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/

[im22]

"I take it you disagree?"

No. I detest the phrase and the way it is used, and noticing you effectively utilized it in the complete reverse of it's normal usage, I thought I'd make a snarkey and immature comment highlighting your post. My apologies

[Beachcomber]

inwinoweritas why are you being so rude and patronising to Flora? Is it because she actually looked at one of the studies you keep referring to as evidence, and found it to be a bit crap?

You have done this several times now on this thread - who exactly do you think you are to talk to women this way?

I CBA anymore with you. Your points and posts are boring and your manner patronising, rude, antagonistic, entitled and tedious. And your studies not very good/irrelevant/not making the point you claim.

Waste of time.

[Beachcomber]

Oh dear flora-you do make a complete hash of your argument.

I tried to be helpful and group the reports by the points I was trying to make but obviously this went over your head.

I mean what sort of dick do you have to be to post the above?

[FloraFox]

wino

I have asked you for proof of one woman who chose prostitution through an exercise of free agency not negated by any of the factors I listed. You are citing survey A deals with factor X, survey B deals with factor Y etc. You cannot combine those surveys to conclude that any one person was unaffected by every factor. That is simply wishful thinking on your part.

Evidence and proof are complex topics. Many surveys are unrepresentative and/or biased. When a person comes to a particular topic that they are heavily invested in without a good understanding of the principles of evidence and proof and particularly when they try to use surveys as proof without a good understanding of statistics and how surveys and statistics can be problematic, it is common to grasp at interpretations which support their viewpoint.

What you have provided, by your own statements, is proof in each case that there are some women in prostitution whose agency is impaired by the factors covered in each paper. You admitted upthread that the New Zealand survey evidences an unacceptable level of rape suffered by women in prostitution despite prostitution being legal in that country. So I ask you again, what is the acceptable number of women who are in prostitution as a result of abuse (past or present), coercion, addiction, mental health or poverty that will allow you to excuse the behaviour of the men who take advantage of their desperation to fuck them?

And what do you think of those men?

[inwinoweritas]

Chaos
Can you explain how that is a copy and paste? I think you are confusing that with "rather long"-or is this another example of radfem humpty dumpty new speak?

[CaptChaos]

Oh wow, a not copied and pasted one. Formatting is still a bit rubbish.

Still no answer to the question posed by the IMP though, so no surprises there.

Just BTW, I'm not a rad fem, try again.

[Beachcomber]

I think he is just hoping that we won't actually follow links and read studies.

Like this one for example www.vawpreventionscotland.org.uk/sites/default/files/Pimps%20and%20the%20Management%20of%20Sex%20Work%20%28full%20report%29.pdf

It doesn't show what he claims either which was What the evidence shows is contrary to the stereotype most prostitutes are not coerced or controlled by pimps or others (see for instance May T et al. For love or money

The above report doesn't show that AT ALL. It is a small police report interviewing 79 people including 36 prostituted women, their partners, their pimps and the parlour owners. It is a tiny study. It doesn't consider women who are in prostitution to fund their partner's drug habit to be pimped. It doesn't consider women who work for brothel owners to be pimped. It makes for grim reading with regards to the women's own habits (some have 500 quid a week class A drug habits), cites the average age of the women's first sexual encounter to be 10 years of age (i.e. sexually abused as children), cites how difficult it is for the police to convict pimps because women are too afraid to testify, etc, etc.

It is a report conducted by police researchers to address how to effectively police pimping. It is not designed to study levels of pimping and states that although they found 'Far from all sex workers are ‘run’ by pimps' they also say that 'Many are self-managed, often supporting partners. Whilst partners are in breach of the law on pimping, they are less likely than pimps to deploy instrumental or coercive violence.' (the partners generally had heavy class A drug habits)

They also state the following regarding the pimps they interviewed; Two-thirds will be in possession of illegal firearms. Three-quarters will be dealing in drugs. Two-thirds will have committed at least one robbery. Two-thirds will have committed ABH, and half will have committed GBH

It seems that all the women have someone taking money from them - either a pimp, a partner (who may well be a pimp too), a madam/parlour owner and or a drug dealer. None were completely independent.

