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.

@gncq
No worries. It is very confusing!

If the Nordic model is so great why is it not supported by sex worker groups themselves

Why would anyone advocate to criminalises their own customers?
Of course the sex worker lobby don't want it.

It's about protecting ALL women, not just those privileged few sex workers that have a voice, or the 100% of punters who obviously don't want it.

Shouldn't the voices of the sex worker "lobby" be the most important since they are ones selling sexual services?

I didn't mention anything about the punters/buyers of sexual services.

What about all the health and human-rights and anti-trafficking orgs I mentioned who are against the Nordic model?

There is a big risk that the sex worker lobby is not representative of all sex workers, that is the objection. The marginalised do not engage with lobbying groups; they scarcely have the energy to survive in many cases.

I'm also interested in what happens after legalisation. Imagine that the policy is enacted. Sex workers can now organise. They can easily rent a building. They can employ their own security and web designers and laundry services and whatever else they need. They also pay taxes and have some employment rights.

Now imagine that a woman (I'll call her Rachel) is addicted to class A drugs and needs to make money to pay for them. She decides to sell her body to men for sex. The well-organised sex workers are unwilling to employ her or rent to her - and they have no responsibility to her, of course. Rachel offers sex acts to punters who are regularly turned away from the legal brothel for being unhygienic/violent/impecunious/on drugs.

What happens next?

Sex work is legal. Buying a body to do sex acts on is also legal. Rachel's punters can be charged if they are violent, but Rachel works in cars and back streets where there are no witnesses, so those crimes are hard to prosecute. She's no better off than she would have been before sex work was legalised.

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?

In NZ, sex workers are protected as employees under the Employment contracts Act (for fair employment dealings) and Worksafe (for safety). Just like any other job. No one can be forced into any job (that's slavery, isn't it?) and no employer can add services to your contract that you don't agree to. Standard labour law.

As a PP linked, a sex worker here has sued for sexual harrassment this year and won an enormous payout. She is entitled to safety (physical and emotional) at work.

No country with legalised or complete-decriminalised sexwork has ever had their job-centre force anyone to provide sexual-services, and this would never happen. As mentioned earlier, the story about such a thing happening in Germany is false.

@leafinthewind

I'm also interested in what happens after legalisation. Imagine that the policy is enacted. Sex workers can now organise. They can easily rent a building. They can employ their own security and web designers and laundry services and whatever else they need. They also pay taxes and have some employment rights.

Now imagine that a woman (I'll call her Rachel) is addicted to class A drugs and needs to make money to pay for them. She decides to sell her body to men for sex. The well-organised sex workers are unwilling to employ her or rent to her - and they have no responsibility to her, of course. Rachel offers sex acts to punters who are regularly turned away from the legal brothel for being unhygienic/violent/impecunious/on drugs.

What happens next?

Sex work is legal. Buying a body to do sex acts on is also legal. Rachel's punters can be charged if they are violent, but Rachel works in cars and back streets where there are no witnesses, so those crimes are hard to prosecute. She's no better off than she would have been before sex work was legalised.

Precisely. It doesn’t help the most vulnerable at all. It might help those doing higher-end work but fat lot of good it will do those working on the streets. Also, since the nordic model was enacted in Scandinavia, murders and assaults on sex workers have decreased. That’s not true for countries who have legalisation or decrim. The objections to the Nordic model come largely from examples of where it hasn’t been implemented as intended or from those who don’t want to lose customers for economic reasons.

@CuriousaboutSamphire

I was listening to the Ted Talk hour, Radio4Extra this morning, reframing, rewording was part of the 'gender' discussion (I was a bit pissed off that they didn't reword 'gender' but hey! They were Americans and I know there is a langauge mismatch).

Simple example

Ted beats Mary
Mary is beaten
(These days we use the term battered)
Mary is a battered woman

3 steps to making the man invisible and making Mary the cause of the issue!

We need to reverse that!

Name the problem...

