Prostitution; help me argue on Facebook

[MrsTerryPratchett]

I'm arguing with a friend on FB about prostitution. She is the most libfem, choosy choice, libertarian person I know. Currently at college so every second post is about gender neutral bathrooms and the like. I almost never engage.

But her argument is that most prostitution is hidden and therefore we can't know that these workers aren't happy, healthy, free and consenting. I've given her the PTSD stats and the violence and rape stats. But she is insisting that these invisible women are all loving it.

Any stats on home-based, self-employed workers? Also, I know that people here have said that workers' organisations are frequently dominated by pimps. Where's the proof of that. And, former workers who are radfem/anti-sex work and have written pieces about it?

Sorry to use your labour

"I do agree with that. What would really do some good is showing children videos and giving them information which lay bare the reality of prostitution. Make them all watch Lilya 4 Ever. Get someone who was in the industry in to tell them about what it's really like in PSE lessons. Totally in favour of a public information programme and educational initiatives like that."

Who are you targeting with this? Your whole argument seems to be around disensentivising women from becoming prostitutes. Teaching them the reality of prostitution so they won't choose it as a career? You do see that this is not actually a problem that needs to be solved? The vast vast majority of women in prostitution do not choose prostitution they are prostituted.

Teaching them the reality of prostitution so they won't choose it as a career?

No! I think this education should be directed at boys! Squarely at boys!

From people LIKE MEN expressing disapproval at this behaviour.
Where did anti-smoking sentiment come from? Anti-drugs? Anti-drink driving? It was a social change driven by legislation, enforcement and wider education e.g. advertising. Not schools.

Why not schools in addition to those things? Unlike smoking which is an issue that concerns health, prostitution is an ethical issue. And ethics are best instilled in minds that are developing. But yes do all the other stuff as well. Have advertising campaigns...whatever.Do all you can to make men understand that it's wrong.

All I'm saying that you can't JUST tackle a vast, multi-millionairess dollar global industry without addressing the structural issues contextualising it as well. Or at least not very successfully.

I really don't see the problem with this, and I don't know why people think I'm saying prostitution should not be discouraged. I've repeatedly agreed that it should. But there seems this odd idea that looking at the issues of poverty and inequality on which the porn industry thrives is mutually exclusive with condemning it socially. Why?

Multi-billion dollar industry*

independent the male sexual entitlement that underpins rape, child sex abuse, sex assault and other sex crimes also underpins prostitution.
Making the purchase of an sex illegal sex crime, just like the other sex crimes above, puts it into the nonce/sex offender category of social taboo. This is a good thing. I know you say you are for the Nordic Model but your emphasis is definitely on economics.
Feminists have fought and continue fight to have male violence against women criminalised and punished and to provide women and girls with the means to escape entitled, violent and controlling men and to survive.
Getting the purchase of sex criminalised is like getting rape within marriage recognised as a crime along with all other forms of male violence and sexual entitlements seen as traditional and as old as the hills.
Sure Rape Crisis, DV shelters, etc need funding, as will the new exist services for women with the introduction of the Nordic Model. But feminists know that male violence against women and girls sees no class or economics.

independent the male sexual entitlement that underpins rape, child sex abuse, sex assault and other sex crimes also underpins prostitution.
Making the purchase of an sex illegal sex crime, just like the other sex crimes above, puts it into the nonce/sex offender category of social taboo. This is a good thing. I know you say you are for the Nordic Model but your emphasis is definitely on economics.

Just answer me this.

Why not do both? Why not both make economies more equal AND widely criminalise and condemn the use of prostitutes?

I'm not saying you shouldn't do both, but I think economic redistribution will have a lesser impact than you suggest and that making purchasing sex a crime will have a greater impact than you suggest on reducing prostitution.

But feminists know that male violence against women and girls sees no class or economics.

Well economics is part of it, because poor women have even less power than rich women and are therefore even more vulnerable to male violence and exploitation. So why not look at the cultural issues, and improve the lot of poor women?

Why this resistance to anything which smacks of socialism?

I'm not saying you shouldn't do both, but I think economic redistribution will have a lesser impact than you suggest and that making purchasing sex a crime will have a greater impact than you suggest on reducing prostitution.

Well, if you do them both then the relative degrees to which they work doesn't really matter does it?

Who has said not to do both? We are just saying that we think that recognising that prostitution is male violence against women and punishing it appropriately is more important and that it has the potential to have more impact regardless of the economic environment it is operating in.

Do you think that there is/was less prostitution and violence against women in more socialist/communist societies?

1. 'Let's stop the demand - make paying for sex as unacceptable as drink driving'

Visiting a prositute already is pretty socially unacceptable. Most men who do it, do it in secret, so changing attitudes isn't going to change that. Also there were 37,578 drink driving convictions in 2015 (imagine how many more total cases there were, given than most people wouldn't get caught) so the argument that making things socially unacceptable stops it happening is demonstrably wrong.

1. 'You can't sell a kidney, so why can you sell sex?'

The two aren't the same. If you sell a kidney it's a one-off, tangible, potentially life-changing thing. If you on one occasion had sex for money, no-one would even know potentially. Should women be allowed to sell their hair? Or give someone a massage who they have absolutely no desire to touch? (Those are equally as irrelevant questions!)

1. 'How can men pay for sex with a woman who clearly doesn't want it?'

It doesn't quite work like that though. A man could log on to a prostitues website, see pictures she's taken in lingerie with a deliberately alluring message on it, and read words she's written inviting him to come and see her, how much she's loves it etc. He could then see her and she would act, say, and have the body language of a person who is really up for the encounter. Now obviously it's all fake and he should know that, but my point is it's not exactly equivocal to him bursting in on a woman, throwing money at her and forcing himself on her while she sobs. It's easy for the man to trick himself into thinking it's an even relationship.

