Sex: My British Job. Channel 4

[YouMakeMeWannaLaLa]

Anybody see this? It was just horrific. I really, really hope it reached the right audience: punters and their defenders. I doubt it, but I hope so

others say things like well they had been giving it away for free why not charge for it
I heard that a few times - from survivors of childhood sexual abuse and rape How callous to include that as a good reason.

So the sex industry pay shills Grennie? I'm not surprised...

Couldn't find a pimp-lobby c&p answer to Buffy's question wino? It's amazing how short and ahem to the point your answers are when they are the product of your own "thinking".

An all new low, intellectually, though. It may surprise you to know that gravity is not studied by pro-gravity lobbyists selecting study participants and asking them how gravity affects them.

I suppose if you view women in prostitution as interchangeable fuck units, it must be difficult to get your head around the problems with your "evidence".

Quite honestly I don't give a 4X for academic studies or statistics - I make my view from what I've experienced (and that does NOT exclude the women depicted in the programme).
Criminalise the punter and what will happen? The one thing it will not do is deter those who cause the most damage. Make it illegal and all you will do is dry up the income source from those very 'naice' men all us happy hookers entertain. It will NOT restrain those who do not give a 4X about the laws of our land.......whether those laws relate to prostitution, rape, GBH, theft or any other crime you care to name.

Ok minnie and Wino , you do acknowledge there are some women suffering in the industry...what would you do to help them but leave the happy hookers be?

Another couple of points; on the same basis as "punters are criminalised", so are street-working prostitutes, under our current laws. This leaves the most vulnerable women unprotected, and unable to protect themselves. (Compare 7 dead women in Glasgow, a "zero tolerance" zone, with no dead women in Edinburgh, when it experimented with RLD and licensed brothels)

And yes, brothel-working is by far the safest way to perform sexwork, as agreed by the UN, which advocates decriminalisation. Most punters are naice men but if you get one who isn't, it's A Good Thing to have Other People around, y'know?

When you look at the WA stats that say 2 women (you know, Real Women, not whores) a week are murdered by their supposed loved-one, whoring looks positively safe.

Grennie
This is a bit late but let’s deal with your posts (07-Oct-13 06:59:02) where you post the so called “facts” about prostitution (copy and pasted uncritically from a prohibitionist website).

Did you get around to looking at the Weitzer articles? No? Well he shows that those of the abolitionist/prohibitionist bent misuse information about prostitution to bolster their case. What they do is take the worst example from street prostitution and generalize toall prostitution. Street prostitutes (who are a minority of prostitutes (10-20% on most reckonings-most prostitutes work indoors) and are especially disadvantaged and vulnerable.

It is simply dishonest to take their experience and project it on to prostitution as a whole-as that suits the prohibitionist purpose.

Lets deal with some of your “facts”-that on rape I dealt with that briefly on the “invisible man thread-post of 21 Aug20:05:17 which shows how “Home office 2004b” is an inadequate citation

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 This “fact” appears to have been lifted from (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 (43% & 36% both small sample sizes) 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.” In that study 22% of street workers had been raped, 2% of indoor workers.

Conclusion: Thus the worst case is taken from street prostitution and generalized to all prostitution. It is simply a lie that “half the women in prostitution had been raped”

Lets take another of your “facts”. You say Up to 95% of women in prostitution are problematic drug users, including around 78% heroin users and rising numbers of crack cocaine addicts (Home Office 2004a).
The “Demand change” website (www.demandchange.org.uk/index.php/fact) says up to 95% of women in street prostitution are problematic drug users, “Object” says “Up to 95% of women in prostitution are problematic drug users”( Note the absence of the qualification of “street prostitution” and “in some areas”.)

What is the source for the claim?
The “Object” website (www.object.org.uk/index.php/the-prostitution-facts) cites Home Office 2004a –obviously a cut and paste statistic source which it fails to reference any more fully. The data may come from Home office (2004) Solutions and Strategies: Drug Problems and Street Sex Markets (that is the source referenced by “Demand change”) which presents a summary Table 3.4.1 of a number of sources-again they pick the worst example of several and present it as typical.

Conclusion: so yet again the worst case from street prostitution is taken and generalized to all prostitution.

So can you see now what is wrong with those facts? I could continue down your list if you want showing all the facts are wrong-but that’s enough for now

Whenthered

So, the key requirement of sex in prostitution is the gratification of the buyer. The gratification of the seller is excluded

is that not true of many commercial transactions? I am sure that I get more gratification in a restaurant than those who serve and prepare the food do in performing those tasks. What they get is the gratification of being paid for it. Is that not the exchange in prostitution?

