People Before Profit (IRL) terrible AGM motion passed on "sex work"

[HowManyFingers]

This relates to a left-wing political party in Ireland, but you might be able to help a bit if you can tweet them some concerns about this issue (their twitter handle is @pb4p ) and why the Nordic model is the way to go.

They voted to support decriminalising sex purchasing. I know there are arguments for and against criminalisation, but decriminalising seems to increase trafficking as it pushes up demand which cannot be met through voluntary labour.

Background: In Ireland we currently have a Nordic model, so the prostituted person (normally a woman) is not guilty of an offence but the purchaser/john is (normally a man). However, since the law came in, no purchaser has been arrested and charged with an offence, so this law is not being implemented.

I think this motion is terrible, the wording, how sanitised it is, and ridiculously unrealistic. I have highlighted what I think are the most important and worst parts.

Motion 1
Sex Work DEFINING ‘Sex Work’ as the performance of sexual acts in exchange for economic benefit.

And

DEFINING ‘reasonable legislation’ as legislation that accomplishes its primary aim without requiring the sacrifice of other policies People Before Profit has accepted or requiring actions that would violate or harm the rights of third parties.

People Before Profit will support, agitate for, and where possible implement reasonable legislation that will aim to decriminalise sex work.

Sex Work (2) DEFINING ‘Sex Work’ as the performance of sexual acts in exchange for economic benefit.

And

DEFINING ‘Sex Purchasing’ as the exchange of economic resources for sexual activity.

And

DEFINING ‘reasonable legislation’ as legislation that accomplishes its primary aim without requiring the sacrifice of other policies People Before Profit has accepted or requiring actions that would violate or harm the rights of third parties.

People Before Profit will support, agitate for, and where possible implement reasonable legislation that will aim to decriminalise sex purchasing.

People Before Profit will acknowledge those individuals engaged in sex work as workers, affirming their right to honourable recognition as workers, their right to safe and non-exploitative working conditions, their right to unionise, and all other rights that have, and will be, secured for the working class.

End of motion.

The last paragraph in particular is utopian. Prostitution and safe non-exploiting working conditions don't exactly go together. The sex-worker "unions" are often pimp led/controlled, and you can't join some of them unless you agree with full decriminalisation, so there is a bias in who joins them and who they represent.

I have to say that this doesn’t surprise me. PBP are a pretty fringe loony group. Very populist with no thought through policies on anything. However, it is worrying that yet again a group who see themselves as being left wing are espousing the most hyper capitalist ideology- the monetising of women’s bodies as a commodity. Stripping women of their definition as human beings and making them into objects to be used and sold as the market sees fit.

I think the only way you can read that is people before profit don’t really see women as people.

Hi thanks for this.

I actually met with a Green Party MP who also favour legalising prostitution and spoke of this issue. It was pointless trying to change their mind, they spoke in completely detached terms from a position of having never experienced or thought much about prostitution at all. They genuinely view it as a completely consensual sexual act between two adults who should be free to make these choices if they wish. Then went on to say obviously if it were legal it could be regulated more and there should be zero tolerance of coercion, violence, or sexual abuse (including child abuse). Those who have been trafficked into the country and forced to work in the sex industry against their will should receive protection under the law (I've just lifted that bit from their webpage but it's basically what they said)

I tried to explain there is rather more grey-area than that because this picture of trafficked women being forced against their will gives quite an extreme idea of exactly what is involved in trafficking. For the most part women are picked up while they're working as a prostitute in their own country, and they want to come to more prosperous countries to earn more, then they get trapped but it's lot more nuanced than "forced against their will".

The only valid reason or reason based on actual reality for legalisation is the possibility for collecting taxes which left wing parties love. All other reasons are based on myths of the happy hooker, "consenting adults" and vague ideas of how extreme cases of abuse will be dealt with by the police.

It's worth sending an email the way of PBP but it's good to hear they don't have much influence.

I haven't dared approach the Labour party about this. Corbyn wrote an article for pro decriminalisation but it's not supported cross party. It really really cannot happen here.

It's really worrying that so many left wing parties are being suckered into the pro-prostitution lobby way of thinking.

Yes Offred! With this policy they should be called People as Profit (PAP) or Profiting from People (PFP)

Incidentally they are very muddled in their thinking in other ways. Their biggest campaigns are all against paying taxes. (Again the cognitive dissonance from a group that say they are socialist is astounding)
They successfully forced local councils to have to privatise bin collections as they repeatedly sabotaged them so that it became impossible for them to do their job.

Thanks OP for highlighting this. I think it’s worth a try convincing them that this is a deeply anti-socialist policy. I’ll try to write to them.

Good article on this here:

“Only when women’s bodies are being sold for profit do leftists claim to cherish the free market.”

medium.com/@JonahMix/pro-prostitution-marxism-is-revisionist-woman-hating-nonsense-2bdd45633f75

yy Opheliah

The sort of person who will talk about trafficked women forced into prostitution are part of the problem they demonstrate the blinkered and rigid thinking that enables VAW.
The ones who think its only rape if it was violent and you are injured, or that girls are groomed or raped because they are troublemakers.

They cannot see the power dynamic, or the process of coercion. They don't see that poverty creates coercion.
They don't listen to alternative points of view and can't see that type of behaviour and attitude is part of the problem, and cannot be used to create a solution.

PBP are wankers.

They were set up on one notion only, and that was to get rid of water charges. Once they had done that they had no idea what to do next
.
They also all seem to be a bit thick. They all have their little hobby horses they want to pursue but can't agree with each other on anything important, so go off on tangents to make it seem they are achieving something, anything.

Hence bollocks like this.

Thanks for all the replies. PBP is smallish (I think more TD's (MP's) than the Labour Party here though, at least in the voting alliance they are in), but their influence is much greater than their number. I am also worried that this might be part of a concerted campaign here by the pro-prostitution lobby, so other groups could go down this path.

The Women's Council of Ireland also had a motion at the AGM in the same week calling for decriminalisation (I will look and see if I can find the wording somewhere). It could be a co-incidence, but more likely I think that the pro-prostitution crowd have upped their pressure. So we could see more of this from other groups (not to mention bloody Amnesty).

I will write more later. Thanks Quarks for the link to the article, I will read that.

Ahhh I accidently deleted a reply I had written, but some more thoughts. The Women's Council of Ireland agm defeated the anti-nordic model motion (they passed on on including trans women. I might post a seperate thread again about that).

At the PBP AGM there were a lot of abstentions on the vote for the prostitution motion, possibly more abstentions than those who voted for the motion, so this tells me a lot of people are unsure of their position, or don't feel they knew enough on the subject to vote, and there isn't necessarily a huge enthusiasm for this position. There was a counter-motion which was defeated, unfortunately.

I am a member. I didn't know whether to mention this in the OP or not as it might make me identifiable (I have name-changed but if they see this they might figure out who I am ). It was a woman who wrote the motion quoted above :(

Apparently there is a thing now here with some young people that they think having sex with men for money is somehow liberating and feminist, or something like this, and some of these chose to do it even if they have other options. If these were the only people who were prostituted I might agree with decriminalising purchase, but we know they are in a tiny minority.

I think a lot of people don't understand coercive control and stockholm sydrome, and don't realise how common they are. I did not really understand them until I started reading these message boards. I might stop using the word trafficked to describe these people (as I consider any coercion trafficking), if people think it is confusing the issue.