AmnestyInternational Prostitution

[JuliaScurr]

Please tweet #Amnesty agm in support of Nordic Model
Pimps out in force

[ThinkAboutItTomorrow]

Sorry - was slow to point so cross posted.

What is it about decriminalisation of sex work in the swedish model that leads to:

"having their income taken away, being made homeless, having their lives and families subject to rigid control by social services and/or NGOs and/or having their work made harder and more dangerous"

that would not be the case in decriminalisation across the board?

Just not sure i get how they differ?

[aformersexworker]

ThinkAboutItTomorrow

"As Buffy says, it's where this leads which is scary. What is the option to make it safe for women (or men) to sell sex and easy for them to stop when they choose to, whilst not making it ok for men to buy sex?"

Fully decriminalise, ask sex workers if there is anything you can do to help and listen to the answers before offering anything...

...and, most important of all EXPRESS your opinion in an environment where others are equally free to express their opinions of people buying sex.

Personally, I loath the one night stand culture and actively approve of any man who prefers to buy sex, but you are as entitled to your opinion as I am to mine. Neither of us is entitled to force others lives into compliance with our opinions.

You have no more right to force men to stop buying sex than I have to force you to sell it.

The Swedish Model was just another brick in a wall of totalitarian social control in Sweden. I shouldn't pay it any attention at all.

[ThinkAboutItTomorrow]

Neither of us is entitled to force others lives into compliance with our opinions.

but as a society we do this in virtually all aspects of life.

We put controls on the behaviour of individuals for the good of society as a whole. As an Amnesty member I am fairly obviously in the camp of keeping these controls to the absolute minimum but for me, men buying women's bodies is the wrong side of the line.

I believe that as a society we cannot say that it is ok to treat women and sex as a commodity to purchase. i believe that the record of violence in the sex trade and the revolting attitudes you find prevalent on sites such as punters net are the proof you need that this is a damaging thing for our society. It degrades 50% of the population. To legitimalise it through active promotion of decriminalisation cannot be a good thing.

[ThinkAboutItTomorrow]

er, legitimise, not sure what legimalising is.

[JuliaScurr]

just to broaden this out a bit - if prostitution is both cause and effect of the oppression of women, why do we only want the views of 'sex workers'?

[vesuvia]

Are the people on this thread who are against the Nordic model deliberately trying to imply that women in Sweden are never evicted from their home for reasons other than being a prostitute in a country that has adopted the Nordic model?

In 2013, 7000 people were evicted from their homes in the Netherlands, where the approach to prostitution is the opposite to Sweden's Nordic model.

[aformersexworker]

ThinkAboutItTomorrow

I believe it is up to individual people to decide how they feel about selling sex, not for others to decide for them.

If you feel there is something wrong with selling sex, do not sell it, and let others make their own decision based on their attitudes, experiences and circumstances.

Likewise it is up to individual people to decide how they feel about buying sex from anyone willing to sell sex to them, not for others to decide for them.

If you feel there is something wrong with buying sex, do not buy it, and let others make their own decision based on their attitudes, experiences and circumstances.

I also happen to believe that my (or anybody's) personal freedom of will, let alone survival is vastly more important than how other people with no parallel experience whatsoever feel about those choices.

[aformersexworker]

JuliaScurr
I really, seriously do not think sex work has any real connection to the oppression of women, except in that it provided some of the earliest opportunities to counter and reject that oppression.

I am also convinced that law should never be built on the premise of minding other people's personal business for them to suit ourselves.

If you do not like sex work, do not do it. If you do not approve of selling sex, do not sell it, if you do not approve of buying sex do not buy it.

...and leave other people to make their own decisions.

vesuvia
Not entirely sure what your point is but I very much doubt if anyone in Holland was evicted and made homeless to force them to engage with ideologically driven organisations that they do not approve of or agree with and pretend compliance with agenda they believe to be very wrong.

In the bigger picture I would have thought we need LESS ways innocent, honest people can be made homeless, not more...

