Woman’s hour on criminalising punters

[QuarksandLeptons]

Jess Philips on Woman’s hour now discussing how to reduce the abuse of women by criminalising punters. She’s such a great, clear, sane voice.

She is brilliant. She won that debate, hands down.
The woman arguing for legalising prostitution didn’t come across well. When she was asked ‘what should be done to stop trafficking?’, first she evaded the question, then couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer. It was clear she didn’t give a shiny shit about trafficked women and girls.

Hurrah!!

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b4z077

Love Jess Philips

Jess spoke brilliantly. Clear, succinct. The sex worker clearly had never bothered to even consider trafficked women at all. A very poor defence of the sex "industry".

Thanks for the heads up :-) will listen later. I just watched her speech at the NI abortion debate on Tuesday, she was fantastic then too. I’ve not always agreed with everything she’s said but she is a very effective voice for women on many issues.

Just listened. Jess Phillips is awesome - violence against women has to be the priority.

Placemarking- must listen later

I do not understand how anyone is against this as a solution. Except men who wish to buy womens bodies, of course..

I struggle with this one, as I think there can only be something wrong with sex work if there is something morally wrong with sex itself, which I don’t accept.

Having said that it is bloody obvious women who fall into it are exploited in the extreme so I’m up for banning it just to see if it makes any difference.

I’m also a bit conflicted as to me visiting prostitutes ‘feels’ wrong, but I couldn’t entirely articulate as to why. It also seems to be a terrible reflection on a man’s masculinity that money needs to change hands. Where the conflict is should I maintain this line with men I come across? Or by attacking their masculinity am I likely to provoke them to be more violent if they do visit prostitutes?

But TEMRA, surely you must agree that the morality or otherwise of a sexual act depends on context. Consensual sex - great. All for that. The more the better. Sex without consent - rape. Horrible crime, I'd cut the bastards' balls off if I had my way.

Prostitution is sex against a background of economic power imbalance and often other power imbalances (pimps, trafficking, etc.)

It's a bit like living donors for kidneys. Donating a kidney to your child or spouse or sibling - freely given out of love, wonderful selfless act. Donating a kidney because you're financially desperate - we make this illegal for a reason!

Is it really like losing an organ everytime you have sex?

So in your view if a woman from an affluent background, well educated etc, and picked men from a lower socio-economic background that would be fine? I’m not entirely sure if I’m straw manning with that question, but I’m trying to get a handle on your meaning.

Emotionally yes I’m with you cutting rapists balls off does sound satisfying, but I worry that that won’t cure the power impulse and such men might escalate to murder.

I don't think all consensual sex is OK. Alot of prostitution is consensual but it is really a man using a woman as an ejaculatory receptacle. All the lova and passion that are what is good about sex are missing and the pleasure is one way. Add that to the fact that the women are working for pimps in many cases and there is trafficking and abuse and it's just all really nasty and abusive.
It's men starring in their own live porn video. Yuk.

I think there can only be something wrong with sex work if there is something morally wrong with sex itself, which I don’t accept.
I think this is flawed logic, and you’re looking at it the wrong way round. Forget about morality - morals are codes of acceptable behaviour determined by a particular philosophy/culture/belief system. What is immoral to someone of a particular religion can be perfectly ethically sound to a secular society. So think about ethics instead - is purchase of sex, paying to exploit another person’s body sexually, ethical? Consider the inherent power imbalance involved, and the reasons that women tend to end up in prostitution.

I’m also a bit conflicted as to me visiting prostitutes ‘feels’ wrong, but I couldn’t entirely articulate as to why.
I’m guessing you’re a man by you writing this? I’d say it feels wrong as you are sexually exploiting someone who you have power over, economically and physically, who you have no way of knowing if she is really doing this willingly or is being forced to service you in the most intimate ways, whether economically, by coercive control/abuse/trafficked, substance dependence etc. Also whilst you might be a ‘nice guy’, you know she is risking violence and injury doing what she does, and she doesn’t know that you’re not going to end up being violent with her.

*It also seems to be a terrible reflection on a man’s masculinity.....”
Honestly, I don’t give many foxes about how use of a prostituted woman reflects on an individual man’s masculinity - I think it reflects terribly on his humanity in any case - but really, toxic masculinity, some stereotyped idea of what constitutes a ‘real man’, is a problem for men to solve. I would however counsel not to hold yourself responsible for the actions of someone else based on what you’ve said to them - don’t allow men committing violence against women to use the excuse that they felt their masculinity was threatened.

I hope you don’t feel I’m picking on you, TEMRA, just felt your post was worth answering. Welcome to the conversation

A lot of prostitution is consensual

There’s a reasonable argument to say that no prostitution is truly consensual, in the way private consensual sexual acts are, as with prostitution that consent is conditional upon payment.

I don’t feel got at, and I’m perfectly willing to engage, but I’m acutely aware I don’t have all of the answers. I just wrote a waffling argumentative response which was neither use nor ornament, because ultimately I think we both agree the important question is are being hurt? To which again I think we both agree yes they are. I’m happy to roll the dice on whichever solution you propose with the caveat that we must be willing to change if it doesn’t work.

