How a Post About Iran Punishing Porn Prompted an Epiphany

323 thoughts on How a Post About Iran Punishing Porn Prompted an Epiphany

1. Thanks, Roy.

   You might also be interested in this earlier roundup I had of (former and current) sex workers blogging (more as a jumping off point, really)

2. No thanks are necessary- I should really be thanking you. I’ve seen a number of your posts on the subject before, and while I’m still working my way through this, it’s been informative and helpful.

3. Up here in Canadistan, we had a safe injection site for drug users. Controversial, because it’s using public money to provide a safe place for people to do something illegal. We’re now having a debate up here over “harm reduction.” The idea being, of course, that it’s going to happen anyway, whether or not the government provides a safe place. So by providing a safe place the mesasge they are trying to send is “Let us help you,” rather than “Yeah, go ahead and use your drugs, we don’t care.”

   Sadly, it’s being shut down. Now there is a group in Surrey trying to open a co-op bordello. Owned collectively by the workers there, and sharing the profits while providing a safe place.

   Because of these two things, I seem to be having a lot of conversations over coffee breaks about drugs and prostitution. Interestingly, despite the high average age of the workforce in at my place of employment (it’s a government job with extremely low turnover), people are mostly of the opinion that sice it’s going to happen anyway, whether we like it or not, might as well make it safe. Most of us here consider it to be harm reduction, because at this point it’s the best we can do.

   Is prostitution inherently harmful? I can’t say for sure, but in it’s current form it certainly is. And by making it illegal we are hurting the women who feel they have no other choice, or really do have no other choice. So if we can’t stop it, we do have the obligation to make it as safe as we can.

   I think the same can be applied to porn; whether or not it’s inherently harmful, we aren’t doing anything to help the people for whom it certainly is. We can’t stop it, so let’s make it as safe as we can, and try to ensure that there are viable ways out.

4. Wow…what a well thought out, reasonable post on the subject!

   I want to say something more pithy but you pretty much hit the nail on the head.

   Although I wouldn’t want to be the one working the moderation queue for this conversation…

5. Ignoring the collateral damage is dangerous and wrong. It doesn’t work. Because the thing is, the ally that’s outraged by porn on moral grounds? That’s the same ally that is outraged by women having sex. The same ally that’s outraged by abortion. The same ally that’s outraged by homosexuality.

   And that makes me really uncomfortable.
   It should.

   well put.
   roy, i didn’t know you’d sided with the macdworkin camp previously. and may i add that i think you’re being a bit tough on yourself. the first instinct, after watching some tired, horrid porn with the fake orgasms, fake breasts, fake well… fake EVERYTHING except the scared, bored look in the actress’s eye, for anyone with a heart would probably be to condemn it in all forms.
   it’s much more difficult to recognize that siding with people/opinions that side with the far right may not be the answer.

6. I sat there at my desk, talking about sex workers and sex work and porn like they were abstractions… but they’re not, and mythago rightly called me on my shit. It took me a while to realize that, but it was a totally fair criticism. My sitting there saying that stats show this and stats show that and look how many sex workers were this or that… none of that helps them now, and talk like that does make me more likely to find myself allied with religious conservatives who have a “moral interest” in condemning sex work… and sex workers.

   Dammit, we can’t /reason/ without abstractions. We absolutely need abstractions. Policy should be focused on what the statisticts show. Doing otherwise is turning one’s back on the evidence. Yes, real people are the subject of those statistics. That makes it even more imperative to look at the evidence and see what can work, and what can’t.

   Considering an alliance with the right is not a failure because of looking at statistics or using abstractions. It’s a failure because their policies are guaranteed to cause more harm.

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8. wow.

   thank you, roy.

9. What irritates me about the position that porn (or sex work) is per se harmful to women is how paternalistic it is. Yes there are statistics that say that the vast majority of women are socially, economically, or physically coerced in to sex work. However, that doesn’t mean that women are incapable of become sex workers of their own free, psychologically-undamaged will. By saying sex work is per se harmful, we limit a woman’s choice to do whatever the heck she feels like with her body. I personally can’t do that.

   So instead of saying to a woman that she can’t do something because we think it’s bad for her, we should concentrate on removing the coercion and providing services to help the sex workers that wish to leave the industry.

10. It’s always refreshing and interesting (and dare I say inspirational, even?) to read a post like this where someone exposes their thought process around changing their mind on such a volatile and crucial subject. Whether I agreed with you or not I have to applaud.

    I do agree though, and it’s because I try to listen to what sex workers and former sex workers have to say — from all walks of life, not just a narrow slice like some people claim are the only voices you ever hear. If the arguments for “oppose all porn” have to rely on depicting all sex workers as helpless victims of abuse who can’t speak for themselves, or are too messed up to be able to, so that the only people who can speak from experience are stereotyped as rich girls who cam or dance for fun… well, our “something’s fishy here” alarms should be going off. Mine did, and it was a major reason I was impelled to go beyond theory-talking on the internet and talk to people who are doing real activism and support work on the ground around this stuff — many sides of it, not just one theoretical position.

11. Aaron:

    It’s not that statistics or theory is bad. It’s that from where I sit reading MacKinnon and Dworkin, the theory is impossibly over-arching. It interprets all of pornography a certain way and deems people who don’t interpret it in the same way deluded, victims, in need of help, etc.

    I don’t believe even that that theory is useless. (I believe it was actually necessary for the time and written/presented in the way it was because fierce and overstated generalization was the only way to get many people to even SEE the problem at all.)

    I do think, however, that a lot of people get caught up in believing it’s the only truth, believing that it’s 100% accurate, and believing the Revolution will come on its back. That all too often means flat-out ignoring the voices of sex workers and news like this because it goes against “radical” feminism.

    And I think it also is part of what leads to the alliances with the right-wing. Because if we assume we have to dismantle the porn industry at any cost because, as MacKinnon and Dworkin suggest, it just IS the backbone of male domination of women, then we can easily get caught up in putting other causes aside so we can slay the Big Hydra.

    And not only does the Big Hydra NOT get slain, but even if it were slain, we’re left with an anti-choice movement strengthened by our support, a movement of people who want to repress women’s sexuality strengthened by our support, a homophobic movement strengthened by our support.

    That I don’t find useful. The moment our abstractions *become* our truth, we’re over-applying them.

12. I love how subjecting yourself to the (usually) violent whims of “customers” is now called “sex work” rather than crass exploitation. Tell me, if impoverished, blacks w/ a history of child abuse (overwhelmingly “workers” are not only survivors of pedophilia but incest) willingly sold themselves to paying whites to whip and beat them repeatedly while calling them racial slurs in a society that condemned the black person and sympathized or lionized the white person (The way we do by condemning the “whore” and celebrating the “John” or even the slave owner/pimp), don’t you think it would incite racism ? (If minstrel show could incite racism, obviously such a violent institution would.) Don’t you think it would further damage the black person? (Cigarettes are legal and yet we know it is damaging. Alcohol is legal and yet we combat alcoholism. Is that “patronizing?”)

    I personally don’t ever wish for the legalization of prostitution (Most prostitution is slavery–flat-out human trafficking–and such an open embrace of prostitution would only justify the idea that male desires are to be met, regardless how ruthless or brutal they are or how many lives are destroyed. Johns don’t go to prostitutes for just “sex.” They seek out such easy female prey to rape, torture, or kill.). However, one must pick their battles and I doubt I have a chance even on this “feminist” site considering previous posts so I’ll just focus instead on not saying women should not be allowed to “work” but point out how it endangers them physically and psychologically, how Johns would still seek out illicit prostitution to enact their bigoted, sadistic fantasies, and how this institution endangers all women and girls by cementing our status as demonized non-humans who, by virtue of gender alone, deserve to be degraded and destroyed.

    Notice: Johns typically don’t wish, let alone feel entitled, to enact fantasies of brutal violence upon other demographics, just females. When you combine that w/ the fact that the power of sexuality is harnessed to entrench such callous bigotry, as their orgasms become conditioned to require, at best, degrading submission, which will inevitably escalate to all-out cruelty, as evident by the progression of porn imagery, why do you believe they won’t target non-“working” women? It’s, like, saying males who masturbate to images of pedophilia won’t actually ever harm children. Exceptionally naive–at best.

13. Very thought-provoking post.

14. Also, the kneejerk anti-porn-at-all-costs position can lead to shit like this.

15. Oh, and about the Iranian law against pornography: what a joke. This is the same country that severely regulates women’s clothing b/c it offends males so, and yet universally these are the same males that made Baywatch a #1 show years back and are regular consumers of porn and prostitution. They’re just using this as a way to further blame women (Something like: if women were servicing their husbands more they wouldn’t feel the need to watch porn. Poor men! Evil women!) When it comes to sexual morality only women can be blamed.

    Iran is going all-out against women right now (Yes, it’s gotten worse from the standard oppression in Islamic states). Check out the Human Rights Watch site about how they’re increasingly arresting (young) women in broad daylight for supposed infractions in morality.

16. So, Miller, no sex worker’s voice counts unless she (or he) agrees with your position?

17. and, uh, yeah, it’s -work;- slavery was also -work;- what differentiated it from legitimate -work- wasn’t the type of work being done but the fact that people were being coerced into it, abused during it, and not paid for it.

    It’s still -work- as in -labor,- and talking as though it isn’t doesn’t help things.

18. Roy, never mind the minefields. You’re an awesome guest blogger – just remember that.

19. Were and are, I should say; or were you under the impression that exploitation is only sexual these days?

20. Roy, you’ve shown either a lot of backbone or a total ignorance in taking on, at length, two of the biggest three blogwar topics. Now, you need to post something on women of color’s reactions to popular het, white, conventionally attractive feminists, prefereably one with a lot of friends in the blogosphere.

    I’m hoping that got a laugh.

    About the enemy-of-my-enemy, I’m with you. I can’t support feminist alliances with anti-sex religious bigots; I’m a sadomasochist, and if they ran the world they would lock me in jail for kill me for what I do. So I think feminist efforts to change or oppose porn have to come at it from a stand-alone perspective, eschewing alliance with the forces of evil.

    (On the other hand, the porn industry offerings don’t just leave me cold, they disgust and anger me. Especially the way they make sadomasochism look bad by conflating it with abuse. But because I am who I am, I am not going to find any friends among the antipornstitution crowd, the members of which are almost uniformly of the view that BDSM is inherently anti-woman.)

    You say you don’t know what to do. I don’t have all the answers, but I don’t think that there is a binary choice between accepting an industrial commodification of women for male sexual consumption and joining as irregulars in the army of religious red guards. In fact, while the alliances with right are awful, there are some perfectly reasonable proposals to deal with porn and sex work, IMO. What, for example, is your take on the Swedish model of decriminalizing sex work, but only for the sex workers, leaving penalties in place for the johns? And do you think that the D/MacK civil liability approach is fundamentally flawed, or just dandy, or a reasonable approach that is flawed in execution? (Obviously, as a sadomasochist, I can’t support the language of their actual ordinance, which was specifically designed to keep people like me from disseminating visual depictions of what it is that we do.)

    Fundamentally, what you said, as I read it, is that (1) we can’t ignore the impact on real women from opposing porn and sex work and pretend that we can fast-forward to a time when it all works; and (2) alliances with the bad guys will never help. I’m on board with that. What next?

21. Miller, did you even read anything in the link to what belledame222 wrote? You know, the quotes from actual sex workers talking about why they got into the trade?

    How lovely the example you provide as to how their voices are routinely ignored. Good on ya.

22. Cigarettes and alcohol have measurable effects on the human body and brain. How do you propose we measure the effects of prostitution on women?

    And even if we could, is prohibition really the answer? Think about the US War On Drugs and how ridiculous it is. Even if you support drugs being illegal (and full disclosure I don’t know where I stand) it should be more than clear that both the origin and the enforcement of those laws is/was ridiculous and very often racist.

23. Yes, duh, Miller, it is the same country. Do you not think that the -repression- of overtly sexual material (for that is what porn is) and the misogyny have -any- connection? Any at all.

    And no, it’s not a fucking joke, actually.

24. Hi Roy,

    I’ll just begin by saying that I enjoyed your post on children, and was impressed with the stand you took, the tone of your responses, as well as the consistency in them. I’m sure you know, in an online venue where debate is encouraged, people will always be offended at something. While often unpleasant, that’s not always a completely negative dynamic either. In my mind, truly listening to others views, being respectful, being sincere in your responses, and if you’re wrong, apologizing for it, are basically how I see an ethical discourse taking shape.

    Keep in mind, ownership of someone else’s offense needs to be appropriately placed; and if you are reasonably sure you reacted ethically in the discourse, then that offense needs to be with no one person offended. Obviously I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, I just sensed from your intro into this post you may have been unfairly hard on yourself, and unfairly placed an excess of responsibility for the storm that ensued in your last post.

    As to this post, for the most part I agree with your premise. Often in our attempts to be of assistance (and here I’m speaking of progressive males in general, and for myself as a gay male, albeit one with white, male, and upper class privilege) we either simplify concepts to a degree that is not helpful, or we make assumptions based on popular theoretical concepts that often are inaccurate about the reality and lives of the subject we are attempting to help.

    So….I’ve learned that with issues like porn, sex work, etc. (things i really know very little about beyond my post graduate work), certainly my opinions need to be open to theory, but they also need to be grounded in, and heavily flavored with real life example from those directly affected. I’ve come to believe the greatest service we can do when involved in advancing worthwhile progressive goals, is to always be conscious that the experience of those living the reality we are attempting to help, needs to be front and center in all aspects of our approach.

    Just one point on the Dworkin, Mackinnon issue. I think I understand what you’re saying in regards to being aware of deeper intent and motivation when you align with ideologically different groups, but I don’t think it’s painting a completely accurate picture to say that Dworkin and Mackinon “alligned” with the right wing anti porn agenda. Certainly they shared some similar goals, but there was always a very autonomous and self defining female centric streak in Dworkins narratives around porn and anti woman culture of traditional sexual depictions.

    Personally, I disagreed philosophically with most of Dworkins assertions, but her opinions were some of the most well formed applications of history and academic feminist theory, and those opinions often intersected with a lived reality. Obviously the whole framework of anti porn feminist theory differs largely from the puritanical and sexually shame based philosophy of right wing groups that share the same goal.

    I suppose my oh so overly long winded point, is that while both sides used the other for some gain, I view it largely as strategic, and while certainly that type of reliance can often be concerning, I don’t know if it was always a position that was anti ethical to the philosophy of the movement.

    Once again Roy, good job on both articles, and I look forward to reading more.

25. per the Swedish model: you know, I was trying the other day to find actual Swedish sex workers (former or current) who were in favor of it.

    so far, no soap.

    but i did find a few who had real problems with it.

26. However, that doesn’t mean that women are incapable of become sex workers of their own free, psychologically-undamaged will. By saying sex work is per se harmful, we limit a woman’s choice to do whatever the heck she feels like with her body. I personally can’t do that.

    I do basically agree with you but this is a dangerously overgeneralisable argument; it’s the standard “libertarian” argument about how any kind of regulation on anything is bad.

    I’m much more concerned about the right not to be coerced into sex work than I am about the right to choose to do it. I have no idea how best to protect the most vulnerable groups of sex workers but if in practice that does involve legal restrictions on the right to do sex work ( it may be something like the Swedish model, for prostitution) then that tradeoff is worth making.

27. Roy, you’ve shown either a lot of backbone or a total ignorance in taking on, at length, two of the biggest three blogwar topics. Now, you need to post something on women of color’s reactions to popular het, white, conventionally attractive feminists, prefereably one with a lot of friends in the blogosphere.

    I’m hoping that got a laugh.

    Probably both. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment?
    I thought I’d tackle blowjobs and fat-shaming next, but, hell, I’ve got three more days. You just never know what I’ll do next!

    Fundamentally, what you said, as I read it, is that (1) we can’t ignore the impact on real women from opposing porn and sex work and pretend that we can fast-forward to a time when it all works; and (2) alliances with the bad guys will never help. I’m on board with that. What next?

    Honestly?
    I’m still a little overwhelmed, and I’m not sure.

    I know- sort of a letdown, right?

    I think that one of the things that I’m going to need to do is take some time to familiarize myself with what some of the women who are actually involved in sex-work are saying, as per Belledame’s suggestion.

28. Belledame, has the Swedish model reduced human trafficking? My not-very-informed impression is that it has. Because I was reading the links you posted, and while they’re clearly describing a situation that is not great, it’s also clearly not even close to the misery of the situation of a woman who’s been trafficked as a sex slave. So my fear is that maybe you have to make a utilitarian tradeoff here, and maybe the Swedish model is the one that produces least human misery.

29. The recs from actual sex workers–see for instance this manifesto from European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rihts, Labour and Migration–generally are along the lines of “get rid of the stigmatization, the fear of jail, the coercion; and we need the right to organize”–like any other guild or group of largely independent workers–for such basics (which btw we’re way behind in -many- fields here in the U.S.) as health care, workplace safety, wage floor, etc. etc. etc.

30. I do basically agree with you but this is a dangerously overgeneralisable argument; it’s the standard “libertarian” argument about how any kind of regulation on anything is bad.

    Good grief. I’ve been compared to a libertarian. I think I need a shower. 😉

    My point was not no regulation, but rather no moral judgment for the women who make that choice (including porn) and no laws completely forbidding women to make that choice.

    IMO, regulation may be the key to getting out of this quagmire. I remember a proposal years and years ago that included the legalization of prostitution with confidential licensing, mandatory paid health checkups every 6 months, and optional access to social services including job training and counseling.

    Of course it failed, because if you mention legalizing prostitution people not only have cows, they hurl cows at you.

31. Or, to clarify what I was saying, because I have this stupid tendency to leave thoughts half spelt out and expect people to read my mind:
    1)more privileged members of the class “sex worker” may be penalised by the Swedish model, when compared to straightforward legalisation
    2)less privileged/more vulnerable sex workers, in particular trafficed sex slaves, may be more protected by the Swedish model, compared to legalisation.

    3) the importance of (2) outweights the importance of (1)

    I’m not sure how true (2) and (1) actually are, though, and if anyone knows please tell me. But (3) seems unarguable to me.

32. Kali, it’s not clear that it does, at least from my initial readings of these and other such entries. If you read the Manifesto from the IRSCE, they do cover trafficking, and are at pains to distinguish trafficking from prostitution, which the ideology that led to the Swedish model (the position taken by Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, for instance) does -not- do. That’s -one- problem.

    Here’s someone else’s take on it.

    Very often politicians also claim that all foreign sexworkers are victims of trafficking. In Denmark the police says that a maximum of one percent of the foreign sexworkers are victims of trafficking.

    And if you are a victim of trafficking the only help you can expect from the Danish or Swedish governments is to be locked up in a closed institution for refugees for some months BUT only if you help the police and expose yourself, for the threat against your family can be executed by criminal organisations.

    And when the police no longer need you, you are deported back to your home country directly in to the arms of criminal organisations.

33. people not only have cows, they hurl cows at you.

    “Run away! Run awaaayyyyy….”

34. You are making a false connection. Because right-wing people agree with part of an idea does not make the idea itself suspect. It only means that we need to watch who we ally ourselves with in pursuit of that idea. Dworkin and MacKinnon did not ally with the right wing, although occasionally their aims were similar in the short term. They have both written about the difference between feminist anti-pornography efforts and right-wing “morality”. This stereotype of them needs to die already.

    Possibly, there are a few women in no financial need who simply enjoy having sex for money. I don’t care. I am more concerned with the right not to have so-called sex for money. The measure of equality is the equality of those women at the bottom of the societal heap.

    I agree that there is a need place for stop-gap measures such as condoms and testing. But I am wary that the price for obtaining these measures is always a guarantee of continued supply: we can get a modicum of safety for (some) prostitutes only if we legitimate prostitution. Not only in the law, but even in feminist spaces. I believe this is a false dichotomy, and that working to improve conditions for women currently in prostitution is not the same as affirming prostitution as a legitimate institution or sex (ie women’s bodies) as a saleable commodity.

35. Thanks for the link, belledame.
    And I could tell you weren’t a libertarian, Kristen, don’t worry! I just felt i should pick up on your wording before an actual libertarian came along and threadjacked.

36. Roy:

    This post was amazing. I (hey, look, a sexworker) thank you for making it.

37. Well, yes, there ought to be a meeting ground wrt “harm reduction.”

    Here’s the website of a woman who talks about that perspective, and the organization she’s involved with.

    Thing is, though, as long as there are laws against it, it hampers the ability to make those improvements (i.e. right to organize, etc. etc.) the Swedish model, i think, is better in that it’s not the actual women who go to jail, but there are still problems with it, as described in some of the links above.

38. Here’s a quote from a book I read last year that deals with interest groups in the American political system.

    “Why is it that interest groups have so little trouble working with their enemies when it suits their needs? Quite simply, it is because lobbying is a profession guided by pragmatism.

    To be sure, there are a few exceptions to the no-one-is-too-evil-to-work-with norm. Feminists and conservative Christian groups who are active in the fight against pornography could strengthen their efforts by coalescing but they have generally worked separately on the issue, rather than together. This is an unusual case, though, and few lobbies have moral qualms about whom they work with.

    Jeffrey M. Berry & Clyde Wilcox “The Interest Group Society”

    The argument that men need unlimited sexual access to all manners of women whether in the flesh or through fuckumentaries is as flawed as the neoliberal argument that without American businesses like Nike operating in Indonesia the poor Indonesian people wouldn’t have jobs. For thousands of years before white imperialist capitalism oppressors with names like Phil Knight set foot on their first Indonesian island they were sustaining their culture and themselves pretty well.

    I’m just not following the “Men in Iran are murderous thugs therefore the multibillion dollar global pornography industry must be allowed to continue for prostituted women’s sake.” line of reasoning. Women always lose in these good mancop/bad mancop pissing contests as men vie for control of women’s bodies.

39. I don’t think that I am, doorknob.

    Because right-wing people agree with part of an idea does not make the idea itself suspect.

    I never said it does. What I said was choosing to ally myself with them means that I have to accept that I am at least partially responsible for any consequences that follow from that. I even spelled out what I saw the consequences of allying with them would be, in this case.

    I agree that there is a need place for stop-gap measures such as condoms and testing. But I am wary that the price for obtaining these measures is always a guarantee of continued supply: we can get a modicum of safety for (some) prostitutes only if we legitimate prostitution. Not only in the law, but even in feminist spaces. I believe this is a false dichotomy, and that working to improve conditions for women currently in prostitution is not the same as affirming prostitution as a legitimate institution or sex (ie women’s bodies) as a saleable commodity.

    I’m not completely sure that I understand what you’re saying here. Could you explain what you mean?

40. as for whether Dworkin and MacKinnon allied with the right wing: maybe not per se, but the Ordinance they tried to push through was, insofar as it succeeded at all, immediately became appropriated and used for the purposes of the repressive Right.

    and yes, there IS a connection, I’m sorry. Maybe it’s not usually an -intentional- one, but it’s there. I’ve seen at least one radical feminist activist group now making use of the studies of Judith Reisman to support their position wrt Playboy, for instance. the latest Carnival linked approvingly to a site called NoPornNorthHampton which is neither radical feminist nor -extreme- right, but IS coming from a religious POV, and does (as people have called them on) make use of for instance studies by the Heritage Foundation.

    there’s more, but I gotta get going here. more later.

41. This strikes me as being similar to the abortion debate and the “ick” factor that democrats often get hung up on.

    “working to improve conditions for women currently in prostitution is not the same as affirming prostitution as a legitimate institution or sex (ie women’s bodies) as a saleable commodity.”

    Just as pro-choice is neccessarily pro-abortion.

    There are two components here; the abstract morality and the concrete legal. Laws can be judged by their results, so which of the two alternatives-outlawing or legalizing-does the least harm?

42. From what I’ve heard / read about the Swedish Model- women who are prostituting who are found not to be Swedes are deported. So yes, it cuts down on trafficking, but sends the women back home to their own countries.

    Also, having condoms is considered evidence of a crime, thus a lot of Swedish prostitutes have stopped carrying and using condoms…which can in no way be deemed as “good”.

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44. I do basically agree with you but this is a dangerously overgeneralisable argument; it’s the standard “libertarian” argument about how any kind of regulation on anything is bad.

    There’s a difference between regulation and prohibition. What we have now is prohibition, criminalizing sex work and the women involved in it. Legal, regulated prostitution might do more to reduce human trafficking and sex slavery than even the strongest prohibition laws.

