When we talk about prostitution, we should focus on the buyers

[Clymene]

I was just reading a couple of tweets on Twitter about the images that the MSM uses in articles about prostitution - often women's bare legs and high heels.

The author suggested it would be better to have photos of the buyers instead so she linked to this blog by a German photographer who photographed and interviewed Johns in a brothel in Stuttgart

http://www.bettinaflitner.de/index.php?id=1270&L=1

She also links to a website with quotes from over 350 sex buyers from a cross Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I haven't read this because I don't have the stomach today (warnings about graphic descriptions of sexual violence).

dieunsichtbarenmaenner.wordpress.com/menu/

Both have English translations. The reality vs the 'sex work is work' position is pretty stark.

MargaritaPie You're making a classic ‘appeal to authority’ move, without much in terms of content.

How representative are these orgs you are invoking? What are their claims based on? And even if they were representative, what is your argument for letting these groups determine policy that affects relations between men and women more globally?

Language policing, too, I see. Very Victorian.

“Sex work is work”- well, so what? Child labour is work. Sweatshops are work. Slavery is work. I don’t understand why this phrase is bandied about like it’s the end of the argument. Lots of kinds of work can be degrading and utterly shit. There are kinds of work that are so awful we ought to legislate against it. If you tell me “cockle picking for 12p an hour is work!” That isn’t an argument in favour of cockle picking.

In any case, if prostitution really is work these leads to all kind of strange consequences. All workers have health and safety rights. Can a prostitute sue her workplace if she doesn’t have access to full PPE? Can a prostitute sue her workplace for sexual harassment for displaying pornography everywhere? Can the government force job seekers into looking for work at a brothel? Could a corporation make it part of your contract that you have to sexually service clients?

Also, something that is often swept under the carpet in this debate is the huge amount of violence that women are exposed to. I remember reading this Lib fem book about prostitution and they acknowledged that harm was a natural part of “the job” so risk prevention was needed. The only other job that risks you being killed or severely wounded by another human is in the military. Shouldn’t we be asking why in this job the “clients” are so violent towards the service providers? And why is this just accepted as inevitable?

Quote: "How representative are these orgs you are invoking? What are their claims based on? And even if they were representative, what is your argument for letting these groups determine policy "

The groups I mentioned are made up of adults who sell sexual services themselves and I'm sure their claims are based on their own lived experiences, so shouldn't the sex workers("prostitutes") views themselves be held most important?

Complete decriminalisation is also advocated by the following, most of these are orgs who specialise in human rights or health issues.

Amnesty International
World Health Org
Human Rights Watch
UNAIDS and UNFPA
Freedom United (International anti-slavery org)
ILGA (international LGBTI assoc)
PICUM (org based with rights and safety of migrants in Europe)
GAATW (Global Alliance against Trafficked women)
HIV Scotland
National AIDS Trust

Quote"Can a prostitute sue her workplace for sexual harassment "

In New Zealand which has complete decrim, yes.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/14/new-zealand-sex-worker-wins-six-figure-sexual-harassment-payout

Not New Zealand, but Australia.

This account of what it is like to work as a receptionist in a legal brothel is chilling.

nordicmodelnow.org/2018/07/01/working-as-a-receptionist-in-a-legal-brothel-prostitution-is-anything-but-a-normal-job/

Was it in Germany where brotherly owners were granted access to advertise their vacancies in the German version of the job centre. In order to receive unemployment benefits, you have to attend interviews and you need to accept a job if it is offered. Once brothels were allowed access to this, and they started offering interviews to women you then had the situation were women were told "take the job in the brothel or lose your benefits".

Women were evening forced into prostitution because it was made legal and was seen as "sex work is work" so brothels had the same right as any other employer to use the jobcentre database. Women had the choice of sex work or completely poverty, because they lost their unemployment benefits.

@MargaritaPie

And if it is decriminalised then what follows is what happened in Germany. You will have women on universal credit being sanction and losing their benefits if they dont go to interviews or accept job offers from brothels.

Sorry that doesn't work for any other industry, do cake buyers get the focus of attention or cake makers, for the customer football fans get focussed on or the players in articles about restaurants it is the chef rather the diner. I'm fed up with women dictating how other women choose to earn their money, it's bad enough men doing it let alone women. Sex work is one of the oldest professions and will be around long after radical feminism and many of todays modern professions have ceased to exist.

