So The Independent recently ran a piece by Catherine Murphy of Amnesty International, explaining why the organization is calling for the decriminalization of sex work.
In the comments, someone calling themselves THEMISHMISHEH offers a unique take on the issue.
And by “unique” I mean “seemingly from another planet.”
Shades of Tom Martin, huh?
@rugbyyogi: I agree that we’ll likely never fully eliminate the ugly side of sex work. However, making it legal means that sex workers who have been abused can go to the police without fear of being arrested themselves for working in an illegal profession. It also means the government can set and enforce standards, both regarding work (pay, healthcare etc.) and safety (making condoms mandatory, stuff like that). Also, it might at least take off some of the stigma.
Given the choice between having sex work regulated and unregulated I’d always chose legal and regulated. It may not work well, but in my mind, it will work far better than just making it illegal and hoping it goes away like drugs and human trafficking.
Nina;hippie lady; zeb: thank you for elucidating my own thoughts so incredibly clearly. It’s almost like we’re telepathic!
Given how many trolls we’ve had that’ve said “The government should force the country’s most attractive women to have sex with needy incels” (but in much grosser words)… Definitely just sex on demand, no payment.
Isn’t there a study in Germany that showed that regulations did not improve the sex worker life condition nor lowered the sex trafficking ? I can’t find it, but I remember articles about it. They weren’t from a source I would say would be without any kind of bias, but I do think that complete depenalisation without actual authorization would allow the sex workers to go to the police for abuse, without giving a legal cadre that pimps can use to hide theirs abuses.
… That is, if the police force is sensibilized to ear them. But that go for regulation too.
Also, trafficked sex workers almost alway are foreigners, so the fear of being expulsed is another layer that prevent them from going to the police. The solution to that is easy but unacceptable for the majority of europeans and american people I guess.
I respectfully think you guys should be doing quite a bit of research on this complex subject, before talking based on vague things you’ve heard here and there.
I suggest reading about how things are going for prostituted women in places like Amsterdam (hint: legalization increased human traficking a lot, made it worse for the women and a paradise for pimps and rapists)
We talk about feel-good feminism (a waist of time) and anti-puritanism, about choice, but the truth is tha no prostituted woman trully chose that life. None. And if they did, they’d be doing women as a group a huge diservice by objectifying themselves (yes, feel-goood-feminism “personal choices” women make affectd us all, so we can and should address those choices)
Another truth is that there is no such thing as safe “sex work”, there’s only luck.
@ fnoicby, grumpy, xodima
One point made against the Nordic model is that johns are often the only people in the position to report trafficking to the authorities. They’re one of the few points of contact between victims and the surrounding society. We’d want to give them a possibility to do that without putting themselves in harm’s way.
It’s impossible to know whether johns could actually be mobilized into a force against trafficking or not without looking into it empirically. I’m very, very cautiously optimistic. If it turned out to be a viable strategy, it would be win-win-win-win for victims, human rights, law enforcement and the johns (who get a chance to prove they’re not completely despicable, which might do them a lot of good psychologically and facilitate empathy toward women) and a big lose for traffickers.
@EJ re: forced sex work compared to forced textile and agricultural work:
The fact remains that those forced into the former face a life rife with stigmitization and narrowed life choices / opportunities if they should manage to escape while the latter don’t.
They may involve analogous power dynamics, but, while they are both reprehensible, they are not equivalent.
You may argue that that’s moot because they *shouldn’t* be subject to continuing stigmitization, but the fact remains that they do.
Ugh re: my pronouns and subject verb/agreement: I wrote something on my phone, tended to a child, and then didn’t proofread before hitting “post”.
Un-icked:
The fact remains that those forced into the former face a life rife with stigmitization and narrowed life choices / opportunities if they should manage to escape while the latter don’t.
Both forced prostitution and forced types of other work may involve analogous power dynamics, but, while all are reprehensible, they are not equivalent.
You may argue that that’s moot because those forced into prostitution and sex work *shouldn’t* be subject to continuing stigmitization, but the fact remains that they are.
Life lesson: Don’t write, get distracted, edit, go do something, and then post without reading through what you’ve written 😀
Seconding everything xodima, msexceptiontotherule and Sally said, too.
Exactly how in the fuck does that thinking even work??!?
But atleast s/he called women women and not “females”
LordCrowstaff-
Echoing some of this to note that the systems of illegality contribute a lot to how systems of enslavement in the sex industry (via trafficking) and sex work in general have such current problems.
Having systems where a sex worker is under legal threat of jail and the rape by authorities that often accompanies sex workers there means that a sex worker has little legal recourse for mistreatment and fellow sex workers working with a sex worker (especially in the escort industry) for safety has little options if their friend is murdered, kidnapped, raped, or otherwise has violence enacted upon them.