They say; The changing nature of pimping. The biggest change to the organisation of sex work over the last twenty-five years is probably the growth of dependent drug use. American studies suggest that the fortunes of the “dealer/pimp” have waxed as those of the traditional coercive pimp waned. In a sense drug dependence has tended to replace physical coercion as the process by which people are locked into sex work. O’Connell Davidson (1998) also comments that pimps will keep women involved in sex work through non-violent means such as supplying drugs. Inciardi and his colleagues (1993) described how the ready availability of crack in American cities led pimps to diversify into drug dealing, maximising their incomes from two illicit markets simultaneously. Similarly Miller (1995) argued that despite the perceived decline in traditional pimping, women on the street had not acquired any greater autonomy. Rather their exploitation continued, as a result of their reliance on a largely male-dominated drug scene. In effect the end result had hardly changed, with street sex workers continuing to hand over the majority of their earnings to men who exercised financial and sexual control over them.

So much for all the the hand wringing from wino with his 'what about the evidence laydeez'

It is just cherry picking nonsense with an assumption that our critical thinking skills are no better than his or those of the people who are feeding him his 'evidence'.

And he still hasn't clearly stated an opinion on the actions of the men .

[Beachcomber]

And this report which he claims says "p168 table 8.1 only a small fraction were coerced by another into prostitution (4% overall, the figure for street prostitutes was 26%-but remember Denmark has a large number of street prostitutes who are non-Danish). "

Well it may well say that - I can't check though because it is in Danish.

Wino have you actually read that 390 page report in Danish ? I'm guessing you must have because you are citing it here as evidence whilst patronising us and mansplaining.

Can you translate this for me, I'd like to know what it means - 'I denne rapport præsenterer vi resultaterne fra SFI’s kortlægning af prostitution i Danmark. Kort lægningen har haft til hensigt at opgøre omfanget af prostitution i Danmark og skabe viden om prostitutionsområdet, herunder afdække prostitutionens organisering samt de prostitueredes levevilkår.'

What a fucking joke.

[inwinoweritas]

humpty Beach
roughly translated 'In this report we present the results from the SFI survey of prostitution in Denmark. The research has sought to quantify the extent of prostitution in Denmark and generate knowledge about prostitution, including uncovering prostitution organization and the prostitutes' living conditions

Yes I have fully translated it-if you want a full translation you will have to PM me

[Beachcomber]

Why are you calling me names?

I don't PM male posters on MN.

Actually I was able to translate the above danish text for myself - I put it into Google translate and got exactly the same translation as you.

Are you going to address what I posted about your pimp/police report saying as it is actually in English?

[Beachcomber]

Excuse me - not exactly the same. I have put it into a few translators and they give slightly different results for this section 'The research has sought'.

[inwinoweritas]

Well Humpty-Beach glad to see you are starting to look at the evidence I produce but you can’t help but misrepresent it.

I cited several studies as I wanted to get a large geographic spread to show that what goes in one legislature goes for another. I mostly cite for material that is freely available so you can see for yourself-but I can cite a ton more stuff-both reely available and either in articles that are behind subscription barriers or from books (which are not generally available on line)

Taking the Police report-just one of the myriad of reports I could have cited from the UK says in the forward This study found that only a minority of sex workers are ‘run’ by pimps and the report is mainly on Street workers-especially those who are drug addicted. Some of those have boyfriends who while being supported in their drug use by the women are not classic pimps of mythology.
.
The Danish and Australian report (and this is only one of several Australian reports I can cite form-in Australia there is a lot of information as three states have legalized prostitution Queensland, Victoria, Australian Capital territory-and one has decriminalized NSW-all have done extensive reports on prostitution-as has Western Australia (where parliament voted to decriminalized-but that was scuppered by a change of government) All those reports show that pimping and coercion is virtually non-existent in the indoor market and rare on the street.

The report of the SFI in Denmark is in Danish I am afraid but I pointed you to some of the tables-I mention the data but you can check it by using Google translate (or PM me for a translation I did for the full text). The Danish report is useful as it is quite a large survey ( a high proportion of the prostitutes in Denmark were questioned-and they did a pretty good census-and used purposive sampling method (which is not as characterised in the post of When (Thu 22-Aug-13 15:22:04)-since they had a pretty accurate census they can accurately define and weight the categories so they can produce results for each sector-but also come to an overall figure which is close to that would be obtained by a random sample)

And flora. For some reason you cannot accept that there can be any women who are sufficiently at ease with sex that they can-in the absence of any sort of coercion be a prostitute. Well there are number of escorts and ex-escorts on Mumsnet who say that was true for them. I also cite three other cases in my post of (Tue 20-Aug-13 15:58:04)-and other qualitative evidence produced by (for instance) Belinda Brooks Gordon or Teela Sanders-which also says the same. The quantitative surveys I cite confirm this.