[ThinkAboutItTomorrow]

I believe it is up to individual people to decide how they feel about selling sex, not for others to decide for them.

Absolutely agree

Likewise it is up to individual people to decide how they feel about buying sex from anyone willing to sell sex to them, not for others to decide for them.

This is where I think there is a social good to curbing individual freedom. Some appetites should not be fed as they inevitable seep into society and cause harm.

For me it is no more or less difficult than imposing a minimum wage. Just because you could find someone desperate enough to work for £3 an hour does not mean society should allow that transaction to happen.

I don't think anyone finds the minimum wage infantalising in the way sex workers seem to claim opposing the right to buy sex or profit from someone else selling sex is apparently 'infantalising' to the seller.

[aformersexworker]

ThinkAboutItTomorrow

I seriously think that if buying sex were going to "seep into society and cause harm" is has already accomplished that by now.

Unless people who are allowed to buy sex people who need to sell sex to survive will have no income to survive and live.

Nobody should have to die because you hold the opinion that buying sex might harm society.

I hold the opinion that trying to control other people's personal choices harms society but I would not go so far as to kill innocent third parties to make that point.

[aformersexworker]

ThinkAboutItTomorrow

PS I always find anybody trying to tell me how something affects me, and what I feel, and how I react and what I need infantilising...but never more so than when they genuinely have no idea what they are talking about.

[FloraFox]

There is no possible way to obtain a clear outcome on what is representative of the views of women in prostitution. There is no baseline for determining the makeup of the population of women in prostitution and therefore no way to get an accurate sample. There are very vocal women who claim to speak for women in prostitution and who claim to know what women in prostitution want. As was abundantly clear in the evidence given to the NI Justice Committee, in fact these women only speak for themselves and their own, often very narrow, perspective. Of course, they are perfectly entitled to speak for themselves. The media loves this type of woman and there is ample platform afforded to the voice of this experience, even one who might have shagged a few men for spare cash ten years ago.

Many voices are not heard because the women don't have access to blogs and twitter to tell everyone how empowerfulised they are. That's okay though because apparently more privileged women in prostitution are able to speak on their behalf and say that street prostitution (the most dangerous type possible) is more suited to them because of the lack of investment required. FFS!

[FloraFox]

aformer it's good that you bolded the me's and I's in your post as it highlights how your viewpoint is all about you.

[vesuvia]

aformersexworker wrote - "Unless people who (sic) are allowed to buy sex people who need to sell sex to survive will have no income to survive and live. Nobody should have to die because you hold the opinion that buying sex might harm society."

How many prostitutes have starved to death where the Nordic model has operated and where it is illegal to pay prostitutes?

[vesuvia]

and is that number of starved prostitutes in Nordic model countries larger than the number of prostitutes who have been murdered by pimps and punters in Germany and the Netherlands where prostitution has been legalised?

[aformersexworker]

FloraFox
"it's good that you bolded the me's and I's in your post as it highlights how your viewpoint is all about you"

Exactly, just as, your view point on how something affects you, how you feel, how you react to it and what you need should be all about you, and not actively imposed upon the lives of others of which you have no understanding.

"There is no possible way to obtain a clear outcome on what is representative of the views of women in prostitution. There is no baseline for determining the makeup of the population of women in prostitution and therefore no way to get an accurate sample."

Absolutely true, but I really do not think letting the most clueless, self serving agenda driven people you can dredge up make it up as they go along is likely to be the next best thing, do you?

Would you like your own personal life defined, decided and limited by people who hadn't got a clue about you and had a vested interest in shafting you?

Thought not...so why do you think sex workers should accept that?

The NI committee heard from two actual sex workers. One admits openly she was off her box on heroin all the time, the other I am happy to personally confirm, as an eyewitness was clean and sober.

Who do you think is the most reliable witness?