@carlaCox tbh I’m not a massive fan of ‘sex work is work’ but I understand where it’s coming from. It’s trying to destigmatise the people working. I’m so so sorry for your family member, that must be so hard for all of you.
Someone I know who isn’t a ‘happy hooker’ - they do street sex work as they need the money - is very vocal about her experiences. All her family cut her off when they found out what she was doing. She is strongly in favour of decriminalisation as she knows it’s safer.

Also, services shouldn’t force people to leave prostitution - this is the case in some countries with the Nordic Model - and if they disagree they can be charged.

FWIW, I’d be very much in favour of campaigning social services to stop taking children from mothers who do sex work. I think it’s disgusting that it’s so common.

@leafinthewind I’m also very much in favour of legalised cannabis. I think about it this way, comparing it to drug laws. Cannabis is less harmful than alcohol imo, so the best comparison for that would be online sex work/phone work. It should be fully legalised and regulated. It still can have detrimental effects, so services should be available to those who experience those inc. therapy. Full service sex work is probably most comparable to hard drugs like heroin or crack. These should be decriminalised for the user and harm reduction services should be available to users without promoting the drugs, like needle exchanges, safe injection rooms and ways to stop if someone wants to quit, like methadone for example. But there’s no point trying to force an addict to quit, someone has to want to quit. So what’s needed is compassionate support. The parallel with full service sex work would be full decriminalisation (including punters as that’s a harm reduction strategy) and providing services that help people who both want to quit, and don’t want to quit. Therapy is a big one. Tbh I think everyone would benefit from therapy, I wish it was more accessible.

@dayoftheclownfish @CaraDuneRedux Germany didn’t decriminalise prostitution, they legalised it. I do not support this at all, it’s just criminalisation with extra steps. I’m not a massive fan of brothels but I know some women feel safer there than on their own. There should be some type of regulation I think around them. I also think the brothel keeping law in the U.K. needs to change, as women working together in a flat as a collective can be arrested as in the law that constitutes a brothel. I don’t know what the answer is to that, I think a discussion is needed. With the decriminalisation of drugs, I don’t think dealers should be decriminalised, same as with people exploiting women (so pimps, madams etc.). That should not be decriminalised.

@WeeBisom “Can the government force job seekers into looking for work at a brothel?”
This is talking about legalisation, I don’t support that. Legalisation is not good.

@PotholeParadies The woman is from Melbourne, Victoria which has legalised sex. I don’t agree with this model.

@WhereverIGoddamnLike Germany has legalisation, not decriminalisation - I do not support this. If it’s decriminalised, they wouldn’t be able to advertise in job centres. Decriminalisation is not the same as legalisation

Lots of confusion between legalisation and decriminalisation but I’m happy to explain the main differences if anyone would be interested
:~)

@Wherehavetheteletubbiesgone

Sorry that doesn't work for any other industry, do cake buyers get the focus of attention or cake makers, for the customer football fans get focussed on or the players in articles about restaurants it is the chef rather the diner. I'm fed up with women dictating how other women choose to earn their money, it's bad enough men doing it let alone women. Sex work is one of the oldest professions and will be around long after radical feminism and many of todays modern professions have ceased to exist.

I agree. I think tbh as long as we have capitalism, people will do sex work. Same with drugs. The war on drugs hasn't worked, the war against sex workers won't work

the war against sex workers won't work

Oh give over.

You're on a feminism board, not a religious fundamentalist board.

No-one wants to attack sex workers. We just aren"t okay with a world in which people end up risking physical genital injury (vaginal tears) from a smelly bloke with god knows what STIs for a couple of banknotes.

If it's work, where's the PPE? They're in close contact with more bodily fluids than health care workers, with less protective equipment.

What next? Calling it a war on slaves next time some MNer starts a thread about fair-trade coffee brands that don't have slavery in their supply chain?

Ooh, ooh, I know. Next time someone posts about not eating meat (due to their concerns about animal welfare) someone can accuse them of waging a war on farm animals!

That will be new, at least, as at this point I have heard it all when it comes to MN meat-free bunfights about vegetarians.

Quote"what follows is what happened in Germany. You will have women on universal credit being sanction and losing their benefits if they dont go to interviews or accept job offers from brothels."

