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.

It does. It’s a really important service I’m just lamenting that no fuss seems to have been made re the implications of mixing the reporting with lobbying for full decriminalisation.

Thanks Opheliah for sharing your experiences with the women you help. I’m very pro the Nordic model and it’s really interesting to hear your take on the ways it will help.

Offred & Opheliah Very thought provoking / challenging ideas on masculinity. While I can see that statistically being male and behaving in ways that differentiate men from women shows that many aspects of toxic / hyper masculinity is indeed about domination over women in the most brutal ways. However, couldn’t it also be argued that both of the sets of stereotypes associated with the sexes run in a spectrum from bad to good. So, for masculinity this could run from the positive behaviours of being a protector / provider to the negative of being a misogynistic murderer / rapist.

Benevolent sexism is still sexism.

One the one hand benevolent sexism demeans and on the other hand malevolent sexism actively causes harm.

The very notion that women being provided for/protected by men is somehow a good thing is massively damaging to women.

It is in no way a positive thing. It involves infantilising women.

I volunteer for an organisation and we update/dustribute "Ugly Mugs" for our area. I'm always encouraging the WGs to talk. Under NM thy will be heared

I really dislike this talk of "girls" and "working girls". It trying to normalise it and hide just how ugly prostitution is. I'm taking it as read that none of the women you are dealing with are literally girls because helping girls in this manner would be beyond the pale.

It is in no way a positive thing. It involves infantilising women

I agree- as does referring to girls and working girls.

A few thoughts:

I particularly dislike the term "sex work". It implies that this is a job, like any other job. It's not. It's an imbalanced transaction between a man who feels entitled to have an orgasm and is willing to rent a stranger's orifices to obtain that, and a woman who - for whatever reason - feels that she has no other way of earning a living other than to put her personal safety at risk and allow a stranger to use her body. If you think it is a job then write a job spec for it; have a think about the skills you'd be looking for to recruit someone. Don't pretend that this is normal or acceptable - it's not.

Many women are trapped in prostitution because there are few resources for them to be able to leave. If they have a criminal record then it will follow them around and preclude them from jobs where a DBS check is needed. If they have nowhere to go and are trying to escape a pimp, then they are faced with having to lie to refuges to try and get a place because many won't accept prostituted women. A vulnerable woman trying to flee a life of exploitation and violence and unable to talk about it for fear of ending up on the streets again.

Prostitution is exploitation. And arguing for full decriminalisation is literally accepting that some men view their need for sexual pleasure and release as greater than the need to respect girls and women and not view them as walking fuck-holes. It is not normal and respectful to order up a woman like you would do a takeaway pizza. It's not normal to "review" them like you would a hotel stay, and grade them on their sexual performance and criticise their bodies.

One final point: if you agree with full decriminalisation and feel that it should be viewed and treated as a valid employment enterprise, then presumably you are also fully committed to seeing it promoted as a legitimate job choice at school career advice sessions? You'd be supportive of JSA claimants being expected to apply for jobs as prostituted women? You'd be supportive of your daughters choosing to become prostitutes?

That’s why sex work and sex worker has replaced prostitute and prostitution.

It was a concerted effort from full decriminalisation lobby groups who wanted to change the language in order to legitimise it as just another industry.

Since these groups have generally been collectives of actual sex workers themselves I concede to use their preferred terms whilst still being ideologically opposed to full decriminalisation.

It's a good point Offred. Fiona Broadfoot deals with this argument really well. She explains that when you are "in it" of course you want to try and normalise it, because you're living in hell and doing everything possible to try and minimise the effects and treat it as "just a job". She also says that for many women, they don't have a choice and they'll say whatever they need to in order to keep the peace, as there's very often a man in the background exerting control and pulling the strings. Pimps and traffickers absolutely prefer the term because it places a veil of respectability and legitimacy over what they do.

She is also especially - and rightly - scathing of those who campaign for decrim and describe themselves as "sex workers", when they have never actually been prostituted themselves.

The part where sex work and sex trafficking were 'untied' was very disingenous. One of the main researchers into the sex industry explicitly states you cannot separate prost from sex trafficking as they are always joined.

Legalizing prostitution causes more sex trafficking.
orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/

Sorry I will refer to them as WGs or working girls because this is generally how they wish to be referred to themselves.

