The greens and prostitutes

[IceBeing]

Be gentle as I am new to thinking about this.

I found the Natalie Bennett's comments on decriminalising prostitution pretty persuasive - what am I missing?

She basically said that sex workers would like this policy (having contributed to it) and that research from other countries indicated it was the way forward.

I don't know if that space would be filled. I mean bluntly I really don't have much time for the happy hookers. Isn't " handmaiden" the term used for women who are happy to prop patriarchy and indeed here who are profiting from it?

Clearly that cannot apply to trafficked and enslaved women, whether the enslavement is literal or figuratively due to poverty.

I would love to see a world where prostitution, stripping, lap dancing were seen as being as abhorrent and unacceptable as drink driving or forcing others to put up with passive smoking.

I personally don't use handmaiden, any more than I would use "patriarchy's bitch" or similar.

But I see your point better now - selling sex, if you have the free choice to make decent money another way, is propagating patriarchy and is probably one of the easier pieces of the jigsaw to crumble.

That is why I mentioned teiring earlier-unpalatable and probably stigmatising as it could be. There needs to be a line drawn between women who are relatively well off, educated, not addicted and fully compliant in prostitution who are free to charge a high price for the most respectable sale of securities (juxtaposition of an oxymoron I know) and women being sold like lollipops with no chance to escape. I don't even know if it is possible but one shouldn't be able to speak for the other. At this point we seem to go back to the argument about why men are entitled to this but as pp if women like Kim are happy to perpetuate the role then do we really have a right to dictate to her, as unsisterly as we may feel her actions and career choice are in society?

lion, can I make a (fake) analogy?

I like taking drugs, and I think they should all be legal. However, I accept that in the hands of some (many?) people drugs can be very harmful. So I accept that they are illegal, and accept the limits to my personal freedom because I see the damage it can (and does) do to the society I live in.

Disclaimer: this is not a view i personally hold, but one which could be said to be true a non-addicted drug user.

I'm not really familiar with Rebecca Motte. I just know of Rachel Moran and have heard some of the things she has said (much of which sounds alien and bizarre to me) and then a few refutations by people who have an agenda to discredit her.

I think there are plenty of perfectly believable accounts by unhappy prostitutes out there. Rachel Moran's just seem to have a level of hysteria akin to The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (which some people still believe to be true to this day.)

Sorry Jessica - are you saying women like Kim shouldn't either be doing what they are as they should think of social effects foremost? Or am I being dopey and missing your point? On phone so not as easy to concentrate (or spell)!

I do think that some women believe I should step away so as to make for a better society.

While I would not be utterly destitute in another job, there is no way I could make the sort of money I do.

There are certainly things I would NOT do simply because I think they are wrong. But, I don't think I'm doing anything wrong. Perhaps in some indirect, theoretical way I am participating in something that isn't great (be that sexism or capitalism or whatever) but this is the situation I have in the culture I live in and I consider myself lucky to have the ability to do this without feeling bad about it.

lion, I'm making a more general point. We restrict personal freedoms in law in order to protect other individuals, and society as a whole. It is possible to argue that all laws restrict personal freedoms. Which is why the "personal freedom is paramount" and "unlimited freedom of speech" arguments don't wash with me.

In this case, I personally am prepared to accept limits on Happy Hookers in order to protect other individuals and society as a whole. Hence I'm not pro-legalisation of prostitution.

However, if you tried to make that argument in order to ban alcohol I wouldn't necessarily agree, because I like wine most people I know use alcohol safely, responsibly without causing significant harm to themselves or others.

That's why I wanted to know what proportion of prostitutes are Happy Hookers compared to how many are being exploited. If it were the case that the vast majority happy with their career choice, I'd be more inclined towards legalisation.

But at the same time we agree men being able to barter a body to £35 an hour no holes barred is repellent? So surely if you consider legalised prostitution the way to keep a modicum of respect is to keep prices high and keep the product slightly revered?

I would love to see a world where prostitution, stripping, lap dancing were seen as being as abhorrent and unacceptable as drink driving or forcing others to put up with passive smoking.

You mean like Saudi Arabia? Or maybe you would prefer the Catholic version of Ireland in the 1930's? What would you do with all the women who failed to live up to your high moral standards?

Sorry saw yr last post after posted that. I thought the recent news reported that 1 in 8 men in UK admitted to paying for sex...so the figures posted earlier seem a little off and far more women must be involved than just over 1mil. Surely this points to abuse amount of trafficking and unreported prostitution or are they all meant to have gone to Amsterdam?

But at the same time we agree men being able to barter a body to £35 an hour no holes barred is repellent?

The "no holds barred" bit is the repellent bit; the price is irrelevant. People have the right to bodily autonomy. If the prostitute is forced to do something against their will, then the punter is guilty of assault and/or rape and should be held accountable.

I have no idea, lion, but it does make me think even more that at least the Green Party are recognising there's a real problem.

