BBC and framing of slavery & sexual exploitation

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Read this on BBC today and raised my eyebrows

'Modern slaves in the UK, often said to be hiding in plain sight, are working in our nail bars, on construction sites, in brothels, on cannabis farms and in agriculture.'

My reaction was

Hiding in plain sit? Surely they are hidden. This phrasing feels odd to me

Brothels casually dropped in amongst the others. Is being raped repeatedly the same as having manual labour exploited? And yes I know none of these things are any good, and they are treated appallingly. The inclusion of being raped as 'working' feels political to me.

Also weird is the idea that women working in brothels are 'in pain sight'. To who? The punters? They think that going to brothels and paying for sex is something that standard UK people (men women children) will be dying, to feel the inside of a brothel is 'plain sight'?

I felt it was really weird and an inappropriate subject to be pushing sex work is work and women are as bad as men (paying for sex).

What do you think?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48589411

I would say that in this makes sense to me. Whether or not I think sex work ought to be work, in fact it is, people are paid for it, in some instances they are taxed and all the rest of it. There are other instances of things that are bought and sold which I think should not be, but they still function as goods in the marketplace whatever my opinion is, they affect the people in the industry, they are subject to various economic forces and can be analysed in that context.
In this article the focus is really on the trafficking and slavery, and I don't know that you can even totally separate the people and industries involved as I would imagine there is a fair number that are interconnected, and there would be a lot of commonalities in terms of enforcement and border control and such as well.
As far as hiding in plain sight, I think that is fair. Some more than others, a brothel is typically not totally in the open in many countries, but it has to be open enough that people can find it. Cannabis farms will also be somewhat hidden, maybe more than a brothel. nail bars are very much in the open, as are domestic slaves.

Would you be happy to be a "sex worker" yourself, Goosefoot? Would you happily wave your daughter into "sex work"?

All work is coerced by the need for money.

The word for work that is coerced and happens to be sex is rape.

They did the same with Oxfam today. 'Sex Scandal'. No, the rape of children and coercion of women in a desperately poor country when in a position of power.

Would you be happy to be a "sex worker" yourself, Goosefoot? Would you happily wave your daughter into "sex work"?

Now what would make you ask that? It wasn't implied in anything I said, quite the opposite really.

It's about the level of "if you don't agree that TWAW you must be happy for your daughter to commit suicide."

"Sex work isn't work" is a slogan, not an explanation.

No one has that slogan

The slogan is sex work is work

Work like any other

Which is an idea with a host of issues

Forced sex 'work' is rape.
The men (let's not pretend it's not men) are therefore rapists.
In law not knowing a prostitute is enslaved is a no excuses crime. You are guilty of rape.

Make no mistake, this word play is to protect punters. In this case, rapists.

The idea that women in brothels are in pain sight is silly as well.

Teresa may is UK brothels are illegal in UK.

We know from p+net etc that men can be aware the woman is forced, and do not care.

"Sex Work Is Work" is also a slogan, one that doesn't stand on its own. People who believe that are not simply asserting the obvious which is that people have sex and get paid for it. That is manifestly true, its been so for thousands of years.

They are arguing that it is legitimate work, that it should be respected, that it should have laws supporting it as work, or in some cases have laws restricting it removed, and so on. They have reasons they think it is legitimate work which usually seem to revolve around how they see the nature of work more generally, they may think for example that it is arbitrary to say working in a dangerous primitive mining job is something individuals can legitimately choose and sex work is not.

Similarly, people who say sex work is not work are not saying that no one works by exchanging sex for money, as it would be manifestly untrue. People do so, some participate in the economy legally, are employed, respond to job advertisements and all the rest. They are arguing that it should not be considered a legal and valid sort of work in the marketplace and so should be restricted just like certain other forms of exchange are, that it undermines individual freedoms or has negative social effects.

Who says people working as prostitutes should be criminalised!?

You write pretty words but they're full of misdirection and lies.

You have not addressed the point that forced sex 'work' is rape
And that the men paying for this are rapists
Not that even when aware, from what is seen on review sites, that do not care.

Sex work is work, in the context of prostitution, seeks to minimise what is actually happening (rape) and obscure the fact that the men who are paying for this 'legitimate work' in the 'marketplace' are in fact rapists.

On phone

The men who pay for sex with forced women
We know from review sites that even when they know they often don't care and even when they do care I little it doesn't stop them getting what they paid for.

'Sex work is work, in the context of prostitution, seeks to minimise what is actually happening (rape) and obscure the fact that the men who are paying for this 'legitimate work' in the 'marketplace' are in fact rapists.'

In this article which is discussing slavery.

Do the forced manual labor slaves see sex "work" as an escape or a degradation?

From what I've read of people's experiences, the latter. Yes, sex "work" is way more soul-destroying than manual labor. Both are physically debilitating and sometimes eventually lethal.

A former prostitute said it best when someone suggested that sex work wasn't really different from other personal services, like housecleaning.

"I guess," she said dubiously. "If you had to clean the whole house with your tongue."

I agree there is an agenda here to make sex work morally neutral and the same as other forms of this work - for the purchaser of course. And we know who is driving it. Men who want to rape women in exchange for money and not feel like the stinking shitbags they are.