One sex worker is dependent on rescue orgs owned and controlled by the same religious orders that ran Magdalene Laundries for 7 years AFTER they got into the rescue industry, the other supports herself...who has the greatest vested interest?

You are right, the majority of sex workers have no voice, because of stigma, and more because the rescue industry intimidates them by cozying up to tabloid journalists who make a living out of exposing them and similar (Never see that? You should watch what you CAN see more closely).

In 40 years I have never met a sex worker who wanted her clients criminalised and the market her livelihood depends upon destroyed. The sex worker who gave evidence for the Nordic Model didn't want it destroyed until she didn't need it herself to buy heroin any more, most sex workers need that market to provide for their families.

I have never met a sex worker who wanted her work and life made even harder.

If sex workers wanted anything the rescue orgs have to offer they would probably not avoid them like the plague.

I have never met, or even heard of, a sex worker who was commercially coerced. The proof is that I can type this because I am not serving life for murder, and I am not the only sex worker who feels that strongly about commercial coercion.

Incidentally, I was almost always a street worker (I tried indoor work and could not cope with the interaction it required) and my motivation was always basic survival...and I think I may well be one of the noisiest.

A lot of sex workers do not admit to having worked the streets because sex workers are all perfectly normal people with perfectly normal attributes like bitchiness and snobbery and who needs it?

vesuvia

Suicide through financial desperation is becoming a common feature of British life these days. Even the records of incidence are now confabulated inside out let alone specific details

What do YOU think happens to people when they run out of the means to survive?

...and I do expect an actual, rational, answer to that question.

But, given your attitude I can see how you might feel there is no big deal in driving a few "prostituted women" to suicide. You may even feel they are better off dead...

But...

When you drive them to find other work instead they will be taking drastic wage cut as well as a job that could have gone to another desperate person who could not handle sex work...

Somewhere down the line some poor sod's life really gets driven off a cliff with no court of appeal.

But it will never be you, so why should you care about that?

[ThinkAboutItTomorrow]

I seriously think that if buying sex were going to "seep into society and cause harm" is has already accomplished that by now.

Yes it has done harm. And to legitimise this will only do FURTHER harm.

And let's face it, criminalising (or not decriminalising) the purchase of sex is unlikely to reduce demand significantly in the short term but fighting to decriminalise the purchase of sex is likely to have an immediate and reinforcing impact on the attitude of men who buy sex about this choice.

[FloraFox]

I really do not think letting the most clueless, self serving agenda driven people you can dredge up make it up as they go along is likely to be the next best thing, do you?

Do you mean the agenda driven by pimps to maximise profits from women in prositution? And by privileged self-proclaimed "happy hookers" with blogs?

Would you like your own personal life defined, decided and limited by people who hadn't got a clue about you and had a vested interest in shafting you?

Prostitution is a commercial activity. All of our commercial activities are definited, decided and limited by law as are many things affecting our personal lives. That is a consequence of living in a governed society rather than an anarchic society. Abolitionists and law-makers don't have a vested interest in shafting you unless you mean male law makers who may have a vested interest in fucking you.

The NI committee heard from two actual sex workers. One admits openly she was off her box on heroin all the time, the other I am happy to personally confirm, as an eyewitness was clean and sober.

Who do you think is the most reliable witness?

Talk about silencing the most vulnerable women. I watched both testimonies and Mia de Faoite's evidence was far more reliable. LauraLee's was self-contradictory to the point of meaninglessness. She originally claimed to be speaking on behalf of thousands of women in prostitution but later said she was only speaking for herself and her organisation had only 10 members.

One sex worker is dependent on rescue orgs owned and controlled by the same religious orders that ran Magdalene Laundries for 7 years AFTER they got into the rescue industry, the other supports herself...who has the greatest vested interest?

Clearly the woman still working in prostitution has the greatest vested interest in prostitution continuing. Many organisations have shameful periods in their past. That is not a reason to reject everything they do. Amnesty International is having its shameful moment now. That is more important.

