The invisible men project

[ArmyOfPenguins]

I think it's important that the buyers' choices in prostitution are highlighted and shared. This project was linked to on FB. Thoughts? I think it's a great idea.

the-invisible-men.tumblr.com/

Yes CaptChaos, it is very telling that the men don't appear to care about the woman's feelings or her well-being. I can't remember if it is on this thread or in other discussions I've had regarding this that people have tried to cite other comments from punternet, portraying them as "not as bad". In all of them, however, the woman is a commodity not a human being. It is chilling.

I think that the fact that money changes hand negates consent. You can't pay for consent. That brings a level of coercion into it. If you think that a woman won't have sex with you willingly without money being involved then how is that consent?

How can any man who has sex with a prostitute be 100% sure that she was there of her own free will, and that therefore he is not raping her?

He can't Capt. But I doubt that troubles his conscience overmuch.

sgheuks I answered the question. Perhaps you just didn't like it or it offended your delicate sensibilities. WhentheRed explained more eloquently how this would be achieved. ITA with Beach - women are not fags and booze, fags and booze are not raped and murdered. Your analogy isn't even logical.

CaptChaos that was my point about punters raping women. I don't think it's a moment but a very important point and I think Damascene is a great characterisation of it. There is a feminist analysis that all prostitution is rape but there is also an analysis that much of prostitution is actually or potentially rape even under our current laws. Most often, accepting the payment is taken as indicating consent although there are clearly situations as you say where payment could be accepted due to coercion. I would also say that consent is not genuine due to past or present abuse or addiction. We recognise that consent is a flawed concept in many areas of law, particularly where there is an economic imbalance (e.g. health and safety laws, minimum wage, even in the arcane area of data protection, there is recognition that consent in the employment context is often not genuine).

Under the law, a man must reasonably believe that a woman is consenting to sex. Whether the belief is reasonable is to be determined having regard to all the circumstances, including any steps the man has taken to ascertain whether the woman consents. A number of the entries in the Invisible Men project show that the men suspected the woman was trafficked, drugged out or drunk but they went ahead and fucked her anyway (and sometimes complained about her failing to pretend to be enthusiastic). Other than paying the cash, punters do not take any steps to ascertain consent.

CaptChaos "How can any man who has sex with a prostitute be 100% sure that she was there of her own free will, and that therefore he is not raping her?" This is entirely correct and is why demand for prostitution should be eliminated / reduced using the Swedish model.

One of the problems with the Swedish system is WhentheRed's point b) above; that they can report assaults against them. (They could do this before the law change, btw, I don't think it's ever been legal to rape and assault women. Even if they work as prostitutes.)

The thing is, that if someone reports an assault, there is a risk that they will be exposed as a prostitute. Landlords are forbidden - under strict penalities - to rent properties that they know or suspect are to be used for the purposes of prostitution, so a prostitute lodging a complaint risks loosing the roof over her head. And if she looses her home, she risks losing any dc she may have, because SS will step in...

These are not incentives to report.

And suddenly I can't spell "lose". It's the weather...

That doesn't seem unsurmountable in many cases OLKN, not to be dismissive.

I just don't understand how on earth you could have sex with someone who you know doesn't want you. You know they don't want you or you wouldn't be paying them. To me it's on a par with with slapping someone in the face for five minutes, twenty quid or not.

Don't get it. Never will. Will always think people who can do it are basically disgusting.

Nevermind the justifications and the hoops that people jump through nowadays to absolve anything to do with sex or desire from guilt or shame of any sort. If you can exploit someone for gratification you should be ashamed.

Little Jasmine had her dc taken off her and given to her abusive ex, because as a willing/consensual/had summed up the opportunities available to her and gone for the least-worst option sort of a prostitute, she refused to perceive herself as a victim.

He killed her.

In the Uk, we have CrimeStoppers, so if you suspect a crime (eg forced prostitution) you can report it anonymously. Punters, even on the much- hated PN, are actively encouraged to do so.

When punters are criminals, (as under Swedish laws) at the very least liable to be exposed to their nearest and dearest, are they going to report such women? Who, other than the punter, will help them?

OLKN there is nothing in that highly biased article that makes a connection between the Swedish Model and the murder of this woman. Women are killed by abusive partners and ex-partners in every country every day.

The idea of punters helping women is frankly laughable. Every trafficked and coerced woman is exposed to multiple punters every day she works. If punters had any shred of decency, trafficking and coercion in prostitution would not exist.

Punters are the source of the demand for trafficking and coercion and the source of danger to women.

I knew before I clicked on the link that it was going to be from Pye Jakobsson. New low for her, co-opting a women's death at the hands of an abusive husband to argue her cause.

Interesting that prostitution is considered a form of self-harm by the Swedish state.

The whole concept of "consent" and how it is applied to sex is so patriarchal. It is a get out of jail free card for men "but she consented guv".

Surely even people who think prostitution is just swell can see that money exchanging hands is coercion. Or perhaps not, punters always come across as deluded, entitled and hard of thinking. Practically psychopathic in their lack of empathy (as seen in their tendency to think women are like fags and booze for example).

Look at the definition of consent particularly the synonyms;

Noun
Permission for something to happen or agreement to do something.
Verb
Give permission for something to happen: "he consented to a search by a detective".
Synonyms
noun. assent agreement approval accord compliance
verb. agree assent accede acquiesce comply concur

How interesting. When I have argued in the past that women in general are at least as much at risk as prostitutes (because, as WA say, 2 women a week are killed by their dp in the UK alone, how many prostitutes are murdered by pimps/punters in an average week?) I have been shot down in flames; now it's a defence for the Swedish model.