Similarly for victims of enslavement and trafficking, having the reaction of authorities be to deport them and nothing else does nothing to dismantle the systems of exploitation where foreign kidnapped or deceived (often underaged) women are forced into a particularly brutal and vile facet of the “industry”. There are currently no protections or refugee offers for those enslaved if they are able to escape their captors or reveal information that could lead to the dismantling of those exploitative and vile networks.
And this lack of recourse applies also to our underaged sex worker population, which is often “chosen” out of necessities of survival due to homelessness and not being allowed any other form of legal work without risking their economic safety (and made up mostly of queer and specifically trans homeless youth). Our laws regarding homeless youth are extremely brutal to those who are homeless and rob them of any recourse or ability to seek any form of social service. And that’s because our current model of reacting to the problem of youth escaping abuse, CSA, disownment, etc… and being forced to the streets is to arrest said homeless youth at best and to send them back to the abusive families who hurt them with the vague promise of having CPS pop in eventually.
The high risk of that prevents underaged youth from seeking redress if they find themselves in said industries whether by economic necessity and the fact that it is the only means for children on the street to be self-sufficient outside drug trafficking (and the intersections of our war on drug bullshit to all of this adds another layer of legal barriers for providing any form of justice) or by force by exploitative pimps.
And it’s worth noting that the lack of legal recourse is what often contributes to the violence against sex workers and what actually makes those in that line of work so much more targeted than exploited people in other lines of work. Because our society says that sex workers are inherently illegal and unwanted in society, people feel justified in looking down on them, johns feel justified in abusing and raping them, and serial killers and serial abusers know that attacks on sex workers will not be investigated as seriously.
And as such, the rates of violence, sexual assault, and so on against sex workers are staggeringly high and we live in a society where most serial killers get their start by murdering sex workers… a fact most cops only notice after “real people” start getting murdered as well.
Regardless of permanent solution to the intersecting problems of trafficking and sex work, the stigma and the systems of illegality are what perpetuate abusive and terrible situations as it leaves little legal options for those in these systems to redress wrong and receive justice and it ensures the most exploitative and horrifying systems to persist as there is no benefit in helping to dismantle them by those who would know the most. (and yes, this also applies to our bullshit war on drugs and how kids end up in a pipeline to perpetuating systems of violence because they have no expectation of receiving any genuine legal help for breaking said exploitative systems down and children who are starving have no other recourse to being self-sustaining.
And so that needs to change if any other legal change has a chance to become effective.
The debate people are having in this comment thread makes me feel really uncomfortable as I have a good number of friends in the sex industry or who were exploited as homeless youth or who were trafficked by their families into the underground child rape industry. And some of them are the same people.
Many of said people are also trans and a good number of those friends are also trans people of color as legal employment options tend to be nonexistent or equally prone to abuse (I’ve had more than one friend in the sex work community state that sex work was the least exploitative career they could find after so many employers aggressively misgendering them and worse).
And the social realities that surround all that. The economic factors, the systems of male sexual entitlement, the social disgust even in the feminist community towards sex workers as subhuman or moronic are rather complex and often best known by those in the industry or who have been through systems of trafficking.
And that’s a voice I just don’t see being currently represented in these debates, and so it all gets really awkward as it seems some of the conclusions being made about sex work and trafficking are made in absentia of those who have actually lived it and often echoes general societal dismissal of the industry and the people who find themselves in it that seem less than helpful.
mockingbird-
And that stigmatization is enforced and perpetuated by how we characterize sex work legally. Systems of discrimination and maltreatment are empowered by systems that dehumanize or legally disempower the people targeted. The legal status of sex work means that people feel justified in mistreating and discriminating for life individuals who worked in that industry (either by choice or by enslavement) and worse, which is why “dead hooker” “jokes” are as rife and everpresent as exploitative jokes about other legally and socially disempowered individuals (see also prison rape “jokes” or “jokes” about “junkies”)).
And it spills over on people who aren’t in the industry. Which is why revenge porn even is a thing. Because having naked pictures of one distributed around the internet is seen socially as a black mark on the person whose photos were taken rather than the one committing an act of sexual assault by distributing said photos without consent.
And part of the reason for that is that we view anything evocative of sex work in general as dehumanizing for the least powerful person involved.
Which is why our social regard of johns never rises above “pathetic” in the “jokes” even if they are intentionally seeking out trafficked or underaged individuals or seeking a target to abuse whereas language that degrades those who are in the industry is rife in our society to the point where words like “whore” or “prostitute” are downright common in their usage as synonyms for “bad or inhuman person”.
