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/

wino all that copying and pasting to answer one question. Pity you haven't addressed the other issues. Since you've read the reports, feel free to answer in your own words rather than copying in the report wholesale.

GFE sounds like paying extra for the woman to pretend to enjoy having sex with a punter. This is very telling about the punters' delusions and about the women's responses when there is sex without GFE.

Flora-remind me what the other issues are?
you keep asking for evidence-scientific evidence-I provide it you dismiss it without even reading it. Signs of a closed mind I think

To just remind you, my words were 'more scientific and less biased analysis' i didn't declare it to be a peer reviewed scientific journal or to be totally unbiased as you are trying to imply.

and no it's not a massive assumption Whenthered. All that is required is a bit of logic to compare the two pieces and it should be obvious to anyone that Jon Millward study is more credible. At least he has explained his methodology, set the parameters, acknowledged the potential for inaccuracies (skim reading) and has presented various statistical analysis, which is something the Invisible Men project fails to do on all counts.

Regardless of whether you agree with sex work or not, there's no denying that more information on trends etc can be obtained from the Jon Milward study.

Pro tip to Flora: if you have to resort to nit picking silly little errors, like accidentally citing PhD incorrectly, then you have already lost the argument and it's better to bow out gracefully rather than trying to have the final word

Libertarian j - Flora's points were perfectly valid. You asking her to leave the thread is uncalled for and sinister.

You also haven't answered my question upthread.

As for the assumption that 10% of women in a profession being raped at work is no big deal - words honestly fail me.

Never mind those "unrepresentative" street prostitutes, they're not good enough to use the internet like the clever internet using escorts, who cares if 50% of those get raped, they're not representative, right?

You pro-prostitution dudes, love to think that just claiming to be scientific (unlike us overemotional little ladies), is enough to be convincing. You have no idea.

So - it's good news that only 50% of street prostitutes have been raped?

Fucking p unters have no humanity.

They don't give a shit if they harm someone. they just don't fucking care no more than they care about their toaster

GoshAnne Gorilla:
a) ?As for the assumption that 10% of women in a profession being raped at work is no big deal - words honestly fail me? .Perhaps you would be good enough to point out to me where it is said it is no big deal? ?
b) ?Never mind those "unrepresentative" street prostitutes, they're not good enough to use the internet like the clever internet using escorts, who cares if 50% of those get raped, they're not representative, right?? No wrong-rape and violence are abhorrent wherever it occurs. The point is that the risk of rape and violence in prostitution is largely confined to those who work the streets-those who work indoors-although rape and violence are not negligible-experience far less. That is not the same as saying it is acceptable.
Perhaps you need to count to 100 before you post?

lib you only think Millward is more scientific because he uses a science-lite format for presenting his blog. It's obvious in the reading that it is not substantively scientific. Since The Invisible Men Project is not purporting to be science-lite, it takes a different format. There is insufficient evidence from the face of the two blogs as to which is more scientific. That you think there is speaks only to your lack of awareness / desperation to believe what you want to believe. By the way, suggest you look up "cite" in the dictionary.

wino you are not providing evidence. You are merely saying "look, statistics, or something". I can't cut and paste my issues list. If you can't figure it out by looking back on the thread I will post them again later.

I doubt there are numbers for women raped in the workplace because the numbers would be so vanishingly small. The ever present risk of rape and violence by punters and pimps as one factor which massively gives rise to the lie that is "sex work".

The majority of posters on here oppose prostitution on the basis of political analysis. If there was reliable and credible evidence that legalising proatitution was safer, some people may agree that it should be legalised. For the most part, we would still consider pimps and punters to be vile and abusive sub-humans and/or rapists.

WhentheRed: ?in support of your pro-prostitution argument?, I am not pro or anti-prostitution (and neither are the reports). If women choose to prostitute (despite the options being available to some being rather limited-that is her choice). What the surveys show is that many prostitutes say they chose prostitution as being better than many other options (sometimes those options being low paid shit work). Prostitution provides them with relatively high pay and flexible working hours (which they can fit around child-care or study). Of course the situation of street working is different-many on the street are drug addicted ?although some choose street work as they get to keep all of their money (rather than only some with they work in a brothel or for an escort agency).
The statics around rape and violence are instructive (and just to be clear I find these abhorrent)-the reason is that a common claim made by those who take an abolitionist line of prostitution goes something like ?More than half of women in prostitution in the UK have been raped and/or seriously assaulted and at least 75% have been physically assaulted at the hands of pimps and punters (Demand change www.demandchange.org.uk/index.php/facts) What the actual data shows is that this statistic comes from a single study (with the highest mumber of rapes or assaults) on street prostitutes-which the campaigners generalize to ¬all prostitution (despite street prostitution being the minority of all prostitution). Similar claims are made in other jurisdictions-all equally dishonest. So it is important to look at reports that survey and compare the experience of those working in different sectors. The reports I cite come from Australia and New Zealand as the governments there have financed proper statistically sound surveys to aid them in decisions about criminalization decriminalisation or legalization of prostitution.

