can someone explain the 'harm reduction' approach to prostitution

[MightyNice]

. . . in a way that makes sense, particularly from a human rights point of view, because it just looks so short-sighted and contradictory - as in, we know harm occurs so let's condone it because, I don't know, why?

prompted by this which I don't understand either

I live in Thailand, where prostitution, and indeed use of prostitutes, is rife. My DDs school is on a lovely street that turns into a red light zone at night. I live 5 mins away from a notorious red light street, no matter how affluent or nice the area, its always a spit away. Bangkok is like that.

I have a lot of conversations about prostitution. I volunteer in an HIV project that largely serves the prostitute and child of prostitute population. I see first hand the effects of prostitution (and its why i would never ever raise a teenage child in this city)

Harm reduction is an abhorrent concept. It means that we put men's needs for sex above the need for a woman to live free from harm.

There is no real free choice - women are either driven here by economic necessity (no welfare state here) or trafficked. And don't even get me started on the children. Born to prostitutes, live with prostitutes, auctioned off at an early stage to the highest bidder. It's sick.

I take issue with the idea that a problem with prostitution is that it makes it 'easy' for men to access sex.

What's actually wrong with it being easy to access sex, if you want sex? Why should sexual enjoyment be something that you have to struggle to obtain? This does seem to be at the core of the abolitionist mindset: not the harm done to the unwilling who have been coerced into sex work, nor the abuse done by a percentage of men to sex workers or to women they claim they thought were sex workers, but the fact that men are getting sexual pleasure 'too easily'.

Nothing wrong at all with it being easy to access sex with consenting unexploited women who are making a free choice to share their body with the man of their choice.

That's not what prostitution is about, though, is it.

but it's not difficult to find someone to have sex with is it? I don't recognise any interest in making sex difficult - but there's sex and there's transactional, coercive activity like prostitution. Quite distinct from one another otherwise why isn't everybody paying somebody for it, or getting paid for it? Why would most people feel insulted if a date left £££ on the bedside table after sex?

SGB, human beings aren't "entitled" to sex with another person. I would put sex with another person in the category of "want" rather than "need." One can obtain sexual enjoyment through masturbation (not involving any other person) or with another person where there is full, free consent and there is no question of one person having greater power or control over the other.

If there were equal numbers of women buying sex from men and men buying sex from women, I could buy your argument. The fact that the transaction is 99% of the time one way, and there is no reliable way to ensure that all women in all situations are not under political, social or economic pressure to provide sexual services for men means that prostitution can never be regarded as just a "lifestyle choice."

Harm reduction, in the model being described here, is about minimising the risks to men in purchasing sex and purporting to minimise risks to prostituted women as well. However, there is only evidence for the former and not evidence of the latter.

But it isn't inherently wrong to pay someone money for engaging in sexual activity with you any more than it's wrong to take or give money for the playing of a musical instrument or the cooking of a very elaborate meal, both things which people do for the sheer pleasure of it as well as sometimes as a way of earning money. One way of reducing the harm that can be associated with sex work would be to reduce the stigma. This would also help those who want to find another job after having done sex work: if you're going to be percieved as a failure, a victim, a druggie or a deluded traitor to your sex for having accepted money for sexual services it's harder to get alternative employment, should you want it.

I agree totally that the women in prostitution should not be stigmatized.

It is the johns, pimps and traffickers who should be stigmatized. As they are in the Swedish model for example.

And that works because it changes attitudes at a societal level to the acceptability of using women in prostitution - people start to see it for the gendered violence and exploitation it really is. And that has the knock on effect of lowering the demand for trafficked 15 year olds and all the other vulnerable women and children who form the vast vast majority of prostitutes.

Sorry SGB, I can't buy that.

Both men and women pay both men and women for cooking elaborate meals.

Both men and women pay both men and women for playing musical instruments.

It is common for men to pay women for sex. It is rare for women to pay men for sex.

This says to me that there IS an inherent difference between the buying and selling of sex from the buying and selling of other commodities.

I agree with Beachcomber that if there is stigma attached to buying and selling sex, it should rest with the punters, pimps, trafickers and others who profit from exploitation of other human beings. Those who profit are primarily men.

I don't "get" that creating better PR for prostitution will benefit prostituted women in any meaningful way. If anything, it would only contribute to further normalisation of the sexual exploitation and abuse of women and girls.

And, I would add the commercial sexual exploitation of men and boys who are also trafficked and prostituted.

Kritiq: mightn't the difference in the numbers of women and men who pay for sex have more to do with the way in which women are still pressured to associate sex with love and to restrict the amount of it they allow men to have with them?