Zooming out how much of consensual human sexual interaction is ever free of power imbalances? I think the problem is men and women interact sexually in a deeply dysfunctional manner. I think we need to examine the root of how we relate to one another as the pollution has gotten in far further upstream than we’re talking about here. I’m not raising this in a whatabouttery manner, but in addition to.

Let’s criminalise it, and then get to discussing how men and women relate to each other in a wider context.

There are many other ways sex can be transactional without actual money changing hands.

I struggle with this one, as I think there can only be something wrong with sex work if there is something morally wrong with sex itself, which I don’t accept.

I don’t understand how you would come to this conclusion? It’s the commodification and objectification/dehumanisation that is the problem re sex ‘work’ not the sex. The commodification etc undermines consent not just re the individuals but generally in society at large. Same with porn.

I’m also a bit conflicted as to me visiting prostitutes ‘feels’ wrong, but I couldn’t entirely articulate as to why.

You need to think about this more but the following is not particularly hopeful;

It also seems to be a terrible reflection on a man’s masculinity that money needs to change hands.

Using economic power to purchase a person is the ultimate destination of masculinity. What you need to do is really think about masculinity here. What it is, how it positions women in the world and whether it should exist.

Where the conflict is should I maintain this line with men I come across? Or by attacking their masculinity am I likely to provoke them to be more violent if they do visit prostitutes?

You are not responsible for what other men choose to do.

TEMRA They’re not proposing to criminalise prostitution- the Nordic model decriminalises the woman (or man) selling their body for sex completely. The punters are criminalised though as are the pimps.

It seems the fairest solution as it recognises that prostitution is a reality but it doesn’t make the lives of the women doing it even harder by turning them into criminals.

You made a comment about not knowing why you would feel uncomfortable about visiting a prostitute. The reality is that the vast majority of men have never and would never use a prostitute. Less than 4% of men do. So, if a man does he is in a small, odd minority. It is a highly odd and counter intuitive thing to do. No matter how people try to dress it up and reframe it, it’s a deeply unsexy thing to do, it’s the opposite of being a successful man / human being - it means you have to pay someone who would ordinarily not want anything to do with you, to perform the most intimate act possible with you. You are violating their space and only getting to do it because you are compensating with money.

You mention that lots of relationships are transactional but really nothing comes close to what the life of a prostitute entails.

If you haven’t already, I’d really recommend watching the documentary set in the red light district in Leeds. The lives of the women are just brutal. Some of the women have so much potential and if they hadn’t had such dreadful childhoods, there is no way they would be selling themselves to feed drug habits

Sex, Drugs & Murder, A Year in the Red Light Zone: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p05qh66t via @bbciplayer

Thanks for the heads up, just listened. She was brilliant.

I struggle with this one, as I think there can only be something wrong with sex work if there is something morally wrong with sex itself, which I don’t accept

What an illogical statement. The context is all here.

So in your view if a woman from an affluent background, well educated etc, and picked men from a lower socio-economic background that would be fine? I’m not entirely sure if I’m straw manning with that question, but I’m trying to get a handle on your meaning

Depends why she is picking them - if she fancies them and they fancy her no issue. If she has to buy them - she is a punter.

if a man does he is in a small, odd minority. It is a highly odd and counter intuitive thing to do. No matter how people try to dress it up and reframe it, it’s a deeply unsexy thing to do, it’s the opposite of being a successful man / human being - it means you have to pay someone who would ordinarily not want anything to do with you, to perform the most intimate act possible with you

Bravo.

it means you have to pay someone who would ordinarily not want anything to do with you, to perform the most intimate act possible with you

TBH I think this is why punters are punters. This is why they do it, why they want to do it, what they get out of it.

And this is the ultimate end of masculinity. This act, this explanation of this act. This is how to achieve the ultimate in masculinity.

All the shit excuses about wives not doing what they want, being embarrassed, it being about sex in general, disability, lack of social skills etc etc

It is nothing to do with any of that it is about power and domination and what makes someone a man according to masculinity.

I agree offred that the transgression is why punters do it but I disagree that it is an expression of masculinity. It’s just an expression of being a horrible human being.

Masculinity (a stereotype of manliness) is about being attractive, a protector, being decent, likeable - not being a monster

If that were what masculinity is we wouldn’t have rape culture at all.

I wish it were TBH.

The domination of women by men is unfortunately an inherent driving factor behind masculinity. That’s why we have ‘emasculate’ when a man feels threatened by being expected to consider a woman to be a person and ‘effeminate’ as an insult for a man who fails to live up to ideals re strength and domination. Why boys ‘throw like a girl’, why dallying to various degrees with the sex industry is seen as an expression of masculinity and/or male bonding etc etc etc even in supposedly progressive ‘civilised’ societies.

I think it is very naive to think dominating women is not the ultimate expression of masculinity or that this is not the ultimate domination; paying a woman to pretend to be into it.

Great post Offred, all good points.