So let?s be clear I think rape and violence are abhorrent-got it?

I support decriminalization of prostitution along the line of New Zealand-and New South Wales.
Lets go through the data mentioned in the demand change site its not quite as you say:
What is the claim?
More than half of women in prostitution in the UK have been raped and/or seriously assaulted and at least 75% have been physically assaulted at the hands of pimps and punters (Demand change www.demandchange.org.uk/index.php/facts)

What source is given for this claim?
The source cited is (Home office (2004) Solutions and Strategies: Drug Problems and Street Sex Markets). The document is a secondary source in turn quoting other research which appears on p20 section 3.4.8. These particular statistics appear to come from Hester & Westmarland (2004) Tackling Street Prostitution: Towards a Holistic Approach. Home Office Research Study No. 279. London: Home Office.p82

? Hester & Westmarland (2004) reported that three-quarters of 125 women experienced physical violence, mostly from clients or from ?boyfriend?/?pimp?.Over half of the women had been forced to have sex against their will or without payment or been indecently assaulted, and over two-thirds had experienced verbal abuse.?

What is the truth?
While this paragraph accurately summarizes the results from the Hester and Westmarland 2004 paper (which deals with street prostitutes) what goes unmentioned is their (H&W) description of other studies which show lower rates of rape and assault (p82) in street prostitution and that (p81) ?Barnard and Hart, (2000) (Barnard, M. A., Hurt, G., Benson, C. & Church, S. (2002) Client violence against prostitutes working from street and off-street locations: A three-city comparison, Swindon: ESRC Violence Research Programme)found that it was the location of prostitution, whether indoors or street, rather than any other factor that was significantly associated with incidence of violence.? Thus yet again a bad case is taken from street prostitution and generalized to all prostitution. While no level of violence or assault is acceptable it is instructive to look at studies of indoor workers-who form the majority in prostitution.

The most cited work in the UK comparing rates of violence in street and off street locations is that of Church et al (2001) (Church S et al ?Violence by clients towards female prostitutes in different work settings: questionnaire survey? BMJ 322 , 524-525) who questioned street workers in Leeds and Glasgow and indoor workers (saunas , and flats) in Leeds and Edinburgh (N=240 in total). The results showed that prostitutes working on the street experienced significantly more (about twice as much) violence from their clients than those working indoors) and the violence was more extreme.(and incidentally also showed that the age of entry of street prostitutes was 19.6 that of indoor workers 22.7-so not as children as is sometimes claimed). Similar data showing the street/indoor split were produced by Kinnel (2002) cited in Brooks-Gordon B (2006) The price of sex Willan p170 table 5.1, and the relative safety of indoor work demonstrated in surveys of brothel and flat workers (N=135) in Birmingham and Merseyside showed that three quarters had never experienced violence at work (Sanders T & Campbell R (2007) Designing out vulnerability, building in respect: violence, safety and sex work policy The British Journal of Sociology, 58: 1?19. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2007.00136.x(p7) ). Similarly in Leeds (N=105) 60% of Sauna and 50% of flat workers had never been assaulted but the figure fell to 25% for street workers, the same study showed that over 80% of sauna or flat workers had never been raped, the figure for street workers was 70% (Church SL 2003 The social organization of sexwork: The implications for female prostitutes health and safety pHD thesis University of Glasgow table 29 p 240)

In a large survey of indoor sexworkers who contact clients via the internet 81% had never experienced violence form a client (Jenkins 2009 Beyond gender: an examination of exploitation in sex work pHD thesis University of Keele p289 answer to survey question 28)
(It should be pointed out that some surveys ask sexworkers whether they had ever been assaulted or raped by a client-others ask whether such an event had occurred in the last six months or a year-this is to control for length of time in the industry-obviously those who had been sex workers for longer would have a higher risk of ever having such an event).

