robbery to me.

This is dangerous misinformation re the theft. If rumours like this are spread and heard by (certain) clients who believe them, that could potentially give them ideas.

The others are correct. Theft is theft regardless if the victim is a sexworker or not. As sexwork is legal in Britain (except for working in brothels as you mentioned), any sexworker who is the victim of any crime including this one should make a police report.

I have read your post again. MrsTerryPratchett claimed that 'sexual assaults increase around strip clubs'. I replied that this is not true. Your response was to question what basis I have to decide to decide stats are false. Then you came up with your own statistic and suggest that I would dismiss it, implying that I only accept with a statistic when it agrees with what I already believe.

I then looked at your statistic and saw that it shows that there isn't an increase in sexual violence near ordinary strip clubs. Neither does it show an increase in crime in general, which is the claim that you are making.

What it shows is that there is an increase in violence. Most victims of sexual violence are women. Most victims of violence are men. It seems likely to me that the increase in violence is not violence against women and girls. If that was true then they would have been keen to say that. It could be that when you read the details of the study there was an increase in violence against women and girls but I doubt that.

Rereading your post you criticised my 'unwarranted personal attack'. If someone supports the Nordic model then they stand by all the other people who support the Nordic model, especially if they share the same false statistics. You don't stand with sex workers.

Jim Wells is a Northern Ireland politician who is an Evangelical Christian. He told a lie in the Northern Ireland Assembly to help get the Nordic model adopted there. He said that 127 prostitutes had been murdered in the Netherlands since legalisation.

Ruhama is an organisation in the Irish Republic that campaigned for the Nordic model. Ruhama was founded by two orders of nuns, both of whom had been involved in Magdalene laundries where young women were locked up. They told a lie that 38% of Irish prostitutes had attempted suicide and 25% had been diagnosed with depression.

Rachel Moran told the Jim Wells lie on Womans' Hours and the Ruhama lie in her book Paid For. She may not have know these are lies but she should have checked, as should the BBC and her publishers.

I have had an unwarranted attack made against me, but it doesn't matter what you think I might be, the important thing is that there are people who are more experts on this issue than me or MrsTerryPratchett and they are nearly all women. I recommend Revolting Prostitutes by Molly Smith and Juno Mac and The Truth about Modern Slavery by Emily Kenway. Read them!

That's not a megabrothel. The press might want to call it a megabrothel but it isn't. Some people in authority want it and others don't, who knows if it will come to anything. There aren't pimps there who are campaigning for a megabrothel.

You say 'nobody wants prostitutes where they are'. I know Soho well and I know that the people who live there have no problem with the prostitutes there. There is the gay community, the Italian community and the sex worker community.

The sex workers are not on the streets, they work from flats. There are always two women in the flat which is probably why no sex workers have been murdered in Soho since the 1940s.

Lots of people go to Soho and don't even know they are there. So much so that when I made a comment about Soho on a thread about sex work two people questioned that Soho is an area for prostitutes. They said King's Cross is the Red Light area, Soho is for gays.

You'd think they could have Googled it instead of suggesting I didn't know what I'm talking about. Why people think they can comment on a subject that they know nothing about is a mystery. I though everyone knew that.

Soho, I will take your word on. You know more about it than me!
The proposal for Amsterdam however, is a large building (the proposed designs are also fuckinh ugly but that's not the point) , capable of holding at least 100 women, and encompassing living/sleeping spaces as well as services like hairdressers etc for the women meaning they never need to leave(!) the suggested site was chosen because it's only 20 minutes from Schipol airport meaning that men can go there straight from the side. It's whole selling point is "everything under one roof". The unspoken reason for its self contained nature is to try to sell it as a better alternative to the current situation in Amsterdam. I dont know what the word "megabrothel" means to you, but whatever it is the proposed building is... Something.

Soho, I will take your word on. You know more about it than me!
The proposal for Amsterdam however, is a large building (the proposed designs are also fuckinh ugly but that's not the point) , capable of holding at least 100 women, and encompassing living/sleeping spaces as well as services like hairdressers etc for the women meaning they never need to leave(!) the suggested site was chosen because it's only 20 minutes from Schipol airport meaning that men can go there straight from the side. It's whole selling point is "everything under one roof". The unspoken reason for its self contained nature is to try to sell it as a better alternative to the current situation in Amsterdam. I dont know what the word "megabrothel" means to you, but whatever it is the proposed building is... Something.

And this "Some people in authority want it and others don't, who knows if it will come to anything"
They have the building designed. The main opposition is over location. No one who chose to live out in the hinterland of Amsterdam is going to be thrilled at this building opening there
There is consensus that the red light district is causing issues - the argument is over where else you put it. The pimps don't care so long as they make money. The authorities are also making money, but they don't want the negative consequences that come with it so are trying to push those over to other neighbourhoods. The prostitutes have to put up with the gross men (it's empowering!) but no one else wants to.

There doesn't seem to be anything on the internet about it more recently than February this year. One Dutch news site says 'Councillors, who will also be formulating new policy on prostitution, will vote on whether or not to go forward with an erotic centre in Zuid in two weeks.'

I can't find what the result of this vote was.

This is true. It dismayed me when I discovered that many young women, and I mean local young women (in fact not all are young), are basically advertising themselves as prostitutes under the guise of "sugar babies".