AmnestyInternational Prostitution

[JuliaScurr]

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

[Grennie]

Amnesty members are lobbying against this.

www.facebook.com/amnestynotodecriminalisation

[Grennie]

There are many women in the sex industry who are lesbians and have who men have sex with for money. This really is not that uncommon. So I am surprised to read that being in the sex industry against your sexual orientation is almost impossible. It seems to be based on this idea that women in the sex industry have sex because they partly enjoy it. That is absolute rubbish.

Het men are rarely in the sex industry, except as pimps and others who profit off the back of women, because of patriarchy. It has nothing to do with sexual orientation.

[MyNameIsInigoMontoya]

Hmm, not convinced on the suicide front. Among other reasons:

"A Canadian Report on Prostitution and Pornography concluded that girls and women in prostitution have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the national average. ( Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution, 1985, Pornography and Prostitution in Canada 350.) In one study, 75% of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide. Prostituted women comprised 15% of all completed suicides reported by hospitals. (Letter from Susan Kay Hunter, Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Jan 6, 1993, cited by Phyllis Chesler in "A Woman's Right to Self-Defense: the case of Aileen Carol Wuornos," in Patriarchy: Notes of an Expert Witness, 1994, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine.) "

[aformersexworker]

MyNameIsInigoMontoya

"women in prostitution have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the national average"

Actually that is a misinterpretation of a study that established the average age of death of murdered Canadian sex workers as 32...to giving all Canadian sex workers a life expectancy of 32 and from thence to a mortality rate 40 times higher than the national average...

When you trace these gosh statistics back to source they seldom, if ever say what it is claimed they say...can't recall the sources on that offhand but I will take a shot at tracing it back on google if you like?

...and even if it were true I wouldn't think making it harder for them to make enough money to live is very likely to improve the mortality rate, that's just common sense.

[aformersexworker]

Grennie,

I have noticed many women in the sex industry have bisexual tendencies all right but Lesbians are pretty rare and I genuinely feel very sorry for them, they are in exactly the same position as straight men.

I said that I personally could not sell sex against my gender orientation, which is true, but that may be because, despite a vague feeling that one ought to be bisexual to be civilised I seem to be pretty much in the "ultraviolet" zone of heterosexuality...

But all this gets us away from the point that because of the difference between male and female sexuality there is too small a market for most men who need the money to make a living out of selling sex...

...and in case everyone is missing it, that is the point of selling sex, to make a living, which is why ending demand is so brutally destructive to sex workers.

[Grennie]

aformersexworker - I know a number of lesbians who have been in the sex industry. I have no idea though if they told the other women they met in brothels that they were lesbians.

It is not as simple as poverty. Poor Het men manage to survive. usually without prostitution.

It is about patriarchy and women being groomed into seeing the sex industry as an option, not realising the damage it will do them.

[OldLadyKnowsSomething]

Women's Aid famously claim, and are frequently quoted, that 2 women a week are killed by their partners/husbands, most frequently when they're about to leave. I don't know how accurate this is, it's a claim that's been made for at least 20 years that I'm aware of. (Sorry for poor sentence construction there.)

So where is the campaign to outlaw other-sex partnerships/marriage?

Nurses, especially in A&E, are frequently assaulted while carrying out their duties. When can we expect legislation criminalising patients?

Teachers are now attacked by their own pupils in schools. Are we going to criminalise students?

[Grennie]

We need education and nurses. We dont need anyone to buy "sex".

[OldLadyKnowsSomething]

Do we "need" relationships? I'd say yes, but then I'd also argue that (as a species) we need sex (otherwise we kinda die out within a generation) so that "need" is felt strongly in individuals, on a biological basis, much more strongly than we "need" education or nurses on a species basis. (We're not on the verge of extinction, after all.)

[Grennie]

The species needs some of us to have sex and have children, it doesnt need all adults to have sex.

[aformersexworker]

MyNameIsInigoMontoya

Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution, 1985, Pornography and Prostitution in Canada 350 :- Resolves to a 1982 paper by M H Silbert and A M Pines (Juvenile Prostitution and child sexual abuse: a controlled study) best not reinvent the wheel and point you to someone who already did the googling maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/

I am sure I do not need to also remind you that 1982 is over 30 years ago, and a totally different world with no internet and no cellphones?

Susan Kay Hunter:- all I can find are quotes from speeches and letters that give no sources at all for her assertions, some of which seem a long way beyond far fetched. Can't find a bio but she seems to had made a significant proportion of her living from promoting abolitionism, with this org <a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20091102090811/www.prostitutionalternatives.org/" rel="nofollow noindex" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20091102090811/www.prostitutionalternatives.org/ (much later webpage - but the final version in 2012 is downright sleazy and that is unfair to Ms Hunter) which is not only heavily invested in Melissa Farley (who's research methods have now been thoroughly and officially discredited) but also never saw fit to file a 990

Just as a general rule of thumb, "Expert Witness" testimony is something a lawyer has paid a lot of money to have spun to the advantage of his client and not much use as a primary source of anything much. This lawyer was defending a client on capital charges and she was entitled to his best shot and then some. I am only sorry he did not spin it hard enough and she died. :(

As it was just mentioned Aileen Wournos was a lesbian sex worker.