Lion... don't those figures also include men who admit to sex tourism? Prague is the hot spot for it at the minute, I believe. Lots of poor women from Eastern Europe who have to let men do whatever they please to them for a pittance. And by poor, I mean economically.

oh, and SE Asia, where very young girls are available to sweaty UK men for pennies.

Lion ... the recent report I presume you are referring to stated that it found that around 11% of the men surveyed admitted to having paid for sex in their lifetime, and 4% admitted to having paid for sex in the last five years.

I don't have links to hand but it sounds about right. The key word there is admitted -as I think many men would still not admit to it.

Yes I agree that the no holes barred is abhorrent but if it is to be done then adding value to it rather than allowing prices to be reduced by using women who cannot leave is not only confounding the problem but creating more in store for the future.

I think it was any man who ever paid or sex, regardless of where it was bought, who was a UK citizen.
My maths is a bit rusty but with a population of 60mil, roughly half being men, 1/8 should be around the 4mil mark. So are we to believe most punters leave the country to buy sex? Not doing the business on their own front door, so to speak? If so does that raise political issues?

but there are also quite a few that express worry that she is not there willingly.

KimCar I've only seen extracts from punternet-type websites, but all the reviews I have seen of men expressing this, they've fucked the woman anyway. This doesn't really improve my opinion of them.

I've also seen the accusations against Rachel Moran, and they don't seem to make sense to me, either in terms of motivation or outcome. I've also seen the same sort of accusations against Brooke Magnanti (ie that she made it up). Do you have any opinion on those?

I don't know if there's any way we can prove anyone's bona fides when talking about this, so as wobbly a proposition as it is, I think the only thing we can do is take people in good faith. The alternative is a sanctioned form of "I don't believe her" in order to push one political viewpoint over another by discrediting the source, and that is really not the road any of us should be going down.

#IBelieveHer

www.theweek.co.uk/middle-east/60339/eleven-things-women-in-saudi-arabia-cant-do

I don't think laws against stripping in Saudi are the key issue, bumble...

I don't really have an opinion of Dr. Brooke Magnanti, either. I've only read very small bits of her blog and have never read her book. Ive never evens watched the TV show. I do think she has plenty to back up her story (I read a long and sort of ranty blog post where she refutes claims by someone or other and seems to have a convincing argument) and other prostitutes I know say that her experience sounds very familiar to their own.

As to why someone would lie about any such thing, I don't know but I do know such things are possible. There are definitely misery peddlers of all sorts, and some of them have been exposed as frauds. It seems that their chief motivation is sympathy or just attention. I have no way of knowing that Rachel Moran is one of those and I would agree that the ordinary correct thing to do is to take people at their word. I just know that she says things that sound bizarre to me. Her pinned tweet is "I answered phones in enough brothels 2 know the most common questions is always "What is the youngest girl you've got?"" While I have never been a teenager working the street I have answered plenty of brothel telephones and never been asked who the youngest girl on the rota was. The bustiest girl, yes. Never the youngest, to my memory.

Since in a heated debate where personal testimony is often key, the discrediting of the opposition on a personal level is a very common tactic and while it may sometimes be useful (if the person is a demonstrable fraud) I think it mostly only makes the entire discourse toxic and useless.

It hasn't happened to me personally, but I know that one way the voices of the Happy Hookers is attacked is to claim that we are actually pimps in disguise or pawns of pimps. As far as I know, everyone who spoke at the conference I went to who claimed to be a prostitute was someone like me (I know their work identities and have seen their AW profiles) Everyone else there seemed to be an outreach worker, a public servant (politician, prosecutor, law enforcement), or an academic. I have heard accusations that some of the voices on our side of the debate are the voices of pimps but I don't know if they mean someone in particular or if they're just generally discrediting in a vague way.

It would probably be tempting to wave away anything I say by saying either that I am being put up to it by someone controlling me or that I am deluded and don't know my own mind. That sort of accusation would probably make me angry and I would struggle to maintain my civility and composure. And so the debate would suffer from that.

It would probably be tempting to wave away anything I say

I don't want to do that! We aren't going to get anywhere by skewing the evidence in any direction - we need everyone's voices in here to be heard if we are going to make decisions on this, and as I said, I am grateful that you have been willing to come here and talk.

That also means that I don't think it's helpful to cast doubt on Rachel Moran and other survivors. (I've seen "she's not a sex worker" said against other survivors, too, though I can't remember specifics.) As it happens, I do genuinely accept Rachel Moran's account of her own experiences - but even if I had private doubts, I would not want to contribute to the prevailing culture of not believing abuse survivors. And that is what I think all this public doubt-casting on Rachel Moran's account amounts to - telling a survivor of abuse that it didn't happen, she's a liar, etc etc. This is too often the standard response (from all kinds of people, including the authorities) to abuse survivors, and I don't think that any woman in this debate should be adding to it.

#IBelieveHer