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/

Flora
?you claim?. views on prostitution? No wrong-not my field at all. What interests me is how campaigners with a political agenda have tried to hi-jack debates where evidence is available and not in their favour. How do they maintain this state of cognitive dissonance? Some examples are GM technology, fracking, arguments against evolution or for a young earth, homeopathy and there are others.

My interest in prostitution was sparked by basic consideration of numbers-a number of claims for numbers of trafficked for the sex trade did not seem to me to be plausible.(e.g.50,000 sexslaves in the UK). This led me to look at the claims by NGOs radical feminists about prostitution and what were the verifiable facts and what was opinion (or faith)-which lead me into the prostitution literature and claims made by abolitionists.

What I find interesting about the debate on agency is that there are some like Catherine McKinnon and Sheila Jeffreys who say no woman can choose to prostitute herself-despite many prostitutes claiming that they chose to prostitute. Are they suffering from ?false consciousness?? I think this line is profoundly insulting to those who say they chose prostitution. It may be that the choices of some are constrained by their situation-given a choice between minimum wage and prostitution some might choose prostitution, but there are certainly others whose situation was less desperate-yet they chose prostitution. Are they deluded? I believe you should always listen to what they say rather than trying to impose your own values and claim they don?t really mean it. Which is why I pointed to the Barbara Sullivan article-which you jumped on-demanding evidence which you then refused to consider.

You are an interesting case Flora as you exemplify the pathology I have seen in other debates-such as evolution or GM. Keep it up-I?m taking notes.

You talk about widespread ?abuse? of prostitution-now undoubtedly some are abused, used etc but there are also others who are taking money from men and making a good living out of it-they might feel they are taking advantage of the weaknesses of men. Who is exploiting who?
And it what way has the NZ report been shown to be unreliable-because the NZCP were involved in the identification of those to be questioned? Is the Danish work questionable because they used NGOs (some with an agenda to rescue women) operating drop in centres to help recruit respondents does that make that report unreliable? How do you suggest reaching a large number of a hidden stigmatized population. And how come the NZ data matches well the data from many other studies?

"Who is exploiting who?"

HOUSE!

?how do you know that they are not representative of the punternet field reports? Have you read all of the punternet reports??
No-but as I pointed out up-thread others have taken a random sample (every tenth review) and a different picture emerges
And Sabrina it should be ?up to 50% of street workers ?looking at a large number of reports? have been raped?. The Church et al 2001 study of the UK suggests 20%. That is not to justify it or say it is ok ?it is abhorrent.

It is indeed abhorrent - so I wonder why you felt is necessary to make that point?

The real issue here is that radfems are 'insulting' to prostitutes. Excuse me, 'profoundly insulting'. Punternet, otoh, well, it's not representative is it? taken out of context. Etc

'I believe you should always listen to what they say rather than trying to impose your own values and claim they don?t really mean it.' said inwino. I concur

Inwino

I have actually read a lot of the reviews on PN. I think the point is the culture of the site is misogynistic and gross. It is like Trip Advisor, but for people who use prostitutes. Sure, there is the odd punter who is less reprehensible than the others, but the dominant discourse is overwhelmingly dehumanising and bragging. Prostitutes are talked about with the same casual disregard as someone discussing a dirty bathtub in a hotel room.

It is about as low as it gets. Talk about false consciousnesses...

inwino the Invisible Men project provides an insight into the mindset of punters. Your posts here provide an insight into how volunteer pimp-lobbyists misunderstand and/or misrepresent research and use jargon they don't understand to try to convince women that prostituion is not harmful. Your understanding of agency goes no further than choosey-choice. All you have done is present statistics that confirm that prostitution is inherently dangerous with an unacceptable level of rape and violence from punters even where legalised and indoors. We knew that already.

