Womens hour on Ash Regan's private members bill in the Scottish Parliament

[334bu]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002f8lw

Ash Regan on fire here.

The "That's one opinion" is increasingly irritating me, and can make it hard to listen. I spent this interview snapping, "You don't SAY!" at the computer every time Nuala said it. I mean, it's self-evident, isn't it: you're interviewing one person with a strong opinion on a controversial issue specifically in order to hear their strong opinion - with which others will, by definition, disagree! You don't have to pepper the interview with it like a margin of pedantic footnotes.

In this context, the sheer quantity of "That's your opinion"s come across as rigid disclaimers - absurd, unnecessarily hostile to the interviewee, and seemingly a pitiful plea for tolerance from potentially volatile listeners.

Meanwhile, the flow of the conversation is disrupted, and the interview becomes stilted and staccato, limiting the clarity and fluency with which the view you invited them on to share can actually be shared.

Lastly, I do think it has the dangerous effect of legitimising and increasing polemical thinking. Instead of inviting listeners to listen and reflect on a fully formed opinion, drawing their own opinions and potentially learning from it (whether in changing their minds or just strengthening their own arguments)... they're just shunted back towards an irritable focus on their own disagreement: that's me she's referring to! I don't share that opinion! And quite right, too! Bizarre way of thinking!

It all feels like a very sad indictment of where we are as a society.

Re: Austria, btw - do you remember reading about this?:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68392233

Police in Vienna are investigating the deaths of four women and a teenage girl in a 24-hour period.

Three women were stabbed to death by a man in a brothel in Austria's capital on Friday. A suspect was arrested.

Says it all, to me.

Is this related to sex work?

In Nordic Model France, 10 sex workers were murdered in a 6 month period. The Nordic Model increases the risk of violence and murder because of the precautions taken to prevent being caught which include the meeting taking place in more secluded locations and the sex worker having less legal options to vet whoever places bookings.

https://pion-norge.no/aktuelt/more-than-10-sex-workers-have-been-killed-in-6-months/

A client, who thankfully has just been jailed, threatened a sex worker in Nordic Model ROI with a knife. Somehow the Nordic Model wasn't able to prevent or discourage him from placing a booking with her- if a client is capable of violence then I don't see how he is going to be deterred from a law against paying for sex.

www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/man-who-exploded-threatened-cut-34792671

PS I'm not saying don't include balance. Just do it while showing respect to the interviewee and your listeners! Replace the endless teenaged #thatsyouropinions with just a few well-timed, concise and above all natural acknowledgements of complexity. Ensuring both balance and fluidity is a fundamental skill for an interviewer, and one that the presenter of Woman's Hour really should have.

If a client is capable of theft then I don't see how he is going to be deterred from a law against stealing.

If a client is capable of murder then I don't see how he is going to be deterred from a law against killing.

Etc.

Arguments using the "laws don't 'prevent' crimes" line are almost as irritating as #otheropinions. I think we can assume that everyone reading knows they don't.

And yes, it's to do with sex work - "brothel", it says. To be fair, though, my example is isolated, as is yours.

For me, it comes down to one thing above all else:

Don't tell me that sex work is work unless 1) you're just as happy for your own mother/sister/daughter/wife to do it as you are be to see them in any other job, and 2) you can tell me about the legislation surrounding contracts and provision of adequate PPE in it, as exist for any other job.

I stopped supporting Amnesty International as a donor because their research on the subject of prostitution in a large part was informed by Alejandra Gil who trafficked women to work in brothels. Unsurprisingly their research backed the call for brothel owners and pimps to be decriminalised. Their interests do not lie with making those selling sex safer but protecting those who make money from the people selling sex

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

👏👏👏👏👏

Another more subtle approach to #youropinion: probe the interviewee instead.

"And could I ask why you use the term 'prostitution'? You'll be aware that many of our listeners may find 'sex work' a more respectful descriptor."

A much more meaningful and natural way of going about things.

(I'd love that job, btw. Let me try! Please!!! Lemmmeeee!)

Interesting. And depressing. As are my own and Chris' examples. Whatever the best way forward, there's an inescapable universality to it. But I think that, too, is an argument for increasing the stigma surrounding it for buyers. We'll never eradicate it, but we needn't bloody encourage and normalise it. And re: DrB's post above - the awful "buy 9, get one free" attitude etc. - that's exactly what's happening in eg. Germany. There's a very disturbing article about it over there that I can't bear to go looking for.

Any society that places any woman in a position that she believes that her only option for survival is prostitution is a society that has failed women. Any society that allows any man to believe that it is acceptable to pay for sex is a society that has failed women.

If it was decriminalised, consultancy firms would see fantastic opportunities for advising such businesses. If they’re happy enough to encourage a pharmaceutical firm to actively target high value prescribers addicts for increased opioid sales, there’d certainly be little hesitation in advising firms owning a chain of brothels, would there?

Purdue engaged McKinsey to recover lost OxyContin sales. Purdue retained McKinsey to conduct a rapid assessment of the underlying drivers of OxyContin performance, identify key opportunities to increase near-term OxyContin revenue and develop plans to capture priority opportunities. This 2013 effort was called Evolve to Excellence, or “E2E,” and included McKinsey advising Purdue on how to “turbocharge” the sales pipeline for OxyContin by, among other strategies, intensifying marketing to High Value Prescribers.

edited to add I’m genuinely interested to know if @Christinapple would buy shares in such a firm. Wasn’t just a rhetorical question.

Hah - you can talk!

How about acknowledging your own cuddly little buzz words?

Like “sexwork” - to make prostitution sound like it’s a professional career choice, akin to accountancy but without the qualifications.

See also “sexworker” (drug-addicted, trafficked, coerced victims of criminal enterprises).