Other countries experience
Similar results have been obtained in other jurisdictions-so for instance in Denmark a survey (N=290) of prostitutes (113 escorts, 140 brothel 37 street prostitutes) showed that violence is very rare in brothels-and even on the streets many have not experienced violence in the year before the survey ( Kofeld et at 2011 Postitution I Danmark www.sfi.dk/publications-4844.aspx?Action=1&NewsId=3032&PID=10056) p 232 fig.10.2).

A very large survey of 770 sexworkers in New Zealand (working on the streets, in brothels or as private workers) showed that in the past year over 90% had not experienced violence or rape (again violence and rape were more common in streetworkers)( Abel G et al 2007 The impact of the Prostitution Reform act on the health and safety Practices of Sex workers :Report to the Prostitution law review committee table 6.4 page 120)

In a relatively large study in Queensland Australia of 247 sex workers (102 in legal brothels, 103 independent escorts and 42 illegal street workers) it was found that found that 85% of sexworkers overall had never been raped by a client, of those that had been raped most were street workers where 50% had been raped (Seib C 2007 Health, well-being and sexual violence among Female sexworkers: a comparative study PHd thesis Queensland University of Technologyeprints.qut.edu.au/16398/1/Charlotte_Seib_Thesis.pdf )(p102 table 4.4) Appendix 4 of this thesis (p 216 ) present a summary table of eight other studies that examined prevalence of rape in sexworkers, again showing most indoor workers had never experienced rape while the frequency of rape in street workers was higher. Similarly for assault (?bashing?), again 85% overall had never been bashed by a client (p105 table 4.6) street workers had the highest prevalence of bashing where 50% reported ever having been bashed by a client (p106 table 4.7)

Conclusion: So while no one is denying that prostitution (both indoor and on the street) can be violent (especially for those working on the street) it is clear that those opposed to prostitution have taken to distorting the facts by taking an extreme example from street prostitution and generalizing to all prostitution.

As far as the invisible man project look at my post of 20-Aug-13 16:49:22-I show that the quotations have been selected to paint men as misogynist abusers-a representative selection as I point out reveals a different story, Since the dates and post numbers from Punternet are not given it is not possible to see if the quoted excepts are accurate or a selection from a post with a different tenor-or if they have been removed by the moderator.

As far as the lvel of rape and assault goes decriminalisation would mean that assailants could be reported to the police and workers get better protection-something that does not happen if prostitution is criminalized. It would give prostitutes labour rights-also something that is missing.

Violence is street prostitution is a more difficult case-perhaps monitored tolerance zones might be effective as they appear to be in Liverpool.

Well look at the data from New Zealand (prostitution decriminalized) (Abel et al op cit p 120 table 6.4 where it gives (by sector) from a survey of 769 prostitutes the proportion that had been raped in the last 12 months (3% overall) the table braks the data down by sector-go and look - and reported to the police or reported to someone who is not the police. That gives the answer to your question-look it up-I provided the link.
Of course protection at place of employment applies to brothel workers who are independent contractors
And while I don?t agree with Minylydia about this particular report it is true that the full report gives a slightly different light. Showing that the invisible man project is selective in its reporting and designed to give a misleading impression of the reports overall-painting clients as misogynists whereas a proper random survey-as done by the two academic reports I quoted earlier provide a different picture. That is why it is important for the invisdible man project to properly reference the reports it gives.

wino

"The Jenkins thesis (which you refuse to read) never claimed to be representative of all women in prostitution-it dealt with only one sector-those who solicit their clients over the internet-which now probably represent a very large slice (perhaps the majority) of those who prostitute in the UK."

It didn't claim to be representative of those women either and you are making an assumption regarding the relative proportions of internet vs. non-internet.

I asked "who wrote these papers?" - providing a list of names is not useful. You have not indicated the credentials of the people who prepared these surveys. Here is a post I made on the other thread about how to introduce academic work or surveys into an argument:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a1671153-OAP-home-allows-residents-to-book-sex-workers?msgid=37017853

I am still no clearer as to the credibility and reliability of the authors of these papers. Please try to distil your points into a shorter form.

The other issues I raised you asked me to repeat are those I raised upthread and on the other thread to which I provided a link. It seems you have found the copy and paste function. You might now try to master "find on page".

Upthread I asked you to present evidence that:

1. these statements from sex workers result from perfect free agency and are not influenced by abuse, addiction, mental health issues or poverty.