The topic of sex work is definitely complicated. But considering that a criminal record destroys your chance of getting a decent job or housing forever, I think sex workers are better off with it being decriminalization for that reason alone.
@rubyyogi, please don’t listen to a thing Catherine Hakim has to say.
http://m.independent.ie/world-news/europe/legalising-prostitution-will-cut-rape-and-sex-assaults-on-women-says-think-tank-31433657.html
The idea that men “need” 2x the sex women do is utter BS. Check out the book called “What Women Want”.
@Sally, I hadn’t heard the term “feel-good feminism” before but I think it describes a lot of things being said in the debate on Amnesty’s position. The fact remains that the majority of people in this industry aren’t there by choice, and that’s what Amnesty’s policy should be concerned with rather than choice sex workers. And sex workers and prostitutes are absolutely not unanimously supporting full decriminalisation, there is much division among them.
Thanks for your input, Cerberus. I agree with everything you said.
Did decriminalization in Vegas, Canada, Germany, Amsterdam destigmatize sex work? I remember reading that it is still very unsafe in Canada. Will the police treat their homicide investigations any better than they do now? (Strippers and porn stars are looked down on and it isn’t the same in terms of punishment.) I wish I believed it will help.
* I’m not saying it should stay criminalized, just that I don’t believe it will take care of how sex workers are treated.
Sorry for the triple post. Sex workers who turn to it as their only recourse, like homeless teens, won’t be able to afford licenses and such like in the Vegas set up. Will they quit working?
The women sexually exploit men and young boys?
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/32659928/images/1402268765555.gif
I haven’t read the comments, but have a cute sleepy baby anyway! I am the brain bleach fairy!
http://geeneelee.tumblr.com/post/126987939046/haramdaddy-me-when-i-cant-sleep-night
Seconding that. She’s an antifeminist who believes, as MRA/PUAs do, that women have some nebulous, powerful thing called “erotic capital”. Completely ignoring that those with the real power in the sex industry (better it were called sex CAPITALISM, because that’s what it is) are the men with the money who come with demands to be exchanged for compliance, or else no pay. All talk of “agency” misses this point altogether. These are not privileged courtesans we’re talking about, they are ordinary people, and often from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds. In fact, the economically-prostituted persons are the most common type, and the ones who make good money and can afford to pick and choose and lord it over their clients are exceptions, not the rule. Yet it’s the latter type who have dominated the discourse and (dare I say it?) co-opted feminism, and it’s their all-male panel of representatives who turned Amnesty’s head. Something is very wrong with this picture.
I should also add that in countries that have taken what is now Amnesty’s current position, it hasn’t worked out well for the women and girls in prostitution (I prefer to call them that, because “sex workers” sounds neutral and euphemistic, and erases their real situation). Germany and the Netherlands have seen a huge spike in trafficking from “post-communist” Eastern Europe. And no, the johns are NOT helping. They don’t care where the girls come from or how they got there, as long as they get to do what they like with them for cheap-cheap-cheap. They pay for girls, they want girls. Not backtalk. And certainly not to go to the authorities in a white-knight bid to help them. I bet most of these guys know damn well they can report trafficking, and just choose not to, because then there’d be no more supply for their demand. Johns are not the heroes in this story. If it weren’t for them, there’d be no prostitution! No demand, no supply. Simple economics.
And no, dubbing prostitution “sex work” and “a job like any other” has NOT legitimized it even in the eyes of the prostituted. Offered a chance to register and pay taxes like regular folks, most of them don’t. In fact, many don’t even know they can, because they were trafficked in from Ukraine or Moldova or Romania, and they don’t speak the language beyond the few simple phrases needed to negotiate a “transaction”, so how COULD they know? All they know is that they are there without a passport or papers (because the pimps took that away from them first thing), and that they were told they could be arrested and deported if they squealed. Or if they tried to escape to seek work on their own, their traffickers would find them and kill them (as has happened hundreds of times since prostitution was legalized in those countries.) And they don’t make enough to keep for themselves, because the oh-so-legal brothels charge extortionate daily rates (on top of a low flat rate for all-inclusive sex, even sans condom), and a girl has to service at least three or four johns before she even covers her room rental for the day!
And even those who know they can register and won’t be criminally charged, still won’t register or come forward, because the pimps, traffickers and johns have inculcated them so deeply with shame at what they are doing. Their job is not like any other, and it never can be. They tend to get PTSD at the same rates as soldiers and civilians in war zones. Outside the military, what kind of “job” does that to a person?