    And Kristen pretty much said what I did. 🙂

45. As far as allies go:

    Have those of you supporting every man’s right to prostituted pussy on demand considered the folks on your side of this debate? The Duke Lacrosse rapists, Joe Francis, Rush Limbaugh (Playboy reader and sex tourist), Howard Stern, Dov Charney, Gary Glitter (childraping sex tourist), …assorted hundreds of thousands of pimps, human traffickers, johns?

    And don’t forget the Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi who just last week called for a return of “sigheh,” temporary marriages to “meet the sexual desire of the youth who have no possibility of marriage.”

46. Possibly, there are a few women in no financial need who simply enjoy having sex for money. I don’t care. I am more concerned with the right not to have so-called sex for money.

    If you’re more concerned with the right not to have so-called sex for money, then why are you addressing the problem by further disempowering women? IThe issue for the women you’re concerned with is not selling sex, the issue is power. If these disempowered women didn’t find employment as sex workers then they would be forced into another career that would undoubtedly be similarly humiliating and personally dangerous. They are coerced into sex work as the least harmful alternative so if you take this away what situations are you coercing them into?

47. Then, Roy, don’t ally with them. Work for what you consider right on your own terms. Just don’t change what you consider right because some right wing person, somewhere, might agree with you for the wrong reasons. What I meant in my last paragraph is that prostitution is not inevitable. It is not going to disappear overnight, but it’s not something we just have to accept.

    The harms of prostitution are not just a theory, but neither is the work of prostitution. While we are talking about this, actual women with lives are having sex with five guys a night to pay the rent, free, non-trafficked women. Activism for a present where that’s safer has a place, but so does activism for a future where that’s unnecessary.

    Belledame, I have read a lot on NoPornNorthampton, and although they may be religious, they are not a right-wing group. Their stance is based on the harm that pornography does to the models and to the communities it’s based in, not on sexual morality. I don’t particularly agree with their zoning approach, as moving it around will just move the harm somewhere else, but they do have a lot of articles and information.

48. Have those of you supporting every man’s right to prostituted pussy on demand considered the folks on your side of this debate?

    Sam, this is a difficult and complicated issue, and intentionally misrepresenting the opinions of people you disagree with isn’t going to get us anywhere. What you just said is roughly equivalent to anti-choicers calling pro-choicers “Pro-abortion.” It’s inaccurate, and dishonest.

    All of us that have posted here so far are concerned about the welfare, safety, and health of women. The disagreement and discussion is about what methods and measures can be taken to do that, and to try to end the suffering and oppression of women. I expect this post will probably generate a lot of intense feelings and that people will get upset and/or emotional, but please don’t intentionally misrepresent what other people are saying.

49. “Dworkin and MacKinnon did not ally with the right wing, although occasionally their aims were similar in the short term.”

    Which is the problem. “Oh, in the short term we’ll give material support to people who are anti-woman. Later, we can crush them, once our combined might has vanquished pornography!”

    Ever bothered to figure out how?

    And as far as things like the MacKinnon/Dworkin ordinance go, I think we need to look at who enforces them. Because even if we assume we can come up with a wording for such an ordinance that actually IS fair and DOES protect women, it’s a stretch in the current US to assume it won’t be enforced primarily by white straight men. How do we know for sure that they will interpret the media being examined according to radical feminist theory and not according, say, to religious standards of obscenity, to personal views opposed to homosexuality, etc.?

50. I can’t help but notice that the way I heard about this story was via Instapundit.

    It seems to me that issues like this are reasons why I’m more closely identified as a neocon/libertarian rather than a liberal.

    The sex trade, it seems to me, is not about a choice between good and bad but between bad and worse. In the “West” it may be worth regulating the sex trade to stop the more blatent sorts of abuse, elsewhere though anyone who actually has empathy should be in favour of it not against it simply because those who are against it are such complete scumbags. It occurs to me, in fact, that one difference between most newly developed countries (Simngapore being the exception that proves the rule) and those countries that have stagnated for the last century is that the former have been pretty open about porn and prostitution. I don’t say the porn or prostitution help development but I think that a willingness to legalise them and deal with the consequences thereof is probably a sign of a healthy culture.

51. “Have those of you supporting every man’s right to prostituted pussy on demand considered the folks on your side of this debate? The Duke Lacrosse rapists, Joe Francis, Rush Limbaugh (Playboy reader and sex tourist), Howard Stern, Dov Charney, Gary Glitter (childraping sex tourist), …assorted hundreds of thousands of pimps, human traffickers, johns?”

    The thing is, as belledame has pointed out over at my spot before, many of those people, as anti-woman as they may be, are not actually advocating for political abolishment or repealing of the rights of women.

    Creepy pornographers abound, for example, but they are not the ones out there lobbying for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, for the sexual repression of women, for an official anti-gay stance in society, etc.

    You’re totally correct that either way, one may end up with very unsavory allies. But to my mind, people who are actively working against the interests of feminism make FAR worse strange bedfellows than people whose misogyny does not involve the blatant social repression of women.

52. I’m a bit hesitant to say that we should base our politics on what right wing bigots may or may not appropriate in the future. I started feeling this way with the shift in LGBT from a cultural liberation perspective to a biological non-descrimination perspective. And sure enough, the ex-gay ministries have started to spin their rationales around ideas of inborn disabilites that must be overcome.

    And honestly, especially with pornography the whole bugaboo about appearing to be allied with the anti-sex right wing has really been a disaster in regards to having any kind of an open discussion. You must polarize yourself into one of two camps, the closed-minded anti-sex right wing, or a throughly fossilized, colonized and subverted sex-positive left wing. As someone who came out during the sex-positive and bisexual explosion of the early 90s, it’s really frustrating to me how the sex-positive movement has lost any creative and critical edge. The sex-positive side has been just as complicit in creating this polarity by invoking knee-jerk comparisons to the taliban and puritans any time someone tries to engage in critical examination of the issues.

    There has to be a way to criticize the ways in which a large chunk of the pornography market pushes pathologically negative views of women, men, and sexuality, and also promote the development of a sex-positive erotic art, and also not stomping all over sex workers in the business.

53. Besides, haven’t most of us read The Handmaid’s Tale? That whole thing got started with anti-porn/anti-prostitution feminists siding with right-wing Christians since just then it was more important that they were anti-porn and not so important that they were also against women’s rights in general. Since the topic of alliances has come up.

54. And sure enough, the ex-gay ministries have started to spin their rationales around ideas of inborn disabilites that must be overcome.

    Which as a disability rights advocate I’d have to say I’d hope you see ways to argue against automatically.

55. er, “immediately”, not “automatically.” The part of my brain that picks words seems to be offline.

56. OK, there’s this:

    http://aff.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/22/2/163

    To date, however, no research has demonstrated that legal prostitution decreases illegal
    prostitution. Rather, legalization seems to increase the amount of both legal and illegal prostitution
    (Farley, 2004; Raymond, 2004). Nations that have legalized prostitution, such as the
    Netherlands and Germany, appear to have become magnets for traffickers (Raymond, 2003;
    Sullivan & Jeffreys, 2001). Similarly, child prostitution seems to have increased dramatically
    in the Netherlands and some other nations since prostitution was legalized (Raymond,
    2003).

    I remember reading some literature on this before, a while ago, and the above seemed to be the consensus. So while I’m all for legalising prostitution in theory, and I *want* that to be the right solution, because I don’t see how sex work can be destigmatised while it remains criminal*, it seems like in practice it has very harmful effects. Of course there’s maybe something in how the Netherlands and Germany actually implemented things that caused the harmful effects.

    *pessimistically, maybe it can’t be anyway. not while so many men hate women so much and use sex as a way of taking it out on them.

57. Roy, good post. belledame222 thanks for the link.

    This is a very difficult topic for me because I know that making sex work illegal drives it underground and endangers sex workers. By the same token, people in the U.S. have a tendency to romanticize prostitution throughout history by only focusing on high-class brothels and ignoring the absolutely horrific living conditions and life expectancies that most prostitutes faced. Pretending that sex work has historically been anything other than a job of absolute desperation and last necessity for the the vast majority of sex workers distorts just how grim the lives of most prostitutes were.

    The status of women has certainly improved since the days that prostitution was legal in the U.S., but legalized prostitution does seem to send a message that some people exist only to serve men’s sexual needs.

    Maybe making prostitution legal and regulated would lead to brothels actually following the laws. I don’t know, but I do think that the higher status of women today makes comparisons with historical periods of legalized prostitution inadequate. No one argues that coal mining, for example, should be banned based on how horrific coal mining conditions often were historically.

    Prostitution usually caters to men and it commonly encompasses cisgendered female, transgendered female, transvestite, and gay sex workers. From what I’ve read in sources dealing with both the U.S. and Latin America, I have yet to read the testimony of any sex workers who do not hold their clients in contempt. I see no evidence that men who frequent sex workers are good men. That being said, as long as men will pay for sex work, some people will become sex workers especially if they cannot find other ways to survive and make a living. When condoms are widely available and clients are unable to beat sex workers with impunity, sex workers report that their lives improve somewhat.

    To decrease prostitution, we need to make it easier for vulnerable groups to find other jobs that pay a living wage. I think that scorning rather than romanticizing men that go to prostitutes would help as well.

    I don’t know how to stop prostitution. I wish I did.

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59. You’re totally correct that either way, one may end up with very unsavory allies. But to my mind, people who are actively working against the interests of feminism make FAR worse strange bedfellows than people whose misogyny does not involve the blatant social repression of women.

    Well, certainly these guys are not going out of their way to repeal abortion or voting rights. But I think they are promoting the blatant social repression of women by promoting their view of the world as a good-old-boys club in which women better fetch the beer and be sexual available or get the heck out. It’s hard not to see the effects of Joe Frances’s work in the horde of imitators who harass women into sexual performance, and it’s not hard to see the after effects of the Duke case when prosecutors drop cases of mass rape that involve potentially conflicting witnesses and alcohol.

60. as for whether Dworkin and MacKinnon allied with the right wing: maybe not per se, but the Ordinance they tried to push through was, insofar as it succeeded at all, immediately became appropriated and used for the purposes of the repressive Right.
    and yes, there IS a connection, I’m sorry. Maybe it’s not usually an -intentional- one, but it’s there.

    totally with you on this one, belle. and i may even go so far as to say that MacDworkin are well aware they are aligned somewhat with the conservative rights. they’re incredibly intelligent women who know how to get others on their side. they’re pushing their agenda. toeing the line between radical feminism and radical right opinions keeps their ideals at the forefront of argument and debate. they want porn eradicated. the more people on their side, the more likely they’re able to get their laws through to the courts. and their tactics work. if they didn’t, would we be here discussing it?

61. sorry, meant to only have MacDworkin in italics, lol… LONG day.

62. Which as a disability rights advocate I’d have to say I’d hope you see ways to argue against automatically.

    Well, certainly. My point is that the right wing is a slippery and moving target. Threfore, the arguments that we should base our politics around their rhetoric, in order to avoid the superficial appearance of being “allied” with them is a loosing strategy.

    Feminist, pro-feminist, and queer politics should not be based on what issues may or may not be appropriated by the right wing now or in the future, but on an unapologetic advocacy of the needs and concerns of the people involoved.

63. Roy, if you’re not saying that men paying prostituted women for sex can be a net gain for womenkind then you’ve confused me.

    You seem unduly focused on prostituted women and have not figured prostitute-using men into your opinion. I believe prostituted women should not be punished for being vulnerable to sexual predation but that affirming men’s right to pay for sex bolsters rape culture and harms women so therefore should be criminalized. RenEv, if you’ve got a source for your info about Sweden’s treatment of women I’d like to see it, because Sweden has been remarked on around the world for its pro-woman policies and the evidence I’ve seen shows their prostitution model is no departure from this long legacy.

    The going theory in this thread seems to be that if men are legally allowed to have as many prostitutes and pornography documentaries as they can afford then they will not brualize, rape, and murder sex working women as much. Prostitution is legal in Germany, but 59% of legal German sex workers interviewed did not think legalization made them safer from rape and physical assault. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com

    What do you want liberal men to do to help prostituted women. Roy? Do you want them to hire more escorts. pay for more strippers at their parties, travel to poor nations and “economically assist” impoverished women in exchange for their own sexual satisfaction? This is the kind of help you appear to be proposing, that men should hire sex workers because women want to prostitute themselves to men.

    If “good men” like you don’t to use prostitutes are you leaving them to rely on only the “bad men” who are hurting them? What argument against encouraging feminist men -nice guys- to “help” prostituted women by paying them for sexual submission do you propose? Stop focusing on feminists, sex workers and Iranians and tell your fellow Western liberal menfolk what you expect them to do to help prostituted women.

    To expand on what CBrachyrhynchos said, what is a rape culture but one in which men believe they have a right to get inside women’s bodies whenever they want a sex-like encounter? Pornography, Joe Francis, all of that woman-are-hoes garbage reinforces men sense of entitlement to control women’s bodies. Prostitution is the essence of rape culture distilled.

    I don’t understand how feminists can know about pornography’s pervasive cultural reach, know about rampant prostitution on Craig’s List, know about the $80,000 per month The Village Voice alone takes in from prostitution advertising and still scratch their heads in befuddlement over where the men of the world keep getting the idea that women are things of theirs to control in matters of sex, abortion, marriages, everywhere.

64. Wellie said
    totally with you on this one, belle. and i may even go so far as to say that MacDworkin are well aware they are aligned somewhat with the conservative rights. they’re incredibly intelligent women who know how to get others on their side. they’re pushing their agenda. toeing the line between radical feminism and radical right opinions keeps their ideals at the forefront of argument and debate. they want porn eradicated. the more people on their side, the more likely they’re able to get their laws through to the courts. and their tactics work. if they didn’t, would we be here discussing it?

    Not sure about the present tense – as Dworkin has been dead for two years.

65. Roy, I like this post as well as your earlier one. Nice job!

    And I agree that nobody here is saying yay to a man’s right to prositututes on demand. That’s a manipulative misread. The point is, we need to look at realistic alternatives. The sex industry is not going away. We either rail about it, possibly shut down the occasional club that will migrate elsewhere, or actually try to do something towards increasing options for sex workers who want out and implementing better conditions and rights for sex workers who choose to stay in.

66. Have those of you supporting every man’s right to prostituted pussy on demand considered the folks on your side of this debate? The Duke Lacrosse rapists, Joe Francis, Rush Limbaugh (Playboy reader and sex tourist), Howard Stern, Dov Charney, Gary Glitter (childraping sex tourist), …assorted hundreds of thousands of pimps, human traffickers, johns?

    I hear what you’re trying to say. There are really three different feminist issues tied into sex work. First, there is the serious problem of men using women as sexual tools. Second, is making choices for women “for their own good.” Third, the social, psychological and physical coercion women experience.

    I hear that you are more concerned with the first item than the second item. I think we’re both equally concerned about the third.

    Personally, I see the intentional disempowerment of women as far more harmful in the long run than sexual objectification. It’s a judgment call, but that’s where I come out on it.

    I will not limit a woman’s choices just because of how men will respond to those choices. I won’t limit a woman’s choice or criticize a woman’s choice to get implants, wear miniature clothing, stay at home with her kids or some other thing that also happens to play into patriarchal notions of how the world should work.

    To do so would be to endorse the same reasoning that I perceive the Iranian authorities relying on: Because men act badly, women’s actions must be proscribed.

67. Sam:

    Here.
    http://www.salli.org/muistio/self.html

    “A more recent paper by Petra Östergren, ‘Sexworkers Critique of Swedish prostitution Policy’ made similar points. She finds that sex workers in Sweden experience difficulty in finding accommodation and constantly worry about being discovered. Consequently, they are either forced to move or pay exorbitant rents. They cannot increase their level of safety by working in pairs or groups and find it difficult to have any sort of domestic or family life as they are considered to be unfit parents. Östergren writes that sex workers find the law paradoxical, illogical and discriminatory. ‘It further obstructs their work and exposes them to danger.’ The better clients have gone away but the more dangerous and perverted ones remain and when apprehended are likely to deny that they paid for sex, if indeed they have. Greater competition leads to lower prices, but this only means that women take risks and are more likely to perform acts that they would have refused previously. Sex workers feel hunted by the police and dare not report abusive customers. However, they still feel stigmatised as weak, dirty and mentally ill, or as having drug problems. Some of the sample interviewed by Östergren reported that they felt used by politicians, feminists and the media who brag and tell lies about the beneficial effect of the Swedish law in comparison with other countries. They are only listened to if they say the politically correct thing. “

    “Women in the sex industry are consistently portrayed as victims, regardless of anything they themselves might say.

    There is a convergence of official attitudes and policy towards children and women in sex work, which infantilises women, leaving them with no right to sexual self-determination.

    The impact of the law on sex workers has been of secondary concern to promoters of the new policy, dogma and international reputation being more important.

    Sweden is making political capital out of promoting the county’s prostitution policy.

    There were only 800 street sex workers in Sweden in 1999, but they were heavily policed once the new law came into force, largely as a result of financial support from the state.

    Charges against men have to be evidence based, which is difficult to provide and leads to intrusive police practices such as invading private apartments to film people in the act.

    Although prostitution was initially pushed underground, many women returned to the streets.

    There has been an increase in Internet sales of sexual services.

    Social workers found that sex workers became more difficult to contact and help.

    Sex workers reported that the quality of clients had declined, leaving those who were more likely to be violent or perverted.

    Evidence such as possession of condoms by women was used to convict men.

    Foreign sex workers were immediately deported and therefore would not report violence.”

68. I really go back and forth on this issue, which tells me that I need to read up more on it.

    I used to think that legalization of prostitution was prima facie a bad idea, but when I did start reading a bit on it, including sources from sex workers, I was surprised at how nuanced the discussion could be.

69. Shit-starter.

    Thomas, it was a much more serious subject than popularity and looks — race.

70. I used to think that legalization of prostitution was prima facie a bad idea, but when I did start reading a bit on it, including sources from sex workers, I was surprised at how nuanced the discussion could be.

    Exactly!

71. When talking about the Swedish model you need to realise that people like Sam are using really old stats to support their cases.

    Many of the stats mentioned are from 1999-2001 something that the Rad fems tend to forget to mention. There are more recent stats available but the rads dont mention them much as they dont support the case that the Swedish model is a sucess, in fact they point to its failure.

    The swedish model resulted in the arrival of organised crime. Something the swedes had never encountered before. The crims brought trafficiking, underage prostution and mureder, things that the swedish sex industry had never had before . In the last three years some where between 100 and 600 sex workers have been murdered in sweden.

    But most of all you cannot look at sex work in isolation. You cant look at illegal brothels in Denmark without looking at all the other factors effecting people migration in Europe. Eastern europe has for some years now been vomiting people in to the west, people who are desperate and will do anything (includeing sex work) to keep from being sent back there.

    The whole area is a major problem for europe, remember most people in Europe are not trafficked for the sex inductry but for other areas of work and they are massively abused as well.

    Of course rads like Sam are not interested in that they only have one message, and its a message of hate.

    Sb

72. Not that discredited Petra stuff again! From Alas a Blog to Reclusive Leftist to about a dozen other blogs, how many more times do I have to tell you that Petra finding 20 women who unanimously agree with her about how much they really want to be prostitutes does not constitute proof of anything? Anyone who wants to read on that further is invited to read here.

    If you’re the type who can read research reports easily, go see for yourself that what Petra is saying is unsupported by all the research. For one example, under Swedish Criminal Procedure Law (Chapter 36, 6 Rattegangsbalken) a prostitute can refuse to give evidence that can reveal that she has undertaken a “disreputable” act. Also, Petra’s unfounded claim that Swedish women are now vindictively crying “prostituted rape!” to blackmail innocent Swedish men is antiwoman fuckery of the highest order.

    ”And I agree that nobody here is saying yay to a man’s right to prositututes on demand. That’s a manipulative misread.”

    No, that is legalized prostitution. Hell, it’s the current state of our rape culture right now that men have a right to sex, but legalizing prostitution enshrines that misogyny further into law. Would you prefer instead of “yay to a man’s right to prostitutes on demand” that it be phrased “meh to a man’s right to prostitutes on demand, no big deal”? The end result either way is one of men being given the green light to sexually (ab)use women’s bodies as much as they can afford, a financially lucrative result that lets men mine women’s vaginas, mouths and anuses as a way of raising a country’s GNP through prostitution-related tourism. Unlike coal mining, the devastations of prostitution are as easy to hide as ditching the diseased bodies.

    Kristen, 9 out of 10 prostituted persons say that would choose to leave prostitution immediately but they are not free to choose. I’ve never seen anything contradicting the fact that overwhelmingly prostitutes are not choosing prostitution but are forced into it. The average age of entry into prostitution could not possibly be 12-years-old if prostitution had anything to do with the choices of the prostituted.

    Choices of the men, now, that’s where all the choices in prostitution lie. Men choose 100% of the time that they’re going to use prostitutes. Having your dick in a woman is not the same as needing coal, or food, or other staples of life people are exploited to produce. Just as people can stop buying diamonds because the environmental and labor conditions of their excavation are destructive and no one needs a diamond, so too can men stop economically coercing women and children into agreeing to be raped gently because there’s no need for it.

    The way it’s assumed poverty-stricken women, women of color, and women in war-torn nations should accept men paying to control their bodies sexually as their best option doesn’t translate outside of the most oppressed women’s experiences to expectations for average American white women. Pole vaulter Allison Stokke could undoubtedly make far more money as a sex worker than as a pole vaulter but what feminist would suggest she ditch the athletics and follow the money? That wouldn’t go down well with sex worker positive feminists who can envision themselves in Stokke’s beleagured position as an unwilling sex worker easier than they can imagine themselves as an Estonian teen girl without enough to eat at home. White, upperclass American Allison Stokke is relatable, and her humiliation at being made a sex object is a foul sexist exploitation most of us can taste in our mouths, and she ain’t even naked!

    Why is it acceptable that poorer, darker women suck and fuck for cash but to divert Stokke into prostituting her sex and away from her athletic aspirations would be considered a terrible waste of her talent and a feminist rollback of Kournikovian proportions?

    The situation reminds me of the racism Jonathan Kozol exposed about schools tracking white kids to be lawyers and doctors while black kids are tracked to be car mechanics and hairdressers. The low expectations white folks have for minority peoples make it somehow all right to expect minority parents to accept their kids settling for jobs as greasemonkeys and hookers “servicing” the cars and cocks of white men. As ever, the fault should not be placed on the people who make the best of a bad situation, it should be placed on the people exploiting in the worst way other people’s bad situations.

73. As ever, the fault should not be placed on the people who make the best of a bad situation, it should be placed on the people exploiting in the worst way other people’s bad situations.

    I don’t think the issue is blame. Blame doesn’t solve problems. We need workable solutions to end the economic, social and physical coercion of women. So far I would say that making prostitution illegal has been a monumental failure, so perhaps its time for a different strategy. IMO that strategy is legalizing and licensing (we can’t help them if we don’t know where they are) prostitution while providing social services that would give those 9 women out of 10 you mentioned the power to leave.

74. “Kristen, 9 out of 10 prostituted persons say that would choose to leave prostitution immediately but they are not free to choose”

    Here we have a typical stat from Sam, an impressive figure presented out of context. If I remember correctly it was from a question asked to either German or Dutch street workers.(not important which). However as I said before you cannot take figures like this out of context, 80% of Dutch and German sex workers are illegals (in the country without a work visa). they cannot step out side and get a legal job because they have no permit and hence no tax code. Normal employers won’t touch them.

    The same 9 out of 10 when asked why they did not go to the police or social services for help indicated that doing that would get the deported back to the eastern Europe country that they came from and they preferred to remain as a sex worker than have that happen.

    Rad Fems are good at quoting the first stat not so good at quoting the second.

    Sb

75. For those in love with the Swedish model consider this:-

    Sweden:
    Population – 8 million
    Sex Workers – 2600 (1999 last time figures became available)
    Percentage of Street Workers: 23 % (1999 last available figure)
    Murders of sex workers in the last 3 years – 100-600 (disputed figure but lets work with 100+)

    New Zealand:
    Population – 4 million
    Sex Workers – 6000 (2003 government survey)
    Percentage of Street workers: 5% (2003)
    Murders Of Sex workers – 2 or 3 ( one of the murders might have been because she was female rather than a sex worker as the killer had attempted to kill a non sex worker 2 days before)

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77. SB, who are you and why should we trust your non-referenced stats over Sam’s? And why can you use (1999 last available figure) to demostrate your points but radfems are somehow being dishonest when they use stats from 1999-2001?