2. The sex workers in question and their views are representative of sex workers as a group.

In the other thread, I said:

The thing is, statistically, it's not possible to devise a meaningful representative study on harm or consent by asking prostitutes for a number of reasons.

- Those who are in forced situations will not be able to participate.
- Those who have left would be unlikely to participate or too difficult to find.
- The responses are largely subjective and therefore unverifiable.
- Dilbert always has something useful to add
- To paraphrase a famous prostitute: they would say that, wouldn't they.

I'm not sure if you are intentionally mis-stating these issues is that I don't believe people or that you genuinely don't understand the difference. A survey is useless if you cannot establish the extent to which it represents the overall population. Can you tell me how these surveys dealt with the inherent problems in establishing a representative sample of the overall population of women in prostitution? I will give you a clue about how you might answer this:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survey_sampling

You say you are not pro or anti prostitution. I don't believe you, but assuming for a moment that I do, why are you pro-decriminalisation? Despite your incredible copy and pasting skills, you have not articulated whether your position is based on agency or harm reduction. To the extent that you are considering harm, it is not sufficient to consider only reported cases of rapes and violence. Please also provide evidence of lack of harm in the case of unreported cases, drug or alcohol addiction, psychological abuse, incidence of mental illness and incidence of sexually transmitted disease. Are you arguing that women in prostitution will be subject to less harm if it is decriminalised (don't see any evidence of that in what you have posted)? Or that the rights of those prostitutes who make a decision based on free perfect agency and willingly accept the risk of harm outweigh the risk and consequences of harm faced by those who are subject to harm or are not exercising perfect free agency? That balancing is a political decision which cannot be proven by statistics.

Whenthered
Well let?s take this slowly-please read it carefully before you rush to post.
a)? You have not provided any links at all? I gave the reference( Abel G et al 2007 The impact of the Prostitution Reform act on the health and safety Practices of Sex workers :Report to the Prostitution law review committee) now enter that in google and you get www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CEAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.justice.govt.nz%2Fpublications%2Fglobal-publications%2Fp%2Fprostitution-reform-act-impact-on-the-health-and-safety-practices-of-sex-workers%2Fat_download%2Ffile&ei=RcoVUuqbJ8O70QWixoDIDQ&usg=AFQjCNHSlYQEy22OpsH8Op3WouOo-IE31A&sig2=JPS5-e3bzxB_JfOXZ9CkPg there it is. I suggest that you read the whole report
b) Go back to original post where I say two things (i) (It should be pointed out that some surveys ask sexworkers whether they had ever been assaulted or raped by a client-others ask whether such an event had occurred in the last six months or a year-this is to control for length of time in the industry-obviously those who had been sex workers for longer would have a higher risk of ever having such an event).(ii)I said ? A very large survey of 770 sexworkers in New Zealand (working on the streets, in brothels or as private workers) showed that in the past year over 90% had not experienced violence or rape ? note the? or? so that means either of these.

If you now go to the table (table 6.4 p120) I referenced-I assume you can find the report and the page you will note that the heading of the table is ?Adverse experiences whilst working in the last twelve months? The table gives separate figures for rape and for assault (the 10% figure I quoted previously was for those combined). Now go to table 6.5 page 122) you will see the heading is ?confidents for bad experience by sector? which fully answers your question ?I wonder how many of those were reported (a) to the brothel keeper; (b) to health and safety officials and (c) to police? Do your studies tell you that?? And you can see-yes the survey does.

Turning to the invisible man project I will say this slowly. The project has an agenda which is portray all clients of prostitutes as misogynists. To do this they select from the thousands of posts those that suit their purpose, and they edit them to remove some of the context.They then don?t reference the report by date or report number so that it can be verified that the reports are not edited to give a misleading impression or if the have been removed by the moderator.

Now there are men who do show awful attitudes which I condemn (I will say that again-which I condemn). But are the reports when taken as a whole misogynistic? To establish this you need to take a random selection of a sufficient number of reports so that they can be assumed to be representative. This was done in the academic reports I cited-and they give a totally different impression. Most clients of prostitutes repoting in on-line forums are not misogynistic.

And I do condem mysogenistic (as displayed by the selected (and edited) reports) as I condemn mysandric attitudes. Got it?

You see people? The real problem here is misandry.

Ok so some prostitutes get raped. Which is sad. But the real problem here is nasty feminists condemning this fact, the situation that allows it, and the people that do it. That's misandric. Got it?