That Jackson Katz talk and discussion is one of my favourites:

We have to ask a different set of questions. The questions are not about Mary, they're about John. They include things like, why does John beat Mary? Why is domestic violence still a big problem in the US and all over the world? What's going on? Why do so many men abuse physically, emotionally, verbally, and other ways, the women and girls, and the men and boys, that they claim to love? What's going on with men? Why do so many adult men sexually abuse little girls and boys? Why is that a common problem in our society and all over the world today? Why do we hear over and over again about new scandals erupting in major institutions like the Catholic Church or the Penn State football program or the Boy Scouts of America, on and on and on? And then local communities all over the country and all over the world. We hear about it all the time. The sexual abuse of children. What's going on with men? Why do so many men rape women in our society and around the world? Why do so many men rape other men? What is going on with men? And then what is the role of the various institutions in our society that are helping to produce abusive men at pandemic rates?

www.ted.com/talks/jackson_katz_violence_against_women_it_s_a_men_s_issue/transcript?language=en

quote from article: "in 2019, 10 sex workers were killed in France in the span of six months. Critics say that the Nordic model and its criminalisation of clients is to blame."

www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/long-read-how-nordic-model-france-changed-everything-sex-workers/

In 2018, a transwoman sex-worker was murdered. quote from article: "One of the reasons for the increased exposure to violence, prostitutes say, is clients now demand to have sex in out of the way places, where the police are unlikely to be patrolling." and "Clients feel more entitled to impose their conditions, because they view themselves as bearing the legal risk".

www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/world/europe/france-prostitution-violence.html

Violence against sex workers has increased in Ireland since they introduced the Nordic Model. Sources:

uglymugs.ie/2018/04/03/increase-violence-sex-workers/
(Ugly-Mugs is a sexworker-run charity)

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/republic-of-ireland/crime-against-sex-workers-almost-doubles-since-law-change-37957334.html

In my own opinion, criminalising clients may reduce the client-base of sex workers somewhat but the clients who would actually be violent or commit other crimes wouldn't be deterred. If a client doesn't care about laws against rape/assault/robbery etc then he is hardly going to care about a law against paying for sexual services is he? This type of client will still exist under the Nordic model, and since sex-workers will have a smaller client-pool as well as potentially having less ways to "screen" their clients like they can with legalisation/decrim then they may end up having to take greater risks by accepting bookings from clients who may pose a threat.

“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.

Yes exactly, WeeBisom, that’s what gets me too about this silly slogan! Like the rest of us think prostitution is a religion or an Olympic sport ...

[quote leafinthewind]@ACatWhoBinds I'm interested in this because I'm generally a liberal, and think that making things illegal is often an unhelpful policy response. I'm broadly in favour of the legalisation of cannabis. I could support legalisation of class A drugs, for example, if it were backed with sufficient government intervention e.g. controlled sales through pharmacies. I recognise though, that there would STILL be illegal sales/imports. So the problem would continue to exist - it would just be a slightly different problem.

I've tried applying the same philosophy to prostitution. If it were legalised, with legal controls/checks to protect sex workers, would that improve things? Wouldn't there still be an illegal sex trade, serving men who didn't want to wear a condom or who wanted to be violent during the transaction?

I genuinely want to be liberal, but I don't think it would help in this case. I completely agree that we shouldn't be prosecuting women (that is, that sex work should be decriminalised) but I don't see the problem with the Nordic approach, which combines decriminalisation for women with prosecution for men. Well, I see the problem - that sex work will continue to be dangerous for the women involved - but I don't see a better way of approaching it.[/quote]
Do a little research on Germany where they have legalised it. It is a massive, ugly problem for the entire country now and hard to roll back. Loads of money being made but obviously not by the women.

@dayoftheclownfish

MargaritaPie

"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?"

The problem with your statement is that you are actually not answering the question 'how representative are these orgs.?' because of your focus on individuals and 'lived experience'. Are the spokespeople of these orgs representative of the majority of women in the sex industry? Do they reflect the average experience? To answer these questions you need solid facts, figures and aggregate data. And the facts and figures that we have look depressing, don't you think? The prevalence of violence, the fact that for most women this is not a job that pays well, the prevalence of trauma, both before and after entering the industry, the fact that migrant women (who are often socio-economically disenfranchised) are so over-represented ...

The term 'sexual services' covers a huge range of activities, also including pimping (because then you sell services performed by somebody else.)

Although I have actually not used the word "prostitutes" on this thread I want to comment on your language policing, which is something people use to project moral superiority in a passive-aggressive way. Bourgeois liberals tend to enjoy it. I am very happy to tell you straight up that I think your point of view is morally deficient, as it ignores harm and avoids the basic question whether consent to sexual activity can ever be bought in a meaningful way.

Thank you - very well said.

