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

As noted above, Farley's "research" is motivated by her own previous bigotry preconceived ideas, and is largely self-funded. Did anyone see the piece in the Sunday Times the other week, about how something like 65% of female doctors (GP and hospital) have been subjected to sexual assault by patients? What are the figures for office workers, retail workers, with colleagues? Xmas parties, anyone?

It doesn't. Why conflate them?

So Melissa Farley, who apparently pays for her own research, is a bigot promoting falsehoods but pro-prostitution lobbyists funding and researching studies are delivering valuable "evidence". Riiiiiiight.

Colours shown, again.

When
The point I have been making in this most recent part of the exchange is that the abolitionist /prohibitionist propaganda is to put it mildly is trying to create a misleading impression-by failing to qualify their so called facts.

A useful summary of the common “facts” cited by prohibitionists (and which is copied and recycled between their websites and recited without bothering to go back to the source to see what the real evidence says is given in Grennie’s post (Mon 07-Oct-13 06:59:02). The qualification is that the so called “facts” are derived from work on street prostitutes and cannot be generalized to prostitutes (that is all prostitutes). The reason is that street prostitutes are a particularly disadvantaged subset whose experience is not representative of all prostitutes. I don’t think I could make myself much clearer.

Now this is not to say that I don’t care about street prostitutes or I think they are to use your words “pesky, not statistically representative street prostitutes” and their problems should be ignored-far from it. What gets me is the way that prohibitionists typically take the worst case examples from street prostitution and present them as typical. This is fundamentally dishonest and I am surprised you cannot see that.

And Sabrina (Thu 17-Oct-13 18:32:54) Farley is not a “fecking nightmare”; she fails to qualify her assertions (as Justice Susan Himmel noted about Farley’s evidence in her judgement in Bedford v Canada cited in my post up thread (Thu 17-Oct-13 17:32:21). I am aware she interviews lots of people-so do the other researchers that I cite. But those researchers say that their results come from the population they are studying-Farley does not-she says her findings from particularly marginal populations apply to all.

I have shown upthread how some of the claims produced by Grennie (that on rape and drug use) are dishonest-generalizing from the worst cases of street prostitution and applying it to all (my post Thu 10-Oct-13 08:39:10) and yesterday I dealt with the PTSD claim-again showing that the data from particularly marginalized prostitutes were generalized to all.

Oh and When
the Roxborough paper you mention is indeed grim-but why did you omit the title? Was it because the work was on Street prostitutes?

And the Rossler paper (on Zurich) needs to be read in full-as I said it deals with different locations and style of working and found that PTSD depended on which sector the prostitute was working-some had high levles some none-which is what I have been saying all along-it depends crucially on the sector.

The point is you cannot pick the "worst" sector and generalize to all

Flora
Where have I cited a "pro-prostitution lobbyist"? You judge a report prepared for the NZ paliament because it uses Community participatory research -and part of that community is a prostitutes organization-which is used to gain access to prostitutes and encourage their participation? This colours the research you think? Show me where please

Funny how that research triangulates with the Danish research where only social scientists were used to do the survey.

wino - let's set aside whether street prostitution is the 'worst sector' or representative or not for a moment - lets say prostitution is made up of some Belle de jours, some drug addicts, some victims of childhood abuse, some who are "happy" to go with the unwanted sex just to get the money because no other option is available to them, and some trafficked women. Not an exhaustive list, I'm sure. But even you have admitted that there is a sector of prostitution that is 'worse.'

How do you think legalisation will help those women in the 'worse' sector? Or even in the 'ok sector'? It won't stop a punter raping them, it won't stop violence by punters towards them, or a punter trying to coerce them into not using a condom and risking their health. Because these things are done by the punter. The punter who is there to buy sexual power over a woman.

Legalisation will do one thing for sure - and that is to make it more socially acceptable in society to visit prostitutes. Prostitution is a demand-led industry - more demand means more opportunity for unscrupulous profiteers, which in turn means more trafficking.

wino we've been through all this before. Please reread the IM thread if you can't remember.

The colours shown are yours. In addition to your casual disregard for any figures showing desperate women suffering in desperate circumstances, you simply disregard any study you don't like and overlook the flaws in any study you like. This is why I have continually said you don't understand how to evaluate evidence.

Buffy and Sabrina
No I am not dismissing the experience of the worst sector-there are some (especially in street prostitution) who have vile experiences. And I don’t consider this as collateral damage of prostitution, there has to be a way of eliminating as far as possible their bad experiences. One is to make it as safe as possible-the other (as alluded to by Sabrina) is to do something about those men who attack or rape prostitutes.

