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.

I also see the whole argument of swiw as an iceberg.

Porn does fuel a desire to be abusive to women. Men are physically abusive to women and girls. The quotes show that men buy and abuse prostitutes and seek those who will "allow" more abuse. There's an obsession with young and petite; aka children.

Women who may be "working" have rights to draw lines and boundaries. They're the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface there's a bigger hidden issue.

As a pp mentioned, supply and demand will drive the sale of unboundaried trafficked women under ground.

We only have to look at porn and porn hub to see the same.

Unfortunately there's never going to be a complete answer as the whole concept is based on men paying for something that women aren't giving willingly, but at least the Nordic model helps those women who are victims rather than criminalising them.

@MargaritaPie

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.

Right and do you see that being a possibility for the women who currently work on the street and get into punters’ cars? You know the ones who are largely addicted to drugs? Do you see them being able to sue their punters for sexual harassment? Do you genuinely think full decrim will make their punters less likely to assault them or degrade them or persuade them to have unprotected sex for a few extra quid?

"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."

Source for this? This is completely false.

"Kerbcrawling" (buying sex from street prostitutes) has been illegal in the UK since 2007. There are already laws in place to prosecute men who do this or try to do this (even just driving around looking for a street prostitute is illegal).

As for drugs such as heroin that in itself is another topic. I'm not certain what approach would be best for that but Portugal is interesting- in Portugal they have decriminalised all recreational drugs which means small amounts of anything for personal use will not carry any criminal penalties (selling controlled drugs is of course, still illegal and enforced). Drug abuse and addiction is seen in Portugal as a medical issue, not a criminal one and in the 20 years of having this law they appear to have had a lot of success.

As for drugs such as heroin that in itself is another topic.

please, please don't start with a comparison between decriminalising the sale of women and decriminalising the sale of drugs. please. Thanks so much!

Not trying to compare and I acknowledged it's a completely different debate. Just posted that because someone mentioned drug abuse.

btw it isn't "women for sale". They are selling their services.

Two things from me: the myth of the nice-guy punter is shattered by reading their comments, either on one of the invisible men blogs or on something like punternet. The more women they pay for, the more they feel entitled to and the more demanding they become. Even reading their gleeful accounts of sticking it in alternate holes (infections! Nice) is revolting. The fact these cretins are indulged by this industry actually affects all the other women in their lives. Why try to resolve conflict in your marriage if you can rape a 15 year old Romanian girl to let off some steam instead? If the boss is a ball-breaking woman, you don't even need to find porn of someone who looks like her, just take out your frustrations on a prostituted woman. Imagine how poisonous these men become, when each time women's humanity becomes inconvenient, he can pay to damage one of us. How will a man like that see women as human?

Secondly, there's no public benefit to any kind of expansion of the sex trade. In cold hard business terms, there's nothing in it for the government, or for taxpayers. Germany is indeed a total fucking disaster. And Ireland got scammed by the "turn out the blue light" campaign which turned out to be run by pimps. There's very little honesty in the industry, the biggest surveys all report 90% on average want to exit the industry but can't. What exactly do we get out of reinforcing men's feelings of sexual entitlement? The rape rate isn't lower. It is a fairly antisocial business. There are lots of links with organised crime and with drug trafficking, and people trafficking.

Basically - being able to pay to abuse women isn't going to make men nicer people, and being able to have it on your doorstep isn't going to improve any community. It all comes down to whether you accept men's sexual desires are needs/urges and that society is somehow better off "feeding the beast". At this point there's normally some lonely disabled guy literally wheeled out for points - but accepting any man is entitled to, deserving of, or is impoverished by not having sex just frames "sex" as a commodity rather than two human being bumping uglies.

Nobody should be able to pay to abuse another human being, and nobody ever died from not having sex. OP is 100% right, we need to focus on these men and shame the fuck out of them.

Women driven to sex work (prostitution) due to UC

www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/newsbeat-49013769

www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/amp/entry/woman-tells-mps-selling-sex-is-easiest-way-to-survive-after-struggling-with-universal-credit_uk_5d011254e4b0dc17ef02768e/

Another.

I remember reading as well that the impact with UC driving women to work as prostitutes out of desperation had driven down prices.

I suppose it's a basic difference of opinion.

If it's a job like any other then market forces are normal, increasing demand is good.

For those who see it in a different light. Who essentially think that it's not good for society, women, girls, or in fact men. To see purchasing a woman to fuck as normal. Increasing demand, normalising, framing it as just another job of you're desperate. Is a disaster.

I don't think these views are ever going to meet in the middle.

For me at least. My view comes from a variety of areas. Knowing what men can be like. My friend having sex with 2 men at 15 for some drugs. My having been asked when I was young and knowing if I was just in a bit less of a good place I'd think why not. Knowing how entitled and pushy men are with sex when they aren't paying. When they are paying. Doesn't bear thinking about. The knowledge that many men always have. And with the porn available now even more. Get off on domination, causing pain, humiliation etc. It's just a toxic mix.

It's not a trade that is ok in society. It's just not.

So really nothing is going to change my mind on that.

The argument that reducing demand just leaves the dodgy men and so women are more at risk is so hopeless I don't know where to put it. The dodgy men are always there. The women are still hurt. Just proportionately less. The fact that basic stats fact is too much to grasp is peculiar to me.

btw it isn't "women for sale". They are selling their services.

This is the romanticised gloss.

In many many cases it's not them. They're owned.

By pimps, traffickers, by drugs. They're owned by the punters; no punters no 'profession.'

Again, iceberg. Top visible glossy, sexy bit. Much larger, darker cold bit beneath the surface.