You are right, the majority of sex workers have no voice, because of stigma, and more because the rescue industry intimidates them by cozying up to tabloid journalists who make a living out of exposing them and similar (Never see that? You should watch what you CAN see more closely).

Bullshit. The media is entranced by the narrative of the happy hooker.

In 40 years I have never met a sex worker who wanted her clients criminalised and the market her livelihood depends upon destroyed. The sex worker who gave evidence for the Nordic Model didn't want it destroyed until she didn't need it herself to buy heroin any more, most sex workers need that market to provide for their families.

As you said above, your experience is not representative of all women in prostitution. Even if it was, in a democratic society, we each have a right to voice our views and there are no areas of law where only those working in a particular commercial activity define the legality or regulation of that activity.

I have never met a sex worker who wanted her work and life made even harder.

If sex workers wanted anything the rescue orgs have to offer they would probably not avoid them like the plague.

I have never met, or even heard of, a sex worker who was commercially coerced. The proof is that I can type this because I am not serving life for murder, and I am not the only sex worker who feels that strongly about commercial coercion.

This is simply proof that your experience is limited.

[aformersexworker]

ThinkAboutItTomorrow

"And let's face it, criminalising (or not decriminalising) the purchase of sex is unlikely to reduce demand significantly in the short term but fighting to decriminalise the purchase of sex is likely to have an immediate and reinforcing impact on the attitude of men who buy sex about this choice."

BRILLIANT...this is a recession you know and sex workers will benefit enormously from a boost towards a sellers market. Their lives will be far easier and better paid.

Florafox


I really do not think letting the most clueless, self serving agenda driven people you can dredge up make it up as they go along is likely to be the next best thing, do you?

Do you mean the agenda driven by pimps to maximise profits from women in prositution? And by privileged self-proclaimed "happy hookers" with blogs?


No I mean agenda driven by ruthless, unscrupulous NGOs tapping into incredibly lucrative streams of abolitionist funding. Do you know there are companies, eg Allia who trade disadvantage on the open market as bonds opting to support abolitionism?


Would you like your own personal life defined, decided and limited by people who hadn't got a clue about you and had a vested interest in shafting you?

Prostitution is a commercial activity. All of our commercial activities are definited, decided and limited by law as are many things affecting our personal lives. That is a consequence of living in a governed society rather than an anarchic society. Abolitionists and law-makers don't have a vested interest in shafting you unless you mean male law makers who may have a vested interest in fucking you.


Career choices and what we do with our bodies are both personal decisions and absolutely nobody else's business.

Likewise whether a guy (lawmaker or otherwise) wishes to fuck me.


The NI committee heard from two actual sex workers. One admits openly she was off her box on heroin all the time, the other I am happy to personally confirm, as an eyewitness was clean and sober.

Who do you think is the most reliable witness?

Talk about silencing the most vulnerable women. I watched both testimonies and Mia de Faoite's evidence was far more reliable. LauraLee's was self-contradictory to the point of meaninglessness. She originally claimed to be speaking on behalf of thousands of women in prostitution but later said she was only speaking for herself and her organisation had only 10 members.


I real terms Laura Lee was most certainly also speaking for me and at least 50 real life, 3 dimensional mutual aquaintances, and I am not a member of the organisation to which she was affiliated (it isn't "hers" it is someone else's get that right)

If you found Mia's evidence more reliable you found it more reliable...but if I live 1000 years I will never be able to see why...except blindly because it fitted your personal pre-determined agenda.

Of course I was a sex worker so I probably know more about who was more representative than you do?


One sex worker is dependent on rescue orgs owned and controlled by the same religious orders that ran Magdalene Laundries for 7 years AFTER they got into the rescue industry, the other supports herself...who has the greatest vested interest?

Clearly the woman still working in prostitution has the greatest vested interest in prostitution continuing. Many organisations have shameful periods in their past. That is not a reason to reject everything they do. Amnesty International is having its shameful moment now. That is more important.


