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

Shit, i'm recoiling with horror at the Victorian idea that women are agents of men who have been 'prostituited' because men are all powerful, women are never financially sexual unless forced to be, and suffer them to be at the whims and desires of rational clear thinking men who alone dictate their destiny appropriate or otherwise. Jesus.

Well,I suppose I mean university educated people with professional careers and high incomes.

independent I've been giving your position on prostitution some thought and have come to the opinion that it is really important to separate this issue from party politics in order for the Nordic Model to have the cross party support it needs to succeed. Claiming it for the left will only alienate the right and do the activists on the right an injustice.

The two aren't the same. If you sell a kidney it's a one-off, tangible, potentially life-changing thing

The point is that legally there are limits to what you can do with your body, and the context of indirect economic coercion is recognised. There are costs to women of selling sex. It's not something most women see as a desirable way of making money.

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.

Legalisation would make it more socially acceptable. Trafficking increases after legalisation.

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.

Come off it. There is far less drink driving now then there was when it was legal. Should we never do anything to change things if it doesn't stop it happening entirely?

The point is independent that the reasons that women become involved in prostitution have both an economic dimension driven by poverty- the desire of the wealthy to control the economic labour of the proletariat for their financial benefit, and a patriarchal dimension- driven by men's desire to control their sexual, emotional and reproductive labour for their benefit.

Solving the first issue does not automatically solve the second. In fact women's experience of socialism historically has been that it has had limited to no impact on how men view their labour and their resultant status in society. Even in more economically equal societies women have lower status than men.

Equally there are many who can see different solutions to the economic issues who can still agree on the need to name male violence when they see it and to liberate women from the structures that mean that prostitution is a more viable choice for them than it is for a man in the exact same financial circumstances.

I think the main effort from every angle in this debate is to raise women in sex work to 'human' and if not human, to more than human.

Too many people on either side have a psychological need for women to be victims, sidelined, marginalised, mental, weak, damaged, problematic, drug addicted and poor, and this is exactly the same psychology that those who trade in women need to make their trade palatable. Yes i am saying that anti prostitution campaigners actively support that state of mind and promulgate that enduring, dehumanising perception that's rooted in deep and nasty misogyny because they want to demonise men at the expense of the agency of women.

Sure women who sell sex are brutalised away from their essential humanity..So are we all. I don't want to be a cunt at work, but I've had to be to minimise the influence and danger of other cunts.

The more we humanise women and give them agency and treat them with respect or porfissionals who need help the less influence and control dickhead murderable traffickers have over 'the market.

scary I don't see how you logically arrived at your conclusions - could you say it in a more pared down way?

There are thousands of women working as prostitutes in the UK who aren't drug or alcohol addicts and who haven't been trafficked or forced into it. And for the pp who asked why no prostitutes come from good backgrounds - erm there are. MANY! The statistics of women funding themselves through university by sex work is growing massively!

to raise women in sex work to 'human' and if not human, to more than human.
What do you mean than 'more than human'?
Do you mean to suggest that women are exempt from being flawed and fallible or something, like some kind of species of angel or goddess?
Because if you do, you subscribe to a sexist belief underpinning the cruel misogyny women are subjected to for inevitably falling short of perfection - owing to the fact that we are actually human.

I think a restoration of women to their rightful place in history, the dehumanization of prostitues is especially pernicious. Here are some of their achievements in the Wild West:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=X2kJM9yQs9k

I'm doing a personal look round history for important women (American ATM), and once I started looking I'm finding them all over the place. Abigail Adams is a particular favorite. If she'd been a founding mother instead of just Adam Smiths wife/adviser. America may well have had woman's sufferage, property ownership AND the end of slavery all on day one of the USA.

"Claiming it for the left will only alienate the right and do the activists on the right an injustice."

I think it's best to dispense with the terms left and right altogether. But if by people on the right you mean people who believe poverty and extremes of economic equality are both inevitable and morally acceptable, then kind of fuck them really. I mean find common ground where you can, but I don't see how you can be a Thatcherite and a feminist. Do these people care about the terrible wage people are paid in female ominated areas of employment like care and retail? No. Their basic ideological position is that capitalism red in tooth and clear should be unleashed and that the people at the bottom are there because they deserve to be. Why would you want them on side?