You have given me no reason to value your opinion of me.

bump

If you want to learn something of the truth of prostitution in the UK-this is a good place to start. It is a general lecture entitled Sex work today: myths, morals and health (29 Nov 2012) by Graham Scambler-professor of the sociology of Medicine at University College London and dispels many of the myths-around prostitution including the one that prostitutes lack agency and cannot choose to prostitute.

wino you've already demonstrates you know nothing about agency so you're just embarrassing yourself now.

wino you have taken nearly 2 weeks to try and find something, anything which backs up your view of prostitution. You have once again failed to do so.

I have no doubt though, that this will start another round of:

1. HUGE copy/pasted posts, most of which you probably haven't read, with horrendous formatting which makes my eyes bleed (metaphorically).

2.What will then happen is that Flora and When will spend their valuable time showing you, with examples and endless patience why you're wrong.

1. You'll then disappear for a bit and

1. come back with more drivel.

To save everyone's time, could we just skip to #3 and stay there?

Well as I thought-closed minds, eyes and fingers in the ears again. Because you KNOW-because your political analysis has led you to swallow the line taken by likes of Catherine Mackinnon Sheila Jeffreys and Melissa Farley that no one could choose to prostitute, that prostitution is violence against women or prostitution is rape that is paid for and that any prostitute who protests otherwise must be either coerced by her pimp, drugged or suffering from false consciousness or as Farley says ??To the extent that any woman is assumed to have freely chosen prostitution, then it follows that enjoyment of domination and rape are in her nature? These are articles of faith-like believing in a flat earth-or of examples of pre-scientific reasoning, as Popper put it ?conclusions formed in the absence of evidence or lacking in the critical ingredient of falsifiability?

How is such flat earth faith maintained? By refusing to consider evidence, by trying to rubbish such evidence by saying it is propaganda, or trying to rubbish the authors or suggest it might be funded by lobby groups or have a vested interest. Or trying to claim that those who point to the evidence have not read it and don?t understand it But consider the evidence? Oh no can?t do that as it might just might undermine the faith. So let?s go on in our little flat earth universe where the sun goes around the earth-better not look out the window as that might put our faith in jeopardy.

And Flora-you have embarrassed yourself by refusing to consider evidence-by not knowing that ?Survey Monkey? is a tool for analysing on-line surveys, for claiming that a report commission by the NZ parliament was lobbying-things you might have known if you just opened your eyes for a second.

God you are tedious

And you are very arrogant to presume that we haven't reached our decisions with the help of evidence, personal accounts, reading about the subject, engaging with it. Just because our conclusions are not yours, inwino, doesn't mean that we haven't done our research.

"Well as I thought-closed minds, eyes and fingers in the ears again." The same could be said for you.

I don't believe that inwino is not a punter, a pimp, or someone with a vested interest in prostitution. No poster would argue so tediously, for so long on such a subject otherwise.

vested interest, exactly, Running.

I don't understand why the world is so invested in believing the accounts of those with the vested interest, and ignoring and dismissing the ones without. There's nothing in it for an anti sex industry person to speak out. No money, no kudos (ha!), no validation of a 'hobby'. It wouldn't happen in any other industry

I agree running. It's also clear that these people are not used to discussing anything else. They're just caught up in an echo chamber where they are fed and promote what they think is evidence and argument but they can't or won't think critically. They think repetition of buzzwords and demanding everyone read or listen to stuff they can't even summarise or validate is debate.

The latest few posts on the project really don't show the men involved in a good light, or even capable of showing basic human decency.

But hey, it's all fine, the women want to be there, heavily pregnant, in pain, unhappy or whatever, because wino says they love it.

How tedious.

I saw the one about the pregnant woman earlier today . Heart-breaking.

When the red
When it surfaced in this thread it seemed to me that ?the invisible man project? might have an agenda namely to paint punters as misogynists (and that that agenda was shared by those introducing it on Mumsnet-it is not an uncommon claim amongst feminists-especially radfems) and was maybe being selective in the posts it was showing.