Or “client” (sleazy, often violent, shitheads, subjecting the “sexworkers” to increasingly risky assaults whilst exposing their unknowing partners to the risk of future infertility or worse).

A government-commisioned report on Europe's greatest experiment in legalisation. Excerpt below (I've not read the report as a whole, and recognise it's much more nuanced):

As regards improving prostitutes’ working conditions, hardly any measurable, positive impact has been observed in practice. At most there are first, tentative signs which point in this direction. It is especially in this area that no short-term improvements that could benefit the prostitutes themselves are to be expected. The Prostitution Act has not recognisably improved the prostitutes’ means for leaving prostitution. There are as yet no viable indications that the Prostitution Act has reduced crime. The Prostitution Act has as yet contributed only very little in terms of improving transparency in the world of prostitution.

https://www.bmfsfj.de/resource/blob/93346/f81fb6d56073e3a0a80c442439b6495e/bericht-der-br-zum-prostg-englisch-data.pdf

Someone asked earlier if sex workers in Britain pay tax. Answer is yes they do unless they are trafficked and they may have accountants like people in other jobs. Whether sex workers will still be legally required to pay tax if the Nordic Model is passed I don't know but would be interested in.

"accountancy but without the qualifications."

Is this a jab at jobs that don't need academic qualifications, or that jobs must require them?

And "client", yes someone who pays for a service is called a client. Clients pay for the service provided, and not "buying their bodies" (another popular buzz phrase I've heard a lot).

"coerced victims of criminal enterprises"

That's a good one. Where did you get this from, a movie?

Someone asked earlier if sex workers in Britain pay tax. Answer is yes they do unless they are trafficked and they may have accountants like people in other jobs.

Just like any other job?! How many plumbers, engineers, doctors are trafficked.???

As you miss the point entirely on whether sex work needs qualifications. Rank these jobs in terms of real-world desirability: accountant, office clerk, McDonald’s server, sex worker. I could throw in sewage repairman or Donald Trump’s toupee fluffer and we all know which job will come out at the bottom of the heap. Qualifications have fuck all to do with it.

The inside of a woman's body is not a workplace. The nature of the female body and the act of penis in vagaina is a far more intimate act than almost any other ( apart from being pregnant, maybe). because of its interior nature.

This is why rape is such a trauma; the breaching and violation of both personal and bodily integrity. The feeling that what is most intimate to you has been violently invaded.

Women, of course, can also become pregnant through penis in vagina sex...and this is registered at aa very deep and primitive level...even when one is not ovulating.....and which is why women, naturally, tend not to be as promiscuous as men...because the risks of sex for women, and the costs, are far higher.

So, yes " Buying their body" is a very apt phrase. In fact, it does not go anywhere near far enough. It could also be called rape - except the woman involved has on some level consented to this exploitation and invasion.

Also, it is well established that many wiomen who end up in the sex industry have suffered previous sexual abuse, including as children. Taking up this' job' is for some a way of attempting to regain control; for others it is a sad comment about their learned lack of self worth and value.

Men tend to have far more transactional attitudes and feelings towards sex, because their investment, and their risk is not so great.

The number of men who adopt trans identities who have have engaged in what you call 'Sex work' is very telling, and represents a bit of a disconnect between the adopted identity of 'woman' and the actual reality of being female.

I’ve seen you appear in a lot of threads on this board, so your style of (not) addressing the points made to you isn’t surprising.

“Client” (in this context), “sexworker” and “sexwork” are buzzwords designed to obfuscate the harsh realities of prostitution and, (if you were arguing in good faith) you’d acknowledge that.

Many ways to earn money don’t require qualifications. I’d hesitate to describe them as ‘professions’ though. Jobs, yes. But in any case, you (quite deliberately) didn’t address the point there either.

Women’s bodies are not “services” and therefore the ‘men’ who engage in acts of assault for money can never be “clients.”

As for: “That's a good one. Where did you get this from, a movie?” - well, no. It’s somewhat telling that you think I’d need to ‘borrow’ that.

What kind of man wants to have sex with a woman he knows does not actually want to have sex with him?

I think we all know the answer to this one

Germany has decriminalised prostitution and now has far more brothels than before, violence to prostituted women has not stopped, and brothels are mostly staffed by immigrant women.
The Nordic model does not stop the prostitution of women. What it says is that there is no entitlement to sex and that it is illegal to buy it, which sends a message to all men: that women are not a set of holes for them to use, they are people and their bodies are not commodities.
The aim of the Nordic model is to end prostitution, not police it. This model opens ways for victims to escape prostitution if they wish, the decriminalising methods you list do not, since they accept that being a prostituted woman is a job like any other.

Oh yes please! Nuala is so stilted in her delivery, drives me nuts stressing she won’t get to the end of her sentence without a stumble even when just introducing the programme.

Replace the endless teenaged #thatsyouropinions with just a few well-timed, concise and above all natural acknowledgements of complexity

DH, who has become accustomed to my loud outbursts of ‘oh FFS!’ from another room while WH is on, was genuinely astonished to hear that NMcG is 52 and not a 20-something handmaiden. Even he (who does get what I’m always banging on about, but tbh would prefer not to think about it overmuch 🙄 ) can’t bear listening to her. He actually commented on the curt, snappy voice reserved for those pesky women doing wrongthink, and if he noticed, then it’s worryingly obvious.

There is a report made for the Belgium government on the consequences of their law change. I remember skim reading it and there was some positive outcomes but also a lot of negative. The one thing that stuck with me is that none of the situations (criminalising, Nordic or decriminalising) led to better circumstances for the prostitutes and all of them worked in the favour of the sex buyers. Also the normalising of buying sex was chilling to read.
Recommendation in the report was to formalise pimping and make it legal to exploit prostitutes.