YoniTime post Wed 09-Oct-13 15:48:12

the "giving it away" is a direct quote from a sexworker-not my quote

And the idea that the international pimp/punter multinational conspiracy pays for anit-prohibitionists to post is ludicrous. I do it to expose prohibitionist lies and distortions-as I said on the IM post I find it interesting there are so many cases (GM foods, vaccines, evolution) where there are passionate arguments advanced but with a fundamental disregard to the scientific facts of the case.

A report in the British Medical Journal about client violence towards women in prostitution stated that of the 125 women in indoor prostitution contacted, 48% had experienced client violence. The types of violence experienced included: being slapped, punched, or kicked; robbery; attempted robbery; beaten; threatened with weapon; held against will; attempted rape; strangulation; kidnapped; attempted kidnap; forced to give client oral sex; vaginal rape and anal rape. [Violence by clients towards female prostitutes in different work settings: questionnaire survey, Stephanie Church et al in BMJ 2001;322:524-525 (3 March)]

It is a myth that indoor prostitution is safer. You selectively quote from studies to pretend that prostitution is somehow a safe "job" like any other.

And absolutely, the industry does pay shills. I have met some of them. And I am pretty sure you are one too.

wino you know fuck all about science or evidence. Your posts are a joke. We would be laughing at you but for the fact that your efforts to minimise the impact of rape, childhood and/or adult abuse, drug addiction, mental health problems, coercion and poverty on women ie people ie humans are disgusting. You are giving every impression of being a person with no humanity who is obsessed with statistics and who doesn't care if some fuck units suffer.

You are a fine specimen of the inhumanity of the pimp lobby. Have you noticed that no-one, not even the pro-prostitution posters on this site, are coming to your defence? Since you only post on this one topic, you won't realise that on MN, posters do generally come on to support someone under siege where they support their posts.

Carry on as you were. You are doing more here for the prohibitionist cause than you are for the pimps.

wino - These are real women being raped, abused and treated like pieces of meat. You may not give a shit about them, but I do. My guess is that the only contact you have had with prostituted women, is as a punter.

And no woman is "suited to prostitution". Being prostituted is not about being sexually adventurous. It is about being used and abused.

Shills like you are disgusting, truly disgusting.

I didn't know a lot about global laws and statistics regarding pridtitution but this tread, and the Invisible Man thread, has really educated me.

Posters like wino allow for a sounding board for many well informed and educated people to share their knowledge and interesting links to myself and other lurkers.

I now feel much more informed and able to confidently put across my views and the facts within casual debate. I'm also now a lot more likely to get involved in organised protest. Ta wino.

others say things like well they had been giving it away for free why not charge for it

I fail to see how this could be considered a reasonable and healthy statement by anyone. Does it not indicate a deeply damaged attitude towards sex and relationships already? And, as yoni states, is something often said by women and girls who have been sexually abused. It is no co-incidence that a disproportionate number of women who suffered sexual abuse as children end up in prostitution.

poor sexually starved men. women put up with loneliness & lack of sex without feeling the need to exploit anyone. But men, poor men, for them lack of sex is scientifically proven to be life-threatening - so what choice do they have, eh?

Cold winter post Thu 10-Oct-13 09:26:06

You give the citation for the Church BMJ article but have obviously not read it-or even seen it as you are misquoting it. If you go to the paper and look at the table on p525 what you are quoting are the categories of violence from a questionnaire-for each category no where did the majority experience that category of violence. That is not to say prostitution is not risky-and street prostitution especially so-or to excuse or condone or minimise such violence as occurs.

. If you look at the actual figures of the table you will see the table is split according to whether in was street or indoor workers. You will also see that for all categories of violence indoor working is safer.

If you look at the results section (starting p 524) the authors say ^The table shows that prostitutes working outdoors
were younger, involved in prostitution at an earlier age,
reported more illegal drug use, and experienced
significantly more violence from their clients than
those working indoors^

The indoor outdoor split is confirmed by countless other studies-so I am afraid you are simply WRONG when you say It is a myth that indoor prostitution is safer

I am not claiming that prostitution is a safe job-the question is how can it be made so?

You somehow find it hard to believe that someone who challenges the prohibitionist line is not being paid. Similar accusations are made against those who are in favour of GM, who believe vaccines are safe, who think creationists are a fraud-but interestingly they can never produce the evidence. Where is it? And where is my money?

Of course, el-wino could just be a punter wanting to justify his hobby, or someone that just supports the status quo: ie. who likes the structural and sexual inequality of women that supports prostitution as an apparent valid choice of career path for women