Flora
Lets go through your points in the order you present them. But please flora do try to moderate the abuse you dish out as shown by your comments on this thread and the one you link to-it really has no place in adult discourse. And readers-go l to the previous thread (helpfully linked to by flora) to get a good sample of what we have become depressingly familiar with. Oh and flora-don?t tell me how to reference academic work-I have examined a ton of PhD theses authored many academic papers and reviewed thousands more. And I am well versed in statistics and sampling.

1. On the Jenkins thesis: You refuse to read this on the grounds that it is not representative. On the other thread you described it thus ?Whereas I have a strong suspicion I'll waste my time reading pomo / third wave bullshit. Saying Nothing New?( Sun 03-Feb-13 04:17:53) ?And again, what are the facts? It's a thesis. It's someone's opinion? (Sun 03-Feb-13 04:32:14). You also try to rubbish the credentials of the author of the thesis.( I deal with representative below)
2. So this is your tactic, you say that you will not read anything that is not ?representative? and you also will try to rubbish it by questioning the credentials of those who wrote it or who funded it (which is presumably why you wanted the names and the funders for the reports I cited) when I provided them and their institutions (showing that they were academics) and pointed out the funders (mostly arms- length government agencies) you find you cant apply your usual tactic so you now want more. You say ?providing a list of names is not useful. You have not indicated the credentials of the people who prepared these surveys.?. Heard of Google? Heard of PubMed? Ok I will try to help you out ( I have gone for the lead authors use PubMed and Google to look for the others): The New Zealand report the lead author was Dr Gillian M Abel of the University of Otago Christchurch New Zealand (www.otago.ac.nz/christchurch/departments/phgp/publichealth/ourpeople/otago010832.html) . Those I cite from Australia the lead authors are (Western Australia and NSW) Prof Basil Donovan from the Kirby Institute University of New South Wales www.kirby.unsw.edu.au/people/professor-basil-donovan that from Queensland is Prof. Jake Najman (Professor of Population Health at University of Queensland) (theconversation.com/profiles/jake-najman-299/profile_bio). The Danish report-chief author Jens Koford is from the Danish National Centre for social Research (www.sfi.dk/search_results_-_view-7352.aspx?PID=18908&NewsID=3032) . Now I am sure you will try and rubbish those and claim they know nothing about conducting a survey-they all have experience in epidemiology and social science research so know how to conduct surveys and the caveats involved.
3. Let?s deal with the problem of representation. If you could be bothered to read the documents I cite they all deal with the problem of whether a sample can be considered representative-since you don?t like cut and paste I will use my own words. (but here is a good example looking at prostitution in Leeds where the problem of representation is addressed in chapter 3 p65 et seq where the issues are discussed theses.gla.ac.uk/1179/ oh I forgot but you wont read theses ?the Danish report is also good on this) One problem with surveying stigmatized populations (such as prostitutes) is that the actual distribution of prostitutes between various categories of work (street, brothel, private incall outcall etc )and their numbers is not reliably known so it is not possible to draw a truly representative sample Instead what is done is to use purposive sampling, that is the major characteristics of the sampling population are specified as categories. So for instance categories might be those working the streets, those working in brothels, those working privately from flats providing incalls and those working for escort agencies providing out-calls. The size of each category that is sampled does not necessarily reflect the actual distribution of workers between these categories as this is unknown. What is important is to make sure that you have sufficiently large numbers from each of the categories. It is for this reason that the results from each of these categories is often reported separately. Street workers (by their visibility) are relatively easy to contact either on the street in drop-in centres or sexual health clinics. What is sometimes done is to use current or ex-prostitutes to conduct the surveys (and they are specially trained in survey techniques) as they can more easily gain the trust of participants and once don?t either they or an independent researcher will interview the prostitutes. Often ?snowball? techniques are used to contact more workers (that is use the already recruited respondents to recruit people they know) there are caveats around this technique which the researchers will avoid (so for instance so that you are not sampling from those who have the largest range of contacts). The size of the population can be estimated by capture recapture techniques. Indoor workers are contacted by visiting brothels which advertise in the various media leaving flyers, questionnaires etc and a lot of persistence-since the number of brothels who advertise is known (and they are de-duplicated) a good idea of the response rate can be gained. Those working privately are more difficult to approach but it can be done (and total numbers can be estimated by using snowball and capture recapture). The reliability of the survey can be estimated by triangulation od the qualitative answers , after a while and broad sampling the same themes emerge from different respondents (so for instance the Police, social services, drop in centres and the respondents themselves). This ensures that the views of the respondents are representative of the class of workers (street , brothel indoor etc). As far as ?these statements from sex workers result from perfect free agency and are not influenced by abuse, addiction, mental health issues or poverty.? It is difficult to know that truthful answers are provided-but since some of the respondents( a minority) do mention abuse coercion etc and admit to drug addiction (the majority of street workers for instance) and the results are tested by triangulation between qualitative and quantitative parts of the survey-what is the motivation for telling untruths. Why don?t you read the surveys before you leap up and down crying foul?
4. You ask ?why are you pro-decriminalisation?... whether your position is based on agency or harm reduction?. My position is based both on agency and harm reduction and I do believe that women in prostitution will be subject to less harm if it is decriminalised ( you say ?don't see any evidence of that in what you have posted?). You don?t see any evidence since you refuse to read it. Why don?t you actually read the reports I have posted-those from New Zealand and Australia for instance deal directly with harm reduction and measures of STIs and psychological well being and the rest. Why don?t you carefully read the reports before you spout? That?s enough for now.

