Help me stay sane and keep my friends.

[loopyapp]

Quick scene setting. Studying sociology, topic of prostitution came up. All fellow students angrily defending the rights of sex workers to sell their bodies.

Did my best to explain all the many ways in which sex work is just exploitative but I'm not very articulate under pressure.

Please post information/links to help me out especially with regards to how sex work enables male entitlement to sexual gratification.

Totally @JoyousAsOtters

The first argument is a rehash of the iceberg thing. Although TBF I knew that already from working in shelters.

Just think of it like this - your classmates are a pretty interesting study case in group mentality (and the belief in utter nonsense despite evidence). There’s probably a PhD in there…

Groupthink. Unfortunately it's been done! Although you could do, 'Groupthink in academic groups - a study in stupidity'.

What I say when this comes up is that I do support the right of women to sell their bodies (though I'd much rather live in a society where they didn't feel they had to), but I don't support the right of pimps to benefit from them doing so. These arguments always end up being about women rather than about the men who promote and benefit from the system that exploits them.

OP I suggest you take a look at the Nordic Model Now website and in particular at their universities handbook which is an excellent resource.

Sorry m in my phone with poor signal but I'll post links later if no one does it for me.

A few years I visited Copenhagen, and it turned out that my hotel was in the red light district.
On some street sign poles outside the hotel were some signs put up by the council that simply said:

THE HAPPY HOOKER
EXISTS ONLY IN YOUR MIND

They're not defending the right for women to sell sex. They're selling the right for men to use women's bodies however they choose.

There's a lot of talk in this conversation about women's choices, its no coincidence that we never seem to talk about the men who are choosing to buy women and treat them as receptacles.

"Just think of it like this - your classmates are a pretty interesting study case in group mentality (and the belief in utter nonsense despite evidence)."

There's a definite ethnographic quality to feeling like such an outsider at uni.
The challenge is that much of it comes from the lecturers aswell. The feminism session got a lengthy derail when the lecturer decided to mansplain that feminists really need to consider more deeply who they are getting into bed with and the potential consequences of sharing/using certain platforms. The telling off did not include any acknowledgement of the extent to which they have been silenced, harassed, bullied, threatened, smeared and maligned by those who are supposed to be on their side.

Also OP, you will find the detective Cormoran Strike drunkenly but effectively demolishing these arguments at a dinner party with students around page 497 of Troubled Blood.

Your fellow students probably don't approve of JKR and probably won't have read it. So you can have a quiet joke with yourself if you quote him to them although you might need to tone the language down. Paraphrase it perhaps.

Thanks everyone, live shared the link, the Norway now model and the iceberg apology. I won't back down. I didn't back down the day JKR got doxxed with her kids in the house. Absolutely refused to engage on the debate about her supposed bigotry and resolutely made them address the issue of someone stalking a women who fled domestic abuse and putting her address out there for her abuser to find. With the children home.

They HAD to relent because of course that's appalling.

@loopyapp

Thanks everyone, live shared the link, the Norway now model and the iceberg apology. I won't back down. I didn't back down the day JKR got doxxed with her kids in the house. Absolutely refused to engage on the debate about her supposed bigotry and resolutely made them address the issue of someone stalking a women who fled domestic abuse and putting her address out there for her abuser to find. With the children home.

They HAD to relent because of course that's appalling.

I have Fight the Power as an ear worm now.

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jun/22/trouble-in-paradise-rise-and-fall-of-germany-brothel-king-jurgen-rudloff

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/30/new-zealand-sex-work-prostitution-migrants-julie-bindel

As someone else pointed out the only time the pro-pimp lobby care about women's earnings is when it comes to the sex trade. Don't remember them caring about all the predominantly female retail staff who have lost their jobs over the years.

This is a very thorough article about legalised prostitution in Germany.

The idea of the law, passed by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s Social Democrat-Green coalition, was to recognise prostitution as a job like any other. Sex workers could now enter into employment contracts, sue for payment and register for health insurance, pension plans and other benefits. Exploiting prostitutes was still criminal but everything else was now above board. Two female politicians and a Berlin madam were pictured clinking their champagne glasses in celebration.
It didn’t work. “Nobody employs prostitutes in Germany,” says Beretin. None of the authorities I spoke to had ever heard of a prostitute suing for payment, either. And only 44 prostitutes have registered for benefits.

s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/welcome-to-paradise/

Sex work is the only 'industry' where the basic health and safety involved learning how how not to get assaulted or murdered by one of your clients.

Also, in other sectors, anywhere where you would be in contact with bodily fluids you would, at the very least, have gloves, apron and possibly face mask. If sex work is like any other job, how this is not the case?

And if sex work were legalised, then sites like Punternet would be totally legit. These are websites where men review women, actual human beings, in the same way as they would an object they bought from Amazon. In what world would that be a good thing? How exactly does that shit 'empower' women?

Just ask them a this question
Do they honestly believe that any sex worker would continue in sex work if they had a million pounds in the bank?
Simplistic I know but.........

nordicmodelnow.org/

prostitutionresearch.com/prostitution-trafficking-in-nine-countries-an-update-on-violence-and-post-traumatic-stress-disorder/

'Researchers interviewed 854 people currently or recently in prostitution in nine countries (Canada, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, United States, and Zambia), inquiring about current and lifetime history of sexual and physical violence. Findings contradict common myths about prostitution: the assumption that street prostitution of men and boys is different from prostitution of women and girls, that most of those in prostitution freely consent to it, that most people are in prostitution because of drug addiction, that prostitution is qualitatively different from trafficking, and that legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution would decrease its harm.'