"Clearly the woman still working in prostitution has the greatest vested interest in prostitution continuing."

See? You agree with me really, full decriminalisation IS, of course, the best possible course for sex workers.


You are right, the majority of sex workers have no voice, because of stigma, and more because the rescue industry intimidates them by cozying up to tabloid journalists who make a living out of exposing them and similar (Never see that? You should watch what you CAN see more closely).

Bullshit. The media is entranced by the narrative of the happy hooker.


Try placing a piece some time. There is an unofficial media embargo at least in Ireland, on anyone who opposed abolition. I have had good journalists in utter despair over it.


In 40 years I have never met a sex worker who wanted her clients criminalised and the market her livelihood depends upon destroyed. The sex worker who gave evidence for the Nordic Model didn't want it destroyed until she didn't need it herself to buy heroin any more, most sex workers need that market to provide for their families.

As you said above, your experience is not representative of all women in prostitution. Even if it was, in a democratic society, we each have a right to voice our views and there are no areas of law where only those working in a particular commercial activity define the legality or regulation of that activity.


Ok so show me on single sex worker who is willing to swear, on oath that she who wants her clients criminalised and the market her livelihood depends upon destroyed. How hard can that be?


I have never met a sex worker who wanted her work and life made even harder.

If sex workers wanted anything the rescue orgs have to offer they would probably not avoid them like the plague.

I have never met, or even heard of, a sex worker who was commercially coerced. The proof is that I can type this because I am not serving life for murder, and I am not the only sex worker who feels that strongly about commercial coercion.

This is simply proof that your experience is limited.


But let us be real, my experience is still encyclopaedic compared to yours, isn't it?

[FloraFox]

I'm not going to respond point by point because your post is too difficult to read already.

I can see you don't know how charitable bonds work. This is a typical pimp lobby argument - try to associate something the abolitionists are doing with something else, completely unrelated, to discredit it. Charitable bonds sound like some dodgy bankers thing therefore they must be bad. Except... no. They are a fundraising tool like many others.

You are wrong about career choices being no-one's business. My career is highly regulated and certain actions I might take in my personal life would result in me being barred from continuing it. Many others are the same.

You are right that LauraLee's organisation is not hers. It is a pimp-run organisation.

As a woman in prostitution you know who is more representative of your experience. You do not know, and neither do statisticians (whose job is to determine what is representative of a given population) what is representative of the women in prostitution generally.

No I do not agree that decriminalisation is the best option for women in prostitution. I said the one woman giving evidence has a vested financial interested in prostitution continuing. Not the same thing.

If you can find me a woman in prostitution who has not suffered from sexual or other abuse in childhood or adulthood, who has not supported a pimp or a pimp posing as a friend or boyfriend, who does not have mental health issues nor uses drugs or alcohol to cope with prostitution, who has never suffered violence nor feared violence as part of her work, has not been sexually assaulted and who has had a genuine choice to enter prostitution or do something else, then we can talk.

I acknowledge the limits of my experience (not that you know anything about what it is) and I do not claim to speak for women in prostitution nor to be representative of them. Your experience is still limited to your experience though.

This is the falsity of the "listen to sex workers" argument. Even if that were the right way to go about making laws (which it is not and which happens in no other field of legislation), it's not possible to find a representative group of women in prostitution to listen to. That's why it's important to listen to all groups (and i have listed to the decrim / legalisation groups), think about the issues on a political level and form a judgement. That's how laws are made to govern the society we all live in.

[aformersexworker]

"Your posts are getting longer and more complicated because you're including lots of words that aren't yours."

I totally agree with you but the post that last responded to was set up so that answering it any other way would be open to endless spurious misinterpretation.

Let's see if I can make this more interesting for you to make up for it. :)

Firstly I am quite sure I use the terms "ideological" and "representative" correctly.

I have always believed women and mean are equal in worth and that social equality consists in equality of opportunity, and has nothing to do with what individuals do with that opportunity.

