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...

It's like they googled feminism, The F-Word came up... And that's where they stopped.

They seem to think that the work being done to combat the trafficking of men, women and children is actually an excuse to raid and deport migrants.

Because that's a "thing" isn't it.

Anyone who is forced / coerced etc etc is a victim of crime and therefore does not need to be considered when talking about "sex workers" as they go in a different group as it were.

Whereas I think that all people involved in sex work need to be included whether they are there happily / voluntarily or not, and that grouping people doing safer work with those doing more dangerous work just serves to water down the stats around harm.

Prostitution is a very specific job with very specific risks and really it needs to be considered separately away from roles where there is distance between the participants / no fluids knocking around / not alone with the customer etc.

IMO but of course I am one of those rabid right-wingers (or was it left-wingers?) that they are not very keen on.

...Although at least that suggests that they acknowledge its existence.

The children in eg Rotherham weren't migrants were they?

Or the boys trafficked in childens' homes?

My friend wasn't when she had sex with some men in return for drugs when she was 15.

I'm not sure what they're getting at.

Thing is, they'll exclude anyone who makes the stats look bad - eventually it'll be, well you can't include people who aren't happy because they shouldn't be in the industry, it's obviously not for them - and they're probably the trafficked ones anyway.

It seems naive doesn't it

The usual (bullshit) response to that is: "well that's statutory rape, it's totally different".

Soz for multiple x-posts!!

Is it youth? Is it all the fault of Tumblr? Is it the new mainstream feminism?

Whatever it is, it's deeply depressing. So much energy wasted on having a pop at radical feminists while ignoring where the real harm is coming from. There is not a single mention of the actions of men in that statement at all.

I got as far as 3 on Conference Believes before my jaw hit the floor:

'the vulnerability of undocumented migrants to exploitation in other forms of work ... undoubtedly contributes to this overrepresentation'

Because undocumented migrants are totally free of exploitation in the lovely choicy fluffy sex industry.

Puffins - The NUS voted on a motion to allow men to rape women for money. They are supporting organisations which have pimps as their leaders. Therefore the NUS can fuck off to the far side of fuck.

spot on.

Pilchard yy - either it's a job like any other, with all the employment law that goes with that, or it's 'consensual' activity in private and nobody else's business. They seem to want it both ways and neither

I agree.

I guess there is a powerful lobby doing well at getting their message across to a bunch of people who on the whole are unlikely to have direct experience of working in prostitution and are keen to seem liberal and open-minded etc etc

I think that criminalising the purchase of sex is an absolutely excellent idea, personally. The people who say it will go underground - yeah because it's all so marvellous at the moment isn't it.

I don't want to live somewhere, where purchasing someone to fuck is the same as purchasing a pint of milk. The implications and ramifications are just huge.

I think the totally unrepresentative Brooke Magnanti types make things worse - people actually believe that it's empowering & well paid. Ugh.

Shirakawa we do not have the crime of statutory rape in the UK.

The age at which a person is deemed to be too young to be capable of consenting to sexual activity is under 13.

I think you have to be 18 or over to work as a prostitute, you do to appear in porn in the UK. So that will want changing then. Which the LibDems wanted to do - lower the age for appearing in porn to 16 that is.

I don't know the stats on students who are in sex work (because they are hard to get to, not because I'm a lazy arse), but I think a qualification to what you say, pilchard, is that students may be more likely to be in touch with sex workers who're already in the high end bit of it. By definition, university students have educational privilege. They're not likely to know 14 year old working the streets.

Apologies, whatever we do have, then . Th point is, when children are involved, the pro-sex lobby always say "well that's illegal anyway" and go on their merry way.

YY Jeanne that was a guess. But I'm guessing my guess would not be far off.

• knowing people who do something and doing it yourself isn't the same thing at all, is it.

Shirakawa YY just painting all of the people out who are the vulnerable ones etc.

Is there anything in their statements etc that talks about how to deal with any of the harm?

It does seem to presume a certain level of 'choice'

Supporting the Nordic model also doesn't naturally follow that you're supportive of how the authorities currentlu handle illegal immigration cases either.

And choices are not made in a vacuum.

I'm not really swayed by their document I've gotta say.

Just sort of says oh yeah sort out poverty. Um right....

Also why is it anti LGBT to want to criminalise the purchase of sex? I'm not getting the link there at all. Most people involved in the sale of sex are women selling to men. If they think this is all a vicious ploy to take away people's livelihoods for unspecific reasons, surely it would only be anti LGBT if those groups were the ones primarily making money from it.

The whole thing is a bit odd really. They should have left the rant out IMO.

They're coming over as ridiculously privileged and ignorant. Students have always been drawn from the privileged classes statistically but when we were young was there really so much blatant ignoring of the people who weren't?

I said on the other thread, but ... I do feel very sorry for them having all of this recorded so publicly for them.

When I was an undergraduate yes, countess, we said and thought things as daft as this.

Students are stereotypically left wing. Increasingly, the left has become libertarian rather than liberal. I think the NUS reflects this, sadly.

Yeah I confessed to my dark past as a 'sex-positive' feminist on the other thread, real life(age?) and the impossibility of sustaining that level of cognitive dissonance worked its magic though and I'm not trying to be the 'kind of feminist men like' (©Hakluyt) anymore!

Thank fuck for having been young pre internet/social media. It doesn't bear thinking about!