    I realize that this is a very prickly topic for a lot of people but I wonder why the focus frequently comes down to whether 80% of prostituted people want out or only 60% want out. What difference does it make? The majority want out and I think it would be in their best interest if feminist allies worked on that aspect of the equation instead of spending 90% of the conversation defending those people who “choose” sexwork joyfully.

    It is certainly a lot less stressful thinking about how “freeing” and “liberating” selling “sexual favors” can be than focusing on the systematic exploitation, rape, and abuse of the vast majority of prostituted people who do not find it empowering or liberating, but it doesn’t improve the status of anyone.

    To me, it seems that if even one person suffers from prostitution than we need to fix the system instead of just accepting that it’s inevitable. I mean, isn’t that why most progressive people are against the death penalty and work to abolish it? Because if even one innocent person is put to death, that’s too many.

78. To me, it seems that if even one person suffers from prostitution than we need to fix the system instead of just accepting that it’s inevitable. I mean, isn’t that why most progressive people are against the death penalty and work to abolish it? Because if even one innocent person is put to death, that’s too many.

    To me, it seems that if even one woman suffers from making sex-work illegal, then we need to fix the system instead of just accepting that it’s inevitable.

    That’s the problem.

    I believe that both keeping sex-work illegal and making sex-work legal will lead (and right now ARE leading) to suffering. Applying an ‘even one person’ measure just can’t work for that reason. We have to weigh harms.

79. Kristen, I used to feel the same way. I used to think legalization would at least help alleviate some of the horridness of prostitution. It hasn’t. All the proof from legalized countries shows legalization has not made good on its promises.

    kali’s post here (number 56) provides some of the abundant evidence that legalizing prostitution increases both legal and illegal prostitution, increases human trafficking, and increases child prostitution. I mentioned earlier that 59% of German legal sex workers did not think legalization has helped make them safer. Of the estimated 400,000 sex workers in legalized Germany, only 100 joined the service union ver.di. That’s That’s .00025% of German sex workers. If even 1% joined the union it would be 4000 sex workers in the union instead of 100.

    Either these sex workers are very stupid to make the choice of turning down the union’s offer of legal aid, thirty paid holiday days a year, a five-day workweek, and Christmas and holiday bonuses, or else they’re not free to choose to join a union and that should be very alarming to people concerned about sex worker freedom.

    “If I remember correctly it was from a question asked to either German or Dutch street workers”

    I’m sure it will surprise everyone to learn that you’re very wrong. Please check the methodology for yourself.

    http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/fempsy1.html

    Responses to “What do You Need?” asked of 475 people in prostitution

    United States: 88% want to leave prostitution

    South Africa: 89% want to leave prostitution

    Thailand: 94% want to leave prostitution

    Turkey: 90% want to leave prostitution

    Zambia: 99% want to leave prostitution

    also

    United States: 44% want prostitution legalized

    South Africa: 36% want prostitution legalized

    Thailand: 28% want prostitution legalized

    Turkey: 4% want prostitution legalized

    Zambia: 8% want prostitution legalized

    But again I remind everyone that johns choose 100% of the time that they will use a prostitute. Johns also have more money and more social power when they are making their choices to use prostitutes compared to prostituted women’s comparative lack of these privileges.

    So, what are we going to ask our liberal male friends to do, use prostitutes more, use prostitutes less, or make no changes in their prostitute-using behaviors?

80. In the great porn and prostitution debates, I generally find myself completely twisted up in the whole theory vs. reality vs. something-in-between debate, so I get befuddled when I try to express my opinions on the matter. Part of this is due to the fact that I always find myself and others discussing the issue in terms of what women do or don’t do or should do, or what they like or don’t like, so on and so forth. You know, always phrasing this as though it’s a one-sided transaction, where in the end women are either doing or not doing.

    And then all of a sudden my brain flips things around and I think to myself, “What sort of an asshole goes out and pays a woman for sex?” I mean, seriously, who are these people? Aren’t they the problem here? I guess I’m just mystified as to how this debate always becomes one about women’s behavior, instead of the Johns’.

    (Well, not mystified, because in our society problematic sexuality that involves women almost always becomes women’s “fault,” but you know what I mean.)

81. Sam,

    I just want to chime in and thank you for bringing the johns and the pimps into this discussion. Every time this issue comes up, they seem to magically disappear!

    Roy,

    I agree with your assertion that sometimes thinking in the abstract takes us out of reality. This leads me, however, to the opposite conclusion: we pretend prostitutes have “choices,” while ignoring the very real power differential between men and women in a sexist society. It’s similar to discussions about polygamy where people start theorizing about how it wouldn’t be bad if people choose to do it. In reality–in this country, anyway– women (actually, young girls ) have little to no real choice as they are raised in closed societies where men have all the power.

    What choices do prostitutes have today when the average age of a girl entering the field is. . .what? 12 or 13? Were these girls ever offered an alternative? Why do these discussions always focus on the tiny number of women who claim they choose this while the vast majority of suffering women are ignored?

    For the record, I know women who chose to enter the sex industry. They did it for the most obvious reason: money. In short, their career options sucked and so they went for the most money they could make at the time. BTW, not one of these women’s stories has a happy ending. And yet, they are women lucky enough to live here in the States, where there is some semblance of a safety net. Imagine the “choices” women living in the rank poverty of the developing world have.

82. SAm, do you have anything by a former or current prostitute/sexworker -in Sweden- that is happy with the Swedish model?

83. Sam:

    I don’t want to get into a discrediting stat fight with you…stats can be found by anyone, on anything, and why yes indeed, are subject to bias from the get go…who funded the study, who conducted the study, how old is the study, who was interviewed for the study….for instance, the Infamous 90% which is often used to represent ALL women in ALL aspects of sex work was hardly ALL inclusive of all types of sex workers now, was it? But that is neither here nor there really. You asked, I linked.

    Point is, there are people on all sides of this issue who want the women in the business to have more chances, more protection, more opportunites to do what they want, but in the here and now, sex work is not going anywhere, so the concern needs to be with the here and now.

84. “SB, who are you and why should we trust your non-referenced stats over Sam’s?”

    I could just as well ask ms. jared who are you and why do you believe Sam figures when she has been show to be wrong before.

    However my figures come from government reports. I wrote that first some time ago so I am working from memory but I believe the Swedish figures come from a Dutch government report done in approx 2004.

    The Swedish government stopped publishing those figures via that channel at about that time and I would like to have more recent figures but I have been unable to find a valid source.

    The New Zealand figures are from a report published in 2004/5 it is a study on the New Zealand sex inductry commisioned by the NZ goverment and conducted by StatsNZ. Its available from their website for free.

    The problem with your statement “The majority want out ” is that when you are dealing with a issue that effects so many people it is impossible to simplify the issue to just a comment like that.

    Sb

85. I do.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6343325.stm

    Granted it’s woman (and man) in the street stuff. But generally, very favorable.

86. Sam, NicoleGW, and Gayle, thank you for bringing the johns into it. I don’t consider myself anti-sex worker. I think people make the choices that they have to. I would say I’m anti-john, though, since if the “customers” would just accept that they don’t have a right to buy women’s bodies, nobody would have to fuck and suck for a living.

    Also,

    Of course rads like Sam are not interested in that they only have one message, and its a message of hate.

    You don’t seem particularly interested in conducting a nuanced discussion of the issues either, considering that you’ve closed off any reasonable discourse with across-the-board accusations. Of course, it’s easier to dismiss radical feminism out of hand, because then you don’t have to think about what you’re enabling. I know; I did it for many years.

87. The problem with your statement “The majority want out ” is that when you are dealing with a issue that effects so many people it is impossible to simplify the issue to just a comment like that.

    She didn’t. She gave stats.

    Nice try

88. “Of the estimated 400,000 sex workers in legalized Germany, only 100 joined the service union ver.di. That’s That’s .00025% of German sex workers. If even 1% joined the union it would be 4000 sex workers in the union instead of 100.”

    I wonder if it is necessary to point out how much crap logic there is in this!

    Obvious problems like “how many Sex workers heard the offer” if only 10% that’s only 40,000 not 400,000. Of those who heard how many could join? how many wanted to join? without knowing those answers Sam statement makes no sense.

    The sex workers I have met are a fiercely independent crowd to would not give 10c of their hard earned money to a union.

    Sb

89. The problem with your statement “The majority want out ” is that when you are dealing with a issue that effects so many people it is impossible to simplify the issue to just a comment like that.

    Second try, I was moderated on the first. Anyway, Sam gave stats. Those stats are rather commonly known and accepted.

    Nice try.

90. Thanks, gayle.

    …um, so far I’m reading, from that BBC article:

    But they said they had not been offered any help getting off the game. One was still waiting after six months for a drug prescription.

    She said that because there wasn’t supposed to be prostitution, there were no drop-in centres for health checks, and no-one handing out condoms or needles.

    Only one of the five had anything positive to say about the legislation.

    Eve, 60, who has been working as a prostitute for 40 years, said that the men think twice before they rob or try to beat the women they have paid for, as they are aware that they can be reported to the police.

    But, according to another woman, Pia, who had worked the streets since 1979, nothing had really changed.

    So…yeah, that actually is kind of in line with what Ostregren and the others were saying.

91. Yes, of course, you chose to puck out the negative comments, Belle. No reference at all to the positive ones or the fact that even the men on the streets stated they knew buying women was exploitive.

    Nothing about the conclusion, which was written by a former sex worker:

    My trip was both interesting and enlightening. The law in Sweden has pitfalls and successes.

    I have not been to a country where prostitution is legal, as in Holland, but the fact that Sweden has taken huge, bold strides against any form of exploitation of women cannot be bad.

    At least if it was implemented in Britain, then many women I know wouldn’t be dragged off time and time again by the police.

    It could stop the huge influx of foreign criminals bringing in women, some against their will, to fill our country’s ever-growing number of massage parlours.

92. “Anyway, Sam gave stats. Those stats are rather commonly known and accepted.”

    It takes about 10 mins work to discover that the stats that Sam quotes are anything but accepted. As Sam admits most of them come from Farleys website at http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/.

    Those figures are generally accepted by the research community to have been rigged. If you do a bit of research you will find on the web papers talking about how she filters her results to achieve a predetermined result. Those papers are written by professional researchers.

    Sam’s figures may be indeed be commonly known but they are also commonly regarded as suspect.

    Nice try

    Sb

93. Hey, I’ve escaped moderation!

    Thank you!

94. SB

    Oh, come on!

    What are you arguing here, anyway? Are you trying to tell us the vast majority of prostitutes just love this line of work? That women wouldn’t jump at the chance to get out if they had another viable way to make a living? You think we women just love getting repeatedly fucked up the ass for money?

    Do you have any idea how ridiculous that is?

    (yes, I know I’m back in moderation now, oh well.)

95. Um, Gayle, it’s -four out of five- of the -actual sex workers living there- who have the “negative” comments. Why does the taxi driver’s opinion rate as much?

96. Yes, I read that Belledame.

    I didn’t say the report was 100 percent glowing. I said it was generally very favorable and it is. You quoted the most negative comment and left it at that.

    Above, you asked Sam if she knew of any sex workers who had a favorable view of the Swedish model. I found one that did and gave you the link. Now you’ve changed the parameters of the discussion.

    You are being intellectually dishonest.

97. Gayle:

    I don’t think anyone is arguing that the majority of street prostitutes would rather be doing something else. There is, however, issue with using data about street prostitutes to define the thoughts, feelings and situations of every person, woman, working in the whole of the sex industry. Also, how does arguing about stats help anyone, really?

    Up above I do believe Belledame included a link to Jill Brennerman’s blog…Jill is a sex workers rights advocate and talks about things like decrim, harm reduction, support networks for sex workers…and without the mentality that they all need, well, for lack of a better term, saving. She has other sex workers and sex worker advocates commenting there, and well, check it out if you’re of the mind.

98. “Are you trying to tell us the vast majority of prostitutes just love this line of work?”

    No not at all. What I am trying to say here is that the sex industry is so varied and the experiences of women is so different that attempting to distill the results in figures like ” 95% of prostitutes want out” or “55% of sex workers have a drug problem” is meaningless.
    Such talk may give the person saying it a warm flush but it does not help women.

    Whenever you talk about regulation or legislation or whatever you must take into account local circumstances.

    “Are you trying to tell us the vast majority of prostitutes just love this line of work” no what I am saying is that an unknown number love their work, an unknown number neither love or hate their work and an unknown number hate it.

    If you are actually interested rather than just talking I would recommend you read the NZ government report also autobiographies like “survivor” and ” call me Elizabeth” written by real sex workers.

    “That women wouldn’t jump at the chance to get out if they had another viable way to make a living?”

    Again that is actually a complicated question, contrary to myth most sex workers (in the west) don’t work to put food in the kids mouths or a roof over their heads. The do it to afford luxuries that they could not afford otherwise or drugs.

    So a question to you would be – why when these women actually do have options (give up that annual overseas holiday, that $60,000 car or those drugs) why do they not take them? The woman who wrote ” call me Elizabeth” got into to it so that her children could go to private school rather than state school!

    “You think we women just love getting repeatedly fucked up the ass for money” I don;t know – and I suspect you don’t either. We would have to ask them. Ask them directly hear their answers with their actual voice not via some researcher with an agenda to run.

    I know of a woman who runs and owns (she is the CEO) a multi million dollar company, she is also a active sex worker, and no I have never had the balls to ask her why?

    My point again is that sex work is very very very complicated you can’t turn it into just 95% this 87% that.

    Sb

99. doorknob, I identify as anti-john to people who haven’t the foggiest clue what radical feminism is as opposed to other types. Anti-john works well in those circumstances.

    RenEv, your sweeping generalization about research forgets three crucial points.

    1. Ostregren’s claims are unbacked by statistics about the 20 women she spoke to; look at the lack of any numbers in what you posted.

    2. It’s highly suspect that all 20 women unanimously agreed with her.

    3. There is not one study that backs up her unique results that all Swedish women in prostitution want to stay in prostitution.

    belledame222, what article did you read that you see support for Ostregren’s claims that the Swedish law has brought about sex workers being declared unfit mothers, increased street prostitution, more violent johns, sex workers feeling hunted by police, and trafficked women being deported? None of that is supported by the article Gayle posted. None of it is supported by other research, either.

    Everybody who read the article can see that what the women complained about is lack of enough services to help them kick their drug habits and exit prostitution like they want to. “But they said they had not been offered any help getting off the game. One was still waiting after six months for a drug prescription….For example, there is often not enough support for those who try to leave prostitution.”

    A lot of money has been spent setting up social services for prostituted Swedish women and it is estimated 60% of Sweden’s sex workers have used some of them to help escape prostitution. What does it mean to you that despite these services for which Sweden is famous worldwide being offered the main complaint Swedish sex workers have is their very high demands to exit prostitution are still insufficiently being met?

    It says to me that there is a very high demand among Swedish sex workers to get help getting out of prostitution, but it is very expensive and difficult to provide everything a prostituted woman needs to effectively leave The Life.

    Most prostituted women need drug addiction & other healthcare help, safe housing, childcare services, rape counseling, job training, and physical protection from pimps. That’s more than the average domestic violence shelter can handle, and the severe psychological damage pimps and johns inflict on prostitutes takes specialized counseling. A woman friend of mine who works with prostituted women refuses to do anything but one-on-one work with them because she has seen group counseling turn into a nightmare scenario involving women brainwashed by pimps into seeing other prostitutes as competition and enemies.

    It is expensive and labor intensive to begin undoing the damage men have done to prostituted women and it will never be perfectly done. Thank goodness Sweden has taken the first steps by rejecting men’s self-assumed right to buy women and children for prostitution and doing that zany socialist democrat thing they do up there by strengthening the social safety net for women.

100. I really liked reading this post and the comments. I’m impressed at how calmly and reasonably most have responded to a few less-than-reasonable comments. It gives me hope for dialogue.

     This discussion reminds me of a brouhah at NWSA a few years ago when Wendy Chapkis was invited to be on a panel, “Beyond the Sex Wars.” She addressed some of the issues that are addressed here – for ex., that instead of arguing about what positions on sex work are or aren’t feminist, that feminists on both sides of the aisle could work together to make it more possible for sex workers who wanted out to get out. (She was opposed by Sheila Jeffreys and others.) She also talked about women’s agency and said that we needed to recognize that being a sex worker doesn’t translate into having no agency. She was again shouted down for this.

     The most fascinating thing was that, later, I was telling a colleague about this. My colleague, a staunch feminist, mother, teacher, and scholar many years my senior, surprised me by saying, “I don’t agree that sex workers don’t have agency. When I was working as a prostitute years ago, I had agency. I chose to do it in order to support my children.” Her point was that she chose sex work over other options, and yes, it may be that sex work was simply the least bad option, and yes, she’s glad she’s out of it, but she was very offended at the notion that anyone would say she didn’t have agency. And this was not a woman who was in denial about oppression – hers or anyone else’s.

101. Farley’s web site is definitely not one I would trust, especially not after the whole “commercial images of kinky sex are just the same as images of Abu Ghraib” nonsense.

     Even if I believed that images of BDSM should not be created and distributed commercially, sloppy parallels like that one are a disgrace.

102. Sam:

     I am not saying the Swedish Model is horrid. What am I saying?

     Okay, the Swedish Model is not the only one that should be considered. Various forms should be looked at, the strong and good points should be considered, the weaker points refined and worked on in an attempt to improve upon the bases put out there by Sweden and other places where prostitution has been decriminalized/made the johns the resposible party/or outright legalized. Since we can’t all go to Sweden and talk to the women working there, and stats are all conflicting, well, it is in my skeptical nature to believe the truth is probably somewhere in between what the various studies say.

     And what you mention, how expensive this all is, is a huge issue and problem…especially in the States…because ultimately it does come down to “who is going to pay for this” and what about the women who don’t want out?

103. Above, you asked Sam if she knew of any sex workers who had a favorable view of the Swedish model. I found one that did and gave you the link. Now you’ve changed the parameters of the discussion.

     You are being intellectually dishonest.

     Excuse me. I asked for one, and actually I was looking for the equivalent of one of the Swedish sex-worker bloggers I’d linked above. But, okay, you give me a BBC article. (And I thanked you). Which I read. One sex worker interviewed says she’s less in fear of being beaten up. Okay.

     The other four mention problems, pretty much the same damn ones the apparently-invalid Ostregren mentions in her study.

     And, don’t call me “intellectually dishonest” again, please.

104. …look, there’s a fundamental philosophical difference here. You keep going back to

     men’s self-assumed right to buy women and children for prostitution

     like THAT is the main issue here. It’s not. It’s the well-being of the actual women. And children. Who are not, by the way, the same as grown women. And oh yeah, men too.

105. And just for the sake of saying it, I won’t ever support anything “for sexworkers” that sexworkers themselves don’t have the most and final say in.

106. sorry, I used “you” collectively there, but I’m figuring Sam and gayle share the same basic core ideas about What It All Means.

107. Here is another by-sex-workers-for-sex-workers’ (of color) advocacy group: Ubuntu.

     For some of us who are current or former sex workers, it is clear that a traditional feminist take on sex work (All sex work is harmful to women–period.) does not address any of these issues, or empower sex workers in any way. For this reason, two former sex workers and sexual assault survivors in UBUNTU developed a political education workshop to address these issues while discussing the particular needs that sex workers and former sex workers have in the healing process as survivors of sexual assault. Our coalition members really responded to this workshop and it has grounded our work in an internal politics that puts sex workers’ dignity, humanity, and right to safety at the forefront of our work to end sexual violence.

     It is clear to us that our Sister Survivor was attacked because she was a sex worker, and that her attack (even among those in the public who still believe that one happened) is very often justified because of her work. “Occupational hazard”…”What did she expect?” “When you’re in that line of work…” –The justifications go. For us this is unacceptable, all rape demands outrage.

108. “stats are all conflicting”

     What stats? You haven’t put forth any stats. Nothing, zilch, nada.

     “because ultimately it does come down to “who is going to pay for this” and what about the women who don’t want out?”

     Men are being fined in Sweden for using prostitutes, and making the handful of women who don’t want out of prostitution feel good about their happy, safe, wealthy sexworkering selves is not remotely as important as helping the millions of serial rape victims who are being trafficked, raped, bought and sold amongst pimps and tricks.

     belledame222, if you think the women in the BBC article were complaining about being considered unfit mothers, being hunted by cops, an increase in street prostitution, or having to deal with more violent johns because of the implementation of the new law then there’s nothing I can do to make you hear that Swedish sex workers are actually demanding better exit services.

     I’m feeling generous today, so I’ll give you that Dr. Melissa Farley is a prostitute-hating woman dead set on ruining happy sex workers’ lives with lies and misinformation. She’s a horrible, malicious person, okay?

     Now if you could just find enough mud to sling at the many people who worked around the world to help Farley, who is after all only one evil woman, maybe you could convince some people that all the research ever done on prostitution is flawed by researcher bias and that explains why they all (except for Ostergen’s) show that women emphatically do not want to be men’s whores. You can start with these likely misogynist co-conspirators:

     Ann Cotton of Washington state.
     Jacqueline Lynne of Vancouver, BC
     Sybille Zumbeck of Germany
     Frida Spiwak of Columbia
     Maria E. Reyes of Columbia
     Dinorah Alvarez of California
     Ufek Sezgin of Turkey
     Isin Baral of Turkey
     Merab Kiremire of Zambia

     Please report back and let us know how many of these prostitution researchers are as biased and likely to fudge facts as the wicked Dr. Farley.

     Roy, it was a gutsy move starting this thread and I respect gutsy. If you’re not ready to answer what you expect your liberal male friends to do about their prostitute consumption (an understandable hesitation) I ask that you please keep the question seriously in mind because men being more vocal about expecting better of their fellows can go a long way in reducing violence against women.

109. Sam, interestingly enough, up here in Vancouver there’s a woman trying to get a co-op going for sex workers. She is one, herself. Google Susan Davis, you’ll find her.

     Whether or not prostitution is wrong, it is now happening, and we are not protecting women who are in that line of work. Whether they’re forced into it or freely choosing it is irrelevant when we are stigmatizing them and making it nigh impossible for them to get the help and protection they need.

     I’m all in favour of this co-op they’re talking about in Surrey. Making prostitution illegal forces it underground and makes it easier for people to abuse the prostitutes. Make it more above ground, and suddenly the prostitutes can go to the police and get taken seriously. Obviously this only works if everybody is on board and the police are willing to do their duty.

     It’s late and I’m tired, I don’t care to get involved in some dick-waving about whose stats are best, but it seems to me that if you make it legal, actually follow through with promises to give support to those who want to exit the industry, and actually take seriously the duty to provide policing, then it’s the best option. Gah, awful sentence, but I think it’s easy enough to understand.

110. Roy,

     I admire your post. And Trinity rocks. I think it was brave to admit to some confusion over this issue, as although I think my thoughts on pornography and ideas about legislation over pornography are pretty sorted, and I’m pro-SM and the rest of it, I still don’t know all that much about prostitution and associated legislation. I’m still trying to sift through all the conflicting data and stories to try and come to some conclusion.

     But I wanted to comment briefly on feminists and right wingers. Here in the UK there’s quite a bit of that. There have been feminist events that some radical feminist groups have boycotted because of the inclusion of sex workers. There ARE attempts made to silence sex workers, SM women, the deviant ‘bad gals’ who wear pink or lipstick or whatever, in favour of speaking for them, because it’s assumed that these particular feminists know best what rights sex workers are actually looking for, whether it’s to get out of the industry, or what kind of rights they really want, and most of the time it seems to me that they’re wildly inaccurate. To side with groups like Mediawatch, whose actions are very often subtly anti-woman, seems like a frightening move to me, and the beginning of a slippery slope into what is simply a more puritanical formation of middle-class centred patriarchy than what is already in place.

111. Yeah, what’s a discussion about porn and prostitution without a little radfem bashing!

     This: “whether or not it’s inherently harmful, we aren’t doing anything to help the people for whom it certainly is. We can’t stop it, so let’s make it as safe as we can, and try to ensure that there are viable ways out.”

     Is something absolutely everyone advocates. So how about we stop the my-stats-are-prettier-than-your-stats pissing contest and talk about what we can agree on, k?

     It’s not a job most women willingly chose. Those that do should be safe, those that want out should have help ready and available. Agreed?

112. Bet Iran won’t have much of a porn problem, though, by the time it’s all over.

     and isn’t that really the goal of antiporn activism? to eliminate porn?