And before anyone says “listen to sex workers” — how do you think I know all this? It’s because I know German, and I translate articles from German news regularly for my blog. The news reporters there talk and listen to the girls in the streets and clubs as often as they can. They’ve been investigating the situation because Germany is on the verge of rewriting its prostitution laws, and they want to know who really represents what interests, and whether the few “happy hookers” who always appear on the talk shows to babble about how “empowering” it is to do “sex work” are actually speaking for a majority of girls and women in the trade. Guess what? They’re not! A majority of the estimated half a million women in the German sex trade are not Germans, they barely speak the language, they come from Eastern Europe, they’re not in good health (need I elaborate as to why?), and most of all, they just want to get out and go home and find a normal job. If any were only to be had. But since there are none, they stay until they get too sick and tired and broken-down to work. Many exit as poor as they were going in, if not poorer. They hardly see a cent of the money they earn; their traffickers and the brothel owners take the lion’s share (to cover room fees, “expenses”, and “debts”). And some don’t see any of that money at all. They are wholly dependent on the pimps.
I’m pro-Nordic Model, myself. The Swedes listened to women in prostitution, and based their laws on that. Selling sex is not a crime there; buying it is. As is profiting from the avails, a.k.a. pimping and trafficking. The girls know that they can go to police if a john gets abusive, and as a result, the johns are on the run. It used to be that one Swedish man in eight paid for sex; now it’s one in twelve. The trafficking mafias realized that it’s no longer profitable to funnel girls from impoverished countries in there because there’s a high chance that they’d be caught and put out of business, so they no longer bother. The supply and the demand for prostitution have both gone down. It’s been such a success that Norway, Finland and Iceland have since adopted similar laws, and France is looking at doing the same. (France, formerly renowned for its bordellos! Imagine that.)
And nobody calls THOSE countries prudish! Their attitude to sex is considerably more relaxed, ironically, than that of Germany or Holland…because there’s a deep-seated strain of puritanism in every culture where prostitution is commonplace, whether it’s legal, tolerated, or not. Purity culture powers prostitution, and vice versa. (Ponder that for a bit.) Prostitution, no matter what “progressive” veneer gets put on it by whom, is at root a profoundly conservative thing. It depends for its survival on a large degree of social conservatism. Just ask any john who didn’t want to “compromise” his good family-man image by screwing around openly!
If I had to invent a nomenclature for persons in prostitution, it would be just that: PERSONS. Specifically, women and girls. (Guys, too, but let’s face it, there are far fewer of them.) I hate signifiers, because I love people. The idea that they are a class set apart for sexual use (mainly by men, almost never by women) is despicable and dehumanizing. Sex capitalism is such a sexist, classist institution that I can’t imagine arguing for it in any way. Not even the “but sex is a Basic Human Right!!!” way. Or the “but she CHOSE it!!!” way. We don’t like to think how people’s “choices” and “empowerment” are actually subject to a lot of constraint (mainly economic), but there it is. I prefer to keep an eye to the humanity of those who are prostituted, and I can’t do that with bland labels like “sex worker” getting all up in my eyes. They don’t want the labels either, that much I do know. They just want to be people, to be loved and independent and let live as people. They ARE people. And those who pay to use them don’t really want to see or treat them as such, no matter what they may say. (If they did, they wouldn’t pay to have their way.)
Who are the villains? Not the prostituted. Not feminists either, not even the ones labelled unsexy, killjoys, SWERFs, Victorian prudes, and all those other crap labels that get slapped on ’em for not going along with the fun-and-empowerment narrative. The real villains have always been the ones with the money to make girls and women into “whores”. (Or those who expect women to act that part, even without being paid a cent.)
In German, the word for pimp is “Zuhälter”, which means “man who holds you to it”. That leaves no doubt as to what these “boyfriends”, “agents” and “business managers” really do. In French, johns are called “prostituteurs”, which is also a good, clear noun to use. Why we don’t have a proper English equivalent for those words, I will never know — but I can guess. We’re such prudes here in the anglosphere, all hung up on euphemizing everything in our weird purity culture, and the sex-capitalists are laughing all the way to the bank.
And I’m done ranting for the day. Teal Deer Socialist Lady out.
@makingfitzcaraldo:
It won’t magically solve there problems, that’s for sure. Hell, there are enough of those problems with perfectly legal jobs. But it is one step in the direction of seeing sex workers not as something dirty and shameful, but as people who deserve rights and have dignity. If you criminalize these people in general, they will always be seen as something criminal. By acknowedging them in law, they are moved into society, out of the corner of shame.
That being said, all manner of pimps,trafickers and abusers should be punished as harshly as possible. Such people are reprehensible.
In other news apparent pro-lifer attempts to bomb a women’s clinic. Thus proving how dedicated to life he is.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/08/18/police-small-explosive-device-found-in-backpack-at-wichita-women-health-clinic/
Those poor workers who discovered the ied. I can’t imagine what that must feel like.