privilege and prostitution

[ezinma]

Appearing in my social media today is one of those sharp and sassy thoughts for the day that I’m invited to approve by sharing. Where better to share it than here:

So, you are against prostitution. But you're an attractive person with a boyfriend. Who I assume you have sex with. That gives you privilege. Some people aren't so lucky. The only way they can get laid is by paying for it. Why do you think you have the right to experience one of life's fundamental experiences and others don't?

It’s from tumblr so we ought to make some allowances. Let’s, if we may, overlook the fact that I am a middle-aged frump with a civil partner; the debatable contention that sex, in and of itself, is one of life’s fundamental experiences; the erasure of women who aren’t “lucky” enough to have a boyfriend and whose right to A Fundamental Experience presumably requires them to seduce a partner using skills that cannot be withdrawn from a bank machine; and the regrettable (though now unavoidable) misuse of ‘privilege’ to refer to any old scenario where one group of people has a little bit more access to something than another group does. (Have I missed anything?)

What remains is the daring suggestion that a woman might be against prostitution because she is attractive. Since it's already well established that we fat old frumps are against prostitution — no glamorous john would waste his beer money on buying our flabby arses, and we are bitter about it! — then I’m left with only one conclusion: a woman’s attractiveness has no influence on her opinions about prostitution.

A lightbulb moment for me. Thanks, tumblr.

No, I've listened to prostitutes who favour decriminalisation or legalisation. I've thought about what they have to say, particularly about harm reduction. I've read studies that favour decriminalisation or legalisation and thought about how that might impact my views, especially on harm reduction. I've read legal analysis of rights and thought about how that might impact my views.

I've come to a view that legalising and decriminalisation does not reduce harm to acceptable levels and that laws should be crafted that protect the vulnerable even if that impinges on the "rights" of some people who are not vulnerable. I put rights in quotation marks because I don't believe there is a right to buy or sell sex in either a legal or philosophical sense. This approach is consistent with most laws which impact on some people for the benefit of others. I also believe prostitution is part of male domination in society in placing women as sex class objects for the gratification of men.

So no, I don't only listen to people who say what I want to hear. It's only punters that do it. The reason is that you need to close your mind to the reality of what you are doing so that you can look at yourself in the mirror.

Did you ever watch Five Daughters, gilo?

Oooh - gilo's talking about what's 'representative' now Where's Buffy when you need her??

How would he know what's representative? He's already admitted he only listens to pro-punter prostitutes.

Did you see what I did there? I did exactly what you lot always do- dismiss a prostitute as "not representative" if she doesn't say what you want to hear.

btw I haven't admitted anything.

Do you know better about prostitution than prostitutes do?

I doubt that anyone with highish status and a financial stake in any industry is in favour of criminalising its customers or abolishing it altogether. People who work for tobacco firms may not have the most objective viewpoint on the dangers of smoking, nor would I expect them to hold a favourable opinion of anti-cigarette organisations.

Why could it be that out of these possible conflicts:

— public health campaigners vs the industry
— the industry vs its own workers
— campaigners vs workers

the focus is so often on number three, the nasty "moralising" do-gooders trying to put decent hardworking etc people out of a job?

Do you understand why prostitutes do not want to be "rescued" by do-gooders?

I don't really want to rescue prostitutes who want to be there. But I do want prostitutes who don't want to prostitutes to be rescued. And I don't want a legitimised market for women's bodies to be enshrined in law - for the sake of me and my daughter, and all women as a class. Because where traffickers see a market for selling and profiting from women's body - they will.

"I do want prostitutes who don't want to prostitutes to be rescued"

And how many are there? Why can't we find them despite all these raids?

Do you understand that prostitutes don't actually like you? They don't respect you and they don't want to have sex with you.

Gilo - are you familiar with the Rochdale cases? Or the Oxford cases?

Or our "bumsnet," as you call us, guest blog?

Many women in abusive relationships defend their partners actions and support them. It doesn't mean the abuser is in the right!
So many prostitutes defend pimps and punters it doesn't mean being a pimp or punter is right.

How about this? Or these?

Or how about this from the Telegraph? Telegraph got a feminist axe to grind now, has it?

Oh good, the punter is still here. Still trying to have the same circular argument. Still not listening, still producing spurious 'facts'. Totally unable to stretch his tiny punter mind to class analyses.

Anyway.

Back to the actual thread.

Prostitution and privilege. Discuss.

Of course, that's just the women and children who are, by definition, trafficked.

It doesn't include the women who may argue that they are there by choice - but dig a little deeper, and you find out that sum total of their 'choice' in the matter was being desperate and in debt - until a "friend" comes along and offers them a miraculous way of getting themselves out of debt (whilst generously taking a 40% cut for himself)...

I can't remember if this particular punter said that that person was lying or wasn't trafficked, despite her entrance into prostitution meeting his previously stated yardstick for having been trafficked. They all kind of merge into one sickening blob after a while.

It was probably him under a previous name, capt.

He'll argue next that Rochdale and Oxford weren't trafficking - despite the perpetrators being convicted of.... sex trafficking.

Did you see what I did there? I did exactly what you lot always do- dismiss a prostitute as "not representative" if she doesn't say what you want to hear.

Good lord. How is it possible to have so little self-awareness?

It seems this thread does not want to be "rescued" either, Captain.

Ah well! Threads evolve, and when the more erudite women share their knowledge it's always a pleasure to read. I just have no time for puntertrolls and there seems to be a depressingly large number of them at the moment.

ezina on the point about privilege, it's more of the same double speak that's typical of the punter lobby. Women hate prostitution because they are ugly or they are beautiful or because they hate sex or think it's a spiritual experience. Prostitution is just a job or access to prostitutes is a human need. Prostitution is not harmful or prostitution is harmful and it needs to be legal to be safer. Women are at risk of harm from punters or let's increase access for punters to women.

They don't have a coherent theory about prostitution. They're just monkeys banging on keyboards until one of them randomly bangs out something resembling an argument then they all pounce on it and gibber on about it.

That's so very true. (To both.)

Sometimes the more incoherent an argument is, the harder it is to make it go away.

There's a comment from a man on the original link:

So ugly, creepy men’s desire for sex outweighs the sexual exploitation of women?

Because not all men are creepy punter-types. Why doesn't the man who posted ^ that invade here? Better things to do probably