113. jessie g – i know andrea dworkin passed away, i didn’t mean to imply that she’s still out there, ghosting it up to eradicate porn. (though the issue is obviously still current) sorry about the tense. i was on my way out the door from work.

114. It’s not a job most women willingly chose. Those that do should be safe, those that want out should have help ready and available. Agreed?

     That’s what I, personally, have been saying all along. And while I am not going to attempt to speak for anyone else, I have observed other bloggers saying the same thing – sometimes even word for word. Antiprincess and Ren come to mind. And yet, the response they get from anti-sex work folks typically comes in two varieties: 1) NO, WE WILL NOT WORK WITH YOU; or 2) *crickets*. (And yes, there have been rare – and I stress RARE – exceptions. As in, I can count on one hand.)

115. it’s assumed that these particular feminists know best what rights sex workers are actually looking for, whether it’s to get out of the industry, or what kind of rights they really want, and most of the time it seems to me that they’re wildly inaccurate. To side with groups like Mediawatch, whose actions are very often subtly anti-woman, seems like a frightening move to me, and the beginning of a slippery slope into what is simply a more puritanical formation of middle-class centred patriarchy than what is already in place.

     That’s exactly how it seems to me as well.

     I used to be much harsher a critic of pornography than I am now. I was never totally anti-porn, as very small independent producers that barely break even never seemed like a profound threat to women to me.

     But now I… well, simply put I’m no longer convinced that men who have sex with women get their understandings of what women are like, what women are “for”, etc. from porn. It just doesn’t add up to me. Most men are around women every day of their lives. Do they never talk to the women around them?

     Yes, there is the added factor that sex and sexuality are embarrassing and taboo topics. Which means that yes, some men and boys are going to run off and embarrassedly consume media and never ask the questions they should ask — of themselves, of friends, of trusted adults, of their girlfriends and lovers and wives.

     But what is the real best way to combat that? I’m no longer convinced fighting porn has a better chance of making straight men more likely to respect women than educating them. Than expending effort and resources not on destroying or combating porn, but on building and creating those alternative models we all want our straight/bi/pan brothers, friends, and sons to have in mind when they do have sex with women.

     I no longer think it makes sense to Tackle The Porn Hydra first. To me, it’s as if we’ve put the real work on hold until the bad media goes bye-bye.

     I don’t get that at all any more.

     And then there’s the added concern and confusion of mine: why should feminism focus so narrowly on men who have sex with women? When porn becomes The Major Issue, feminism becomes depressingly heterocentric.

116. …and depressingly focused on men. Isn’t this a women’s movement?

117. Vera et all:

     Agreed, absolutely, which is what I have been saying for an eternity now. Do what can be done to get women who want out out, do what can be done to keep women in safe, do what can be done not to discount, marginalize, or otherwise shame the women in the business, yes, yes absolutely! I am all for that, and I think most people are also all for that.

     So then…how to best do that? That’s where things get messy.

118. I am totally confused by the sex work discussions. I really just don’t know where to stand. And here are some of the reasons why.

     1. I don’t have a position on whether sex work is inherently good or bad. I am about equally squicked by the people who feel hard-core that it’s evil, evil, evil and the people who think that it’s a fabulous, sparkly testament to sex-positivity. I guess that, to me, this issue is fundamentally not that much about sex, which I realize is not the way most people look at it. It’s about labor. It’s about trying to figure out whether and how a particular industry can be run in a way that ensures the safety and dignity of workers. Honestly, I don’t care that much whether the industry is fucking or making paper hats.

     2. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the argument that some people choose to do sex work and that it’s terrible and unfair to them to take away their choices. This is an argument that has been made against every single labor law since the dawn of time. It was made about the eight hour day. If you think that any labor legislation is legitimate, including workplace health and safety regulations, mandated overtime pay, or the minimum wage, then you realize that there are limits to people’s right to take on any work they want.

     3. I’m all for listening to actual sex workers, but I’m made a little nervous by the big class biases in which sex workers are able to get their voices heard. Audacia Ray, who I’m pretty sure comes from at least a middle-class background, has a book contract and a blog and gets interviewed on NPR. She has that access because she has skills and education and a lot of cultural capital. But those things also mean that she has other options and is only doing sex work because she likes it. An undocumented immigrant working out of a message parlor in Queens does not have the same options or the same media access. I worry that there’s structural bias that means that we’re most likely to hear the voices of the most privileged sex workers, who are most likely to find their jobs satisfying and fun. I think we need to work harder to hear a wider variety of voices, and I’m not sure how to do it.

     4. Similarly, I worry a little bit that the proposed solutions don’t reflect the realities of the sex workers who work in the most difficult situations. Specifically, in discussions of sex work in Europe, a lot of people mention that many sex workers are undocumented immigrants, but they don’t seem to think at all about the ways that those women will continue to be vulnerable even after sex work is legalized. And I think the same might go for sex workers who abuse illegal drugs. I’m not convinced that decriminalizing sex work will make a huge difference for those women, assuming that other aspects of their lives continue to be criminalized. So I guess I’d argue for a more comprehensive plan to improve the lives of sex workers, based of course on what sex workers themselves (and not just the “isn’t it fun to strip my way through grad school!” crowd) say they need.

     So yeah, I’m confused.

119. Bet Iran won’t have much of a porn problem, though, by the time it’s all over.

     and isn’t that really the goal of antiporn activism? to eliminate porn?

     *Snort* No they just won’t have a women problem. Iran is not trying to eliminate porn as much as control women. On a society that legally arrests, rapes*, and executes women for the heinous crime of being born pretty….you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t think this will really be applied against men.

     *Because if they died a virgin they might just get into heaven. God knows we don’t want any attractive women up there polluting heaven with their womenly-ness.

120. Sally, you’ve summed up, far better than I could at this point, why I’m conflicted myself.

121. It’s as inevitable like death and taxes…

     Anytime someone attempts to pursue even a reasonable, progressive take on sex work and how antiporn radfems are in alliance with the Right, here comes the usual APRF posse (Sam, gayle, NicoleGW…can Heart, delphyne, pony and StormCloud be far behind??) to attack the messenger with their usual refried talking points.

     And yet, they are the first to scream about how they are being “censored” and “silenced” whenever someone rightfully calls out their nonsense and their abuse of stats to support their ideology.

     Please. Just….please.

     The fact remains that however you may junk up stats to prove your points, Sam, you simply cannot deny that there are many sex workers who do NOT believe that the “Swedish model” you and Melissa Fairley are so much in love with is the greatest strategy for their protection. Unless, of course, you simply will women and feminists who don’t sing your hymnals out of existence, or reduce them to male enablers of rape and mindless sexbots.

     And this “unfettered male sexual access to women” thing….can you please change that scratchy record?? Not even the most jaded “sex positive” advocates (and certainly NO ONE here on this discussion) has or ever will advocate that men should have “unfettered sexual access” to women. We actually do believe in enforcing laws against sexual assault and battery, and that a woman’s right to say “No,” even “Hell, freakin’ NO,” is just as important as her right to say “Yes, yes, yes”.

     Yes, I would agree that most women would probably not depend on sex for pay for basic survival….but that does not mean that those who do either because there are no alternatives available or because they — gasps of horror — actually LIKE sex already and are willing to exchange money for it, should be infantilized by you as innately incapable of respect. Those who want to get out should be given all the resources available to get out…and those who want to stay should be given the resouces they need to practice their profession safely and discreetly. Funny how the APRF Brigade is so up front with the former, and so silent with the latter.

     Oh, and please, for Goddess’s sake, Sam, let’s drop this “liberal males’ consumption for prostituted women” nonsense once and for all. Unless you have real proof that it is leftist and liberal men who are most likely to frequent sex workers (never mind being the most abusive and dismissive of all clients), I see no reason why this shouldn’t be taken for what it is: a right-wing talking point seized by you for “feminist” consumption.

     You may call this “radfem bashing” if you wish, Vera….but I prefer to call it the truth.

     Otherwise…what Roy, Trin, Belle, Ren, and Amber said. Raised to the power of infinity.

     Anthony

122. Also interesting:

     I have worked with many women in the outcall industry who pose as sex workers but are really expert petty thieves with stripper bodies. They often have no intention of doing anything more than a fifteen minute strip tease, if that and usually “cash and dash” right after they get the john naked. They prey upon a victim’s unlikely report which would require him to admit to the “crime” of prostitution. This is the same mentality that men use when violating female bodied prostitutes. I have heard and seen this man’s situation, first hand, and it is not rare, but the tragic flip side reveals that his story pales in comparison to hundreds of prostitutes raped and robbed by clients and the 48 women that serial murderer Gary Leon Ridgeway murdered. According to Dangerzone411.com, a website built for sex worker safety “at least 2 out of 50 female sex workers are victimized, attacked, raped, mugged or arrested in a day.” The real crime is not prostitution but the criminalization of prostitution.

     As long as prostitution remains a crime, the people involved will remain underground, unable to report real danger and violations, and the women AND men involved will be unable to be provided with real resources or recourse to help them when things go wrong. As long as prostitution remains a crime, police and sheriffs will not be motivated to protect and serve the lives and pockets of those that they deem criminals and the violence will continue.

     Written by Jenna Jasmine, Sex Workers Outreach Project-LA

123. Audacia Ray, who I’m pretty sure comes from at least a middle-class background, has a book contract and a blog and gets interviewed on NPR. She has that access because she has skills and education and a lot of cultural capital. But those things also mean that she has other options and is only doing sex work because she likes it.

     Audacia Ray is a close friend of mine and while she doesn’t come from a dirt-poor background, she’s not exactly rolling in dough, either.

     And, she says in her book these exact things you’ve said here. She completely cops to the fact that she has a degree of privilege which allows her to choose sex work over other options. Does that make her choices and her life any less valid?

124. Well said, Sally. It is confusing.

     2. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the argument that some people choose to do sex work and that it’s terrible and unfair to them to take away their choices. This is an argument that has been made against every single labor law since the dawn of time. It was made about the eight hour day. If you think that any labor legislation is legitimate, including workplace health and safety regulations, mandated overtime pay, or the minimum wage, then you realize that there are limits to people’s right to take on any work they want.

     I don’t know. I think that the problem is in talking about sex work in such a way that it treats the women involved as though none of them are autonomous human beings with thoughts, feelings, emotions, and desires. I don’t get the impression that the… erm… the Anti-Anti-Sex-Work side? Sure. The AASW side are quite saying that. The impression I’ve got (and gods know that I could be completely wrong here) is that it’s a little more complicated than that. That it’s a request to recognize that the women involved have or should have voices in this conversation.

     If the Anti-Sex-Work side think that sex-work is harmful to women, in part, because it leaves those women without a voice- because those women are forced or coerced into it- then I think it’s probably pretty important to do our best to make sure that whatever actions we’re taking to correct that, don’t shut down other women’s voices.

     And here’s something I’m unclear on. When people are talking about sex-work, are they only talking about prostitution? Because that’s what it sounds like, and I’m not sure I understand if that’s considered the only sex-work there is, or if other things are included.

125. Audacia Ray is a close friend of mine and while she doesn’t come from a dirt-poor background, she’s not exactly rolling in dough, either.

     And that makes her vastly more privileged than many women doing sex work.

     She completely cops to the fact that she has a degree of privilege which allows her to choose sex work over other options. Does that make her choices and her life any less valid?

     No, but it also doesn’t make her life and choices more valid. I’m not saying that she should have less of a voice in these discussions than more-typical sex workers. I’m saying that right now she has much, much, much more of a voice than other sex workers, largely because of her class privilege.

     It’s great that she acknowledges her class privilege, but acknowledging it doesn’t invalidate it.

126. vera:

     I’m not sure whether your ‘rad fem bashing’ comment was directed at me, but no, actually, this isn’t about bashing anyone. Simply questioning why UK radical feminists, in particular, are so scared or disgusted by the idea of being in the same room as sex workers. I don’t understand the logic of not wanting to speak to or communicate with sex workers, preferring to communicate with right-wing pressure groups on this issue. It just seems a scewed way of doing things, that’s all. Is censorship, for example, so much more important than achieving decent human rights for sex workers? It’s not like the industry is going to disappear overnight if you just prohibit what’s viewable/distributable, etc. Yet the radfems over here seem to be totally thrilled that censorship will keep the seedier, already illegal bits of the industry underground, and possibly worsen things for the women involved. I don’t understand their joy, to be honest.

127. Anthony, I don’t see why it is really relevant whether liberal men are more likely to patronize sex workers. Almost the entire thread has been about whether women want to be doing sex work and how best to assist them in getting out. A few people have raised an important point, which is this: can men justify patronizing sex workers? Conservatives subscribe to conceptions under which women are property; so rent and lease arrangements are not significantly different for them from purchase arrangements. Folks on the left ought not to be thinking of women as property. With so many women (an here it really doesn’t matter whether it is 95% or 60%) who would rather be out of it, and so little way to tell which are which, how is patronizing sex workers any more justifiable than participating in any other exploitive labor practice? Of course, when I buy clothes, I can at least say to myself, “I don’t know what conditions these are made under, but I need the clothes.” Sexual services are always a luxury. Are you really okay with giving men a pass to buy a luxury service from a woman who more likely than not is trapped and miserable selling it? (And don’t tell me you can tell which ones are happy with their choices. Not with any reliability you can’t. If you interact with them as a client or potential client, they have strong motivation to get your money, and therefore not to tell you anything that might cause you to decline for reasons of conscience.)

     Amber, Audacia is as self-aware and conscious of her privilege and her choices as anyone I’ve met. But she gave up doing most of the kinds of sex work that she has done. She gave up turning full service escorting, then she gave up giving handjobs and doing fetish sessions, and then she gave up performing on the web and I don’t think she even does nude modeling now. The plural of anecdote is not data, but to the extent any conclusion can be drawn, she stands more for the proposition that sex work will burn out even those most in a position to handle it.

128. The impression I’ve got (and gods know that I could be completely wrong here) is that it’s a little more complicated than that. That it’s a request to recognize that the women involved have or should have voices in this conversation.

     That’s how they frame it, but my sense is that a lot of the pro-sex-work people are fundamentally starting from a “sex positive” agenda. That is to say, they’re a lot less interested in the well-being of sex workers, and especially of non-elite sex workers, then in tearing down sexual taboos. They want the workers involved to have a voice only inasmuch as they say things that further the sex positive agenda.

     And I don’t think there’s any guarantee that they’ll care about a pro-sex-worker agenda that doesn’t further their quest for sex positivity. I mean, what if it turns out that a really important priority for sex workers is improving police treatment of undocumented immigrants, so that undocumented sex workers can call the cops when they’re mistreated by a john? What if it turns out that immigration laws are preventing sex workers from taking advantage of the benefits of legalization? Is that an agenda that the pro-sex-work crowd will be willing to get behind? Or is it too unsexy?

129. And here’s something I’m unclear on. When people are talking about sex-work, are they only talking about prostitution? Because that’s what it sounds like, and I’m not sure I understand if that’s considered the only sex-work there is, or if other things are included.

     You’re right. I think different people use the word differently. When I refer to sex work, I (personally) am think of any activity in which an individual consents to exchange the use of his or her body or image for sexual gratification for money. For me this includes porn, stripping, prostitution, (some relationships), etc.

130. Wow, I am just about ready to dissassociate myself from the feminist movement all together if “feminists” think sexual slavery is “empowering.”

     Read this:
     http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/letter-from-a-pimp-to-the-teenage-girl-he-is-prostituting/

     Is this stuff described there the type of crap y’all support?
     Thankyou Sally, Miller, and others. A lot of the arguemnts here coming from pro-pornstitution folks are not at all supportive of sex workers, they just gloss up reality with the idea that women should keep having to give men blowjobs and give up their pussies for cash to feed their families. Because that’s what women exist for right? To please men, and for cash! :/
     And interesting too how all the folk arguing to support pornstitution (NOT female sex workers) never addressed Miller’s point about how prostitution is comparable to the race-based slavery legal in the 1600s to the mid 1800s. IN FACT the economic dependency and lack of power women of color, specifically poor women of color and poor white women, experience forces them to prostitute themselves. These sex workers who have the money and power and privilege to sit typing away in this forum thread clearly don’t know what it’s like to have a pimp threatening constantly with rape and beating or starving unless you turn a trick in the next 10 minutes.
     Reading some of the comments on this thread literally made my stomach turn.
     And I cannot see how it’s patronizing to point out that legalizing prostitution (instead of DECRIMINALIZING it) only make it easier for men to legally abuse women rather than helping actual sex workers.
     And what about the experiences of women trafficked all over this damned world as prostitutes? Why do you never see “pro-sex”/”pro-sex worker” folks addressing their experiences or needs?
     Folks, the whole point of feminism is to look at the ways that sexism is built into our very institutions, our very ways of seeing things, our basic concepts of “sex” and “work”. And I am so fucking sick and tired of being told I “ally” with the right wing because I think women are people and not meat envelopes. I mean really. And enough with the lies about Dworkin, she in NO WAY allied with the right wing, she HATED it, she saw the connections between the right wing’s agenda and that of “pro-sex” agendas.
     This is so depressing 🙁

131. That’s how they frame it, but my sense is that a lot of the pro-sex-work people are fundamentally starting from a “sex positive” agenda. That is to say, they’re a lot less interested in the well-being of sex workers, and especially of non-elite sex workers, then in tearing down sexual taboos.

     Well, that’s a pretty serious problem, then, because it sounds like both sides are accusing the other of working in bad faith. You think that the pro-sex-work side only cares about breaking down taboos, and they seem to be saying that they think that anti-sex-work side only care about reinforcing them. In other words, both sides are accusing the other of not giving a damn about the actual women involved. That’s going to make things… difficult, isn’t it?

     Thomas: can men justify patronizing sex workers?…
     …Folks on the left ought not to be thinking of women as property.

     I agree with this.
     I’m not sure that’s exactly how the question was being asked, though. The question being asked was, first of all, a little more hostile than just “can a man pay for sex and still be progressive?” It was also assuming things that weren’t said or implied by other posters:

     What do you want liberal men to do to help prostituted women. Roy? Do you want them to hire more escorts. pay for more strippers at their parties, travel to poor nations and “economically assist” impoverished women in exchange for their own sexual satisfaction? This is the kind of help you appear to be proposing, that men should hire sex workers because women want to prostitute themselves to men.

     The suggestion that maybe flat-out criminalization and allying ourselves with people who have a very different agenda- an agenda that, as I see it, is in direct conflict with ours- isn’t working is not the same as saying that the solution is for men to go out and hire prostitutes and call girls. The question was, as I saw it, at least, an attempt to misrepresent and discredit, not to engage in actual debate. Nobody here seems to be suggesting that progressive men should be out paying for sex, so it’s kind of a red herring to say that they are, isn’t it?

     If it’s a serious question: No. I don’t think that progressive men should be out paying for sex. I’m also not sure what the best way to stop asshole men from paying for sex is.

     I’m not sure why someone can’t say: There are serious problems with men exploiting sex-workers and we should be working towards getting rid of the mentality that lets men think of women as objects to be purchased and used. While we’re trying to do that, we should be working to improve the conditions that the women that choose to/are forced to/have fallen into/end up doing sex-work are actually working in, because it seems like getting men to stop paying for sex is kind of a long term problem, and in the meantime, it might be a good idea to offer some aid to the problems facing sex-workers now.

     It’s like (yes, I know, nobody like an analogy) working to improve the lives of the poor or homeless. Just because someone decides to move from talking about abstractions and decides to go down and actually work in a soup kitchen to find out what is happening and what the immediate needs of the poor and homeless are doesn’t mean that she has decided that the long-term exploitation and abuse inflicted upon the poor is acceptable– it means that she recognizes that poverty isn’t something that’s going to be solved overnight, and, in the meantime they deserve to be treated like real people who have real immediate needs.

     I don’t know.

132. So Anthony the only way a woman can say “Yes yes yes” to sex is by selling her ass to a perverted male for a night? Is this your idea of “sex”?
     As long as you keep denying that patriarchy exists (which means that sexism is ingrained in our very institutions, that some institutions were created solely to perpetuate patriarchy) then your argument doesn’t hold. And no one out of the anti-pornsitution clan is trying to not respect sex workers. Quite the opposite.

     “Oh, and please, for Goddess’s sake, Sam, let’s drop this “liberal males’ consumption for prostituted women” nonsense once and for all. Unless you have real proof that it is leftist and liberal men who are most likely to frequent sex workers (never mind being the most abusive and dismissive of all clients), I see no reason why this shouldn’t be taken for what it is: a right-wing talking point seized by you for “feminist” consumption.”

     And isn’t it interesting that suddenly a whole bunch of liberal males pop into the scene on this particular forum thread to eagerly defend the use of prostitutes (rather than the concern for the well-being of prostitutes)? Hmmm

     You say that “sex-positive” (I guess the only way to be positive and mature about sex is by believing in the sexual hierarchy that is prostitution) folks oppose sexual battery and assault. Prostitution IS sexual battery and assault because it is fully based on sexual hierarchy and men’s power over women. You ever asked yourself why men have not been prostitutes even a fraction as much as women have been for men?

133. They want the workers involved to have a voice only inasmuch as they say things that further the sex positive agenda.

     Unfortunately the abstract third person stinks rather obviously like a strawman arguement honey. Is assuming good fath such a bad thing?

     I mean, what if it turns out that a really important priority for sex workers is improving police treatment of undocumented immigrants, so that undocumented sex workers can call the cops when they’re mistreated by a john? What if it turns out that immigration laws are preventing sex workers from taking advantage of the benefits of legalization? Is that an agenda that the pro-sex-work crowd will be willing to get behind? Or is it too unsexy?

     Why wouldn’t they be?

     Let’s step back from the strawman for a second here and let’s look at things properly, what is the goal of the people you’re painting here for us?

     You say they’re interested primarily in breaking down taboos about sex, alright, let’s take that as a given then, now how in the sam hell does that actually affect their position on the situation you just threw out there?

     Oh right because of course teh sex-pos side are all like Valenti and trying to sell liberation like it was a can of pepsi, or something and this therefore… means that they act like the democrats and are anti-immigrant because they have a delusional idea that it will hurt their cause…or something.

     If instead of begging questions about these sorts of silly legless strawmen, you actually out and out asked actual sex positive feminists you’d actually get an actual answer.

     Now, while unfortunately the sex-pos “side” of things has everyone from me, too all kinds of sex workers, prostitute, pornstar or otherwise, to (unfortunately) the occasional hipster feminist like Jessica Valenti and others who are under the false impression that you can buy feminism from GAP or at your local buns and noodles, and in fact need to, not because liberation is a good thing, and that the oppression of women that exists in palce of liberation is a bad thing, but becuase it’s a commodity like an I-Pod that needs to be owned and bought and accesorized with to stay on the hip side of the cultural pelvis.

     This unfortunately means that not only are throwing strawmen at a ridiculously hetergenorous group, you are doing so in such a way as to call people who are actually o your side flaming anti-immigration bigots (of all things, seriously where the hell did that come from?) for no apparent reason, that is if your side is the side of the sex workers (you’ve assumed bad fiath, now I can, heh, never use a double edged sword like that unless you’re prepared to be cut child).

     More amusingly than that, you’re doing this to people who, shock horrors, understand that YES, race does come into play WRT the oppression of sex workers, because sex workers, while not always forced via economic conditions to do sex work, are more often than not pushed into it becuase of their economic conditions.

     And guess which side of hte white/not-white line that means that a great deal of sex workers fall under?

     No guess, I wait.

     Yes, which means that the issue you’re throwing up is already known (because it’s hard to ignore really, though the ultra pale second wavers did a good job more often than not during the 80’s) and has in fact been thought about by the people you’re accusing of not having thought about any wider, dare I say that icky “intersection” word?, intersectional issues to do with misogyny, racism and the great grabbag of prejudices that sex workers have to play off of to work, get thrown at them by their clients, agents and whatnot, and suffer primarily as a result of.

134. No, but it also doesn’t make her life and choices more valid. I’m not saying that she should have less of a voice in these discussions than more-typical sex workers. I’m saying that right now she has much, much, much more of a voice than other sex workers, largely because of her class privilege.

     It’s great that she acknowledges her class privilege, but acknowledging it doesn’t invalidate it.

     Right, but I’m just not sure what you expect her and others in similar situations to do. Shut up? I mean, I know she works diligently for the rights of ALL sex workers to be heard. Many other sex workers who do have a relative voice do the same. Is that good enough? Not enough? Doesn’t count? I’m trying to understand.