For more info regarding the New Zealand model - Michelle Mara is a survivor of the sex trade in NZ and has written about the ways decriminalisation made things worse on the Nordic Model Now website and was interviewed by Meghan Murphy on her podcast.

www.feministcurrent.com/2020/04/13/podcast-michelle-mara-on-the-truth-about-the-decriminalized-sex-trade-in-new-zealand/

As for Amnesty and other non-profit organisations that support decriminalisation:

• you mean that Amnesty that started in the Cold War to support political prisoners?
• that Amnesty that has since lost much of its purpose but gained a whole lot of middle-class degree-holding employees on its payroll?
• that Amnesty whose Irish branch recently told gender-critical women they have no right to political representation?
• that Amnesty whose own members resisted a pro-decrim policy that was imposed from above?
• that Amnesty (reported in Guardian) whose UK branch recently faced allegations of bullying and financial meltdown?

Sometimes organisations lose their way but trade on their reputations.

See also:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/22/pimp-amnesty-prostitution-policy-sex-trade-decriminalise-brothel-keepers

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/feb/22/amnesty-international-leaders-offer-to-resign-over-bullying-workplace-culture

Not to mention the recent debacle when Amnesty ‘supported’ the Polish women’s strike about access to abortion but curiously avoided the word ‘women’.

@MargaritaPie you haven’t responded once to the point that many former sex workers support the Nordic model and don’t support decrim. They have the benefit of the genuine insight you get when you have left an abusive situation and are looking back and I think their views should, if anything, carry more weight than someone still trapped in it who has convinced herself that this is empowering just to survive. I don’t believe current sex workers all speak with one voice either and the ones who are most prominent in the movement are not the women addicted to heroin working the streets and decrim will do nothing to improve their safety.

The point made about language policing is so true. People who push this agenda resort to policing language as well as levelling hideous insults on women who are genuinely concerned about the dangers of the sex industry - SWERF, bigot etc. If you were so sure of your argument you wouldn’t need to.

Tell me too, do you so vociferously stand up for the ‘rights’ of those who perform other dangerous or degrading work? Should we be standing up for the rights of children to work in sweat shops? The rights of cockle-pickers to risk their lives every time the tide comes in? Maybe we should protect those children involved in county-lines drug dealing? Or should we legalise the organ-trade? I’m guessing not. If sex work is work, most people don’t run a high risk of being raped or murdered at work so I think the sex industry needs to become H&S compliant. Obviously won’t affect the genuinely poor and desperate like the Suffolk Strangler victims. Don’t think the brothels or clubs where the ‘let’s unionise’ lot work employ smackheads somehow.

I really don't think that the idea that reducing demand- by dissuading men from doing it who would if they knew there were no consequences- and leaving the ones who are more dangerous and don't care- thus increasing risk for women- holds water.

I've seen that argument before and it always feels very wonky.

I think what's meant is that percentage wise there will be less dangerous punters.

So eg (totally made up numbers)

Say if there's no consequence 1000 men pay for sex. 100 of them are violent. That's 10% of women selling sex harmed

With consequence only 100 pay for sex and they are the dangerous ones who don't care. So that's 100%. Which is a worse %. But it's still 100 women harmed.

The argument that watering down the victim pool makes the (fixed-ish) amount of dangerous men somehow less dangerous doesn't make sense. All it means is that the odds of being in their path are reduced.

This is the same argument with women's safety full stop. And comes from a starting point that nothing, or very little, can be done about dangerous men. That's a really dodgy starting point.

I'm not sure I follow your point NG, but being "dangerous" eg assault, theft, rape, sexual assault, trafficking, acting in a threatening manner or anything like that towards anyone (including sex workers) is already illegal in all UK jurisdictions; and sex workers have just as much right as anyone else does to make a police report and be taken seriously if they are victims. Above I posted a link about a sex worker in NZ (which has full decrim) who successfully sued for sexual harassment.

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.

That's beyond chilling.

Don't know a lot about this area but following the discussion with interest.

The OP was about images; images are subtly and overtly coercive to humans. That's how advertising works. Specifically, making a product desirable.

Shift the focus to the buyers and it's immediately less sexy. Highlights reality. Destroys the fantasy.

Sadly I read the quotes imagining that some men would find reading them erotic, thanks to porn.

Also that's why straw man arguments about "focus on the cake buyer,"
"listen to lives experiences" and "sex work is work" don't work; the woman or girl is the product, not the designer, manufacturer, business owner or any other aspect of "normal work."

The only analogy with "work providing a service" is, a pp said, in the military, in active war fare. As providing that service has the potential to harm.

And worth noting that war fare is also one of the oldest professions, and will be around as long as humans are.

And that rape is and always has been part of war.

Women were and are commodities.

We criminalise anyone who causes bodily harm. But not when it's a woman being raped for money.