I could say "hookers" or "prozzies" but unless one is using that term about oneself it is deemed quite impolite.

I called myself a "hooker" when i worked but still recognise it's derogatory nature.

It is in no way a positive thing. It involves infantilising women

Sorry, have I misunderstood this are you saying "Ugly Mugs" that distributes descriptions of dangerous punters to establishments is "infantilising women"?

I disagree with the phrase "sex worker" because it glosses over the realities of the job in a way WG or prostitute does not.

No, the idea that masculine stereotypes that men are protectors/providers is some kind of positive aspect of masculinity. It’s in no way positive.

I recognise that the Ugly Mugs initiative is designed to improve safety and has had positive results. I'm still uncomfortable with its implied conclusion that men who don't beat/abuse/rape prostituted women are OK though.

That's not to try and diminish what it's trying to achieve; I just wish it wasn't necessary at all. I wish that there was more focus from the police and the council in providing supportive, consistent and safe exit strategies - instead of putting 99% of their time and energies into trying to make prostitution safer, which keeps the man buying a woman and his needs, at the front and centre, instead of the women who are being exploited and abused.

To paraphrase a feminist I heard from recently; we hear a lot about how poor women who need to feed themselves and their kids "choose" prostitution. Why doesn't the state try putting food in their mouths instead of cocks?

TBF it would need a national framework and funding to tackle it. A local/police authority cannot independently tackle it in just their area and within existing (vanishing) budgets.

Austerity politics is going to make things like the Leeds MZ more likely.

"Benevolent sexism is still sexism.

One the one hand benevolent sexism demeans and on the other hand malevolent sexism actively causes harm.

The very notion that women being provided for/protected by men is somehow a good thing is massively damaging to women.

It is in no way a positive thing. It involves infantilising women."

Yes agree, of course it is infantalising and generally sexed stereotypes of male or female are reductive and prevent people from behaving according to their humanity as individuals.

I have no argument against your description of rape and violence against women as being inherently driven by a form of masculinity.

However, my original point was that the idea of using a prostitute is one that would jar with most men who society would consider as masculine (benevolently sexist as you describe) While the outlook of men who see themselves being a protector / provider infantalises women, they do not see women as hateful objects to be dominated via sex and violence.

Obviously, un-sexist men who view women as human beings would also not wish to use prostitutes but my post was responding to the poster calling himself an MRA who questioned why his impulse was to not want to use prostitutes. My response was to share my opinion that even viewing the world through an MRA lens, using a prostitute essentially equates to a failure of manhood.

I agree that the misogynist murderers and rapists and men who use prostitutes are also conforming to masculinity but would see this as representing the darkest end of the spectrum of masculinity.

Men who buy into sexism soothe themselves by telling themselves things like ‘science says’ or that their version of sexism cherry picks only the socially acceptable parts.

In reality this is rarely true.

Once you have decided that women are inferior and that your maleness confers superior status anything that challenges that world view motivates you to engage in malevolent sexism.

Some of these men may lack the confidence to express and enforce those entitlements via overt aggression and therefore use passive aggression which ties in nicely with their public/self image as a Nice Guy.

Some of those men interact with the sex industry and tell themselves and others lies about it; ‘I only went to the strip club because I couldn’t let the stag down’ ‘I felt uncomfortable while I was there’ ‘I’m too afraid to ask my wife to do x because she might reject me’ ‘I can’t tell my wife because she’d kick off’

These are all lies including that a sexist man only does the ‘nice’ bits of sexism.

Many of these men are perfectly happy to treat women as objects/inferior/behave in hateful ways providing nobody sees it or finds out.

That culture is pervasive within masculinity, if nobody saw it it never happened and what matters is what people think of you not what you do.

I could say "hookers" or "prozzies" but unless one is using that term about oneself it is deemed quite impolite

Well you could call yourself whatever you like. Why you would think anyone on here would use "hooker" or "prozzies" puzzles me. I have never seem any poster here use those terms. The fact that you have makes me think you are being disingenuous and trying to validate "working girls".

The word for a person who hires their body out for sex is "prostitute"- trying to prettify it up by calling it "working girl" is no better than calling it "sex worker"