If a man has the legal right to sell sex, a woman must also have the legal right to sell sex.

If a woman has the legal right to buy sex a man must also have the legal right to buy sex.

Sex work is an area where woman have a natural advantage that cannot be legislated away. If their position becomes desperate a woman has the honest and honourable option of selling sex quite easily, and it will never be the same for a man however much he deserves it should be. This is different and deeply unfair but it cannot be addressed by legislation.

More young men commit suicide than women every year.

I have learned, the hard way, from personal experience how unscrupulous NGOs can be in general and was still reeling from the unexpectedly (even to me) negative results of some solid hard research when I got back into the sex work debate in 2011...and even then I had not idea how thing really were.

If you can show me just ONE NGO that is not rotten to the core you will not change my attitude but you will make me feel a lot more comfortable in my own life.

What I have seen is absolutely terrifying and I would not burden my worse enemy with knowledge of some of it unless I could see something they could do to stop it.

Perhaps I should point out that, because I am autistic, I never really feel able to take a stand on anything until I have checked, crosschecked and checked the facts again. Up to that point I am probably the most non-committal person alive on any topic.

I don't think I have actually claimed my voice is the most representative (PUH-leese, as an autistic in the top 2% of ability range who is also 6 ft tall is that even likely?) - but when I think about it it probably is...just because of the 40 years I have put into exploring the subject and trying to understand the facts and the people involved at all levels.

Also because I never tell myself I know something until I have experienced it or seen it with my own eyes.

As a result I do actually speak from firsthand knowledge from the perspective of those who do not have internet access and those who are not literate. I have worked in France and also have a trusted friend who speaks for many others who do not speak English...

...so I am, beyond doubt, far more genuinely representative than people who have never really spoken or listened to any sex workers and are, as a result, just guessing and/or making the whole thing up as they go along to validate their own attitudes and feelings.

Let alone those who make the whole thing up to support their personal ambitions and agenda.

[aformersexworker]

Florafox

I know far more about how charitable bonds work than you do and beyond that that how they can and are used to manipulate larger (even Geo) corporate interests at considerable profit, all skimming just within the law.

But morality? Not even in the same county.

People like that are the real crooks making multi millions out of mass manipulation of serious and dangerous issues that affect real people.

Your career...(which is?) may be highly regulated but you are allowed to make your own personal choices about whether to do it for a living or not just as others are allowed to make their own personal choices about whether to employ you, until you break the rules you freely chose to abide by.

I have asked Douglas if he is a pimp and he says not. Personally I think the world might find that easier to believe if he had not done a Channel 4 documentary about an Escort agency, but I always find him a very nice guy, and I am convinced his activism is totally sincere and something he genuinely believes in.

As well as my own experience, I have known a LOT of other sex workers, at different levels, really well...almost like family, which is far more than you know, isn't it? Yet for some curious reason you think you know more than I do...I can't work out where you get that idea from.


a woman in prostitution who has not suffered from sexual or other abuse in childhood or adulthood, who has not supported a pimp or a pimp posing as a friend or boyfriend, who does not have mental health issues nor uses drugs or alcohol to cope with prostitution, who has never suffered violence nor feared violence as part of her work, has not been sexually assaulted and who has had a genuine choice to enter prostitution or do something else, then we can talk.


No problem, Laura Lee, but you do not like her because she doesn't suit you...so if you want another one just say...there are plenty.

Only thing I miss is childhood abuse but I did not sell sex till I was 22 (just once in crisis) then 25 (to survive). I actually had a morbid fear of selling sex until I had to do it.

You most certainly do claim to be able to define sex workers lives and impose your uninformed opinions upon their lives and futures.

Otherwise you would just be saying:
"Well this is my opinion, but you need to find out what sex workers say to know what is best."

My ideology consists in two simple things:

Shut up and let sex workers speak (or not) for themselves
Give sex workers the right to choose whether they make a living from selling sex or not.