This is a myth started by a Telegraph article from 2005. It's false. Tabloids are by no means at all credible sources for pretty much anything.

www.snopes.com/fact-check/hot-jobs/

"from a smelly bloke"

In legal or decriminalised jurisdictions at least, sex workers have the right to refuse service to customers who don't meet hygiene standards.

I think you have to be careful about equating decriminalisation with something like what Germany has. Organisations that support it are not necessarily supportive of the latter - what they mean is that prostitutes, women or young men, should not be criminalised.

How to manage the rest of it is another question.

I do think the strongest argument for allowing some system of prostitution is harm reduction. The problem is, you have to show it actually works, and it's not at all clear that it does.

I think the reason that it seems like a reasonable approach to many is that it has been at least somewhat effective in a lot of other areas to look at problems, like drug addiction, as public health problems, and to use a harm-reduction strategy. So things lie safe injection sites. Lots of people working in this area also del with sex work and prostitution, so it makes sense they would think along similar lines.

I would argue that while that approach seems like it could work, it doesn't seem to in the same way we can see with things like addictions. That's an evidential claim of course so if someone could show better outcomes in that kind of scenario, better than something like the Nordic model (which also involves decriminalisation btw) that would be a strong argument.

@MargaritaPie

"from a smelly bloke"

In legal or decriminalised jurisdictions at least, sex workers have the right to refuse service to customers who don't meet hygiene standards.

Having the right is very different from having the financial freedom to do so, isn't it.

The Nordic model is not decriminalisation, it's a form of criminalisation. None of the orgs or groups I have mentioned above support the Nordic model.

All intriguing perspectives so far from a range of points

@MargaritaPie - have you read the blogs I've linked to in the OP? German men saying they prefer prostitutes because they can pay them to do whatever they want. And that's just what they told the photographer. They have no shame, they have no compunction scout buying women's bodies.

A society where there is a widely held view that women are commodities is one in which we can never be seen as equal. Legalisation drives up trafficking.

And I'm not hugely familiar with all the organisations you've listed but Amnesty believes that women who fight for their human rights should be disenfranchised so I'm not especially confident they're pro women.

@MargaritaPie

The Nordic model is not decriminalisation, it's a form of criminalisation. None of the orgs or groups I have mentioned above support the Nordic model.

Yes it is, it decriminalises prostitution for the people providing the services.

It criminalises it for the buyers.

Almost the opposite of the way harm reduction works in addictions policy, where the buyer/addict is decriminalised but the seller is criminalised - but that makes sense given the way the two are structured.

Where it differs is that in addictions you typically create a way for the addict to access drugs through the medical system in a safe way oriented toward stopping if they want.

There really isn't a need to provide buyers of sex in a similar way, it's not like the women "need" this. Jobs, or financial support, would be the equivalent.

The question I guess would be, does the market then go more underground - but I think the answer is no - it's the same as it was before because that part always seems to exist.

amp.theguardian.com/society/2020/dec/21/my-working-week-who-buys-sex-vulnerable-women-help

Published today.

Yes replace a picture of the criminally bare legs with a photo of a punter leering out from POV of the woman

Leering out of car window*

Skimmed the thread.

I think the OP point was as per the thing upthread. Where the language used invisibilitises the punter. There is rarely any focus on the men. Why do they do it. How often do they do it. What is their psychology. How dangerous are they. What do they get out of it (company? Domination?) Etc.

When I was young paying for sex was stigmatised. Going to watch women take their clothes off was stigmatised. It was sad. And not generally normal. (Apart from maybe in the city.. dunno).

I would say

Stigmatise the men who buy as much as possible. It's not like going to McDonald's FFS. It's not ok.

Help the women and girls who are selling, if and when they want out.

Problems here.

Universal credit. Little support for drug and alcohol abuse. CSA AOK. Authorities don't care. Loads of services have much less money now.

UC reports in papers about women turning to prostitution because no no money.

As a society we decide whether to care or not.

In the meantime. I am AOK with stigmatising the buying of sex. Making it illegal.

Oh and of course you can never legalise prostitution. Health and safety regs. It's just too fucking dangerous. Note that. When all the lovely orgs call for decrim. Never legalisation. That is a tacit an admission of what a dangerous job it is.