135. Roy, I took the tone that I did because I was responding to Anthony, who I thought was trying to hand-wave the question away. This whole topic is given to people throwing rhetoric at each other and both sides believe the other is operating in bad faith. So if I waited until someone asked a question in a non-inflammatory manner before pointing out that it needed answering, I’d be waiting forever.

     It seems to me that, whatever differences I have with them, the anti-sex work feminists want to add into the discussion, “so, guy with a dick, what are you willing to do to not participate in the exploitation?” I don’t think that jumping for the top-level critique answers that question, or gets us out of answering it. On the ground, we can decline to participate in the sex industry and in the commodification of sex and we can ask other men to do that.

136. Can we please not use the term “perversion” in that way? Casting judgment on people who like particular sex ACTS is not in any way useful.

     If what we’re talking about is people buying sex, whether we want to call that “buying sexual services” or “purchasing women” or whatever, I don’t care… the issue is sex for money, not putting someone’s sexual desire up against a societal standard.

     Or are you *really* saying you’re worried about “perversion” too, Laura? Because that’s precisely the sort of elision that worries the hell out of me.

137. That’s how they frame it, but my sense is that a lot of the pro-sex-work people are fundamentally starting from a “sex positive” agenda. That is to say, they’re a lot less interested in the well-being of sex workers, and especially of non-elite sex workers, then in tearing down sexual taboos. They want the workers involved to have a voice only inasmuch as they say things that further the sex positive agenda.

     I’m not sure what this “sex positive agenda” is (is it at all like the “homosexual agenda” we hear so much about?) but speaking for myself, I can say that I am interested in the well-being of sex workers AND tearing down sexual stigmatization. For me, caring about the well-being of sex workers means centering them in these discussions, giving primacy to their voices, and listening to ALL their diverse viewpoints.

138. I mean, what if it turns out that a really important priority for sex workers is improving police treatment of undocumented immigrants, so that undocumented sex workers can call the cops when they’re mistreated by a john? What if it turns out that immigration laws are preventing sex workers from taking advantage of the benefits of legalization? Is that an agenda that the pro-sex-work crowd will be willing to get behind? Or is it too unsexy?

     I am completely supportive of that goal. Again I cannot speak for anyone else, though. And I do not prefer the phrase “pro-sex-work,” because it is too reductive.

139. Huh. So I find myself here scratching my head and wondering. Yep. I’m a sex worker. Yep, I think I have the right to choose to do this. Yep, I do, oh actually do and try to help women who want out, out. Yep, I realize I’ve been lucky. Yep, I know women (and gay men) who have not been so lucky. Yep, I notice a bunch of people who aren’t sex workers sitting around and trying to decide what is best for sex workers.

     Let’s see, what would be good? Well, me, sex worker, and sex workers I actually, you know, work with, know, socialize with…safe working conditions would be really nice. The knowledge we could go to police if we got raped, threatened, beat up, robbed would be nice…especially with not having to worry about being ignored, arrested, demonized, or further harassed. We’d like more options for sex workers to move into other careers, and not be turned down for other jobs because once upon a time or currently we are sex workers. We’d rather not be shamed all the time. We would like to see more help for people who want out. We’d like to be taken, oh, ocassionally as people, adult ones even, rather than children. And yeah, insurance would be righteous, but I am realistic. Oh yeah, and we’d really, really, prefer not to be executed for being in a porn flick.

140. This whole topic is given to people throwing rhetoric at each other and both sides believe the other is operating in bad faith.

     I’m noticing that, and getting that impression. That makes sense.

     It seems to me that, whatever differences I have with them, the anti-sex work feminists want to add into the discussion, “so, guy with a dick, what are you willing to do to not participate in the exploitation?” I don’t think that jumping for the top-level critique answers that question, or gets us out of answering it. On the ground, we can decline to participate in the sex industry and in the commodification of sex and we can ask other men to do that.

     Okay, that makes sense, and I think that’s fair. I admit that I was feeling a little defensive against what I perceived as hostility, but that’s a fair question.

     Sam: For my own part, I think that my position is similar to Thomas’. I don’t participate in the exchange of sex/sexual services for money, and I won’t be a part of situations that do (the most obvious being bachalor parties that involve strip clubs). I think that I could do more to engage the people around me about the topic, but I admit that I’ve done little more than make my own displeasure about, for example, strip clubs be known. I don’t know how many, if any, of my friends have participated in prostitution. I would guess none, but there’s obviously no way for me to know.

141. Prostitution IS sexual battery and assault because it is fully based on sexual hierarchy and men’s power over women.

     Technically, shouldn’t sexual battery and assault involve… sexual battery and assault rather than abstract theoretical conceptions that makes act X merely equivalent, within the theoretical frame work you’re using, to act Y?

     If only because, and do correct me here, it would seem to rather diminish and trivialize the ridiculous amount of actual sexual assault and battery (which, if I recall correctly, involves them being physically beaten, burnt, stabbed, shot, cut, tortured, raped, murdered and occasionally involves them literally being beaten over the head with a metaphorical heirarchy, that takes the form of sticks or other large heavy istruments of blunt trauma) than actual living breathing sex workers suffer, doesn’t it?

     Or what exactly? Help me here, how does saying act X is equal to vile evil act Y actually accomplish anything other than merely to make an entirely retorical point that act X is by default as vile and evil as act Y?

     What exact practical purpose does the conflation achieve is what I’m getting at, how does this construction help?

     The suggestion that maybe flat-out criminalization

     you’;re missing the point roy, criminalisation involves nothing more than feminists abdicating any responsibility to in any way even try to help prostitutes, it involves selling those women right in to the hands of the police and court system that is, by definition, an overly complex system of legalised rape far beyond anything that mere legalisation of prostitution could achieve (and I personally am against legalisation rather than decriminalisation, but even legalisation is inifinitely better than criminalisation, because pretty much anything that doesn’t involve actual darfur style organised mass rapings).

     Criminalisation only opens the entire debate into a muych wider one centering primarily on prison and legal reforms that have nothing whatsoever to do with sex work per se.

142. er. not elision. conflation. bleh. i really can speak English, i swear.

143. If what we’re talking about is people buying sex, whether we want to call that “buying sexual services” or “purchasing women” or whatever, I don’t care… the issue is sex for money, not putting someone’s sexual desire up against a societal standard.

     YES. Thank you.

     And, I would add, I do care how the transactions of sex work are referred to. “Purchasing women” is, often, not accurate. When I go to work each day I am providing a service. I am not SELLING MYSELF. Same goes for sex workers.

144. I don’t know how many, if any, of my friends have participated in prostitution. I would guess none, but there’s obviously no way for me to know.

     I’m curious, Roy, how you would react if you knew that one of your friends does, or at one time did? I ask only because it might be healthy for guys to talk about how to, well, talk to other guys about this.

145. You say that “sex-positive” (I guess the only way to be positive and mature about sex is by believing in the sexual hierarchy that is prostitution) folks oppose sexual battery and assault. Prostitution IS sexual battery and assault because it is fully based on sexual hierarchy and men’s power over women. You ever asked yourself why men have not been prostitutes even a fraction as much as women have been for men?

     Wait…What proof do you have that prostitution is, by definition, “fully based on …men’s power over women.”

     That’s a pretty biased statement that to me denies women agency.

     Let’s take my hobby horse hypothetical du jour, women in Iran are forced to wear the veil. That “force” is patriarchal in nature. Men telling women what they can and cannot do based on male value systems. If we require women to remove the veil (a la France) we are telling women what they can and cannot do based on “feminist” value systems. You know what. There is no difference. None whatsoever. In both instances you are denying the woman in question the ability to choose that CANNOT be the right answer. It is antithetical to the idea that women are capable of making correct moral and ethical decisions on their own.

     I am not saying that women by in large choose prostitution. I wouldn’t be surprised if 90 percent of prostitute would like to leave the trade (god knows I sure as hell wouldn’t want to do it). Those women need OPTIONS not a criminal record. Period.

     Blaming (some) men for being sexist bastards does not give those women options. Shaming men, arresting men, probably even setting them on fire, will not resolve the problem. Women having no power is the problem. You cannot resolve disempowerment by shifting the power from men telling women how they should be to women telling women how they should be. Doesn’t work.

146. What exact practical purpose does the conflation achieve is what I’m getting at, how does this construction help?

     My sentiments exactly.

     That’s part of why I no longer think personally choosing not to consume (whatever) is such a great thing. Of course, live by your principles, and if they say “I can’t support that even the least little bit”, then… don’t.

     But the thing that I wonder about all the conscientious little liberals who don’t go to strip shows or stop buying porn OMG is… what serious impact does a handful of pro-feminist men gasping in horror (and, perhaps, feminist women, too — I stopped consuming porn for a while myself after hearing feminist critiques) actually have?

     How does this actually begin to affect the actions and opinions of the vast numbers of men who do use porn, who have never heard of radical feminism or who write it off as a bunch of right-wing-allied party poopers?

     The reason I actually eventually resumed consuming what little I do (some porn, and I’d go back to strip shows if any looked interesting) is because I couldn’t figure out what my abstinence from it actually achieved. I could certainly live without my porn (though I missed it). But — who did it liberate?

     It didn’t liberate me; all it did was make me worry and feel ashamed if I wanted to go back and look at the stuff on my computer. It didn’t get any of the workers in the images out of sex work. It didn’t convince anyone else to abstain from using them, much LESS start an avalanche of social change that led to everyone refusing to use any of it.

     I think a lot of us have very simplistic ideas about complicity and how it works.

147. And, I would add, I do care how the transactions of sex work are referred to. “Purchasing women” is, often, not accurate. When I go to work each day I am providing a service. I am not SELLING MYSELF. Same goes for sex workers.

     Amber,

     I actually agree with you and cringe at the “selling women” phrase as well. I just meant that, hey, if the topic is whether “women” or “services” are being sold, fine. If the topic is how gross men are who like anal sex… well, that doesn’t to my mind help anyone hash out what feminists should think of sex work.

148. Just to be clear, Roy, I’m not an absolutist on porn. I have said in several places that it exists on a spectrum, with exploitive commoditization at one end and genuine interaction at the other. I don’t think that every image of sexual conduct is a problem. In the past, for example, friends have sent me erotic photos of themselves: unpublished, for an audience of just me and my spouse. Under those circumstances, where I understand that the creator is engaged in and how the images were made, and where the creator has a good idea who the audience is and how they will see the work, I just can’t see how the image is a problem. In fact, it’s more like sexual activity between creator and audience than anything. Farther along the spectrum are images created by a small community for a fairly defined audience; say, a bunch of lesbians in Brooklyn making videos for a few dozen people in their social circle. But the less cohesive the audience is, the less the creator controls the image, the less the common understanding between the creators and the audience, and the more it is done for money and not to communicate something about sexuality, the more it moves to the bad side of the spectrum.

     The thing is, I can’t find much of anything that I’m okay with that I can purchase — at least in the way of images. Text, of course, raises fewer issues. It is expensive to maek sexually explicit images widely available on the web, and almost impossible to do so non-commercially, so what is out there tends to cater to a mainstream audience, and that means being palatable to the patriarchy. If the work itself isn’t, the marketing often is.

     In fact, I spoke with Audacia Ray about this. Her answer was (paraphrasing), “don’t buy the stuff that doesn’t support your values.” There’s not much left.

149. BTW, R. Mildred, did you have in mind something specific that Valenti had to say on sex work?

150. You don’t think treating a woman as a sexual commodity is “perverted” Trinity? And my name doesn’t have a “u” in it.
     You people have literally no interest in listening to others, let along taking things into context, I am done with trying to debate with people who only want to make assumptions about others and want to stifle any concrete discussion about the issue. I am done with this.

151. You think that the pro-sex-work side only cares about breaking down taboos, and they seem to be saying that they think that anti-sex-work side only care about reinforcing them.

     Probably, but just so we’re clear here, I don’t know that I’d say that either side is exactly acting in bad faith, but I do think that both sides are fundamentally motivated by an agenda that has to do with sex, rather than an agenda that has to do with the needs and wants of the majority of sex workers. Like I said, both sides of this debate squick me out, because both sides seem to be using sex workers to push their particular agenda. Which is why I really can’t figure out where I stand.

     Right, but I’m just not sure what you expect her and others in similar situations to do. Shut up? I mean, I know she works diligently for the rights of ALL sex workers to be heard. Many other sex workers who do have a relative voice do the same. Is that good enough? Not enough? Doesn’t count? I’m trying to understand.

     It’s not enough, because at the moment the voices of non-elite sex workers are still obscured. I’m not saying that’s your fault. It’s all of our faults: it’s a symptom of far-reaching problems in our society. But it makes the whole “listen to the voices of sex workers” thing complicated, when some voices are privileged over others. I’m not convinced that the sex workers who show up in these discussions can in fact speak for all sex workers, anymore than I could speak for all women. And I do think that they kind of implicitly claim to do so.

     Like I said, I don’t know how to address this, which is [say it together, everyone] why I don’t know where I stand on this issue. But the sex workers who show up in these discussions seem to be of the opinion that as long as they can show that they care about non-elite sex workers, they should be taken as representatives of the entire group, whose opinions are the “voice of sex workers.” And I don’t buy that.

     Unfortunately the abstract third person stinks rather obviously like a strawman arguement honey.

     You know, R. Mildred, I neither like nor respect you, so I generally try to ignore you. But don’t you fucking dare call me “honey.” Or at the very least, don’t use that kind of condescending bullshit on me and expect me to respond to anything you say. Ok, honey? Am I making myself perfectly fucking clear, sweetpea?

152. “yet, the response they get from anti-sex work folks typically comes in two varieties:”

     And I think you (meaning, not radfems) get that response because your solution doesn’t go “far enough”. And, i agree that it doesn’t.
     You eat a whale one bite at a time. Improving the situation is but one step.

     Notice I am not saying that all porn should be erradicated. Sex work – I am not nearly qualified to make a judgement there.

     “When I go to work each day I am providing a service. I am not SELLING MYSELF. Same goes for sex workers. ”

     I’m a carpenter. When I got to work I’m selling the product of my skills. A stripper is selling her body – which is the product and the performance, which is the service. A prostitute is selling the use of their body.

     ~~~~~~~~
     Tonykins –

     “You may call this “radfem bashing” if you wish, Vera….but I prefer to call it the truth. ”

     Since you took the time to name several radfems who haven’t been involved in this thread and have nothing to do with this conversation, it is beyond dishonest to then pretend you’re not just radfem bashing. That said, your personal misogyny issues are not relevent to the thread in the least.

     _____

     “Simply questioning why UK radical feminists, in particular, are so scared or disgusted by the idea of being in the same room as sex workers.”

     Where did you get the idea that they are “scared or disgusted” to be in the same room?

153. Well, I admit, I do tend to stop listening when someone refers to me and or people I’m loosely or closely allied with as “you people.”

154. You don’t think treating a woman as a sexual commodity is “perverted” Trinity?

     from the OED, definition 2:

     2. Sexual behaviour or preference that is different from the norm; spec. that which is considered to be unacceptable or socially threatening, or to constitute a mental illness; an instance of this.

     Different from the norm? I’m not sure it is. It may be, but much of radfem theory is centered precisely around the idea that it isn’t, that in fact men treating women as non-commodities is rare. I’m not sure whether I agree or disagree with that as I have no idea what percentage of the population of men interested in sex with women are johns. And no idea what the attitude of all those johns is. Stands to reason it’s often negative, but all of them? That I doubt. The little I’ve heard about men with disabilities as johns, for example, suggests that they are not interested in treating a woman a certain way and rather want to experience sex and fear they will not be able to find consenting partners.

     Unacceptable? On a radical feminist view, sure. On my view? Nowhere near as clear. First there are the admitted minority of sex workers who do like their job; paying them for a service doesn’t seem unacceptable at all. As far as the others, who are coerced to various degrees, unhappy to various degrees, etc: maybe so, but even then, if this IS the woman’s livelihood, is she better off being denied it? I really don’t know the answer to that one.

     If “unacceptable” refers to a social standard, an idea that someone is “gross” simply for his sexual desires… well, like I said, I think that has no place in this discussion. That’s been used against minorities since time immemorial — including gays and lesbians.

     And that’s the most common use I hear of the word “pervert” (aside from the reclaiming use of the word by sadomasochists.) Using that word, generally, is about judging people for what they desire. As the OED definition above mentions, the word’s lineage is bound up with the idea that particular statistically abnormal sexual desires are indicative of — or are themselves — mental illnesses.

155. First off, to Lara:

     How nice of you to impose your vision of what I am on me…regardless of whether or not it is actually true.

     For starters, I’m not a liberal; my politics are well to the left of most liberals on most issues.

     Second, I do not and have never used prostitution or any other branch of sex work, other than the occasional membership of adult websites run by women I respect and admire, and not only for their sexual performances. So I am hardly the advocate for “selling her ass” for perversion that you take me to be.

     And maybe the reason why “liberal men” rise up in opposition to your ideology might have something to do with the ideology itself, which tends to scapegoat and demonize such men for the sole crime of having an erection, or simply supporting the right of actual sex workers to speak and act for themselves rather than be the mere mouthpieces of antipornradicalfeminist Newspeak.

     Also…just to set you straight: when a sex worker makes an arrangement with a client, she is not “selling her ass” (or any other part of her anatomy); she is getting paid for providing a service. That you may dislike the particular service she is providing makes it no less so.

     You can challenge (and rightfully so) some of the social and physical conditions in which that service is offered; but that does not in any way erase the automony of the woman who does make that arrangement. Her voice, whether pro or against, must be respected by all.

     To Thomas:

     And my comment on “liberal men” was directed solely at Sam, who has a history of scapegoating “liberal men” as being the chief supporters and beneficiaries of “abuse of prostituted women”.

     And on Audacia Ray:

     Very interesting how Dacia’s experiences are dismissed or distorted to support antiporn/anti-sexwork ideology…..as if every single act of hers has to be overanalyzed to prove how “privileged” she is merely because she’s White and not poor. As if the fact that she openly defends the right of women to improve and upgrade sex work to make it safer and more humane somehow makes her more “privileged” than the APRF abolitionist activists who claim to represent “real pornstitutes”. (Also interesting how most of these supposed activists dissing Dacia happen to be mostly upper middle class and pretty much privileged themselves….often more privileged than the “sex-positive” women they project their elitism onto.)

     I don’t dismiss or even reject antiporn/anti-sex work activists who want to persuade people not to do sex work for all their reasons cited; that is their right to do so. But I strongly reserve my right to point out those sex workers who do feel that they are being misrepresented by the abolitionists and who have an alternative belief in reforming and transforming sex work to be more humane and safer for both client and worker.

     And it goes without saying that as a progressive and a sex radical, I stand as much for general political and economic reform as a means of granting more economic alternatives for those wanting to get out as I do in defense of those who want to stay in and reform the profession.

     That is my definition of “sex positive”. Love it, leave it, or criticize it, but I’m sticking with it. Those who don’t like it….too bad.

     Anthony

156. Quoting Lara:

     You don’t think treating a woman as a sexual commodity is “perverted” Trinity? And my name doesn’t have a “u” in it.
     You people have literally no interest in listening to others, let along taking things into context, I am done with trying to debate with people who only want to make assumptions about others and want to stifle any concrete discussion about the issue. I am done with this.

     “You people”???

     And you talk about us not wanting to listen??

     Perhaps your diatribes should be directed towards a mirror.

     Remember..you came here, not the other way around.

     Anthony

157. Sam: For my own part…I think that I could do more to engage the people around me about the topic, but I admit that I’ve done little more than make my own displeasure about, for example, strip clubs be known.

     Good to hear, and I hope the question Linnaeus raised about men learning how to talk about this to other men gets hammered out some. Men who care about women need to step up more when their brothers are being sexist pricks.

     I’ve found the hardest part in talking about prostitution is connecting what people are desensitized to seeing in the copious amounts of pornography around them to the bodily realities the prostituted women onscreeen were subjected to in order to produce the imagery. A lot more vaginal and anal reconstructive surgeries happen in Southern California than most pornsturbators would like to believe.

     “There’s some unwritten law or agenda out here in Pornoland that … if we tell the truth about what’s really going on here, the fan will get turned off.” -Ona Zee, ex-porn performer

158. For the record, I don’t claim to speak for anyone but me, and I don’t think Audacia does either, but when a thread about sex worker/sex workers does come about, don’t expect the sex workers who are around, and are not or have not always been middle class white girls, to stay out of it and not state their feelings on the matter.

     Like I said before, I don’t support anything for sex workers that sex workers themselves…all of them…all kinds, in all situations, don’t have the majority of say in and the final say on.

159. As regards Belledame’s comment:

     and, uh, yeah, it’s -work;- slavery was also -work;- what differentiated it from legitimate -work- wasn’t the type of work being done but the fact that people were being coerced into it, abused during it, and not paid for it.

     It’s still -work- as in -labor,- and talking as though it isn’t doesn’t help things.

     I disagree. Calling prostitution “work” can only serve to legitimize the purchase of men’s use of women’s bodies. As OAG puts it (far more succinctly than I’m able to):

     Prostitution is “work” unlike any other, which is why I have come to see it as the Swedish do, as institutionalized sexual oppression instead of work. There is no other “job” where a person is expected to have their bodies penetrated repeatedly and exposed to contagion-carrying human fluids. There is no other “job” where a 13-year-old with zero experience can be sold for 100 times the price what a 23-year-old with ten years experience is sold. There is no other “job” an emaciated homeless person strung out on heroin can do (or, more accurately, have done to them) as they’re lying limp on the floor.

160. Like I said before, I don’t support anything for sex workers that sex workers themselves…all of them…all kinds, in all situations, don’t have the majority of say in and the final say on.

     Y’know, Ren, there’s a sloganny thing in the disability community: “Nothing about us without us.” I find that most feminists respect that. It’s strange how when the topic is sex work, though, there’s always something *wrong* with the women speaking, unless they were trafficked in and want out: they like it too much, they are white, they are middle class, they are none of those things but still somehow misrepresenting “reality.”

     It’s odd. Because… well, wrt the disability stuff: I’m white, I’m middle class, my disability is mild, but I don’t ever get told I’m hiding the real truth of how hard it is, or suchlike. Or that I’m unaware that a lot of other people deal with much more serious direct ableist stuff that harms their welfare directly, rather than just being bloody annoying (as is much of what happens to me now that I’m an adult. As a kid, different story.)

     What if people valued every sex worker’s voice? Wouldn’t that be interesting?

161. Trinity: absolutely, but this is me not holding my breath.

162. Sniff…and oddly enough, a great many sex workers would argue that it is work…

     but lets not consider what they think…

163. No, of course not. Why can’t you ever think of -women,- you selfish thing? (p.s. you’re not a real woman).

164. “Simply questioning why UK radical feminists, in particular, are so scared or disgusted by the idea of being in the same room as sex workers.”

     Where did you get the idea that they are “scared or disgusted” to be in the same room?

     Well, he might be referring to the recent business where w-w came in to gloat about how RE was fired from her volunteer job, your kind isn’t wanted here, so sorry.

     Not sex work per se, but one might also be thinking of the flapdoodle over Ladyfest recently, where whosis and whatsis kretched about a workshop they wanted to have and then didn’t have the grace to show up.

     Or, not UK, but there’s also this sort of thing:

     AND the constant “whore, sexbot, fuckbot, don’t even link to me I feel dirty,” crap online of course, but hey, that doesn’t count for anything, it’s all just petty infighting and anyway They Started It. christ knows there’s no slut-bashing going on here; we’re all -feminists-. (except some of us, apparently).

165. You know, I’d argue that it’s a problem with the disability rights movement that we often don’t think quite enough about how disability intersects with other forms of oppression and about how certain voices get privileged over others. And I do think that stuff comes up occasionally. It came up in a big way with Christopher Reeve. People certainly did point out that his initial dismissal of accommodations was rooted in his class privilege. It is easy to dismiss the need for accessible public transit if you can hire a driver to take you anywhere you want to go.

     But I also think that a job is a little different than a status, because one can quit a job if one has other options. Maybe someday middle-class disabled people will be able to quit being impaired, and the only middle-class people who will continue to be impaired will be those who choose it. And maybe when that happens, the ones who choose to stay impaired will claim to know the needs of poorer disabled people who can’t quit, or who would have to sell a kidney or something to raise the money to quit. It is totally possible that this will happen, and when it does, it’ll be comparable to this situation. I don’t think we’re quite there yet, though.