"MANY! The statistics of women funding themselves through university by sex work is growing massively!"

Well exactly. You've just identified another economic issue. So how about state funded tuition? Ooooh no we can't have that - that's evil statist socialism that takes money off affluent liberals.

independent people can have different opinions on how a safety net should be provided or how to close the gap. You believe in higher taxes to redistribute, but people who disagree with that approach may still belive in philanthropy, charity, commercial opportunities, etc and open their personal wallets -ie it doesn't mean they don't care

The point is independent that the reasons that women become involved in prostitution have both an economic dimension driven by poverty- the desire of the wealthy to control the economic labour of the proletariat for their financial benefit, and a patriarchal dimension- driven by men's desire to control their sexual, emotional and reproductive labour for their benefit.

Yes of course, but what are you going to actually do about the patriarchal dimension in the immediate term? Look at it this way. In Jim Crow America black people were oppressed and segregated by racist white people yes? So what did the Civil Rights activists do? Did they go around trying to persuade white people not be racist? No, they systemically challenged the segregational laws and economic system which oppressed them. They marched for an end to segregation in schools and the denial of voting rights to blacks. And quite a few of them were on the Marxist left. In 1963, there was a march 200,000 people on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Although it was a call for legislation to end discrimination, it was also a march for a minimum wage increase to $2.00 an hour. That was because King and the civil rights leaders believed equality could not be fully enjoyed without economic justice.

"What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn't earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee"

MLK.

Well exactly. You've just identified another economic issue. So how about state funded tuition? Ooooh no we can't have that - that's evil statist socialism that takes money off affluent liberals.

Erm, what are you talking about? I actually agree that tuition should be funded. It wouldn't stop women prostitution themselves though. My point is just that not all sex workers are drug addicts and trafficked into it. Alot are articulate, educated, bright individuals.

who disagree with that approach may still belive in philanthropy, charity, commercial opportunities, etc and open their personal wallets -ie it doesn't mean they don't care.

Look, we know that stuff about philanthropy is bollocks, however well meaning individuals who believe it might be. This was the justification of Victorian capitalism remember - that the rich would come to the aid of the poor out of the goodness of their philanthropic natures. Did that work? Evidently not. Indeed, there was a shit load of prostitution then - and child prostitution too.

Alot are articulate, educated, bright individuals.

I never said otherwise. I wish people would stop imputing to me things I have never said.

independent I think you're getting different posts confused. I was just reiterating my original point. Simple as that.

My apologies Pirate.

I don't know if this is timed right, but i loved Reginald D Hunter's analysis that the class..Structure And by extension the 'womans place within it.. is anethid by which you can be racist to people' who look like you..

The emphasis should be on discouraging to the point of criminalising the buyer

Interesting to imagine how these prosecutions trials would work out. Lass - Lets imagine you were a duty solicitor called out on behalf of a client on suspicion of a sex-buying offence. If you were told by the disclosing officer that the prostitute had refused to provide a statement, would you be advising your client to give a 'no comment' interview ?

I see that NI has legislation in place for such offences - see section 15 here. It's envisaged by some campaigners that this will be the template for legislation for the rest of the UK. The otherwise 'inchoate' acts of the act itself will not lead to any charges - surely though, the burden of being the chief prosecution witness will sit uneasily on many shoulders.

"Yes of course, but what are you going to actually do about the patriarchal dimension in the immediate term?"

Argue that the concept of paying to rape women is inherently violent and lobby government to introduce laws to criminalise the buying of sex whilst supporting women to leave prostitution.

My solution is no different to yours. It's the importance I place on different parts of the analysis that is different. I believe that the above situation could be implemented now in our current society and would still be a force for good. I don't think an overthrow of capitalism is necessary to start implementing these changes.

I don't think an overthrow of capitalism is necessary to start implementing these changes
Nor do I. What a derail

"Argue that the concept of paying to rape women is inherently violent and lobby government to introduce laws to criminalise the buying of sex whilst supporting women to leave prostitution"

What a load of nonsense - prostitution is (unless forced or trafficked) consensual. Therefore not rape. At all.