Should it be illegal for men to pay for prostitution?

[EatsBrainsAndLeaves]

Should we criminalise all men who pay for prostitution, alongside help for women to leave prostituion?

carmenelectra

Actually you do fancy some of them and have a LOT of fun with them. If you knew the number of guys some girls who are popular actually meet in any given week the chance of them NOT fancying some of those guys is particularly low.

blueshoes

The simple fact that there are many ex-prostitutes like me proves that a very high majority are able to leave.

There is a difference between prostitution through choice for whatever your personal reasons and being forced into it, in that instance the woman cannot leave, in the first instance she can leave whenever it suits her.

Drug addiction and prostitution are so inextricably linked though- the Suffolk case showed that girls were so desperate for their next fix that they would go onto the streets with a known serial killer on the loose. They weren't enjoying the so-called high life were they? They weren't entering into mutually beneficial transactions with men 'they actually quite fancy anyway'. They went onto the streets out of pure desperation. That's the face of prostitution that some posters here don't want to face up to.

This isn't a life I'd choose for my daughter.

Carmen- that's interesting about realitychecker.

Trishawisha- thanks for posting that. I think this was the journalist that reported on the death threats received by anyone who dares challenge the traffickers/help the women involved. It's chilling.

"prostitution is only dangerous because we allow it to be by stigmatising it"

Yes, prostitution has been stigmatised in the past by the men that use it, prostitutes looked down on and ostracised from society by the men who don't notice their own double standards. It's a way of shifting blame and responsibility for your own actions by dehumanizing someone else.

I expect their perceptions have changed now because they have been called to account, but I doubt very much that any man who has visited a prostitute would want their daughter (if he loved her) to have that same occupation.

"There is a difference between prostitution through choice for whatever your personal reasons and being forced into it, in that instance the woman cannot leave, in the first instance she can leave whenever it suits her."

So, if prostitution were properly banned these women of the "first instance" would not suffer because they already have other options, as you said. To force a willing prostitute to work as a supermarket worker is not as bad as forcing a non-willing woman/girl to work as a prostitute.

Carmen, yes I use prostitutes to bridge the gap between relationships....

Runningforthebus...Don't take this the wrong way but are you capable of reading??? I did not say that a punter has no responsibility to check a girl's age. I was making a comparison between the 2009 law which says I have no excuses if I visit a girl who is forced/threatened etc. But if I visit a 13 year old prostitute (who isn't forced) I can say that I thought she was over 18, and LEGALLY the police have to prove that I did NOT reasonably believe her to be over 18. That was my only comment regarding responsibility for underage girls and I was actually making the OPPOSITE point to the one you claimed, in that I was saying if you were going to make someone strictly liable for something then underage girls would be the one....but no the way it works if she's 13 a punter can whinge and whine and say how was I to know, and if she happens to look older he could get away with it. But when a girl is 30 has a passport, is in the country legally, smiles and looks happy and acts like she's your girlfriend, the police can turn up and arrest you and you'll be convicted if it turns out she was being forced by someone whose very existence you were unaware of. You're convicted on the basis of a 3rd party's actions (their force/threats) rather than your own. You're convicted even though there's no way to check anything. But even though you can insist on seeing ID to prove a girl's age, it's not necessary (legally) since you can just say "she looked old enough to me" and the police may have to drop the charges. Sounds a bit backwards to me.

messy - brothels are illegal. Soho, however is still there as far as I know and the police know where all the parlours are and leave them alone. Plus they know where every other brothel is. Yet they're ignored unless they receive complaints or reports of possible forced/underage girls. Or they wait until the people running it have made a packet and then seize it all under the Proceeds Of Crime Act, as they did with the 15 year old girl in the article I linked to earlier, which was basically theft since the money FACTUALLY was not the proceeds of crime. But POCA proceeding are a civil offence and you're not entitled to legal aid and a 15 year old girl isn't going to know shit. So they were able to take the money and split it up between the gov't, the CPS and the police themselves. Nice little earner.

The point being a new law would not eradicate prostitution. Punters would just be arrested every now and again, fairly arbitrarily, and get a small fine. It would just drive prostitutes further underground and make them more secretive to attract clients. If ALL the prostitutes are hiding you can't focus on those who need help. If those (the vast majority) who are working of their own free will are able to be open about it, that leaves the police able to look at those who have something to hide. The last thing the police need is another prostitution law that they have to find excuses to ignore.

The point is a fairly simple one reality. You, as the punter, have no way of knowing for sure whether a girl you pay for sex is underage, or being coerced into it. Vicious beatings can be the result of not doing what a punter wants in brothels. Google marinela badea's story in the guardian.

Oh, and if you do google for that guardian article it touches on the travesty that is the police turning a blind eye to many known brothels. A terrible thing was her arrest - I agree with the Swedish model whereby the brothel owners and punters are arrested, not the prostitutes.

But on reflection, reality, I do find your posts rather difficult to read. I don't enjoy discussing prostitution with a self confessed punter who seems to be under the delusion that the girls he pays for sex 'quite like him'.

there's no way to check anything

Stop doing it then

slimeball

I have no way of knowing (for sure) if the allegedly 20 year old girl I pick up in a bar or nightclub is underage....what's the difference? By that logic we should ban sex altogether.

I'll try to keep this in really simple English....

If a girl is underage....I can be arrested and charged (if I knew she was likely to be underage, as explained earlier)

If a girl is forced, threatened, deceived or otherwise coerced.....I can be arrested and charged and convicted even if I didn't know.

If I kerb crawl - nicked.

Solicit it public - nicked.

The only circumstance where I can't currently be arrested, which the "Swedish Model" would change is where, in private, I arrange to have sex with a consenting adult over the age of 18 who is perfectly willing to be there to have sex with me for money. That's what your law will make illegal.

