NUS and prostitution - confused...

[Ubik1]

They seem to haves passed a motion which holds anyone who thinks the Nordic model of managing prostitution is the preserve of right wing radical feminists.

I'm confused. I don't know much about sex work but I do know it is linked to trafficking of women and children and organised crime. I would be delighted if men were criminalised - but maybe I'm wrong?

Here's the motion but you might not be able to view it...

Can I stick in a "young feller me lad" here?

Fill your boots, the fucking troll doesn't listen anyway, too busy sticking crayons up his nose.

Way to go completely ignore the fact that RG relies on churchgoers for support while prostitutes are resisting her proposals.

I am trying to remember whether it was arrse or f 4 j who used to call us bumsnet. I think it was arrse. Have had a brief look on there tonight and they really haven't evolved.

Laz what's your interest in prostitution?

The Nordic model is just blatantly unfair. If you apply it to cigarettes or alcohol, it is easy to see. Let's have prohibition but legalise speakeasies, just criminalise anyone who frequents one. Or legalise drug couriers (who are frequently desperate and forced into it) but criminalise drug users.

The way to help sex workers is a combination of cultural change (which is already happening, I don't know any men who would find it acceptable to use prostitues) and making it as open and protected as possible. If you want to maximise ill treatment of women, drive the whole business underground.

As for tolerance, I agree with you re the NUS. All views, if stated calmly, should have a platform. Banning Of any free speech should be an anathema for students, regardless of its content (with the possible exception of hate speech and incitement to violence). However, this board would do well to remember glass houses and stones regarding free speech.

Heckler, you're right, but I doubt Laz has the intelligence to even post on there.

You know, even setting aside the whole ad hominem thing, an argument is never aided by coining an insult that even 5 year olds would be embarrassed by. Bumsnet?

I think there's an enormous difference between drugs and alcohol and prostitution, not least that prostitutes are not inanimate objects. The Nordic model is about shifting the stigma (and consequences) to those who demand the service. The often very vulnerable women offering (or being forced to offer) the service should not be criminalised and stigmatised. The pimps and punters should.

With alcohol prohibition, the people running the speakeasies are the pimps and the drinkers the punters. The analogy doesn't work because you don't need to protect the alcohol from anything.

I find drawing a parallel between the prohibition of using cigarettes/drugs/alcohol and prohibiting using actual people (women usually, but women are people) a bit lacking in equivalence.

X posted!

Christians (your allies) generally consider it a huge sin along with homosexuality.

This has cropped up repeatedly, and I'm bored with it now.

I think the poster needs to meet a wider circle of Christians. Our local church had a gay groundsman for, like, years. Everyone knew he was gay (including the vicar).

I also know an out gay vicar who lives with his partner and again, the congregation doesn't appear to give a damn.

I found the Christian thing hard to fathom as well.

My great aunt was a Church of England nun who would travel to Bristol to give out condoms to prostitutes during the first wave of the AIDS crisis.

Religion has a lot to answer for - it really does - but there are many Christians who are there to help when the rest of society won't. Look at the Salvation Army.

Oh it's fairly common to make out that those wanting to apply laws to prostitution, pimping or punting are sex negative uptight prudes. Similar to how those same people see the church.

Quite what's sex negative about thinking both parties in sex should be there freely and willingly, giving each other pleasure, rather than one buying consent for the other to give him pleasure, I don't know.

From the other, not for the other.

The meaning of consent is the same as the English meaning. It has to be freely given but in no sense involves mutual sexual pleasure. This is a distortion to suit an agenda. There is nothing wrong with a free trade of sexual pleasure for financial pleasure. A haircut is not mutually pleasurable but that does not make a hairdresser unable to give informed consent.

Sure, it is a fat from perfect analogy. But the idea that no one can give informed and willing consent to any kind of paid sex work is also a completely incorrect axiom to use.

larry, you've already compared a woman's body to a bottle of cheap booze in terms of easy tradeability, so forgive me if I don't take anything on what you say about consent with any level of seriousness.

Read my post, larry, it wasn't responding to yours, but to Ubik's.

HTH

Annie,

Forgive me if I don't engage with your childish simplistic point scoring.
I wonder what is really happening with the Nordic model? With the buyers criminalised it pushes everything underground and affords zero protection to the women.

What a lot of posters want is to punish men and don't really care about the logical corollary of also making things far worse for the women.

Have you looked at what had happened in Germany, larry? Or are you too invested with the idea of women wanting to "punish men" for treating women as objects?

Anyway, to return to the thread after the invasion of the trollbeasts if only MNHQ showed all trolls the door so quickly, we'd still have SGM here

The biggest problem with the NUS's stance isn't their fairly ridiculous views on prostitution, it is the fact that their stance stifles any possibility of further discussion. Women are socialised to be inclusive and collaborative, so the very real threat of social and political ostracism is pretty frightening and an excellent way of ensuring women with dissenting views are effectively silenced.

www.newstatesman.com/society/2014/11/invisible-subjects-men-who-fuel-demand-prostitution

Probably been quoted before but I was nodding in agreement with this article.

The content in the link below is revolting. It is "reviews" taken from Punternet. Damned out of their own mouths and demolishes the "it's just another job" myth.

the-invisible-men.tumblr.com/

Indeed, Buffy. It's almost as if he just can't wrap his head around the idea of somebody being genuinely interested in the fate of women. he seems to think that every opinion, ever, must always centre around men. I wonder why that is?