The dodgy men are always there. The women are still hurt. Just proportionately less. The fact that basic stats fact is too much to grasp is peculiar to me.

Completely.

I agree with everything you say @FlyingOink

Quote: "Women driven to sex work (prostitution) due to UC"

I agree, poverty and faulty benefits systems like UC can be a contributing factor for causing some to enter the sex industry who may not have done so otherwise. In this case it is better to tackle the issue of poverty as it's obviously much better to tackle the cause.

Quote: "Get off on domination, causing pain, humiliation etc. "

This is called BDSM. There are sex workers who "specialise" in this called mistresses or dominatrixes. Before engaging in any activity it's standard practice for a dom will chat to the client beforehand to discuss what the client wants out of the booking to determine if it's something she can provide and to discuss rules about safety etc.

Re the British law on BDSM porn it's illegal if it depicts something that could put someone's life in danger (this includes choking), porn depicting rape and rape "roleplays" are illegal and any porn involving animals or dead people (again including people pretending to be dead) are illegal.

@MargaritaPie
Quote: "Get off on domination, causing pain, humiliation etc. "

This is called BDSM. There are sex workers who "specialise" in this called mistresses or dominatrixes. Before engaging in any activity it's standard practice for a dom will chat to the client beforehand to discuss what the client wants out of the booking to determine if it's something she can provide and to discuss rules about safety etc.

I don’t think that it is the women providing the domination that are meant. It is the women on the receiving end that are meant. Those women probably won’t have been able to discuss rules and safety and even if they have done so there is no guarantee that the men involved will stick to that.

In the UK brothels are illegal which means sex workers must work by themselves, however it is standard practice for them to have someone either in another room (if it is the sex worker's place) or outside in a car (if it is the client's place) for security if the client becomes dangerous.

They also have the same right as anyone else to make a police report if a client commits a crime against them, and because sex work is currently legal there are communities available for them to share details of unsafe clients with other sex workers to ensure noone else accepts a booking from that individual in the future.

There are ways to deal with dangerous clients and to prevent them from harming any sexworkers in the future, this is something sex workers do not have to deal with.

You're deliberately misunderstanding here arent you.

I'm not talking about BDSM. I'm talking about mainstream men and mainstream practices that have been normalised by porn. I'm talking about how normal standard het porn is about male sexual domination of women. I'm talking about how many men have a resentment of women bubbling under- the women who said no when chatted up, the female boss who gets to tell him what to do, the woman who argued with him in the pub in front of his mates and won... A buried desire to put women in their place, to bring them down a peg or 2, to show them who's boss.

To ignore that isn't part of what, in some/ many encounters, the man is paying for. Is naive tbh.

'They also have the same right as anyone else to make a police report if a client commits a crime against them'

Have you seen the stats about reporting/ prosecuting sex offences in the UK?

Have you no understanding of how the police will still discard complaints from women they don't see as the right sort of victim?

Your posts are incredibly far removed from the real world, they're in an alternate universe.

I posted a link above from NZ (which has complete decriminalisation) about a recent case a sex worker successfully sued for sexual harassment.

We don't live in New Zealand though.

And their record on sex offences/ offences against women selling sex from certain groups are hardly anything to aspire to.

Here in the UK women and girls are very unlikely to get any kind of action if they report sex offences. Maybe if they are the 'perfect' victim and it's a very violent attack and there are with witnesses but even then no one with sense would put money on it.

Even being dead these days often doesn't seem to gain much interest.

It's all very well talking in hypotheticals. If society was like this that etc. But it's not the real world and your posts seem very naive.

For those in favour of the Nordic model, a couple of questions....

(1) What about men that pay to be whipped etc. without sex happening? Many people would still view this as a form of prostitution. Should the men be sent to prison for it? Is it really that bad a job for a woman, if you can earn a lot an hour to dominate a man? Should women be prevented from earning a living this way?

(2) What about massage with possible "happy ending"? That looks like a form of prostitution to me. So criminalize the men. But how do you reliably catch the men offering to pay for an "extra"? Who is going to know if massage extends to the penis or not? So make it illegal for women to make a living by massage? Or they need to be under strict controls and have a licence to massage that can be taken away? But that would then criminalize the woman presumably? How easy is it to control what happens at a massage?

On the second point. Men shouldn't be asking for sex acts from women who are giving them a massage. Unless they are very very sure that is on offer.

Being offered cash for sex acts is not pleasant. It's not neutral. It's happened to me when I was young more than once. And I wasn't in a situation alone with a man who was on a bed type thing and naked except for a towel.

I know men are taught don't ask don't get. No harm in asking. That's really not true in every situation though.

It may be the woman giving a massage suggesting a "happy ending" of course.

Either way, it's difficult to gather evidence to prosecute anyone.

@Zinco

1.) Objectification and exploitation with a whip is still the same objectification and exploitation without a whip.

2.) The lengths you've gone through to ask those as though women don't have autonomy is concerning. "How will they know a massage went below the belt"? You mean, "how would they know a woman was sexually harassed?" Hopefully the answer is she files a report against him to the police.

Why on earth would we strictly regulate masseuses and punish women for the inappropriate actions of men? Massages aren't a sex act. This is nothing but victim blaming, it makes as much sense as proposing to arrest a shop owner for being the victim of a robbery.

The whataboutery on this thread is getting a bit unreal.

‘A not insignificant number of men get off on sexual domination’ - ‘oh, that’s just BDSM, no biggie!’

Hilarious if it were not so terribly tragic. Maybe it takes a bit of life experience to understand that raw power, getting what you want from someone, especially when that someone doesn’t really want to give it to you, really turns some people on. Makes you feel important, invulnerable, top dog, and it can be about many things, not only sex.