     And I think that valuing every sex workers’ voice means actually valuing every sex workers’ voice, not valuing the ones we get to hear and ignoring the ones we don’t. I’m not devaluing what RenegadeEvolution or Audacia Ray have to say. I’m just saying that I don’t feel like I have enough context to determine whether their perspective is typical or whether most other sex workers would want different things than they want. I’m saying that I don’t know to what extent I think their perspectives should inform public policy.

166. Maybe the world would be a better place if prostitution were eradicated completely. I’m not saying it wouldn’t, though I have doubts, especially depending on how it was eradicated.

     Thing is, prostitution is not going to disappear. It’s been around for as long as anyone can tell, and it doesn’t seem to be wasting away. Since we do actually have to live in a world where prostitution exists, what can we do to reduce any harm done to the actual people who do sex work including, but not limited to, prostitution? Why is trying to reduce the harm done to these people such a bad thing? Why discount the words of the people in this very thread who are actual sex workers? Because they aren’t arguing for complete eradication, they don’t count? Because they’re not oppressed enough to be able to speak for anyone else?

     And I use the word “people” deliberately, because those arguing for the criminalization and eradication of sex work keep referring to women as though women were the only sex workers out there. Though he may have a penis, a fifteen-year-old boy selling his ass on the street is every bit as exploited as a fifteen-year-old girl.

     What’s the emphasis on penetration about? Does that mean that a masseuse who gives a handjob isn’t as bad as a woman who sells penis-in-vagina sex?

167. A lot of the arguemnts here coming from pro-pornstitution folks are not at all supportive of sex workers, they just gloss up reality with the idea that women should keep having to give men blowjobs and give up their pussies for cash to feed their families. Because that’s what women exist for right? To please men, and for cash!

     No; personally I’m more concerned that the women are able to feed their families (and themselves) and do so in a way that minimizes intrusion on their well-being–according to what THEY think is best for them, not according to what -anyone- else thinks. That’s going to take some nuance, though, which isn’t real well addressed by either “yay! all pornstitution is Empowering!” (which is a total strawbot that keeps resurrecting itself in these arguments) -or- “sex for money is the most inherently degrading thing ever and yer propping up the Patriarchy by ever even remotely suggesting otherwise, no matter what some of the people actually doing it think or say.”

     and yes, a lot more people have bad experiences with it. -No one said otherwise.-

     but not everyone fits into your Procrustean bed, and you -really are- erasing the voices of women to do it. or, yep, slut-bashing.

     (“i’m hot, bi-sexee, will fuck and suck anything for money”–right, Sam?)

     by the way, the sex workers i know in real life are not at -all- from “elite” backgrounds. They call themselves “sacred intimates” and see their work as a spiritual calling as much as anything else. and yes it’s very far from street prostitution, that is so. it’s also something they have to keep pretty damn low profile, which means their livelihoods are precarious.

     but it doesn’t matter no matter what, right? If I say (as in some cases) they’d been abused and on the streets, then well that explains everything, of -course- no one who hadn’t been who’s in her (or his, yes, i know male sex workers also) right mind would voluntarily choose this sort of work, poor lambs, they’re just unconsciously recreating their abuse (never mind that these people know more about psychology than most armchair -and- professionals i see yakking about this shit put together). If I say (as in some cases) that they’d never experienced any such abuse and freely chose this work because they like it, they’re privileged dilettantes whose input is largely irrelevant at best, actively harmful to other women at worst. And/or, they don’t -really- exist anyway, you’re lying.

     What can I say.

     And it’s not for me to say, really.

     But you know, at minimum, it’d be -really swell- if we could get through one of these here talks without phrases like “give up their pussies for cash,” much less “warm wet fuckholes” (-has- that made an appearance yet? i’m too fucked off to read the interim other 50 or so comments since i last came here), from the not-at-all-prurient-just-concerned-for-Class-Womens’-welfare folks. I mean, that’d be really -peachy.-

168. sally:

     And that is all fine and good, I think all sex workers do need to be asked, heard, counted, considered. That is a good way to look at it, you need to hear lots of stories. But I don’t think people who aren’t sex workers at all should be the ones informing public policy.

169. And I think that valuing every sex workers’ voice means actually valuing every sex workers’ voice, not valuing the ones we get to hear and ignoring the ones we don’t.

     And I agree with this; but in that case i think it’s our responsibility to go out of our way to -find- the voices we don’t normally hear -ourselves,- not just let their Saviors (including ourselves) -speak for them.-

170. and so far, what I’m finding is: just about every sex workers’ rights organization that’s headed and run -by actual sex workers- are pretty clear that the boilerplate “prostitution is bad ‘mkay” is not sufficient. There needs to be help getting out for people who want getting out. There needs to be -across the board- economic reform. There need to be legal and social safeguards against the crap that happens to sex workers -not- -only- because they’re -women,- but -specifically because they’re sex workers, and sex workers are specially stigmatized.- Legally AND socially, and -a lot of the well-meaning shit doesn’t help.-

     …that’s it, that’s the bottom line. We’re NOT all the same. It’s NOT -all about- Class Woman. Yeah, institutionalized sexism is a big part in -why- the system is the way it is, but it’s not the whole damn picture, and most important, just because you FEEL at one with your poor suffering Third World streetwalking sister doesn’t mean you ARE. She’s not an -extension- of you, okay, just because you both have vajayjays;

     and by the way, a lot of the people who -don’t- have vajayjays are among the most stigmatized and brutalized of all; i am talking of course about trans sex workers, and no i don’t think it’s a total coincidence that the women who most adamantly push the Swedish model and the “prostitution is the key to the Patriarchy” line–Sheila Jeffreys, Janice Raymond–are also among the most virulently transphobic.

171. Yeah… see…

     If I say (as in some cases) they’d been abused and on the streets, then well that explains everything, of -course- no one who hadn’t been who’s in her (or his, yes, i know male sex workers also) right mind would voluntarily choose this sort of work, poor lambs, they’re just unconsciously recreating their abuse

     That’s where I’m coming from…

     I think all sex workers do need to be asked, heard, counted, considered. That is a good way to look at it, you need to hear lots of stories. But I don’t think people who aren’t sex workers at all should be the ones informing public policy.

     This is more where I am now.

172. mean, what if it turns out that a really important priority for sex workers is improving police treatment of undocumented immigrants, so that undocumented sex workers can call the cops when they’re mistreated by a john?

     As a matter of fact, as I understand it from ICSRE and maybe Ubuntu!, it -is-. And, I am very much behind this.

173. But I don’t think people who aren’t sex workers at all should be the ones informing public policy.

     But on some level we’re going to have to be, because we live in a democracy, and most people aren’t sex workers. So even if we start from the premise that sex workers should decide public policy as regards sex work, the society as a whole is going to have to decide which sex workers will craft that policy, given that there are bound to be lots of different perspectives.

     (Actually, in general I think this is a huge problem with the “listen to the voices of [blank group]” thing. It obscures, I think, the workings of power both within and outside the group. Who decides which members? Who decides who speaks for that group? What’s to stop you from finding the representative of the group who says what you want to hear and declaring that person the spokesperson for the group? This is something that has been giving me a lot of trouble recently.)

     And I agree with this; but in that case i think it’s our responsibility to go out of our way to -find- the voices we don’t normally hear -ourselves,- not just let their Saviors (including ourselves) -speak for them.-

     Yeah. I have to put some more thought into how I can do this.

174. again, here’s the ICRSE

     Different approaches have been adopted across Europe responding to the sex industry and female, male and transgender sex workers – including migrant sex workers – ranging from the acceptance of sex work as labour and the introduction of labour rights for sex workers through to the criminalisation of a wide range of practices associated with sex work, which at times results in the criminalisation of the status of sex worker, sex workers partners or their clients.

     Over the last years, legislative measures that restrict the fundamental rights and freedoms of sex workers proliferate at local, national and international levels, claiming to be in the interests of combating organised crime and promoting public health. However, many of these measures are implemented against the policy and principles set out by advice of UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation which note that repressive legislation restricting the rights of sex workers in fact undermines public health policies by driving the sex industry underground, making practices central to safe sex evidence of crimes such as possession of condoms. In addition, such measures contradict the European Parliament’s Resolution on Violence Against Women [1] that called for the decriminalisation of the exercise of the practice of prostitution, a guarantee that prostitutes enjoy the rights of other citizens, and the protection of prostitutes’ independence, health and safety. Moreover, many measures are in violation of the obligation of States under international human rights law to respect, promote and protect the human rights of all persons within their territory, without discrimination, and including the right to privacy, to a family life, to legally leave and return to one’s country, to be free from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment and from arbitrary detention, and in favour of the freedom of expression, information, association and movement.

     Despite the fact that evidence shows that migrant workers in all sectors face increasing levels of abuse and exploitation with impunity European responses to increasing international migration have focussed on restrictive legislation with little attention paid to protecting migrant’s rights and freedoms. To date Bosnia and Turkey are the only European countries to have ratified the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, which came into force 1 July 2003.

     Sex work projects and sex worker’s organisations in Europe have substantial recorded and anecdotal evidence that discriminatory legislation and behaviour, which cannot be justified on the grounds of protecting public health or combating organised crime, restrict the fundamental rights and freedoms of sex workers, at local, national and international levels. These practices occur across health and social care, housing, employment, education, administrative law and criminal justice systems….

     (It continues in a pdf file)

175. Sally; there is a difference between coming up with the policy and implementing it, you know? I just know (speaking for me alone and all) as a sex worker, there are sure as hell some folk out there who are “sex worker advocates” and “concerned citizens” I sure as hell would not want deciding how I take care of business.

176. Maybe we should bracket our disagreements about ‘theory,’ law & public policy, & ask what practical steps we ourselves can take to mitigate the circumstances of the worst off prostitutes. Everyone evidently agrees that things are grim for many prostitutes, & there’s no shortage of expressions of sympathy for them. So how about it! However endlessly fascinating ‘theoretical’ disagreements may be, no one here controls the state, & nothing the state might do in the near future will totally end the problems of, say, drug-addicted street prostitutes. So the more pressing problem may be what private groups & individuals should do on behalf of those people who actually need & want help. This ultimately will call for more than just another repetitive blog thread. Eventually, it will require talking to actual prostitutes, & asking them what they actually want. This shouldn’t be impossible for highly motivated moral agents. It’s not as if hard up prostitutes are socially invisible: if johns can find them, so can you. Show that you care! It should be highly educational all the way around. Actual experience meeting the felt needs of actual prostitutes might even open new vistas for blogging on the subject. In the meantime, a prostitute near you patiently awaits your arrival.

177. Sally, you might try reading at Jill Brenneman’s; she ‘s got both a sex worker and radical feminist background, switched approaches recently in running SWOP East.

     from the more abolitionist-leaning side, there’s Victoria Marinelli, but I dunno how much she’s talking about this shit (or much in general) on her blog these days. but she’s another one with serious chops/creds.

178. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the argument that some people choose to do sex work and that it’s terrible and unfair to them to take away their choices. This is an argument that has been made against every single labor law since the dawn of time. It was made about the eight hour day. If you think that any labor legislation is legitimate, including workplace health and safety regulations, mandated overtime pay, or the minimum wage, then you realize that there are limits to people’s right to take on any work they want.

     That’s not really a great analogy.

     1) Unlike all those other laws, sex workers who want to work legally are arguing on their OWN behalf, not “please may I exploit these workers for longer hours and lower pay.”

     2) as long as it’s illegal, sex workers are exempt from being able to organize and thus take advantage of any of those labor laws or lobby for their own, which generally speaking would probably help to make their work safer.

179. Moira you say people, but it’s still men buying those 12-15 year old boys, it’s men buying these women.

     Why don’t women have the same demand on men’s sexual services as men have on women? Do women not have sexual needs too? Yet prostitution, sex work etc is entirely focused around men’s consumption. Would equality therefore be women using prostitutes as much as men?

     Where are the children who are being prostituted in this thread? Where are the prostitutes who are who are earing 4 dollars to suck dick? in this thread?

     Where are the women in the brothels in Nevada who are not permitted to leave for up to two weeks at a time, and almost never without an escort in this thread?

     What about the people who live in their communities and need to deal with johns crawling after their wives, daughters, sisters and moms because these men think any woman walking the street is available for sex? They don’t have a say in this too?

     With legal sex work, rape becomes theft.

180. KH: Wise advice indeed, yet then there is also the problem that sex workers often are a pretty suspicious lot when it comes to trusting people and their motives…and not without reason. There is no shortage of examples of the words of sex workers being twisted to suit other peoples agendas…plus that whole fear of legal reprocussion in some aspects of sex work….but yeah, less talk, more involvement is always a good idea.

181. Why don’t women have the same demand on men’s sexual services as men have on women? Do women not have sexual needs too? Yet prostitution, sex work etc is entirely focused around men’s consumption.

     So are you saying that if it wasn’t, you’d be okay with it?

     I mean–what’s the point of framing it this way? Yes, women have sexual needs. Some of them even pay for them. Some of them even do it in an exploitive way (of men as well as women). Fewer and farther between, but it happens, ayup.

     We’re not -supposed- to have sexual needs, of course. (an idea, btw, that i think is actually reinforced by the emphasis on menmenMEN and their selfish, depraved demands). And, by and large, men are traditionally the ones holding the purse strings. That -might- have something to do with it. If that’s what you’re getting at, then I’m all for it. But I think a much MUCH more well-rounded socio-economic examination is called for than just, “men sexually exploit women.” There’s a LOT of exploitation going on in a LOT of ways.

     As for “what about the children”–what ABOUT the children? This started, y’know, as a post about Iran’s decision to make -adults- making porn punishable by -death.- Yeah, i dunno if that actor has kids, but if she does, it’ll suck for them if Mom’s killed by the State, true.

     I don’t love “what about the children” gambits in conversations like this, tell you the truth. Yeah, of course it’s a legitimate question in its own right; but by conflating it with discussion about -adults-, you make it sounds like the adults in question might as well -be- children.

     It’s also a great way to detract from any other point, which is a trick the right wing has known from time immemorial. Also see: gay rights, interracial marriage, etc. etc. etc.

182. beanphed, what did you read to make you think I was talking about johns? I was talking about sex workers, and the way that the folks who want to abolish prostitution make were ignoring lots of sex workers in speaking only about women. Please don’t misunderstand, I don’t mean to say “What about the men?” but to point out that not every sex worker fits the model they seem to have of an enslaved woman who only wants desperately to escape.

183. and yep, those other poor women don’t have voices in this thread.

     I wish they did. And if you find any online, please point them to this thread; and I’ll certainly do the same. But I’m really not interested in lots of violin-playing on their -behalf-, because sometimes i get the feeling that it’s a little too convenient for those who do not belong to the demographic du jour to concentrate on the “voiceless” in preference to the people in the demographic du jour who -do- have a voice here; because the “voiceless” tend to make better sock puppets.

184. Ren, bingo. Instead of presuming to parachute in with all the answers like some tribune of the fallen, anyone seeking to reach out to the people who need it most had better learn, among other things, some humility. If you can’t, you’re wasting your time & shouldn’t pretend you have something to offer. In my experience, it helps a lot if you’re in some ways as dodgy as they are.

     But even basement-bound bloggers can begin to think seriously about what practical help civil society organizations can offer. In the face of enormous unmet needs, these interminable retromingent ‘theoretical’ threads begin to weary me.

185. 1) Unlike all those other laws, sex workers who want to work legally are arguing on their OWN behalf, not “please may I exploit these workers for longer hours and lower pay.”

     There definitely were workers who opposed earlier labor legislation, either on ideological grounds or because they thought it would hurt them.

     Actually, there’s a great analogy for this. The American Federation of Labor was the umbrella organization for American unions in the early 20th century. The president of the AFL, Samuel Gompers, was a huge union elitist: he believed that unions should represent skilled workers only, and he subtly and not-so-subtly closed the union movement off to most other workers, including the overwhelming majority of women and African-Americans. (But also unskilled white men.) Gompers claimed, however, to speak for the entire working class, and that claim had credibility, because he was the head of the American labor movement.

     So in 1912, Woodrow Wilson decides that it would be useful for him to strike up an alliance with the labor movement, and he takes Gompers on as an adviser in exchange for Gompers’s support. And across the board, Gompers was opposed to protective labor legislation, largely on ideological grounds. He thought it was totally paternalistic. The way that workers won rights was to unionize, strike, and demand those rights like men. He didn’t think workers should expect anything from the state, except non-interference in their strikes. Of course, Gompers didn’t think that women or black people or unskilled workers should be in unions, and he ignored how easy it was to break a strike by unskilled workers. But that wasn’t his problem or his issue, and he had Wilson’s ear for a couple of years. He managed to make it seem like most American workers didn’t want an eight-hour day.

     It’s highly likely that most American workers favored protective labor legislation, but they were shut out of the debate, because a credible (but in fact elitist) leader said they didn’t want or need it. And that’s what I worry about a little bit here.

186. and yeah, on the “what about the male sex workers” tip, here’s one, -not- privileged, who showed up at Women of Color blog:

     I have little direct experience of porn, but for many years I’ve been an on-and-off sex worker, in brothels or, at my most desperate, on the street in Melbourne, where there is really only one male sex work strip, a few hundred metres from effectively the only trannie sex work strip and totally surrounded by streets and streets of women working the streets. Street sex workers in Melbourne are predictably varied in race but in the majority white, certainly so on the street though there are eg. brothels solely devoted to Asian women: what all these sex workers have in common, overwhelmingly and banally, is poverty.

     Over the decade of my working I’ve seen all ‘categories’ of sex workers subjected to violence, over ninety-nine percent by men. Most recently I was drugged and raped by an HIV-positive man, since which I have not worked in the sex industry.

     I know of exactly two instances in which women were involved in sexual violence against workers, once a man and woman who hired a woman and together raped her while both laughing, the other two women who hired a man and sexually assaulted him. Assaulted me. Both of these cases were in brothels. Actually the number of women who are clients of sex workers in Melbourne is small, but the percentage of these who go to the streets is microscopic (though it happens).

     As a male sex worker I have had multiple experiences with clients who also engage in what is essentially sex tourism in ‘Third World’ countries, especially Thailand and the Philippines but also Bali. Sex tourism, or sexual-assault-mediated-by-money tourism. For obvious reasons these have been men who use their power as relatively rich westerners to exploit these people, overwhelmingly male, often quite young boys. I know of but have had less experience of clients who use sex tourism to do the same with young girls. And over the last few years I have become aware of Australian women going overseas to similarly exploit young guys in impoverished parts of Asia, which it turns out is a surprisingly large economy though still dwarfed by its male equivalent.

     The power/economic differences in these cases makes the nature of the ‘transactions’ clearer, but to me also make clearer that the difference between those cases and say those on the street in Melbourne is one of degree as much as, more than, kind. Quantity doesn’t really become quality here quite often.

     Partial legislation of sex work has not really helped very much, for complex reasons, though I still oppose the criminalisation of sex workers and support any efforts at the self-organisation of workers, for all their limits.

     …I think that these discussions are important and only wish that more sex workers could find ways to create such spaces or participate in debates such as these, which are so directly relevant to our daily lives, to our experiences of violence, gender, class, state power.

     So, yeah. Hardly a “YAY sexwork is empowering!” post. And yet, you notice:

     though I still oppose the criminalisation of sex workers and support any efforts at the self-organisation of workers, for all their limits.

     …I think that these discussions are important and only wish that more sex workers could find ways to create such spaces or participate in debates such as these, which are so directly relevant to our daily lives, to our experiences of violence, gender, class, state power.

     Note that he -doesn’t- say, “I sure wish we had the Swedish model.”

     And that he wishes more sex workers could find ways to create spaces or participate in these spaces.

     And yeah, he’s a dude. Does he rate?

187. Would equality therefore be women using prostitutes as much as men?

     Perhaps you and I have differing definitions of equality. I do not think that men and will ever be the “same”. Equality is access to the same opportunities.

     As for those who are being abused, whether they be men, women, or children, my answer is the same: a criminal record does not help them find a job.

     How do you think criminalization of prostitution helps them not be abused?

     With legal sex work, rape becomes theft.

     This is a specious rhetorical argument. Slavery is not the theft of labor, it is the deprivation of personal autonomy. Rape is not, and will not ever be the theft of sexual services, it is the deprivation of personal sexual autonomy.

188. beanphed:

     No, I don’t see the children or the meth addicted woman selling a 4$ blow job here…nor do I see any male or transgendered sex workers here, or, for that matter, the woman who owns her own big money porn production company, brothel, or strip club…

     and they are ALL out there. All those types. Because the sex industry, in all its levels and facets, is not a monolith. And like like the sex industry, the people in it are pretty diverse, with very different working conditions, reasons, and stories. And like everything, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. No, most sex workers are not the big time female porn warlord, but I also doubt most are the 13 year old trafficked sex slave…whole of the industry and all…and this could be debated until the end of time, on and on, ad infinitum, amen.

     In the mean time, what can be done to help? Well, see, I worked with a dancer who hated it and wanted out. So, yeah, I taught her microsoft office and hooked her up with a legit job interview. She got out of the sex biz and works in a mail room in an office building…pay cut, sure, but now she has insurance…little things and all, you know?

189. and you also note this bit:

     And over the last few years I have become aware of Australian women going overseas to similarly exploit young guys in impoverished parts of Asia, which it turns out is a surprisingly large economy though still dwarfed by its male equivalent.

     The power/economic differences in these cases makes the nature of the ‘transactions’ clearer, but to me also make clearer that the difference between those cases and say those on the street in Melbourne is one of degree as much as, more than, kind.

190. Sorry Moira, you are correct.

     I was trying to draw the idea that men are still the primary users of these people for their sex. It’s these men and women that experience the brunt of men’s sexual violence.

     belledamme222, I don’t think you’ll see many of these working people “online”? How many blowjobs do they have to do to bring home a “living” wage? Is it enough for DSL, food, and enough free time to read lefty feminist blogs?

191. With legal sex work, rape becomes theft.

     Actually no. Most sex work is a service, not a commodity (although certain sections such as porn are possibly both).
     If you tie someone up and force them to take people’s fast food orders you would be prosecuted for kidnapping, not theft. Even though, technically, the forced fast food worker’s time, body, and service is being stolen.
     In the same vein, if you force someone to have sex with you, you would still be prosecuted for rape/sexual assault.

192. I see. Well–have a look at the ICRSE manifesto and see what you think. It could be that there are the equivalent of Gomperses heading some of the sex workers’ rights campaigns. I know Sarah Katherine Lewis has had bitter things to say about the Lusty Lady, for instance. ICRSE doesn’t strike me as such, although it’s hard to know how the day to day machinations of realpolitik play out over there.. Neither does Ubuntu!

     Truth is, there are always gonna be people making power grabs for their own agenda & egos, no matter -what- ideology they’re representing.

     I’m just saying I see a -lot- of that in the abolitionist movement already, at least as much as I do in the decriminalize/legalize movements.

193. Kristen please direct to me anywhere in my posts that I thought prostitutes should be criminalized.

     And sorry belledamme222 a few affluent white women flying oversees to buy men for sexual services does not negate the majority of men (affluent and poor) who crawl neighborhoods and visit brothels in their own community. Men don’t need to fly overseas.

194. beanphed: points silently at the man who IS. and no, the majority aren’t, but there are others, of varying degrees of “privilege,” and i find it more instructive to read what -they- have to say than someone who’s never done it at all.
     
     here are a whole bunch more.

195. and yeah, “rape becomes theft” sounds a little too close to the whole idea of a woman’s “golden triangle” (as some sexist vomitaciously put it the other day) being -property-, you know, her -worth.-

196. Belle, thank you for finding that. I say he rates, but the rad fems and I have our differences.

     beanphed, I hit Enter too early. In your comment you said With legal sex work, rape becomes theft.

     How exactly does this happen? Prostitutes cannot be raped? Is that it? Just because the service a prostitute provides is sexual, that doesn’t mean that she’s selling it all the time. She has the same right to not be raped that anyone else does. Doesn’t she?

197. I’m just saying I see a -lot- of that in the abolitionist movement already, at least as much as I do in the decriminalize/legalize movements.

     I am definitely not disputing that! In fact, I think that the reason I’m pushing harder on the decriminalization movement is that it’s the side I incline towards.

     [I have come to the conclusion that I’m possibly paralyzed by having too many historical analogies at my disposal, by the way. It’s a real problem!]

198. (192 was replying to Sally, in case it wasn’t clear)

     btw, per disability rights intersecting with other things, and sort of on topic, (although not so much with sex work per se, but “sex positive”) you might be interested in this blog.

