Melissa Farely

[MsAnnTeak]

Has been a leading light for radical feminists The American clinical psychologist, researcher and feminist anti-pornography and anti-prostitution activistis best known for her studies of the effects of prostitution, trafficking, and sexual violence. Much of her reasearch has been quoted on the above issues and has been highly influential in forming policies across the globe.

Recently there has been a formal complaint lodged against her and there are moves to have the APA rescind her membership.
Canadian courts have found Dr Farley to be a less than reliable witness,
finding her evidence ?to be problematic?, believing her work is
unethical, unbecoming of a psychologist, and is in breach of at least sections 5.01 and 8.10of the APA?s Code of Ethics, perhaps more.

sex-work-2010-reference-group.googlegroups.com/attach/a3b87993a830d0da/Complaint+to+APA+_Melissa+Farley.pdf?gda=11biokcAAAAASGXV9xe26yC0z09q-oJkzQiIpGuuFVKvv_B1Trw6bJCxwZJKsAB7Jsg1500Mx6obQwFxJw55cVwemAxM-EWmeV4duv6pDMGhhhZdjQlNAw&view=1&part=4&hl=en The document is 115 Pages long.

If it's upheld and her membership is rescinded will we all have to have a rethink ?

Stewie - where's your proof (other than anything that Melissa Farley has influence over) that many (please quantify) prositutes start at 14/16 ?

Summary of responses:

1.The intention of the proposed Bill is to criminalise the purchasers of sex and related selling activities. The consultation document accompanying the draft proposal for the Criminalisation of the Purchase and Sale of Sex (Scotland) Bill was issued on 24 November 2010 and was open for comment until 18 February 2011. A number of late submissions were received after the closing date; these were accepted and have been included in the analysis.

2.The consultation document was made available from a link on the Proposals for Members Bills webpage on the Scottish Parliament Website: The Scottish Parliament: - Bills - Proposals for Members' Bills at www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/bills/membersBills.htm . It was also issued to 146 organisations and individuals with an interest in the issue. Recipients were encouraged to bring the consultation to the attention of anyone else they thought might have an interest in the subject matter.

3.In total 122 responses were received; these were made up of the following groups:
38 individuals
20 anti-violence against women organisations
9 academics
9 equality/human rights organisations
9 health boards
8 local authorities (including the Association of Directors of Social Work)
8 support groups
6 women's business organisations
5 pro-prostitution organisations
4 criminal justice organisations
3 religious organisations
1 child protection group
1 legislator
1 trade union organisation

78 (64%) Responses supported the proposed Bill either in whole or in part.
39 (32%) Against the Bill
5 (4%) Neutral

Mystery to me it's not there now.

You keep asking for proof of things MsAnnTeak.

How about some proof that the accusations made against Ms Farley, by a man who runs an organisation which is very much for the legalization of prostitution, are of any validity.

And even if any of them are valid, I fail to see how all of Ms Farley's work can somehow suddenly be discounted. That is an intellectually dishonest argument.

It is very easy to do things like accuse of person of not having ethical clearance for a piece of work - what one really needs to know is would ethical clearance be required or in any way expected for the type of work in question at the time the work was completed. Otherwise it is just smoke and mirrors and mudslinging.

The ethical clearance route and interpretation of statistics is a pretty routine way of attacking someone whose views you wish to discredit.

Are you reading any of the info linked to? Are you interested in genuine discussion of the wider issues of prostitution?

Is it so difficult to understand that trafficking and child rape are integral to prostitution? Where you have prostitution you have trafficking, where you have trafficking you have prostituted children, where you have prostituted children you have child rape. This is the reality of prostitution as it happens at the moment in the real world.

You cannot have an honest discussion about what really happens in prostitution, if all you want to discuss is the situation of women over the age of 18, who are not pimped or subject to violence, who entered prostitution as adults under no coercion, who have other valid choices available to them and who are able to exit prostitution without difficulty if they chose to do so . This is a discussion about Pretty Women - it is a fairy story it is not the reality of the vast majority of prostitution.

www.crisisaid.org/ICAPDF/Trafficking/traffickstats.pdf

Oh and for those who are finding it tough to get their heads round the feminist perspective to this, the reason why where there is prostitution there is trafficking, pimping and coercion is because most women do not want to be prostitutes. They have to be forced or coerced.