I thought this might be the case as I was aware of a number of academic studies (cited in my posts on this thread (Tue 20-Aug-13 16:49:22, Fri 23-Aug-13 19:21:22) that had used punternet and equivalent US sites as sources for the views of men who buy sex-and had selected representative posts at random and come to different conclusion (namely that the majority of men who buy sex were no different in demography or attitudes from those in the general population-they are a heterogeneous bunch). Indeed the project is headlined ?The punter Let?s talk about his choices?. Not SOME punters or A FEW punters but punters-implying that all punters were similar.

I have myself have just gone through the last fifty posts on PN-and can?t see the type of views highlighted in the project reproduced in that sample, which suggests that the project must have worked hard to come up with the samples they did-again suggesting an agenda.

Now you argue (WhentheRed Fri 23-Aug-13 19:45:02) that the very existence of punternet and other review sites (whether the reviews were respectful or misogynist) show a terrible attitude- that?s a matter of opinion, my own view is that these are hobbyists talking and may not be representative of men who by sex (or men) generally. In her comment on this very thread Minxylydia a West London Escort (link given by lifeandstyule Sun 16-Jun-13 13:15:08) points out (as I have done that the posts are selective and edited) and that there are many posts that are complementary to the prostitute and that if a service is advertised as one thing then maybe if the woman has misrepresented herself perhaps others should know, equally if she provides a good service that too should be acknowledged.

Now you are entitled to your views-what you are not entitled to do is distort the facts ?what the invisible man project is trying to do is present a distorted view of those who purchase sex. Now this is generally acknowledged to be an under researched area-but what research that has been done and produced in the peer-reviewed literature presents a rather different view than the invisible man project

I am glad you (unlike flora) are prepared to at least make a tiny start at looking at some of the evidence I produce. It?s a pity you did not get further in ProfScambler?s lecture. (incidentally not as you describe him as ?man sharing stories about "girls" he has interviewed? but a Prof of sociology who has published several papers and articles based on researching the sex industry). I linked to the video as he summarizes in an accessible way what is known from many academic studies about the sex industry in the UK-and shows it is unlike the media and Mumsnet stereotype (these academic papers are often behind journal subscription barriers-and yes I have read them and understand them-but since you all seem averse to reading I thought maybe a visual summary might help).I urge other Mumsnetters who might have more open minds to look at it.

But again whenthered you cannot resist the opportunity to distort the content of the video. He does deal a little with the clients (at 18:30-saying that clients are heterogeneous and you cannot generalize about them) and quite a bit about agency (4:02,5:14,21:50 24:06,35:30, 38:20)-the evidence shows that many prostitutes freely choose sex work and are not coerced.(and a large number of surveys some of which I cited in earlier posts show this) Which debunks your line (your post Wed 08-May-13 01:17:41) that there is no consent or agency in prostitution-the evidence says otherwise

Those of the ilk of Mackinnon (introduced by Beachcomber( Fri 02-Aug-13 11:16:23) think that under the patriarchy a woman cannot consent to be a prostitute and leads on to the view promulgated by many radfems that prostitution is rape that is paid for. I agree with the comments of minnehaha who put it more succinctly (posts of Fri 02-Aug-13 22:20:53 ) but I pointed out that there are other views from other feminists (my post Tue 20-Aug-13 15:19:48) citing from an article by Barbara Sullivan (lecturer in Political Science University of Queensland (an internationally acknowledged researcher on prostitution and trafficking-according to the Queensland University website) who has written extensively on consent and rape in the context of prostitution (see www.polsis.uq.edu.au/sullivan)-the article I cite critiques the view put forward by Mackinnon-saying that prostitutes can consent and that those who have experienced actual rape know that sex in prostitution is experientially different. I could have used the comments of minnehaha who out it more succinctly (posts of Fri 02-Aug-13 22:20:53 )That post prompted the usual kneejerk from flora..leading to the derail..

And When-I would never ever insult you or anyone else in the terms you suggest