As far as safety goes when legalization was first suggested (nearly 30 years ago in Victoria Australia) there was a report by a prominent academic lawyer Marcia Neave Neave biog now on the Australian Supreme Court which recommended legalizing of prostitution and at the same time legalizing street work in managed zones Neave report on street prostitution. The government partly followed her advice on legalization but a media backlash prevented the introduction of tolerance zones for street prostitution here and completely against her advice introduced stiffer penalties for both street prostitution and kerb crawling –the legislation was therefore botched extract here.

Since then Report after report has shown that ever stiffer and stiffer penalties was not working and recommending tolerance zones (see for instance the report on Port Phillips the area of Melbourne that includes St Kilda here and here .

But again media pressure and local attitudes made the council too timid to implement anything.

Tolerance zones were introduced in certain areas of Sydney NSW, and included the provision of “one hour hotels” with a strict no drugs policy and security on hand however gentrification of the area around Kings Cross in Sydney led to their sale and closure.

The fact that prostitution is legalized or decriminalized means that prostitutes are no longer criminalized and so their relationships with the police have improved so they are more likely to report incidents; bad clients know this (previously they believed often rightly that they would not be reported)

It has to be pointed out that the vast majority of client prostitute interactions pass off without incident, however there are some bad clients who beat rape or rob prostitutes. What can be done about them?

Research on clients of prostitutes is difficult as they are even less visible that the prostitutes but what research has been done suggests that there is little that distinguishes clients from non-clients ( for a good summary of Research see Home Office Research Report 27 Tackling the demand for prostitution: a rapid evidence assessment of the published research literature here. The evidence shows that clients are not in general misogynists nor do they harbour rape fantasies or views of entitlement to womens’ bodies or are trying to exert sexual power over them or any other of the feminist stereotypes-and this is backed up by many contributors to Mumsnet who are or have been prostitutes).

From those bad clients who have been arrested it seems they often have records of criminality often including violence but some don’t. It is hard to see how those types of bad clients can be weeded out-just as it is hard to see how much of criminality can be weeded out. It is not even clear if poverty were eliminated and everyone had their perfect job if criminality would not still persist.

wino Buying the 'use' of a prostitute IS an act of misogyny and is an act of 'entitlement to womens' bodies'.

We are never going to agree, because no matter how safe you seem to think it is (and it's not), I just cannot agree with the principle of buying people for your sexual enjoyment.

And I will never have faith in any regulations or safe zones to protect sex workers. Ever.

Interesting you don't mention the tolerance zone in Vancouver, Canada. Robert Pickton murdered an unknown number of women he picked up in that zone, it is estimated at 49. He was on the bad date list.

Bad clients don't need to be weeded out if punters are criminalised and women are not. The punters are the source of the danger to women but women cannot be expected to identify which of them are dangerous and which are not.

In considering policy or law, there is a weighing up of benefit and harm. Where there is a substantial benefit to society, a degree of harm or risk of harm to some members of society might be acceptable. The less substantial the benefit to society is, the lesser amount of harm or risk of harm would be tolerated.

In the case of prostitution, the "benefit" put forward by pro-pimps is usually that happy hookers have a right to earn a living. They generally don't promote the right of men to access women's bodies for sex.

The harm, even on wino's statistics is rape, violence, murder, PTSD, mental health problems, abuse and addition which is actually happening (not just a risk) to actual women. The source of this harm is the punters and the pimps.

To me, this is a no-brainer. The "rights" of privileged happy hookers to make a living and the "rights" of men to access women are massively trumped by the real harm caused to real women. Even if I accept wino's statistics, the harm being suffered by real women in legalised environments is not being reduced to an adequate level.

The "benefit" of prostitution is illusory. Nothing will be lost by criminalising the punters and pimps and much may be gained.

The tobacco industry and their proponents have been producing low, mild, light etc. cigarettes for years in an attempt to make them less dangerous. But, there is no such thing as a safe cigarette (and not even a safer cigarette).

The 'make prostitution safer' proponents remind me of the tobacco industry, flailing around in an attempt to make something potentially inherently dangerous into something where the level of danger is acceptable. No can do.

wino - check out the UK news tonight.

Buffy- there is no similarity between selling an organ and selling sex . The woman is not selling her body as she still possess it once she has had sex , it's a silly analogy. She is selling a service

Youmakemewannay. Buying the services of a prostitute is an act of my mysogeny? That comes from the Andrea dworkin school of feminist lunacy

"she still possess it once she has had sex" Why is that significant? The reason organ selling is illegal is not because a person no longer possesses their organ after sale. Continuing to be in possession of the body or organ is not relevant to the legality or illegality.

Look up wino. This board is FWR. We think your posts are full of lunacy and don't consider it an insult to be compared with Andrea Dworkin.

ps learn how to spell misogyny if you want to sound smart when talking to feminists. You could even copy and paste it from lala's post - you know how to do that, don't you?