Only passing comment because I do come into contact with 'sex workers' or exploited women as they should be called.

I have met a couple of women who state they do it of their own free choice and make a reasonable income from it. Both were uk citizens and had no obvious vulnerability. They would say they are 'sex workers' and argue it's a job like any other.

I have mostly met what I would describe as exploited women who have been treated as a commodity. The majority have been UK citizens who have been subject to some kind of abuse (usually sexual) throughout their entire lives. It's not 'work' it's a means of obtaining money quickly and often that money is not theirs but is shared with their abuser. They tend to describe it as 'going out' or give the name of the street they use so 'I'll be up B street'. I've never once heard any one of them say they are a 'sex worker' so it's wrong they are having this term forced upon them.

Obviously it's nicer to think about the small number women who say they are 'sex workers'. It eases the guilt. The 'sex workers' are also more likely to be articulate and put forward a good argument that men want to support. The end result is a lot of misery and abuse for some of the most vulnerable women in our society.

It's shit because I can see the problem but I can't see the answer.

You write pretty words but they're full of misdirection and lies.

Oh, fuck off. If you can't engage then you have a problem.

You have not addressed the point that forced sex 'work' is rape
And that the men paying for this are rapists
Not that even when aware, from what is seen on review sites, that do not care.

The article is about modern slavery, there is really no question that being forced into slavery including sex is rape. Whether all sex for money is rape is another question, one which reasonable adults disagree on, even reasonable feminists.

I don't know what your problem is that you have to resort to name-calling and insinuation because someone thinks its ok for an article to address slavery without trying to decide which particular form of slavery is the worst. There is more than enough material about modern slavery so that an article will struggle to cover even part of the story, its natural that they would focus on certain elements.

@Lasttobepickedatgames I also come into contact with a lot of women who do this. And a couple of young men. Addiction, force by a man and desperation are the motives I see. I haven't met one who say, "I really love sex with any random I meet?"

I have met a couple of women through a sex workers' resource near me who go on about legalization a lot. But I didn't know them when if they did it so I have no idea.

I also used to read the Bad Date file at work which helped women know which violent rapists and scumbags were currently circling. Anyone reading that would have been in no illusion that prostitution is anything other than violently misogynist and extremely dangerous.

mrsterrypratchett every time I speak to someone who routinely comes into contact with exploited women they say exactly the same things but still this myth of 'sex work' continues. You've worked down in Brighton I'm working up north near Manchester. I've met people the length of the country and we all say the same thing. I do think in the future we will see brothels legalised here in the UK and that will be a very sad day.

On a practical level, I think it makes sense to put all forms of slavery together. Although personally I would like to see an end to all prostitution, it's not going to happen, and singling coerced prostitution out as different to other forms of slavery could just lead to the same old rebuff of, 'oh they're nearly all happy hookers the number getting exploited are minimal'
There are so many people willing to stand up and defend prostitution (not all of them men) but very few people will stand up and try to legitimise slavery (at least publicly for now!) so it might be more effective to phrase it this way.

I’m not sure I go along with the idea that sex work is rape
necessarily, as I think that is philosophically unsound. I do however think society as a whole has every right to regulate it if not make it outright illegal. Given that it is so fundamentally dangerous wether you define it as work or not is entirely beside the point. The number of prostitutes who are beaten and even murdered is so great we can’t not regulate it in some way.

Even the very happiest of hookers I’ve seen will even advocate that brothels being illegal makes their work more dangerous. Point being is that if your safety is such a concern above and beyond even median rates of gender based violence that’s got to be the biggest issue on the table surely?

I don’t think we should even get to discussion on the question of wether sex work is work until the violence underlying the entire debate is resolved. What underpins this is a general attitude towards women as a class where women at the bottom are seen as fair game for pretty reprehensible treatment.

The question always seems to focus on a woman’s choices, and never on the choices of the men who make the choice to be violent to them. I can’t think of a more ass-backwards way of discussing the issue.

This article just to remind says this:

'Modern slaves in the UK, often said to be hiding in plain sight, are working in our nail bars, on construction sites, in brothels, on cannabis farms and in agriculture.'

To me as per the OP, the listing of sex work (which is called rape in this context) and the pain sight comment (brothels are supposed to be illegal and even though there are obvious ones on high streets, clearly the women inside them are not in plain sight) is jarring. It feels to have been written with an eye to playing down that this is rape. We all know who benefits from that. It's an ideological stance (sex work is work) which I think is inappropriate in a piece about slavery.

Re: not knowing the solution - seems to me we’ve never tried the obvious approach of bringing the full force of moral disgust, social disapproval and criminal prosecution to bear on the people responsible ie the purchasers of sex.
I wonder why that might be?

Sorry they are working in brothels. Is what it says.

That is plain sight apparently, and happily sits in the middle of the list, unremarkable.

I found out jarring.

It's a mystery, llama.

Dervel this thread is about modern slavery so no question as to whether it's rape.

A lot of people feel uncomfortable that a man could get convicted when he 'didn't know'. Although it is a no excuses type crime.

Still, I don't believe a single punter has ever been prosecuted for paying for sex with a trafficked woman, so, all is well.