199. Kristen please direct to me anywhere in my posts that I thought prostitutes should be criminalized.

     You’re right. I apologize. I wrongly assumed that you agreed with the other posters that were discussing a similar idea.

     So what is your solution? I’m all about blaming people for abuse but how do we turn blame into help?

200. Moira: I assume this is referring to the belief that -all prostitution IS rape.- There cannot be such a thing as “sex work” because prostitution is INHERENTLY -rape-. Y punto.

     which to me is where it turns into dogma and thus not useful.

201. How many blowjobs do they have to do to bring home a “living” wage? Is it enough for DSL, food, and enough free time to read lefty feminist blogs?

     In DC, a few hours’ work a day. It’s already been noted that many women can make much more money as prostitutes than from any (no less acceptable) alternative. Excepting eldery end-stage addicts such as the one described in beanphd’s link, the overwhelming majority of sex workers can reasonably quickly make enough money to pay for DSL service. Most prostitutes’ most severe problems lie elsewhere than in inability to lay hands on money. The reason they’re not here online supporting your thesis is overwhelmingly because they have other interests.

202. With legal sex work, rape becomes theft.

     What drakyn said. Legally speaking, forcing someone to perform a service is never theft. By the same token, there’s no specific compliance for labor contracts. If someone signs a contract to work for you and then leaves, you can sue for damages, but you can’t sue to force them to uphold the contract. Because forcing someone to work, even when they’ve promised to do it, is slavery, and that’s not allowed in the U.S. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure the law is very clear on this: there is a fundamental difference between taking property and coercing actions.

     And of course, as things stand now, it’s not like it’s really easy for sex workers to successfully prosecute their rapists.

203. Having spent a day thinking about it, I really do think that fighting to improve the status of women, trans people, gay people, poor people, and other vulnerable groups who face discrimination, may be the best solution in terms of giving people who pursue sex work but don’t actually want to be sex workers other options. Immigration reform and a living wage would help. So would the availability of other jobs for poor transgendered women and other women (and men) who face massive discrimination and difficulties when trying to find work.

     In terms of prostitution, I personally find men (or women) who use prostitutes despicable. I don’t like the idea that intimate access to someone else’s body is something that people can pay for. That doesn’t change the fact that leaving prostitution criminalized forces it underground and gives sex workers little legal recourses.

204. I’m not finding it particularly useful either. If a woman can’t find work that isn’t sex work (say, in the Iraqi refugee camps in Jordan, where Iraqis cannot work legally), her children still have to eat. I don’t see how it helps her to jail or fine her. I’m not saying it’s empowering uplifting work — prostitution can be and often is degrading and oppressing. But we can at least try to work to reduce the degradation and the oppression without taking away her only source of income. I’m not sure how, but I bet asking her and others like her might be a good place to start.

205. beanphed: what is your point? Yes, we KNOW: the majority of prostitution involves men doing the paying. And? Does this say something to you about the inherent nature of men and women? The inherent nature of sex work? -What?-

     If you are trying to argue that by and large, men have more economic power and are socialized into aggressively pursuing sex, as opposed to women, preaching to the choir here. Again, though: so what? Is that the basis of the argument for the Swedish model? Is that the point? That this is how we, what, restore the balance? Or, what?

206. Melissa, I’d just add accessible drug treatment to your list. Many, many of the prostitutes who’re in the worst straits & who really wish their lives were different are stuck because of an expensive habit. I’ve always found it curious that that’s so infrequently in these discussions.

207. Immigration reform and a living wage would help. So would the availability of other jobs for poor transgendered women and other women (and men) who face massive discrimination and difficulties when trying to find work.

     Well, yah.

208. well and of course that’s -another- area where Just Say No hasn’t really helped much, has it. Teh Drugz.

209. Yeah.
     It worked so well with liquor and drugs.
     I expect it’ll kick in like magic with sex, too.
     Any day now.
     .
     .
     .
     .
     .
     Annnny day now.

210. KH, I agree about the drug treatment. So, how do we get there?

     Improving the status of marginalized groups and stopping discrimination

     Immigration reform

     A living wage

     Available drug treatment
     I would argue coupled with some method (and I don’t see any other than legalization) to get the drug trade out of the hands of really vicious people who have fingers in all sorts of other organized crime while minimizing the harm to people who became dealers due to a lack of options or are small farmers who make a living growing coca and can’t provide for their families at all or as well with other crops

     De-criminalization of sex work

     It’s a difficult agenda, and one that the Right will certainly oppose.

211. If a prostitute has an opiate problem & you enroll her in methadone or buprenorphine substitution therapy, she almost always will stop or radically curtail her prostitution. Simple as that. But even when people are ready for treatment, it’s hard to get.

212. roy: ain’t that the truth…

213. It’s hard. We can list things that we think need to change, and even if we come to some sort of an agreement in the feminist community, which really doesn’t seem very likely, actually changing the problems we identify seems almost impossible. I don’t think that there is a solution that could happen soon, not for most of the world anyway.

214. You have to start outreach with people who’re still on the street, before they’re willing to quit. Even people who hate what they’re doing often resist quitting. You have to meet them where they are. Like needle exchange programs. There was a woman in NYC, profiled in the New Yorker 8-10 years ago, who, entirely on her own, set up a truck that went around delivering all manner of services to street hookers. While they stayed on the street, there were harm reduction serivces, & when they were ready to quit, there was someone there to help them make the (often very daunting) transition. If the state is content to let these people die in the streets, civil society organizations should be establishing fleets of these vans in every city.

215. Melissa, you can help one person. You can.

216. The difference is for me – is that drugs and alcohol are objects – not breathing living humans. Prostitution involves buying people, not commodities or products.

217. The drugs aren’t what gets arrested & sent to prison. There are still breathing living humans.

218. KH, your idea about organizing in civil society makes sense. It seems daunting, but you’re right, it is possible. Things like sex work are particularly difficult questions though, because many, if not most, sex workers who want out can’t get out without outside help, but it is hard for people who haven’t been involved in sex work to figure out how to provide the right type of help. Listening to current and former sex workers is important, but it’s hard to find sources where sex workers feel empowered to speak about their problems.

219. The thing to remember about the Swedish model is that what it really amounts to is just one idea: that sex workers should not face criminal penalties for what they do, but that the johns should. We’re not, in any of the 50 US states, looking at a realistic possibility of decriminalization or legalization. But the basic concept of the Swedish model could be implemented in any municipality in the US, by the decision of just one person: the prosecutor.

     Federal authorities don’t enforce prostitution laws, for the most part, and state AGs have never focused on it. That leaves only the local prosecutor to set policy about who gets charged. All the DA has to do is say, “for the welfare of the sex workers involved, it is now the policy of my office not to seek criminal convictions against sex workers: we are only interested in prosecuting pimps and johns.” And these people are elected.

     So, for folks who want to see the Swedish model implemented, the way to do it is to make it an issue in the race for DA.

     (Cops may not like it; they can still make arrests. But isn’t it better for an arrested sex worker to go into the tank and then get releases sex hours later when the line prosecutor in the complaint room says “no charges,” than to spent twelve hours and then get arraigned on a misdemeanor? Word would get around quick that the arrests were meaningless, and police supervisors might even give orders to stop making the arrests.)

     The other advantage to pursuing that strategy is that it doesn’t require more public funding. Everybody can talk about treatment programs and social services, but on the ground your local politicians will not pay for it. To really happen, it has to come from volunteer efforts. Changes in charging decisions don’t put another line item in the budget.

220. Maybe someday middle-class disabled people will be able to quit being impaired, and the only middle-class people who will continue to be impaired will be those who choose it. And maybe when that happens, the ones who choose to stay impaired

     Impaired? I could be misreading you, but… are you calling disability “impairment” or are you claiming that with the advance of assistive technology, the privileged among us will no longer be impaired at all? Because I can’t quite tell which of those you mean, and the first is medical-model-ey in a way that I’m not totally comfortable with. (I do think the medical model has uses, I’m just not sure it applies well here.)

     And “choose to remain impaired” also sounds very medical-model, too. If we’re saying that assistive technology will advance enough that we’ll not be impaired, what does this mean? Obviously it refers to people who wouldn’t choose to use the technology, but for what reasons?

221. With legal sex work, rape becomes theft.

     “Rape is not, and will not ever be the theft of sexual services”

     Oh how I wish to all the heavens this weren’t true. But it is true. What would it take for me to convince you that some women’s rapes are already not being called rapes but “uncompensated sexual labor”?

     When the OC pool table rapists drugged and filmed themselves raping an underaged girl, they claimed she said she wanted to be a porn star. Even though no one I heard of brought up the question of if they offered to pay her for ‘sex work’, the clear implication was that it wasn’t a rape but merely a case of uncompensated sex work.

     Then there’s Kim Meston, a young woman from Tibet whose parents were lied to by an American man who raped her repeatedly and forced her into domestic slavery. Seems like a pretty clear-cut case of rape, right?

     Wrong. Pro-sex workers rights ‘progressive’ writer Yasmir Nairwrote an article for Clamor Magazine in which she called Meston’s rape uncompensated sex work, “Meston’s story reveals the kinds of labor, sexual and commercial, that may be extracted from family members under economic stress.”

     The woman was RAPED. Imagine the uproar if people suddenly started calling murder “suicide without consent”.

     You know how every feminist knows victims of rape are least likely of all crime victims to speak about their sexual victimization? According to pro-sex work Nair, when it comes to sex work this well-known truth reverses and women like Kim Meston who claim they were raped are lying about being raped because they’re ashamed to admit they were really prostitutes:

     “It’s easier for sex workers to claim being kidnapped and forced into sex rather than admit to looking for sex work”

     The woman was RAPED. And Yasmin Nair/Clamor called her a liar who probably wanted the “sex labor transaction” but was ashamed to admit it.

     http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/09/76044.html

     With legal sex work, rape becomes theft.

222. Thomas: that is interesting wrt, you say it’d be a lot easier to implement the Swedish model than go to decrim. I admit to knowing next to nothing about the legal aspect of all this, but that sounds…odd.

     I mean, I understand the rationale from the point of, people want SOMEONE to go to jail and not to seem like they’re excusing vice, so this seems like a better solution; I’m just not clear on why the legal mechanisms in the U.S. would make this easier?

223. The drugs aren’t what gets arrested & sent to prison. There are still breathing living humans.

     I’m aware of this and I am a drugs counsellor.

     I’m talking of Roy’s

     Yeah.
     It worked so well with liquor and drugs.
     I expect it’ll kick in like magic with sex, too.
     Any day now.

     Prostitution is not the same as liquor and drugs – as I said people are not commodities. They are not a spliff/doobie/hit/bowl/line/dig whatever – that is what I am talking about.
     .

224. Impaired? I could be misreading you, but… are you calling disability “impairment” or are you claiming that with the advance of assistive technology, the privileged among us will no longer be impaired at all?

     The second. (I’m not claiming it will happen. It’s a hypothetical.) And yes, it’s the essence of the medical model. I’m saying that if there were an expensive “cure” for all of our impairments, it would be equivalent to prostitution, which is a job that privileged people can easily quit. In order to equate prostitution and disability, some people have to be able to quit. I’m sure there would be people who would reject the medical model and say they didn’t want a cure, and that would be their choice. But it would be a choice. It would be very different from people who didn’t have access to the cure because they couldn’t afford it. And if the people who rejected the cure started talking about the medical vs. the social model and how it was an affront to disabled people to work harder to make the cure available, they would be assholes. They would be imposing their perspective, legitimate as it might be, on people who have a right to make their own choices.

     The fact that this way of talking about disability makes you uncomfortable is kind of my whole damn point.

225. Prostitution is not the same as liquor and drugs – as I said people are not commodities. They are not a spliff/doobie/hit/bowl/line/dig whatever – that is what I am talking about.

     How do you mean this? Are you saying that because prostitutes are people, that changes the dynamics of the black market? Or are you saying that because prostitutes are people, the black market is a necessary evil because legalization and decriminalization are wrong?

     I could just have missed something, but I have no idea what this comment says.

226. I’m saying that if there were an expensive “cure” for all of our impairments, it would be equivalent to prostitution, which is a job that privileged people can easily quit.

     How would it be equivalent, unless you assume most of us want cures? I’m not sure if my brain just went offline or if this doesn’t follow. I’m totally confused.

227. How would it be equivalent, unless you assume most of us want cures?

     So that means that you’re assuming that most prostitutes want to quit?

     I don’t think it is equivalent. I think it’s a dumb analogy. I don’t think that disability is like prostitution or any other job. But it was your analogy, not mine. I’m trying to show you how much you have to strain the analogy to make it work. I’m not sure why you think you’re contradicting me by claiming it’s a strained analogy.

228. Jessie, I think Roy was addressing the practical inefficacy of prohibition, not the moral differences between persons & inanimate objects.

     But, yes, I know you were drawing the distinction between the voluntary exchange of inanimate objects & the voluntary exchange of embodied services. It is not human beings, of course, that are being exchanged. It is a service, a unit of labor. But do you object to all contract labor? All personal services? All services involving physical contact? All of them that involve invasive contact? No, I’m guessing. So your objection isn’t to treating people as commodities. It’s to commercial sex. Even if the people involved don’t share your (possibly very compelling) views about sex.

     As a drug counselor, do you have any practical suggestions about how services might be afforded addicted sex workers?

229. You have to start outreach with people who’re still on the street, before they’re willing to quit

     I agree and the best way I know how to do that is by supporting organizations like HIPS. Yes, I can do more and as a result of this conversation I am going to start researching more national/international organizations. (I’m taking suggestions!)

     But (and maybe its just because I’m a lawyer) I think we should do more about the negative legal consequences that *our* society imposes on sex workers.

230. Yes, HIPS does very good work here & deserves more funding.

231. BD, here’s how I figure:

     If you wanted full decrim in New York, you would need the legislature to remove the criminal statutes from the books. That means getting the leadership to propose and back it, getting the majority in each house to agree and getting the governor to sign it. People have been trying to fix the Rockefeller drug laws in the legislature for three decades.

     If you wanted decrim-on-the-sly by nonenforcement of all prostitution-related criminal statutes, all it would take is the local prosecutor’s agreement — in Manhattan, NY County DA Morgenthau. But he’d face all kinds of opposition. He’d be refusing to enforce the law, which really is not his job. That could even threated his stay in office; which is basically a lifetime appointment for the last two people to hold it (Morgenthau, Hogan).

     If all you want is to refuse to charge the actual sex workers, then he doesn’t have to admit that he’s not enforcing the law. Instead, he can simply say that it is his office’s job to decide how to enforce the law, and that charging the johns rather than the sex workers is, in him judgment, more effective. That’s the kind of charging-decision policy that prosecutors are generally understood to make, and he’d get only marginal if any heat.

     So it is easier because it requires the support of only one person, and it is an easier step for them to justify.

232. Sam, you have a vile, twisted mind. You’re going to use a young woman’s gang rape, and her rapists’ defense team’s disgusting behavior during both trials of her rapists as some kind of evidence that sex workers are raped? A man rapes and enslaves an immigrant woman and someone described as a ‘pro-sex workers rights “progressive” writer’ calls it sex work? That’s your evidence that rape is theft when prostitution is legal?

     That you think this is compelling support for your assertion speaks much more to the way your mind works than it does to bolster your argument.

233. I don’t think it is equivalent. I think it’s a dumb analogy. I don’t think that disability is like prostitution or any other job. But it was your analogy, not mine. I’m trying to show you how much you have to strain the analogy to make it work. I’m not sure why you think you’re contradicting me by claiming it’s a strained analogy.

     I think you’ve really missed my point. I think that in ANY movement for people’s rights, making those people central is absolutely necessary.

     I don’t think this somehow becomes untrue because disability is a condition but prostitution is a job. If we were discussing the rights of any other laborers, it would just be obvious that the workers themselves know better what they need than their bosses (or than random well-meaning radicals/liberals/leftists.)

     So no, I don’t see why you assume I’m saying the two movements are the same. I’m saying that one thing the disability rights movement stresses — and gets right — is that “change” that gets made by people who are not members of the group in question is often not helpful at all and grounded on the vision of paternalistic “helpers” rather than on the actual needs of oppressed people.

234. Was prostitution legal in the jurisdiction (Massachusetts?) in which Kim Meston was raped? Or maybe I miss the point.

235. So, yeah, before we got all bogged down with the all sex work is rape thing…I saw people actually talking about how someone can help? Other than say how horrible it is and all??

     A few ideas on how you can help sex workers, or even “a” sex worker…

     1: Don’t assume they want or need your help. Only offer it if they express an interest.
     2: Do not shame them, condemn them, or treat them like children. Treat them as you would wish to be treated when in a similar position (that being one where you needed help).
     3: Identify their primary needs (money, housing, child care, education) and identify any factors that are contributing to their condition (drug use, an abusive partner, so on).
     4: Start small. Do not demand they leave the biz right off. Work on primary needs and contributing factor in steps. You cannot wave a magic wand and make everything right for them over night. Use your available resources (time, contacts, connections, skills, money) to assest THEM in helping themselves…help them find affordable sources for education, housing, child care, drug treatment, other possible job opportunites. Do not act like you are handing them the world, help them do it themselves. Can you search the want ads or net for things? Baby-sit? Look up low cost adult education sources (or teach skills yourself?), find out about free or low cost drug treatment programs? Free or low cost health clinics? If you can do these things, they help.
     5: Be spportive, calm, and positive towards them.
     6: Look into organizations which specialize in helping sex workers such as SWOP, UBUNTU…see how you can help them help sex workers, see what the sex workers who go to (and run) these organizations want and need.
     7: Never forget these people are people, not stats, not subhuman, but people.
     8: Realize most sex workers are pretty suspicious of non sex workers who are looking to help them, and keep that in mind.
     9: Don’t ask personal questions.
     10: Remember that prostitutes are considered criminals by the law and thus, it is important not, to in any way, endanger them legally.

     Just a few ideas…

236. Okay, you know what? We’re finally heading into the Land of Intelligent DIscourse and Reasonable Suggestions.

     The thread is getting really interesting, and people are starting to talk about solutions, and I’m really not interested in backtracking to the Swamp of Mud-Slinging and Name-Calling.

     I’m cranky, and it’s my thread, which means I get to make the rules. If you just feel like telling us that prostitution and sex-work are rape, then don’t bother. It’s been said, and it’s not actually going to help anyone. It doesn’t get us any closer to solutions to the problems that are facing sex-workers. If you’re thinking of throwing out some pithy snark about how even considering the notion that criminalization hasn’t worked means I’m saying that men should have unlimited access to women’s bodies and/or that sex-work is necessarily empowering, save your breath.

     I fully recognize that This Isn’t Fair, but the next post that I see that I decide is hostile or dismissive or is taking us back into the mudslinging, and isn’t actually talking about ways we can help or what the problems facing women are or otherwise productive and interesting? It gets devoweled or deleted or otherwise removed.

     I haven’t moderated a post yet, but I’m feeling cranky and my fingers are twitching.

     Thomas, Renegade? Thank you for the comments- Those are interesting and useful suggestions.

237. from my experience with SWOP in san francisco, it did not seem like helping women who wanted to get out of prostitution was a priority or even a consideration, nor was helping current street prostitutes in any capacity at all.

     robyn few (the director of SWOF SF) was a guest speaker at a feminist meeting i was at a couple of years ago and when i asked her specifically what we could do to help street prostitutes (because i live in the tenderloin where the majority of street prostitution takes place and i see women in terrible distress on a daily basis) she said, and i’m paraphrasing but this is honestly the gist of what she said, “we shouldn’t be worrying about them because they have plenty of services they can access: homeless shelters, free clinics, etc. what we need to worry about is middle-class sexworkers, unionization, and healthcare.”

     i was honestly, mortified by what she said because i felt that it was totally classist and completely ignored the true needs of actual women in really dangerous, desperate situations. and i had gone into the meeting with an open mind, actually HOPING that she would make prostitution all happy and feminist for me so i could feel good about it and continue to enjoy watching porn with my boyfriend but i left that meeting totally depressed and defeated. i felt like all she really cared about was herself and her ability to pimp women even if it put their lives in danger. (she also said that as a pimp (although she didn’t use that word) she wouldn’t always know where she sent the women because that would be illegal so she sent women “on dates” even knowing that they could be injured, raped, or killed, but she “knew” the guys so she didn’t worry about the women because she trusted the men.) i don’t know, that just didn’t sit well with me.

     i think everyone should have healthcare no matter where they work or whether they work. i guess my point is just that i don’t think that SWOP (in SF anyway) necessarily has ALL sexworkers best interests in mind. there was A LOT of pimp glorification and i could only assume that was because robyn few is no longer a sex worker, but a pimp. also there was lots of drug legalization talk that although i agreed with it, i felt like it was off topic and again, all about robyn’s wants and robyn’s needs.

     however, reading this whole comment string gave me some ideas. from reading thomas’ comments i think the step i’m going to take is to write kamela harris and suggest that we start implimenting the swedish model in san francisco and stop arresting exploited runaways, women and transgender people who are working the streets and start prosecuting the johns who are abusing them.

     we’ll see if she listens.

238. roy:

     you’re welcome.

239. Hey, I’m not really taking part in this discussion, but I just wanted to say that I’m finding it amazingly damn good and useful and educational and interesting and several other positive adjectives.

     Also, Roy, good post.

240. No, I don’t see the children or the meth addicted woman selling a 4$ blow job here…nor do I see any male or transgendered sex workers here, or, for that matter, the woman who owns her own big money porn production company, brothel, or strip club…

     And certainly that couldn’t be because of the incredibly condescending, paternalistic, antagonistic tone taken by many of the commenters here. I mean I know I LOVE to go around to blog threads where people are talking like a bunch of know-it-alls about some group that I’m a part of – when they themselves are NOT part of that group. It’s a load of fun to try to shout at a brick wall in my free time. I can’t get enough of the constant replies of, “But but but…”

241. I’m saying that one thing the disability rights movement stresses — and gets right — is that “change” that gets made by people who are not members of the group in question is often not helpful at all and grounded on the vision of paternalistic “helpers” rather than on the actual needs of oppressed people.

     Yes, I get that. But Christopher Reeve was disabled, and he believed that his agenda reflected “the actual needs of oppressed people.” When he said that the government should fund research and not accommodations and that people who wanted curb cuts had “given up,” he was talking as one of “us.” And I don’t think that the correct response to that, or the one I wish that non-disabled people had taken, was to take his word for it, think they’d heard the voice of disabled people, and throw all their resources towards finding a cure rather than funding accommodations.

     “Nothing about us without us” is a great slogan. But it’s just a slogan. It doesn’t define the boundaries of “us” or address the question of whether “we” all have the same needs or decide who gets to speak for “us.” It doesn’t render “us” raceless or classless or sexless. It isn’t a “get-out-of-analysis-of-power-dynamics free” card. It’s a starting point, not the end of the story.

     Finally, I still think the analogy stinks. Sex work is a job. When we regulate an industry, we don’t just take into account the voices of workers. We don’t say “nothing about us without us” when we talk about how to regulate barbers, teachers, or auto mechanics. So yeah, I definitely agree that it’s wrong to fall into a protection narrative, and sex workers’ voices have to be front and center in this discussion. But I also don’t think that disability rights slogans translate easily to questions of workplace regulation.

     Feel free to erase this if you’re bored silly by this discussion, roy!

242. It doesn’t define the boundaries of “us” or address the question of whether “we” all have the same needs or decide who gets to speak for “us.” It doesn’t render “us” raceless or classless or sexless. It isn’t a “get-out-of-analysis-of-power-dynamics free” card. It’s a starting point, not the end of the story.

     Yes. It definitely IS a starting point. The thing is, though, that the exact reason I mentioned it is that it seems to me that a lot of this discussion, incredibly and sadly, IS still stuck at the starting point.

     There’s so much discussion of whose voices count that no one is being listened to. THAT is a problem to me. When no one IS part of “us” unless she has the following set of Feminist Approved Experiences, that’s no longer activism, that’s using people to prove a point.

243. “we shouldn’t be worrying about them because they have plenty of services they can access: homeless shelters, free clinics, etc. what we need to worry about is middle-class sexworkers, unionization, and healthcare.”

     Wow. That’s totally bizarre and disturbing. Was this said as “we don’t have the resources” or “there’s another group that can better specifically handle their issues” or was it just completely dismissive?

244. Roy,

     If you don’t want to go back there, okay. But a couple of ideas in your original post still trouble me so I had to come back.