You can bleat on about trafficking and sexual slavery all you want, but if that's happening I'm already under arrest, and guilty of a crime.

The Swedish model results in men being arrested even if the woman is genuinely earning big money and even if she gets on the witness stand and says "I loved it your honour."

THAT'S WHAT IT'S ABOUT.....NOTHING TO DO WITH SEX SLAVERY. IT'S YOU ENFORCING YOUR MORALS ON OTHERS.

There's no way to check anything even for the police....everything relies on the girl's word. I never said it was a shot in the dark 50/50. I can talk to the girl, look at the place she's working out of, look at how she presents herself, what services she provides or doesn't. I can be pretty sure, as sure as I am that I won't drive dangerously today, that I won't miss a speed limit sign and go too fast, as sure as I am that I won't commit a host of different offences.

If there's a victim - it's already illegal.

Swedish model = consenting sex is illegal.

That's the fact of the matter.

I think what you are missing is that the police have to prove that the girl is trafficed, coerced or underage (with your knowlege on the last one). As you have said that is hard to do and relies on evidence from a (mostly) vulnerable woman

If it became illegal for you to do it at all, the demand would decrease and less of these women and girls would be needed to fullfill your "need"

If it became illegal for you to do it at all, the demand would decrease and less of these women and girls would be needed to fullfill your "need"

Yes this is what has happened in Sweden. Attitudes have changed and, while it still goes on, it's a much smaller industry than it was, especially wrt trafficking and street prostitution.

reality you sound much more concerned about being caught than about the possibility you might be raping someone.

"I have no way of knowing (for sure) if the allegedly 20 year old girl I pick up in a bar or nightclub is underage....what's the difference? "

I know this is a bit radical but you could always get to know the woman first, well enough to ascertain what age she actually is ... just a thought.

I know you want your sex without attachment and that's fair enough but when it results in an industry which treats even some women so badly then your desire sounds like an irrelevant luxury to me.

Norma....I'm not missing that at all. I addressed it in my very first post on page 5.

Your argument amounts to "The police are having trouble finding that pesky evidence stuff, so let's just make it so they can arrest them without any."

It's hard to prove rape - the stats are quite poor from what I understand.
Proving fraud is a real pig...the recent Asil Nadir trial was fiendishly complicated. But that's how the world works.

The police find very few women who are sex slaves. They prosecute for trafficking more frequently because trafficking simply means "aided in their travel in order to commit an offence" (run a brothel for example). If the police were turning up sex slaves on a regular basis, there might be an argument on your side for making the whole thing illegal. But they're not. 2 years of (targeted) raids over 800 premises in Operation Pentameter 2 and only a handful of sex slaves were found...the official stats are higher (167 women) but that's because of how trafficking is defined as I explained earlier. Force/coercion has no bearing on a trafficking conviction, and that woman's declaration of being a "trafficked woman".

You see the stats and say "That's only because they're scared to speak out". But you don't know, you just assume, and seek to pass legislation based on that assumption. It's a win/win. A sex slave is found you post a link to the story. A police raid turns up empty, and you say they're just scared to speak out. Biased much?

messy - yes I could but I don't have to, it's not illegal to have a one night stand. But you want to make it illegal to pay for sex based on a handful of sex slaves that are found each year....

I want to see paying for sex made illegal because it's bad for all women.

I really liked the quote in trishawisha's post -

Before she started the investigation, Cacho says she was open to the idea of legalising and regulating prostitution, and had listened to many academics and feminists who advocated it. "Then the more I travelled, and the more women I interviewed, the more worried I got," she says. "I'm absolutely convinced that all forms of prostitution are just a way of normalising gender discrimination and violence against women, and women are 'trained' to become prostitutes because they are objects in a society that wants to have ghettoes of women who can be raped."

Reality, I don't mean to sound rude, but do you often have trouble following an argument? You've admitted that you can't know whether these women are under age/ pimped etc, but you still go ahead anyway?

All your arguments are just trying to distract from this very simple fact- that you yourself have admitted. And the only reason you want to distract from this is that you feel you're entitled to rent out women's bodies. Ugh.

Cacho is a big liar...that quote with the "ghettos of women who can be raped" statement feminist pseudo-scientific claptrap and gives her away as a paid-up feminist moralist who believes her morals override anyone else's. She never "changed her opinion" - it was made up from the start.

And your statement about it being bad for all women proves the same about you.

You couldn't stomach the thought of having sex for money, which is perfectly understandable, so therefore in a world with over 6 billion people, anybody who actually does it is a poor misguided soul who needs your help. Arrogant rubbish.

And a 'handful of sex slaves' is minimisation and a huge insult. But I imagine it suits your argument to minimise the damage.

See? Instant dismissal of cacho. Because to face up to it would be to face up to the reality of what YOU do.

Good god, the hypocrisy here is astounding. You're the ones who keep bringing up arguments I've already dealt with, as if they're going to be news to me. I'm following the argument just fine

You can't know if the apples/trainers/football or anything you buy was made with slave labour abroad or picked by trafficked workers in this country. But you go ahead. How many Chinese restaurants and Indian restaurants are employing illegal, trafficked workers? Do you check and satisfy yourself 100% as to their status before getting your curry on a night?

People are trafficked all over the shop. People are enslaved everywhere. Yet you pick prostitution because you find it inherently immoral, and even though the police can't find any significant numbers of sex slaves you don't let that deter you.

If there's a victim I can already be arrested.
If there isn't then I'm harming no one and you go toddle off, as you put it.

I'm very sorry you can't find the evidence of these 1000s of sex slaves that clearly exist in your little mind. But you can't make a whole industry illegal based on a handful of sex slaves.