It might be worth asking questions, too, OP, like whether colleagues actually know any prostitutes?

I'm glad you found the link to Nordic Model Now OP.

This is a good article from their site.

nordicmodelnow.org/2021/12/01/universities-are-training-students-to-believe-prostitution-is-a-normal-job/

And there is a critique of the infamous Leicester university tool kit and the response from NMN with their own university handbook.
It's an excellent resource, very informative and well researched.
Worth remembering Leicester Uni received substantial funding from the ESCR over three years for their tool it which is being rolled out across U.K. universities.

Meanwhile NMN is volunteer run and they pulled together and produced their handbook in a few short months over the summer.

nordicmodelnow.org/the-nordic-model-now-handbook-for-universities/

Cross post Arabella

@Ghostsintheshelf

I believe there is also evidence that in countries which treat prostitution as a completely legal, problem-free job, trafficking of women and girls increases though I can't remember the source for that.

Women being trafficked to Germany?

Because German female nationals might actually be empowered by having sufficient employment opportunities and rights they don't need or want to be "empowered" and leave the "empowerment for women from less economically successful locations.

I have come to think that part of the problem with talking about this in a way that people understand is that as a society, there are lots of wodely believes ideas that lead to them accepting that conclusion.

So it's really not just that you have to convince people that prostitution sucks.

The main problem is that it is generally accepted by a great many people that it is ok to choose to have dangerous, violent, exploitative casual sex, with anyone including someone you have never met before for any reason you want. It can be sex that is self-destructive. It can be sex with a nasty old man you hate but when he dies you will get a fortune. It can be with someone who will share their drugs with you. It can be out of your mind on drugs in a sex club blindfolded. Whatever.

If someone believes that, sex for money really doesn't rate as particularly more dangerous, or self-destructive. The idea that sex requires looking out for the good of others, some kind of human connection, is already gone. It's completely transactional.

Absolutely - and when porn is everywhere and routinely depicts sex as a collection of unpleasant and degrading acts you must “perform” or submit to in order to do it properly (including choking, anal, slapping, bondage, “facials”, the whole lot) - then why would the idea of being paid to be objectified and degraded seem to young women particularly different to doing it for free? In fact getting paid to do it might seem better than not. If you have to get trussed up, choked and pornified just for your boyfriend (in ways that older and more experienced women would be revolted by), what’s the barrier to doing it for cash on OnlyFans?

The current culture of emotionless hardcore porn kink sex being valorised and ubiquitous, means young women have no way of understanding that sex isn’t meant to be like that in the first place. Humiliation, in particular, is built in to porn ideas of women - and the flipside is the widespread acceptance of the daft BDSM idea that somehow being humiliated, or sexual submission, is a kind of power or identity in itself. (God knows how many young women get taken in by that one.) The identity language around “tops”, “bottoms” etc. only adds to this, so there’s much less of a sense (in both porn and queer youth cultures) that good sex shouldn’t involve humiliation or discomfort, and instead should be about mutual pleasure and connection — rather than a series of acts on a menu, or acting out a power imbalance.

As a result, you have this situation where lots of young people, overfed on Tumblr and YouTube and also with little experience of disadvantage in life, believing that “sex work” is like empowered porn, or just like getting cash for role play, and so on.

The massive gulf between normal, pleasurable, mutually enjoyable sex; and the humiliation, commodification, danger and power imbalance of prostitution, just isn’t visible to them in the same way.

@Ghostsintheshelf

Yes - thank you. Very powerful

@foxgoosefinch

Absolutely - and when porn is everywhere and routinely depicts sex as a collection of unpleasant and degrading acts you must “perform” or submit to in order to do it properly (including choking, anal, slapping, bondage, “facials”, the whole lot) - then why would the idea of being paid to be objectified and degraded seem to young women particularly different to doing it for free? In fact getting paid to do it might seem better than not. If you have to get trussed up, choked and pornified just for your boyfriend (in ways that older and more experienced women would be revolted by), what’s the barrier to doing it for cash on OnlyFans?

The current culture of emotionless hardcore porn kink sex being valorised and ubiquitous, means young women have no way of understanding that sex isn’t meant to be like that in the first place. Humiliation, in particular, is built in to porn ideas of women - and the flipside is the widespread acceptance of the daft BDSM idea that somehow being humiliated, or sexual submission, is a kind of power or identity in itself. (God knows how many young women get taken in by that one.) The identity language around “tops”, “bottoms” etc. only adds to this, so there’s much less of a sense (in both porn and queer youth cultures) that good sex shouldn’t involve humiliation or discomfort, and instead should be about mutual pleasure and connection — rather than a series of acts on a menu, or acting out a power imbalance.

As a result, you have this situation where lots of young people, overfed on Tumblr and YouTube and also with little experience of disadvantage in life, believing that “sex work” is like empowered porn, or just like getting cash for role play, and so on.

The massive gulf between normal, pleasurable, mutually enjoyable sex; and the humiliation, commodification, danger and power imbalance of prostitution, just isn’t visible to them in the same way.

What a brilliant, measured response. Thank you.

They need to understand that they're not supporting the right of women to sell their bodies; they're supporting the right of men to buy women's bodies. Ask them why they think that's a good thing.

There was a good article in the Guardian a couple of years ago by a young woman who did some work in a prison and discovered that lots of women in there had been forced into prostitution. It dawned on her (duh) that her previous belief that sex work was a woman's choice might not be 100% accurate.