1. 'It's a moral issue at the end of the day. Prostitution is wrong, so it should be illegal.'

The problem with this argument is there are plenty of people (until recently a member of parliament for the Isle of Wight for example, so powerful, educated people) who think that homosexuality is wrong. Or that sex before marriage is wrong. Not everyone has the same set of morals. Therefore, it generally seems easiest to go by the idea that as long as what you're doing isn't directly hurting any other parties, and all involved are consenting adults, then it's fine. The one difference being drugs and alcohol, but we don't have a logical policy towards those because alcohol is too entrenched to ban.

poor women have even less power than rich women and are therefore even more vulnerable to male violence and exploitation
Rich women are victims of CSA, DV, rape at the the same rate as poor women.

Well I oppose socialism, AND prostitution. Well that's not entirely true I veer left on health and education. I'm both opposed to taxing the wealthy and middle classes into oblivion or selling future generations into a debt oblivion.

Happy to switch over to the left as soon as a viable ubi policy is ironed out, but looking at socialism's track record in both other countries (every time it has held sway it's been a spectacular failure and of course both hits the poor hardest and makes more people impoverished in the first place!) and areas of the U.K. where it has been strong has left me deeply suspicious of it.

Also independent if you focus primarily on economics and the exploitation side of prostitution you are nudging the issue of prostitution into the 'no-worse-than-flipping -burgers-job-like-any-other' school of thought. Which is very irritating to people who recognise that naming the problem is key: The problem is male violence.

I'm not talking about communist or socialist countries, some of which were corrupt. I'm saying there is a correlation between impecunity and prostitution. Since the impoverishment and immiseration of Greece at the hands of the troika prostitution has risen. Teenage prostitutes were selling sex for the price of a sandwich.

Likewise prostitution has skyrocketed in Russia since the financial crisis.

www.newsweek.com/prostitution-russia-surges-after-financial-crisis-report-437869

Is all this a coincidence?

Cultural politics and identity politics have their place, but I think progressives need to sometimes get out of their bubble, take a step back and take a good hard look at the absolutely shit state the world is in.

There is currently a shitstorm in the Middle East that doesn't look like it's going to end any time soon. Along with increased floods and other environmental catastrophes, that is going to mean mass migration into Europre with millions of people vulnerable to sex traffickers, kidney harvesters, pimps, child pornographers and every kind of bandit scum and Mafioso.

Closer to home, we are about to pull out of the EU no doubt leading to all manner of economic problems - possibly another recession. That will inevitably mean more unemployment, poverty, economic insecurity, which will in turn lead to a worsening of social problems - drugs, crime, homelessness and, yes, prostitution.

On top this, there is a global industry in pornography which is completely deregulated and people can access on smartphones, interfacing with banks, credit card companies, IT companies, hotels and is worth hundreds of billions in global revenue.

We are talking some major forces here. Now it's all very well viewing things through the lens of cultural politics, but that will not in and of itself address the invidious consequences of the economic and geo-political forces that so many vulnerable women are bearing the brunt of. That is just a cold, hard fact.

To make any progress in these conditions, we need a very bold government with a social conscience; a lot of political will and state regulation (including the regulation of the sex industries) and a whole lot of money - and anyone here earning upwards of 50K a year, that's going to mean a lot of your money.

Not everyone has the same set of morals.

Just because everyone agrees on morals, it doesn't mean there are not morals we should agree on.

If I argue that paedophilia is wrong, is that an opinion or a fact? Indeed, we have decided that it is wrong to criminalize homosexuals. Without normative moral standards, it is impossible to make any judgments concerning anything. Which is why moral relativism is an infinitely regressive nonsense.

Well I oppose socialism, AND prostitution. Well that's not entirely true I veer left on health and education. I'm both opposed to taxing the wealthy and middle classes into oblivion or selling future generations into a debt oblivion.

Thank you. At least you're honest. Now I know we're not going to agree on much.

I just think you are arguing with the wrong people here. I mean how exactly are women

A) responsible for the current economic state of the world and
B) supposed to bring in your socialist utopia

when we can't even get men to agree that paying to rape women and girls is violence against women and should maybe be discouraged.

1. Can you tell me when I said women were responsible for the economic state of the world?

2. Just because utopia is not possible, it does not follow that we should not try to make societies as just, functional and ethical as we can?

Well, away with you and do that, given how many times you have disparaged internet fora, I wonder you can bear to post here any more. Have at it, Vive la revolution!

When shall we start the guillotine based knitting club?

Oh don't be ridiculous. We don't just have a binary choice between rampant capitalism and the Khmer Rouge. I'm completely opposed to authoritarian communism. Just saying that the middle-classes might have to go without some Beaujolais so that mentally ill children aren't made to sleep in police cells because there are no beds and cancer patients (or mentally ill women who've been sexually abused) don't lose their benefits.

How's capitalism doing these days? Osborne's debt reduction programme seems to be going swimmingly.

Well I oppose socialism, AND prostitution. Well that's not entirely true I veer left on health and education. I'm both opposed to taxing the wealthy and middle classes into oblivion or selling future generations into a debt oblivion

My position too. The emphasis should be on discouraging to the point of criminalising the buyer.

• Prison terms (for violent ones)
• Fuck off big fines
• Entrance onto the sex offenders register
• Immediate barring from holding public office

I'll add a ban or substantial fine and compulsory training from practicising any profession which requires an element of public trust such as law, medicine, accountancy or the police.

I completely agree Lass. Furthermore , this should be extended to porn. Porn is prostitution in visual form. Anyone who uses it is no better than a punter.

You still haven't said who you think is middle class yet Indy.