And a small lesson in statistics-you say You are citing survey A deals with factor X, survey B deals with factor Y etc. You cannot combine those surveys to conclude that any one person was unaffected by every factor. That is simply wishful thinking on your part. But lets take the Danish example which deals with almost the examples of possible coercion you mention and shows that for the vast majority of indoor prostitutes do no suffer from any of these.

Yes one can show that there are individuals who do not have any of these characters. Let’s assume the worst case example where the types of coercion are independent variables (this is unlikely as in fact those who are disadvantaged will likely be subject to several negative factors). Since the individual coercions you suggest are so rare in indoor workers you can show that the chances of a woman suffering from any one of these is slight. Since the coercions are likely to be linked –the chances that there are women who suffer from none of these is still larger)

[Beachcomber]

Stop calling me names.

[SabrinaMulhollandJjones]

Why do you continue to bang on about reports with a questionable bias, inwino?

Once posters like Flora and Beach have identified a bias in the reports you link to -that they are researched/funded by pro-sex-industry activists- you can hardly expect us to take them as objective.

Once this has been pointed out to you, you resort to personal attacks and name-calling

[FloraFox]

wino

Only an absolute fucking moron would think that anonymous posters on mumsnet are evidence of anything. However I'm not surprised you think that given your track record. The only evidence that you have successfully presented on this thread is evidence that:

• you don't understand the concept of evidence and statistical evidence in particular
• you can't synthesise and present arguments from reading material
• you can't formulate and present your own analysis
• you can't format your post
• you misunderstand or misreprent the studies you cite
• you ignore or disregard some horrific accounts and statistics from the studies you present
• you show no humanity or compassion for the women as people except to defend the punter's wet dream of their right to be paid to be fuck dolls by repulsive creeps whose main concern is that she hides her disgust for him from him
• you are bizarrely invested in spending time on something you are shit at (research) for someone who can't possibly be paid to do it (as you are shit at it)
• you can't or won't answer questions you are asked about the actual topic of the thread.

[inwinoweritas]

Sabrina

Once posters like Flora and Beach have identified a bias in the reports you link to -that they are researched/funded by pro-sex-industry activists- you can hardly expect us to take them as objective.

so the SFi (Denmark-the Danish social Research council))
Economic and Social Research Council (UK-funded Mai and Church studies)
The Police (UK)
Medical Research council of Australia (Australia)

are all pro-sex-industry activists-well news to me

[inwinoweritas]

Flora
Why cannot accept that there are some women who are sufficiently at ease with sex that they can-in the absence of any sort of coercion be a prostitute? Or must all prostitutes by definition be coerced-by pimps, poverty, drugs and the rest?

[Beachcomber]

so wino are you accepting that the police/pimp report does not show what you claims it does?

if anything it actually does the opposite. it clearly showed that the majority of the women had drug issues, histories of child sexual abuse and were under the control of men (pimps, partners and or drug dealers).

[FloraFox]

Beach in the University of Wino's Mind, he is the Dean of Wino-Logic.

[FloraFox]

wino if such a person exists (which you have not proved), I believe her right to exercise her perfect agency does not justify making available women who have not exercised agency to be fucked by men.

What do you think of the men?

[Beachcomber]

It would appear so. And he's here to set the laydeez right with his evidence .

Shame there is no actual analysis (or possibly even actual reading of the whole studies as opposed to quoting one sentence out of context).

It is the lack of empathy which is creepy. The police/pimp report makes for fucking grim reading and yet it is being used by wino to paint prostitution as being about women who just love sex so much they do it with strangers under no coercion whatsoever no sirree.

It is pathetic. And sick. I mean to use a report like that which talks about heavy class A drug use, addicted cocklodging partners, violent gun toting pimps, childhood sexual abuse and entering prostitution as minors, as an argument for prostitution. And if only the prudish feminists would get with the programme they would see that.

Utterly foul.

(As was the study which seemed to be saying that it was hard to discern if it was childhood sexual abuse in and of itself which led to girls entering prostitution or if it was the fact that they became homeless in an effort to escape the abuse which was the primary factor. What sort of moron/sicko do you have to be to think that shows prostitution in a good light?)

[FloraFox]

Beach the Mai report had accounts of women who were co-erced and who described how they had to pretend to punters that they were happy because otherwise men would not buy sex from them (reason 1) and because the pimps would send friends in to make sure they were doing this (reason 2). It had accounts of women coming for war zones whose family members had been killed and their lives ruined. It also had accounts of women believing their pimps were in love with them although they were beat up. Women talked about not being able to leave their abusive partners in their home countries so using prostitution to escape to another country. Despite all that, the author concludes that the main danger to women in prostitution comes from stigma. It's fucking sick.