If trafficked/co-erced women are really being bumped off in huge numbers in the UK, how come we don't know about it? Operations Pentameter 1 & 2, (that would be when every known brothel in the country was raided) remind me, what were the results? And don't say they didn't find anyone because they're too well hidden, if they can hide that well htf do the punters - more than ten a day, per prostitute, remember - find them when plod can't? And how odd that they can find trafficked workers in the food trade, but not in prostitution...

And for those few women who really have been illegally brought to the UK and forced to work as prostitutes - a vanishingly small number, but important nonetheless - who but a punter can help them? If they're locked in small rooms, never allowed out and can't communicate the only hope they have is that a customer will report their unhappiness. But that won't happen where he risks exposing himself to criminal charges.

And I am puzzled as to why something from Pye Jakobssen should be viewed as unreliable. Surely as a sex worker herself, her voice and POV are important? I have seen it said that if someone profits from the sex trade, they have a "vested interest" but it seems a little odd not to listen to women who choose to work as prostitutes just because they make money from it.

And yes, choosing to work as a prostitute is viewed as a form of self harm not only by the Swedish state but also by RadFems in the UK. It's a useful silencing tactic for when sex workers speak up.

Pimps don't kill* the women they prostitute because they are a resource.

They are a means of making money. It would be a stupid pimp who would kill off the women he has put time and effort subjugating into being an income for him.

• of course pimps do kill prostituted women sometimes; as a threat to other women, by mistake through beating/drugging, by driving them to suicide, to eliminate a woman who is too troublesome, etc...

And for those few women who really have been illegally brought to the UK and forced to work as prostitutes - a vanishingly small number, but important nonetheless - who but a punter can help them? If they're locked in small rooms, never allowed out and can't communicate the only hope they have is that a customer will report their unhappiness. But that won't happen where he risks exposing himself to criminal charges.

This is one of the saddest and most hideously twisted arguments I have seen in a long time.

We mustn't criminalise the punter (without whom prostitution would not exist) because he is the trafficked prostituted woman's (who wouldn't exist if it weren't for the punter) only hope.

Gotta look after those altruistic punters or how else can they save prostitutes. Huh?

Right.

(And the argument isn't even logical within the context of prostitution as a global institution if the number of trafficked women is 'vanishingly small')

they could leave an anonymous tip - surely that could be arranged.

Though it would stick in the craw to have to listen to someone confess to raping a trafficked young woman at 123 Fake Street, and no body else should be allowed to. I suppose police officers have to listen to a lot of shit they wish they could fix.

Yeah, exactly Sinistersal.

I wonder how many punters the trafficked woman would be raped by before Mr Nice Guy "rapist but with a guilty 'conscious' about other men raping" Punter would call the police.

OLKH are you really saying that prostitutes are at no more risk of harm from men than women in general? I've never heard anyone put that argument before.

Also this isn't just about trafficking. You seem determined to ignore the impact of other factors that negate consent: past or present abuse, addiction, mental health issues or poverty. There was nothing in the article you linked to that would give a reason why Jasmine Petite was in prostitution and continued in prostitution when it was becoming apparent she would lose her children. You can't hold her up as being a willing and consenting "happy hooker" without knowing a lot more about her. I find it distasteful that this woman's death at the hands of an abusive ex-partner is being used to push an agenda that will expose more women to harm.

Yes, I don't have an issue with what Pye Jakobsson said on the issue of Jasmine's murder because Pye Jakobsson is a sex worker/activist.

I have an issue with what she said because it is dishonest co-opting of another woman's death (as a result of male violence).

Increasingly I find from certain circles an expectation that women must not critically examine what a sex worker says or does on the basis that she is a sex worker - regardless of what is said or done. And there is something very wrong there on many many levels. It is a manipulative tactic that patronises women in prostitution and appropriates their status in order to bolster an agenda. Very unpleasant.

Most prostitution is rape. Either the woman is enslaved or underage or she needs the money but doesn't want the sex. Basically the man is buying your right to reject him. The men who use prostitutes get their kicks out of this dynamic. There are very few happy hookers in the industry (if at all).

@WhentheRed - Rachel Moran writes that she, and other prostitutes, actually felt safer working on the streets as they had some control over who they went with and the sex was over quickly. When she worked in brothels and making home visits she was abused more than she was on the streets.

The big elephant in the room with the pro prostitution argument (which basically comes down to happy hooker/choice), and the punters who delude themselves with that argument, is the framing of 'consent' WRT sexual intercourse between women and men in male supremacist culture.

There are punters who don't care if the prostituted women is there by choice or not, there are punters who get off on knowing that a woman is suffering and being coerced. There are, as GiantHaystacks said, men who get off on the dynamic of paying a woman to submit to penetration that she doesn't want (i.e. rape).

There are also punters who need to delude themselves that the woman wants sex with them in order for them to get off. I have read a lot of testimonies from women who say that often these were the worst sorts of encounters as there is an emotional violation that is very damaging for them - not only do they have to submit to penetration that they don't want but they have to be intimate with a sick fuck who has deluded himself that she likes it/him and the woman has to go along with that lie.

Sex a woman doesn't want, is rape. This is the feminist analysis of rape. This is the analysis from the female perspective.

Patriarchal analysis is that rape is sex a woman does not consent to. This is a male/PIV centric perspective.

Consent can be bought, manipulated, influenced and coerced.

"Consent" is a smoke and mirrors patriarchal concept used to allow men to get away with raping women. "Consent" is a rape myth - possibly the biggest one of all.

Consent in prostitution is pay to rape.

And punters know this - they just either don't care, lie to themselves about it or they actively get off on it.

"Consent" is always the final word in the pro-porn argument as though it is an unexaminable, non-flawed neutral reality, when the truth is that consent is a patriarchal social construct rooted in the oppression of women via our vulnerability to PIV. Consent is a tool of oppression and nowhere is that more obvious than in prostitution and porn.