The sort of people who will force, beat, threaten and coerce others into having sex with strangers with people for money tend not to be very nice. They tend to be the sort of people who will traffick and groom minors and children and sell drugs and be involved in organised crime. They are the sort of people who hang around care homes and 'befriend' young girls.

Which of course is a bummer for those who wish to cling to the happy hooker cliché, but it is unfortunately an unpleasant fact that has to be faced.

Trafficking is an evil thing but don't forget that it isn't just sex workers who are trafficked. Trafficked people can end up in the catering or agricultural industries, beaten and enslaved and exploited, and also in domestic slavery.

SGB - and that's wrong too, as already agreed to upthread.

Yes of course that is very true SGB. The fact that people are treated despicably and inhumanely in areas other than those of prostitution only adds to the argument really doesn't it?

Poor people are exploited and badly treated - for the gain of the nonpoor.

Ugly. But not to be tolerated.

But this is why I do not like the abolitionist stance when it comes to sex work. The obsession with stopping sex work does a disservice to people trafficked for other work, makes life harder for the non-trafficked sex workers (by stigmatizing them and denying them agency) and doesn't necessarily do the trafficked sex worker any good, either.

How does standing up against exploitation damage the case of non-sex workers?

SGB - How? Your argument smacks a little of "You can't care about x and y at the same time". Again anti-sex work feminists seem to be getting the blame instead of those doing the actual trafficking and exploiting.

I know you won't agree with me SGB, but I find the euphemism 'sex work' offensive and manipulative when applied to prostitution.

This takes us back to GothAnne's link from earlier.

?To be able to defend that women sell their bodies (and that men buy them) one must first abolish the victim and instead redefine the prostitute as a sex worker, a strong woman who knows what she wants, a businesswoman. The sex worker becomes a sort of new version of the ?happy hooker?.

?Ekis Ekman shows in a convincing way how this happens through a rhetoric which portrays the victim position as a trait of character instead of using the correct definition of a victim: someone who is affected by something. In such a way the terrible reality in which women in prostitution find themselves is concealed. The fear of the ?victim? in the prostitution debate ? is something which mirrors neo-liberalism?s general victim hate ? since all talk of the vulnerable person immediately reveals an unjust society. Through making the victim taboo can one legitimise class inequalities and gender discrimination, for if there is no victim there is no perpetrator.?

Beachcomber: And a lot of sex workers find it offensive to be called prostitutes.

For those who wish to call prostitution 'sex work'.

Would you agree to this job being advertised in job centres? Being something a careers advisor could recommend to youngsters? Something young people could do work experience in? The sort of job that could be offered in temping agencies? A possibility for job seekers who can't find other work? A weekend job for a student? Something people who worry about money should do to help pay for Christmas?

The pimps and the traffickers just love the term sex work - they work in the Human Resources department. They probably call it 'training' when they rape a new girl to break her in.

SGB I've followed your arguments on here a long time and although I am anti-porn I've been very impressed by some of what you've said and developed some new ways of thinking about the whole thing.

I thought I'd point that out because I want you to understand that this next question is genuine and not posted in a passive-aggressive way (cos I've tried numerous ways of writing it and it still sounds like it is):

What do you propose we do to eradicate exploitative porn and trafficking but continue to help existing genuine sex workers? Why are the two necessarily linked? Few people think nannies/cleaners should be abolished but still accept that trafficking slaves for this reason os unacceptable.

I can understand why a prostitute would prefer to refer to herself as a sex worker and I have no wish to deny anyone the right to do so, for themselves, as an individual.

I object to people framing discussions about the global institution of prostitution, as it operates in the world today, as 'sex work'.

Many many prostituted women hate the term sex work and what it implies.