Surely the pressure you describe is also the product of our patriarchal social, economic and political system that values men more than women, with the message that women can be regarded as commodities to be bought and sold for consumption by men.

If you can wave a magic wand and eradicate the patriarchy along with all the traditions, assumptions, practices and social conditioning that flows from it, creating in an instant a world where all people are valued as human beings, I might be able to see your argument.

But unless you or someone else has that magic wand, I can't see that world being around the corner. It is still the context within we all live and the environment we all have to negotiate on a daily basis.

And, I can't see why exerting pressure of a different kind on women to disassociate sex from love, "give" sex freely to men (however, whenever and whoever wants it,) and regard the selling of sexual services as no more unusual than selling a Big Mac with fries will in any way liberate, empower or protect them.

SGB women can have as much free sex as they wish, so why would they pay for it ?

Men have been aware of the fact for centuries but in order to ensure as much as possible the children they were raising were their own, chastity and modesty in females were promoted and female behaviour was conditioned. Though it wasn't necessary to regulate the sexual behaviour of women past childbearing age it was felt that to allow such behaviour to go unregualted it would promote the wrong message to those who were younger.

If a women was promiscious she could be locked away, the family name blackened and they were shamed, ostracised from the circles she moved in. Women would keep other women in check by frowing upon any sexually deviant behaviour and feel good about how virtuous they were.

Contributions noted and would like to hear your thoughts and the following. Another long thread was discussing equality in the home and division of housework is a bugbear. Traditionally it's the women who does the majority of the chores but if you have enough money you can hire help.

Returned from the Middle East last week and chatted with some fascinating women.

One topic did upset me when discussing domestic labour, which many affluent women have. Low paid, foreign, contracted for a year, ticket home at the end of the year if your emploers were happy with you, stranded at the airport if they don't quite often. Living in what I describe as a hut consisting on a bed, shower, wardrobe and sink, a human kennel really.

In order to stamp out trafficking and illegally bringing in domestic labour, a decree went out which had severe consequences for anyone found having none legitimate staff.
Within a few weeks many of these women had disappeared. They haven't returned to their home countries, rumour had it they were driven out to the dessert and disposed of.

The plight of women and children who are trafficked and often sexually and physically abused for domestic servitude is well documented. It's mentioned as a route in to sexual slavery and prostitution. Many are of the belief they are going to foreign countries to become nannies, or maids.

Do many people frown upon using women to look after families and clean houses for a pittance of pay ?

How do we explain the fact that there are many vulnerable, destitute, even homeless women who do not enter prostitution? Surely there is a bit of personal responsibility involved? Men couldn't pay for sex if it wasn't available to be paid for

I can see that once in the 'market' it can be very hard to get out, but all children are taught about sexual health, sexual assault, drug abuse, etc., so there is an initial choice that is made, a line that is crossed, which isn't the making of the first client, is it?

MsAnnTeak the situation you write about is common here. I am deeply unpopular amongst a certain group of expat women here for employing my hope help under conditions similar to those found in the UK (eg sick pay, maternity pay, proper notice period, proper holiday terms, defined hours of work, paid overtime) as well as paying them a decent wage and providing benefits such as medical insurance and further education. They think I am upsetting the applecart.

Trafficking for domestic servitude is rife here. As is treating your home help as slaves.

Its all symptomatic of the denigrated position of women, especially poor uneducated women, in society as a whole.

Lougle what choices do you think these women have, especially in countries with no welfare state or decent education system? What other jobs can they do?

Lougle many, possibly most, of the women in prostitution have pimps. They are not acting independently. It is extremely difficult to have accurate figures on the % of women who are pimped - many women do not identify their pimp as a pimp, they will say that he is their partner or boyfriend. Huge numbers of women are trafficked into prostitution.

Sorry but I think you have got things the wrong way round - women and children wouldn't be pimped and trafficked into prostitution if there wasn't a market for sexually abusing them.

The women do not create the market - the johns, pimps and the traffickers do, because the institution of prostitution is big business and there is a lot of money to be made from pimping out women. The pimps need to find women to provide 'raw material' for the market either by manipulating women, grooming them or using violence to control them (because most women do not want to be prostituted).

That is how prostitution works - it is a big business that is mostly run by traffickers and organised crime.

Good post Beachcomber. Maybe it's more palatable to think people go into prostitution of their own free will and if it turns out bad for them, well it was their choice. Maybe it's easier to accept the idea of prostitutes preying on helpless men rather than it being a customer and profit driven industry.