Dear lord your replies are hard to follow wino, for someone who claims to be something to do with academia, your formatting is bloody shocking.

The problem with the long, winding replies is that they don't answer the question the OP posed, so are therefore pretty irrelevant to the actual topic of the thread. Perhaps you could start a new thread, where you can soap-box your pro-punter manifesto?

The original question posed by the OP (as you seem to have found it hard to stay on topic) was. Given the examples of what men say about women in prostitution, what do you think of HIS choice.

While the various papers you have referenced are interesting bathroom reading, the samples will inevitably be skewed in how they respond. Even the most habitual user of women's bodies as wank socks must be aware that their habits are somewhat of a social taboo, and therefore, how can we be sure that any responses they give to an academic are going to be their true thoughts and actions? Their responses on Pnet can be safely seen as being their true thoughts as it is a completely anonymous platform for them, they are stating these comments to like-minded people and are therefore more likely to be honest in their responses and they are able to see themselves as providing a public service to other men like them. They have no pro- or anti- prostitution funder to appease, no political axe to grind.

Sexual consent, real consent, can only be freely given. It cannot be bought, coerced, drugged, forced or anything else. If it is, it is rape. Unless you are suggesting that prostituted women would have sex with these men if they weren't paying them, then they are raping them. To decriminalise prostitution would be to decriminalise a form of rape. I am not happy with that. No right minded person would be.

Sorry Flora to interrupt your debunking and thanks for pointing the way to even more clarification for me.

I agree Capt.

inwino wants us all to read his lengthy c&p, his verbose ramblings - because then we'll all see the light. We'll stop seeing punters as misogynistic men, capable of writing about women as though they are merely sexual playthings to be bought.

We'll stop seeing the abuse of women. Told, not by the anti-prostitution lobby, oh no, but in the punter's own words in field reports and the like. We'll stop objecting to having women's bodies graded and judged like prize cattle - because it's fine you know, as inwino says, most (or is it some) women are happy doing it. Not many of the women are raped in their working hours (what's 10% between friends? or even 50%? Oh - lets just brush that under the carpet)

There is zero evidence that decriminalisation improves the lives of prostitutes - there is in fact evidence to show that illegal brothels outnumber legal brothels in places where it is legalised/ decriminalised. It was linked to upthread. What is really relevant to this thread is that we're not talking about the women's choices, but the men's - the punters. Why did punter 18 think that paying £200 gave him the right to coerce the woman into sex a second time? What attitude do these men have that makes them think they can just pay their money to treat women this way? What does that say about how society treats women?

Those are the questions that need to be asked - and imo, saying - 'oh, but most punters are only after companionship and intimacy' just doesn't cut it.

Flora and whenthered, I do applaud your engagement with this particular poster - who clearer thinks he is cleverer than the rest of us - after all, we're just a bunch of women.

Absolutely Sabrina. If most punters are after companionship and intimacy, where are all those posts on Pnet which rate how nice the biscuits were, what the conversational topics were, whether or not she knew what wine to serve with the fish course? Why are they all about what the sex was like and how the punter felt about the body of the person he was wanking into?

I realise that wino feels he is oh, so much cleverer than I, but I am smart enough to spot bluster and bullshit when I see it!