Beachcomber not sure if your last post was to me or to SGB. Either way, it sort of backs up what you're saying because I was specifically using sex worker to mean women who have genuinely chosen to work in porn (I think there are very, very few personally, but I accept that there are some). I would refer to those trafficked/coerced/forced through circumstance very much as victims.

Although saying that, 'victim' could be considered pretty offensive too. I hate being referred to as a victim of DV. I am no one's victim.

Trouble is, words are important aren't they. I refer to victims of DV whenever I am talking/writing about them as a group although I would never call a woman a victim face to face IYSWIM (unless that's how she referred to herself).

It was to SGB.

BTW SGB I have a lot of respect for you on MN - I agree with you on a lot of things. Just not this one .

.

I think the word victim has been manipulated too - being a victim of something that is not one's fault, is completely different to having a 'victim mentality' or being somehow weak or feeble.

Women need to reclaim the word victim IMO, and have it regain its meaning as the opposite of perpetrator. IMO victim should be a neutral word to describe a person's experiences at the hands of others - there should not be any implication about the victim, only the perpetrator.

Good point Beach. It's interesting how much the word victim has come to be equated with shame in the context of crime against women as opposed to crimes against men (unless they too are of a sexual assault nature).

No one feels ashamed of calling themselves a victim if someone stole their car, do they?

Exactly. It is a form of victim blaming.

I certainly don't think that victims of trafficking and forced prostitution are weak or bad or have anything to be ashamed of. To be trafficked and enslaved (whether that's for sex work, domestic work, catering or agricultural work) is a terrible thing.
But I think that ending the stigmatization of sex work and getting rid of the insistence that no matter what they say sex workers are victims (powerless, 'other') would be more helpful to those who are being abused. An exchange of sexual activity for money is no more 'buying a person' than an exchange of money for a person's time to cook your food, dig your garden, clean your toilet or cut your toenails - and sex work paid for at an hourly rate is a lot less 'buying a person' than marriage can be. If sex work is not stigmatized it becomes easier for sex workers to complain and press charges when mistreated - or ripped off - by clients, without fearing that they will get told it serves them right for working in such a profession. It becomes easier for those who want to do something else to move on without being afraid that Someone Will Find OUt they have done sex work and judge them for it.

I disagree SGB.

I don't remember the first time I cooked someone's dinner or cut their toenails. But the first time I had sex was an event, and is for most people. Sex, for the majority of people, is a totally different thing. It's a primal thing, a huge driver in their life, maybe it defines their life and life choices in a way that cutting toenails or playing the piano simply does not. kids are fascinated by it, teens gossip and giggle about it, adults cause immense amounts of misery and happiness because of their sexual choices. It's a central theme of vast amounts of literature, music and art.

You could argue that it's not innate but merely a symptom of the sexully fucked up society we live in. That may be so, but most human societies are similarly fucked up, in that case, which suggests that there's something deeper at work. Secondly, does it matter in a pragmatic sense as people are products of their society and take on it's norms.

Of course not EVERYONE feels this way, and for a lot of people they can say, and mean 'It's just sex'.
(As an aside, I suspect that most people who feel this way are men (because since the dawn of sex the consequences of sex are less severe for them) and that's problematic from a feminist perspective if we're all encouraged to take on a 'male' view of sexuality, which unsurprisingly benefits men.)

(perhaps those people,the 'happy hookers' who can go against societies' norms are also the people who are most likely to go against the stigmatization of prostitution? Maybe the stigma is a sort of protection for the people who HATE the work. AS in it's not YOU that's wrong for hating this, it's a normal reaction. I don't know really, just mulling)

This is ss btw

It isn't feminists who stigmatise prostituted women - it is patriarchy with its madonna whore complex and fetishization of female sexuality.

Sex is not treated by society like any other activity such as gardening or cooking. Female sexuality is fetishized and subject to a value system in patriarchy.

Some individual people may be able to treat sex like any other activity, but it is clear that the women who want to exit prostitution, do not. These women describe undesired sex for money as a violation.

I do think that all women, men and children in prostitution are victims - they are victims of patriarchal values.