[aformersexworker]

Grennie

You might find it interesting to know that I was sterilised age 22 (before I ever sold sex - there was six months in it) because of genetic problems in my family I did not feel I have the right to replicate and these days I never have sex.

Very simple, old fashioned reason. I can only think of one guy I truly want to make love with and I don't know his phone number. :)

[SabrinaMulhollandJjones]

We don't need sex as a human right. We have no human right to use another's body for our own self-gratification.

The species won't die out - plenty of people are having sex and children voluntarily.

[OldLadyKnowsSomething]

You still haven't addressed my first point; if two, non-prostitute women a week in the UK are killed by their non-pimp men, why is there no campaign to outlaw other-sex relationships?

No, the survival of the species doesn't depend upon all adults reproducing, and the way we're currently going it would be better if more didn't, or reproduced less. But that in no way reduces the biological urge to have sex in any individual.

And no, having the urge doesn't give a "right to have sex". But if men (and we agree, purchasers of sex are mostly men) have that urge, and women are willing for whatever reason, including survival, to sell, why is it anyone else's business?

No-one would bat an eye at adult, consensual sex between people not in a relationship (eg, one night stands), why does a pile of £20's on the bedside table suddenly make it different?

[aformersexworker]

Also Grennie

How do you know sex work does damage women?

I do not see any proper, neutral research into that. I certainly do not feel sex work damaged me. I can put my hand on my heart and say, though I hated it, it was good for me.

(Not least in teaching me to accept that life is full of times when we have to bite the bullet and get on with things we do not like.)

For one thing, I went to very "elitist" schools and sex work taught me never to look down on ANYONE, and how to respect people who are different to me.

Sex work taught me tolerance. (Maybe not much, but at least SOME :) )

Sex work taught me that few people will ever be as intelligent (whatever that means anyway) as me but a feckload of people are just naturally wiser and more together, and many of those people are ordinary decent working class sex workers and clients.

Sex work taught me about lots of different classes, types and professions of people I would never have met otherwise.

Sex work stopped me withdrawing totally into myself for many years longer than otherwise.

Sex work left me with a few truly glorious memories to keep me warm in my old age.

Now where in the feck is the "damage" in that?

As for patriarchy, he may have been an abusive control freak who got off on beating the crap out of me but my father must have been the original radfem (mother would have INSISTED upon that), and my mother came from three generations of women in business in their own right.

I could never even take male chauvinism seriously, it always looked like parody to me.

[aformersexworker]

SabrinaMulhollandJjones

Absolutely...if you can't find anyone willing to give you sex you can do without...but if you want sex and somebody else wants to sell you sex you have every moral right to take them up on it.

[OldLadyKnowsSomething]

And puhlease don't start chuntering on about the nature of true consent blah de blah. How many would "enthusiastically participate" in workfare, stacking shelves in Tesco for their benefits, if not for survival reasons?

And that's here, and now; last night Thinkaboutit was wondering if western radfems were effectively "mansplaining" prostitution to third world sexworkers, and that's where I joined this convo.

Because that's exactly what your theorising and ideologising (is that even a word?) is doing.

[SabrinaMulhollandJjones]

You don't see a difference between a punt and a relationship?

Or between a punter and a teacher/nurse?

Poor you.

[OldLadyKnowsSomething]

I don't see much difference between a punt, where the sexworker is working of her own free will, and a one night stand, no.

Again, where is the campaign to stop opposite sex relationships, since they're so dangerous to women?

[SabrinaMulhollandJjones]

And male violence against women manifests against women. By men. Be they in a relationship with them, or buying their body for a quick punt.

And it's 2 to 3 women per week in the UK (see Karen Ingala-Smith for details) and 4 women per day in South Africa.

[aformersexworker]

OldLadyKnowsSomething

I would always go with the notion of abused partners of either gender being in most danger when they plan to leave.

Respecting that idea seems to help keep them alive!

People should be spending less time minding other people's sex work and more time trying to work out why people abuse people they often love who love them back and trying to find ways to stop that.

[SabrinaMulhollandJjones]

What about when "other people's sex work" involves vulnerable women being exploited?

[OldLadyKnowsSomething]

Aformer, I hugely admire your persistance in your argument for hours, maybe your ASD helps? But yes, abolutely, where there is an abusive person in a relationship, the person who wishes to leave is absolutely at greatest risk when they try to leave.

That applies to heterosexual, gay men, lesbian women, and the whole rest of the gamut of human sexual relationships.

Maybe we should ban all rels unless casual/ONS/paid encounters? At least in prostitution the boundaries are clear from the outset.

[OldLadyKnowsSomething]

Vulnerable women being exploited us already covered by current legislation, as is the sexual abuse of children. There is no need to criminalise the customers of consenting, adult sexworkers.

[SabrinaMulhollandJjones]

I'm not talking about being trafficked here - I'm talking women who have got into debt, and some 'friend' suggests moving in with them, or gives them a room, suggests prostitution as a way out? And end up paying a substantial % to that 'friend'?

I've read several posters just on mn who have testified this happened to them. They were groomed, exploited and believed it was their own 'choice'. One of them dreamed of being a nurse, but instead ended up sexually servicing 5-10 men per day old enough to be her father, or even her grandfather. Maybe you think that's fine for "some" of the nations daughters - I don't.