Lougie, in your post, you suggest that for prostitutes theres 'the initial decision that's made, the line crossed.'

Most often that line is when they are raped as children, followed by grooming for sexual exploitation, being convinced they're only good for sex, bought and sold. 'Choice' as we might know it rarely comes into it.

Thing is, no one actually knows the number of women who have been forcibly trafficked by the sex industry. Yes, people-trafficking exists and it's very wrong, but it seems at least likely that the 'big business' end of it is at least as much about supplying slave labour for agriculture, the clothing and catering industries, and the ongoing problem of domestic slavery.
As to the sex industry as a whole, the patriarchy wants it there but from the patriarchy's viewpoint it needs to be as dirty, dangerous and stigmatized as possible, because the patriarchy depends on women feeling they need to ration what sexual gratification they permit men so they don't Get Ideas about enjoying sex on their own account. The patriarchy doesn't want women to choose sex work as a way of making a good income and living independently of a man, because the spectre of the suffering, victimized, hopeless streetwalker is one of those ways of reminding women that their best option is to sell their sexuality to one man for the price of a wedding ring.

SGB - I think the reality is that the pimps and the traffickers make a lot of money and our patriarchal society doesn't give a shit that that money is made from abusing women.

Have you read the report I linked to - it talks about trafficking in terms of GDP for crying out loud.

Also the definition of trafficking isn't shipping women across borders. Basically any women with a pimp or a 'boyfriend' is considered to be the victim of trafficking. That has to be most women in prostitution. Most prostitution is trafficking.

"In the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children of the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime
?trafficking in persons? is defined as follows:
(a) ?Trafficking in persons? shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, or abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments of benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs"

Beachcomber: So 'trafficking' means whatever the person using the word chooses it to mean? There's useful.

No SGB.

As is usual in studies of this nature, the concept being examined is defined at the beginning. I thought the definition was interesting because I think a lot of people think of trafficking as being kidnapping women, taking their passports, transporting them across borders and imprisoning them. This form of extreme trafficking does of course exist.

However it is important to examine other less obvious forms of trafficking because I think it highlights the reality of the coercive nature of the vast vast majority of prostitution.

We throw the word 'pimp' around fairly easily but if we start calling these men what they really are i.e. traffickers, perhaps people will take the harm and abuse that is rife in prostitution more seriously.

I think I have a degree of cognitive dissonance, tbh. I have the book 'Faceless' by Martina Cole. Whenever I read it I find myself both fascinated and horrified by the world within it. I can totally 'get' that Marie, Tiffany and Carol exercised 'non-choices'.

Yet, when I think in wider terms I feel a bit bemused. All these girls go to school, they shouldn't have a non-choice.

Bossofme thanks for your open and honest response. I find it difficult to fathom how hard line feminists can scream and shout about prostitution, where women are usually renumerated over and above any average wage but do very little to address the plight of poor woman who find themselves becoming slaves in the households of the priviledged.

Beachcomber and SGB You'll find a document was officially launched by the UNAIDS Secretariat in Geneva, during the 29th meeting of the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board, a section clearly differentiates between sex work and human trafficking with clear definitions.

SGB, found a link which may interest you.
Link

Lougle, with respect, it's naive to assume that "all these girls go to school, they shouldn't have a non-choice."

Girls and women trafficked from Eastern Europe and developing countries may not have much education. Most will have been promised jobs as dancers, nannies, waitresses or models only to find themselves in a strange part of the world, often unable to communicate very well in the language, raped, passports confiscated, told they have to "work" to pay the cost of their passage. Are you trying to say they genuinely have "choice?"

There is evidence that the majority of women in prostitution have experienced sexual abuse in the past - abuse that has eroded their sense of self-worth, their mental well-being, their capacity to make genuine, informed choices. Maybe they went to school, but in my experience, schools aren't particularly good at dealing with sexual bullying for starters. Is there supposed to be some magic pill they give in schools that mean young women will be immune from sexual exploitation? I just don't get what you mean.

MsAnn, I'm struggling with your argument. It's similar to people who complain that the NHS shouldn't provide fertility treatment when the money should be spent on hip replacements or some such. Feminists can be concerned about exploitation of migrant workers AND women in the sex industry at the same time. It doesn't have to be one or t'other. I think you'll also find you're off beam with your assumptions that prostitutes "are usually remunerated over and above any average wage." The money earned goes straight to the pimps who may pay them an allowance, or rape and beat them if they don't earn enough. For trafficked women, they often don't even get an allowance - bed and board provided and they're told everything they earn has to go back to pay their fare and fees for getting them into the country.