     You said the anti-porn movement isn’t working, in fact the industry is growing larger. This is true but is it because the anti porn movement is wrong or is it because the industry has all the money, power and privilege? Feminist anti-porn and prostitution advocates are not granted access to the main stream at all while Ron Jeremy gets to sit in the front row of Major televised Benefits– he’s treated like royalty. He’s just one example out of many.

     Also, this same argument has been used against feminism in general. People say feminism has failed because women still earn less, women are still exploited, etc. I’d say the lack of feminism, the silencing of the movement, is really the problem.

     Finally, I don’t see any alliance between anti pron feminists and Iranian mullahs. I don’t consider them allies in any shape or form. I don’t advocate murdering anyone.

     The US government reinstated the death penalty some years ago. I’m against the death penalty. Does this mean I should rethink my position on murder? That logic simply fails me.

245. You said the anti-porn movement isn’t working, in fact the industry is growing larger. This is true but is it because the anti porn movement is wrong or is it because the industry has all the money, power and privilege? Feminist anti-porn and prostitution advocates are not granted access to the main stream at all while Ron Jeremy gets to sit in the front row of Major televised Benefits– he’s treated like royalty. He’s just one example out of many.

     Sure, that’s possible. Here’s the thing though, regardless of why it’s not working- the current tactics aren’t working. Meanwhile, women are still being harmed by it.

     How does the saying go? If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting the results you’ve always got?

     If things aren’t working, and the industry is, in fact, getting bigger, and women are still being harmed and still suffering as a result… it’s time to think about changing tactics.

     AND even if you don’t want to completely change tactics, at the very least it’s time to start thinking about what to do NOW about the women that are suffering. Because, here’s the thing, ignoring the women that are suffering now, or treating them like part of the problem, or treating them like they don’t have any agency? That’s not helping. Leaving things they way they are? That’s not helping.

     And, ultimately, my conclusion was that allying ourselves with people who are seeking to actively oppress women? That’s not going to help either.

     Finally, I don’t see any alliance between anti pron feminists and Iranian mullahs. I don’t consider them allies in any shape or form. I don’t advocate murdering anyone.

     ?
     Okay.
     I didn’t say that anti-porn feminists were allying themselves with the mullahs. I said that the story about Iran was something that helped me realize the problems with allying ourselves with the Christian right, over here. That the story inspired thoughts in my head is not to say that feminists are actually allying themselves with oppressive forces in Iran- it’s to say that the story sparked thoughts in my own head.

     Look, I think that the majority of the porn on the market is awful. It’s scary stuff. I don’t doubt for a minute that there’s some serious exploitation happening. I absolutely think that it’s important to work to change that. I’m not suggesting that we should just throw our hands up and walk away- I’m suggesting that maybe a new approach is needed- one that includes and addresses the women involved, and works to help them with their needs now as well as works to end that exploitation in the future.

     That’s why the comparison to the drug war strikes me as apt- you don’t have to think that crack-cocaine is great stuff to think that the probhibition on drugs isn’t working. To think that a new approach might be needed- one that addresses the needs of the people addicted to drugs. One that works to make drugs safer for those who are going to use them no matter what, but that also seeks to help people get off drugs and get back on their feet.

     It’s a complicated issue, and I’m not sure that a view that treats it like it’s 1 or 0 is necessarily the best view to take. The attitude that you’re either completely 100% opposed in all instances or you’re completely 100% thinking that men paying for sex is empowering strikes me as a gross over-simplification of a complex issue, and a view that misses the needs of women now.

246. Thomas, the Swedish model amounts to a state-imposed boycott of prostitutes, & boycotts impose harms on their targets. Some people think decriminalization would be worse, but even if you think it wouldn’t, is there a practical ease-of-implementation argument for supporting the Swedish model?

     It may be politically easier for prosecutors to decriminalize on the sly by nonenforcement (whether announced or not) of laws against selling sexual services than it is for them to decriminalize on the sly by nonenforcement (whether announced or not) of laws against buying sexual services (or against both), or it may not. It’s a matter of politics, not law, & depends on whom the community loves more, prostitutes or johns. This will vary across jurisdictions. There are more johns than prostitutes, johns generally have more higher social status & more political influence (at least until they get caught), even johns’ wives generally would prefer to kill them themselves than to endure the public trauma of prosecution. Sympathy toward prostitutes is spotty outside of a few rarified precincts. Without actual decriminalization the negative externalities associated with illegality may remain, & as long as somebody’s complaining about the nuisance of having hookers around, there may be pressure to prosecute. We can only guess what’s easier.

     (I don’t really understand why the DA would be under any more pressure to explicitly announce her policy in one case than in the other. If asked, couldn’t she just as easily say that her decision to charge only sellers was based on a charging-decision judgment that that’s more effective?)

     In any case, the relative ease of implementing two alternatives doesn’t by itself settle the question of which is preferable as a practical political matter. I suspect most of us would prefer the Swedish model to current law & policy, but some of us also think decriminalization would be preferable to either. If, arguendo, the Swedish model were easier to implement than decriminalization, should people who think decriminalization is the best policy settle, as a practical political matter, for advocating what they see as the second-best option? Not necessarily. If decriminalization were only marginally preferable to the Swedish model, & also much harder to implement, then there’d be a pragmatic argument for advocates of decriminalization to settle for the Swedish model, at least for now, while they work for further change. But if decriminalization were substantially preferable to the Swedish model, & also not much harder to implement, then there’d be no pragmatic reason for advocates of decriminalization to settle for second best. Reasonable people may evaluate the relative ease of implementation & the relative preferability of the two options differently, but not all evaluations are equally reasonable. I not only think the Swedish model is only the second-best option, but in most cases also see no practical political reason to settle for advocating it.

247. Maybe we, I, should stop talking in general terms about “the Swedish model.” Both it & the alternatives to it are complex combinations of policies, involving a lot of moving parts. Better to consider each part of the package separately.

248. Roy, thanks for clarifying. The Christian right has stolen feminist arguments against porn to help make their case, but I don’t know of any feminist women today who are actually allied with them.

     I like the Swedish model, not because it’s perfect– what law is? I like it because it criminalizes the johns and the pimps’ behavior without punishing women and girls. That’s a move in the right direction, IMHO.

     AND even if you don’t want to completely change tactics, at the very least it’s time to start thinking about what to do NOW about the women that are suffering. Because, here’s the thing, ignoring the women that are suffering now, or treating them like part of the problem, or treating them like they don’t have any agency? That’s not helping. Leaving things they way they are? That’s not helping.

     Agreed. I’m all for a new plan of action. I don’t see how decriminalization helps the kids and the women who want out. I’m also concerned that decriminalization serves to further legitimize an inherently exploitive and misogynistic industry. That it legitimizes the notion of buying and selling girls and women as acceptable and “normal” male behavior. And that mentality leads to the victimization of girls like Dayln:

     http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/6422729.stm

249. Yes, I get that. But Christopher Reeve was disabled, and he believed that his agenda reflected “the actual needs of oppressed people.” When he said that the government should fund research and not accommodations and that people who wanted curb cuts had “given up,” he was talking as one of “us.” And I don’t think that the correct response to that, or the one I wish that non-disabled people had taken, was to take his word for it, think they’d heard the voice of disabled people, and throw all their resources towards finding a cure rather than funding accommodations.

     Well, I’m wondering how much of that has to do with–the general tendency many or most of us seem to have to want/respect -representation-, preferably in the form of a wealthy celebrity, or rather, thing it’s as good as if not better than a more let’s say directly democratic approach. If that makes sense.

     I mean, you see that in a -lot- of areas, even right here in garden variety feminism, yeah? Not that I want to go down this path so much, but the whole, “if Hillary becomes President that’s a major triumph for women in itself, I’m sure she’ll be looking after our interests, as a woman, plus, yay! role model!”

     …that sort of thing. and not that that’s particularly rife on feministe or anything, but it exists.

     or, you know, the focus some mainstream gay activist groups have on media representation, and celebrity spokespeople, and yay, so and so is “out’

     …I mean, I’m not saying this isn’t ever relevant -at all;- I’m just saying, as a (I am coming from a U.S. perspective here) culture, we seem to put a -lot- of investment into this. Starfucking. Or, less cynically–again, we have a model that’s based on “respresentational democracy.” We vote for a leader and in return, we assume s/he’s gonna do the brunt of the going-to-bat for us. I do think that this unconsciously plays out in areas that aren’t electoral politics, too.

250. But I mean, back to the issue at hand–well, you do see this on both sides of the debate, I think. Personally, though, I tend to be somewhat more inclined to listen to, say, Nina Hartley than Sheila Jeffreys or Robert Jensen on this particular issue; she may not, in fact, be the Voice of the People, but at least she’s done it -at all,- and I -know- what her particular vested interest is. Whereas with Jensen I find it a lot…murkier.

251. …sort of–well, probably awful analogy, but, yeah, I can see where Reeve’s POV is problematic there–rich celebrity, of course he’s got different priorities from the hoi polloi–but, even that might be preferable to, I dunno, Peter Singer?

252. Thomas: well, what kh said.

     but, also/rephrased for my own mind, this:

     If all you want is to refuse to charge the actual sex workers, then he doesn’t have to admit that he’s not enforcing the law. Instead, he can simply say that it is his office’s job to decide how to enforce the law, and that charging the johns rather than the sex workers is, in him judgment, more effective. That’s the kind of charging-decision policy that prosecutors are generally understood to make, and he’d get only marginal if any heat.

     that’s…how likely is that? And it’s hardly gonna be universally applied even if one prosecutor does this (and i’m still not totally clear on how that works legally; what is the actual law(s) that criminalizes prostitution? how does it read? IANAL and all that), even if it does inspire some others to go and do likewise.

     It also doesn’t solve a whole host of other problems: at best, the prostitute herself is in legal limbo, the stigma’s still there. So, like, a case like the university professor who was fired and then had a police sting on her, and killed herself when the news broke–so maybe she wouldn’t have had to fear going to jail herself; but it probably wouldn’t have solved the basic problem of, she’s never gonna work in the University business again, -and-, how’s she gonna make money if her source of income, i.e. the clients, are prosecuted. And oh yeah, the media exposure’s probably still there. And so on.

253. (continuing thought from still modded post)

     I mean, I’m not saying that given a choice between the prostitutes/sex workers being criminalized and the johns/clients being criminalized, that the latter probably wouldn’t be at least somewhat preferable. I mean, coming from a position of empathizing with the sex workers; sure, I’d rather -not- go to jail and have a criminal record on top of everything else. Getting rid of that would be a start. I just…don’t think it’s so hot as a stopping place, and I’m not even sure that it leads in the best direction, ultimately.

     I guess I keep asking what the philosophy behind it is, and how congruent that is with…well, a few things.

254. we shouldn’t be worrying about them because they have plenty of services they can access: homeless shelters, free clinics, etc.

     oh lordie. yes, because homeless shelters and free clinics abound, and are unstinting and unproblematic in their bounty for the lucky indigent, you know. jeezus. :headdesk:

255. …so, -that’s- Robyn Few, huh.

     well…yeah, i’m not surprised that classism is a problem. it’s kind of the big honkin’ elephant in ALL these subjects, from -most- sides of the eternal (for instance) online thrashes, tell the truth.

     i do think it ought to be possible for one to -not- be classist like that and still also not take the abolitionist position.

     and I mean–I’ve not heard otherwise, but it seems to me St. James Infirmary is a good organization, for instance. I dunno if that’s what she meant by “free clinics,” but, it’s pretty unique, it’s true. And I agree that health insurance is an issue -also-.

256. Prostitution is not the same as liquor and drugs – as I said people are not commodities. They are not a spliff/doobie/hit/bowl/line/dig whatever – that is what I am talking about.
     .

     Yes, but again, it’s a -service.- Is someone who gives nonsexual massages a commodity? A professional sports player? After all, they get “bought” and “traded.”

     When you talk about people as commodities solely in relation to the sex industry, you’re reinforcing the idea that in fact the person who trades sex for money is reducible to an orifice or a pair of hands. Passive, a thing (as opposed to any other line of work). And, if she’s exploited, abused, tricked, even coerced–as often happens, as we’ve all agreed–well, effectively yes, her agency has been taken away.

     But is that -inherently- true of trading sexual services for money, is the question. And if so, -why- is that more true than–again, doing non-genital massage? Why does it suddenly, -automatically- become degrading and objectifying just because the client is paying for sexual release as well as less overtly erotic forms of relaxation (along with all the other pretenses that go along with the service industry, smile, soft music, pretend to like the person even if you don’t, etc.) Yes, it’s true that a lot of people would find it so; but no, in fact not everybody does. And, as people keep pointing out, it’s the stigmatization itself that contributes to the “degrading” atmosphere; stuff that gets pushes underground and into the shadows does end up taking on a “seedy” and unkosher tone.

257. Was this said as “we don’t have the resources” or “there’s another group that can better specifically handle their issues” or was it just completely dismissive?

     to be fair, i think it was said dismissively, but not maliciously. i think robyn’s position on street prostitution is that it’s inevitable and hopeless and would require too much work and too many resources to make a “real” difference so we should let the government worry about them while we focus our energy on improving the lives and status of the “independent escort” or whatever. that didn’t really sit well with me either, however. it reeks of capitalism and “trickle down” economics which i don’t buy.

     i’m a socialist and it’s my position that those of us who are better situated are REQUIRED to assist and offer a leg up to those in less fortunate circumstances NOW, not to continue to better our own lives until we have MORE than enough so that sharing our abundance stings less. i do realize that my perspective is the minority perspective however, and that many more people align politically with robyn’s perspective.

258. classism,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

     The abolitionist movement is aligned with the Bush Administration through TVPRA. They have their players in the Bush Administration, have cut off funding worldwide except to NGO’s that support their position.

     Lets look at some of the key leaders of the abolitionist movement. McKinnon, Hughes, Raymond, Chesler, Farley, Lederer,,,,,,,,, aren’t they all major academics? How many of them were sex workers? With the exception of Norma Hotaling, I can’t think of many who were once on the street working as sex workers that are in the abolitionist leadership spots. Seem’s pretty classist to me to have a movement about sex workers allegedly for sex workers run by an astonishing majority of never been sex workers but are major well paid academics.

     Robyn Few, it’s funny. I knew of Robyn Few when I was an abolitionist and respected her work. I know her now that I’m not an abolitionist but instead a sex worker rights activist. Wasn’t SWOP formed as an anti violence organization? Something to do with remembering the victims of Gary Ridgeway? A day called International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers? A day that remembers the memories and lives of victims of Gary Ridgeway? Who killed mostly street working prostitutes, runaways, etc? A day that abolitionists refused to take part in with the exception of a very small minority because the event, International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, was created by sex worker rights activists and contained the words sex workers. So those victims don’t matter because the wrong activists remember them?

     Robyn Few, it seems she advocates decriminalization, human, civil and labor rights for all sex workers. That’s a bad thing because????

     Something tells me Robyn is being taken out of context.

     Swedish Model. Question. With all the money allocated to TVPRA and all the power behind it. If abolitionists are so high on the Swedish model and are aligned with the Bush Administration why isn’t the Swedish Model being advanced as legislation? Rather than TVPRA which is a cheap theatric for the Bush Administration and a nice way for the abolitionist movement to tie up all the funds for themselves. One would think if the Swedish Model were the priority of abolitionists that they would have legislation in process and have a major political campaign for Swedish Model type legislation in Congress. Does anyone outside the feminist and sex worker rights movements in the US even know what the Swedish Model is?

     Death penalty for those involved in porn in Iran. This might be a time for abolitionists to focus first on sex worker human rights, like the right to not be executed, and leave the rhetoric about exploitation aside as it is a very convenient tool for the Mullahs to use. A vast majority of Iran’s population is under 25, born after the revolution, chafing at the repression of the Mullahs. If one wants to initiate social change in Iran, there is the future. Aligning with human rights movements in Iran rather than positioning to say while we oppose the mullahs lets talk about exploitation and the harm porn does to society, which is the mullahs basic point, although they have a very different ending in mind for everyone involved including those exploited than the feminists.

     Speaking of Mullahs, had the Bush Administration not galvanized Iran against the US with his axis of evil bullshit, he wouldn’t have empowered the mullahs and conservatives points to repress what was a movement toward moderation. But he needed his enemies to be there, not reformation to propogate his war against terror, axis of evil all that bullshit.

     It seems the abolitionists follow the Bush script of always needing a war, a war with no real chance of ending and any sell out for that purpose is acceptable. Do we really think porn and prostitution are going to end? If so, when, how, what is the game plan?

     No revolutionary war is going to end the sex industry. So maybe we look at real alternatives like human, labor and civil rights for sex workers worldwide. What are those?

     * Decriminalization of all aspects of sex work involving consenting adults.

     * The right to form and join professional associations or unions.

     * The right to work on the same basis as other independent contractors and employers and to receive the same benefits as other self-employed or contracted workers.

     * No taxation without such rights and representation.

     * Zero tolerance of coercion, violence, sexual abuse, child labor, rape and racism.

     * Legal support for sex workers who want to sue those who exploit their labor.

     * The right to travel across national boundaries and obtain work permits wherever we live.

     * Clean and safe places to work.

     * The right to choose whether to work on our own or co-operatively with other sex workers.

     * The absolute right to say no.

     * Access to health clinics where we do not feel stigmatized.

     * Re-training programs for sex workers who want to leave the industry.

     * An end to social attitudes which stigmatize those who are or have been sex workers.

     * Zero tolerance for child sexual tourism

259. “we shouldn’t be worrying about them because they have plenty of services they can access: homeless shelters, free clinics, etc. what we need to worry about is middle-class sexworkers, unionization, and healthcare.”

     I’m not willing to take this (admittedly paraphrased) statement at face value, having not been present at the discussion in which it was supposedly made. I’ve had things I’ve said be twisted to ridiculous conclusions that I never implied or intended, so I’m not going to sit here and go, “Oh, yes, yes, isn’t that horrible, what she thinks about street workers.”

260. I’m not willing to take this (admittedly paraphrased) statement at face value, having not been present at the discussion in which it was supposedly made.

     that’s understandable. i’d like to clarify however, that i’m not paraphrasing her POINT in that statement. although the comment was paraphrased (by me), that is almost word for word what she actually said. it was 2 or 3 years ago though so i don’t remember it EXACTLY, so that’s why i said it was paraphrased.

     you don’t have to believe me, i was only using it as an example of why *i* don’t think SWOP (SF) has ALL sexworkers’ best interests in mind. that was MY experience with the director of that organization.

261. I’m not willing to take this (admittedly paraphrased) statement at face value, having not been present at the discussion in which it was supposedly made. I’ve had things I’ve said be twisted to ridiculous conclusions that I never implied or intended, so I’m not going to sit here and go, “Oh, yes, yes, isn’t that horrible, what she thinks about street workers.”

     Yes. That’s what I was getting at too, when I asked what the context was. Because like I said, it could have been made with a totally different context than the presented.

     Maybe it wasn’t. And if it wasn’t, of course it’s terrible, casts doubt upon SWOP, etc. But I’d want to see a transcript and be absolutely sure it was “I don’t care” and not “here’s what our group can handle and what it can’t” or “here’s how SWOP is limiting what it does simply because resources are finite” or “here’s the logistical problem with getting this sort of help to that sort of population, we’ve tried” or… gods know what.

262. btw, on the other side wrt class & such, here’s a former sex worker (who also is with SWOP East, now).

263. i tried to clarify in another comment but it’s still in moderation.

     she DIDN’T say she didn’t CARE, she did say that street prostitutes should not be the FOCUS of feminist activism around sexworkers.

     unfortunately, it was a private feminist meeting with only about 15 of us so there isn’t a “transcript” of what was said. you can assume i’m lying or misinterpreting her if you’d like. i have no transcript or tape recording as proof and it wouldn’t be the first time someone called me a liar.

     i don’t think this is really germane to the post or the discussion though so i’ll bow out now.

264. oops. one last thing though.

     she actually didn’t talk about SWOP (SF) specifically or what they do at all. the meeting was mostly around FEMINIST ACTIVISM and what WE could do to help sexworkers as FEMINISTS, not what SWOP can do to help sexworkers. the comments that robyn made when *i* asked about street prostitutes is what colored my perspective of the organization because she’s the director. that might not be entirely fair though, and i admit that.

265. A long thread here, and too much ro respond to. I just briefly wanted to address this statistic that keeps getting thrown around about “90% of all sex workers want to get out now”. This is an over-application of Melissa Farley’s research, which was exclusively focused on the most marginalized urban street prostitutes in American cities and in several countries in the developing world. Even leaving aside for a minute the strong methodological flaws of her research, the idea that statistics about marginalized, often homeless and drug-addicted street prostitutes can be extrapolated out to porn actors, strippers, or even indoor escorts is absurd on the very face of it. Keep this in mind when the “90%” warhorse is trotted out as if it applies to all sex workers at all times.

     And even when it comes to the data on street prostitutes, the way Melissa Farley comes by her data is the subject of some severe doubt. Bascially, her statistics represent her own distillation of longer oral interviews, and what criteria she used to arrive at a “yes” answer to “want to leave prostitution now” or “showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress” is not reported at all in Farley’s papers. Also, Farley’s subjects are disproportionately women who have been referred to her program by the court after arrest, something else that introduces sampling bias into her numbers.

     The problems with Farely’s work has been addressed by Ronald Weitzer (a pro-legalization social scientist) in a series of back-and-forth articles by Farely and Weitzer in the pages of the journal Violence Against Women. These artlcles are all linked to under the Wikipedia page on Melissa Farley. (Under “External links” starting with “Bad for the Body, Bad for the Heart”.)

266. It’s a matter of politics, not law, & depends on whom the community loves more, prostitutes or johns. This will vary across jurisdictions.

     KH, it is a matter of politics and not law, but it is politics that I am arguing. Any political change that requires the buy-in of fewer participants is structurally easier, and ceteris paribus will be easier to make happen. While there may be individual circumstances that alter that in a particular case, it will tend to be true. And in reality, prosecutorial discretion gets a fair amount of leeway on the ground. (Also, standing up for johns is politically very difficult. Nobody can come out and say that they are one, or that they want leniency for them.)

     The best is the enemy of the good. As you point out, if you prefer full decriminalization, and if you think that it is not substantially harder to achieve than DA-imposed Swedish, then give it a shot. However, assuming arguendo that it is preferable, there is absolutely nothing in US politics to suggest that decriminalization is within the window of the possible. Prostitution remains illegal in its entirety in 49 states and in all but a handful or rural counties in the fiftieth.

267. speaking of the Swedish Model,

     Let’s say the Swedish Model is implemented. What happens to the sex workers that don’t want their jobs taken away by the government that are now out of work? The government “rescues” them by ending demand but now what? Are there new jobs waiting? Jobs the sex workers want?

     Perhaps it would make more sense to build sex worker human, civil and labor rights, decriminalize sex work, and focus the legislative and legal punishments on crimes against sex workers, that way those that are raped can get justice for having been raped, those that are assaulted can get justice for having been assaulted, etc.

     Wouldn’t the money spent on going after clients with consenting sex workers be better spent on job re-training programs for sex workers when they want to leave the sex industry or stigmatization free health care?

     Decriminalization and human rights for sex workers are a tough enough sell in the macho cowboy US with it’s penchant for wars on everything, although perhaps we can recruit Nancy Reagan for a campaign to clients. Clients, just say no to sex workers, ah, problem solved.

     If we can’t get basic sex worker rights initiatives passed in the US, how are we going to pass legislation that criminalizes men over women in a country that Bill Clinton was the most leftist leader in the last quarter century? A country that voted for Reagan twice and W twice is not going to just buy into the punishing men rather than women much less sex workers.

     Human rights for sex workers is a possible goal. Maybe we should work towards the plausible in this lifetime goals first?

268. ms j, I wasn’t calling you a liar. Just asking for context, and I didn’t see the post in moderation.

269. i think robyn’s position on street prostitution is that it’s inevitable and hopeless and would require too much work and too many resources to make a “real” difference so we should let the government worry about them while we focus our energy on improving the lives and status of the “independent escort” or whatever. that didn’t really sit well with me either, however. it reeks of capitalism and “trickle down” economics which i don’t buy.

     Doesn’t sound right to me either. I’ve seen thinking like “we help the most assimilated first and go back for the less assimilated” and it very often means “we don’t actually CARE about the less assimilated, and defending them would tarnish us.” So yeah… if that’s what was meant… UGH. I agree.

     But it’s hard for me to imagine that’s what was meant. I could be very wrong, but in my quite limited experience none of the higher class sex workers seem profoundly unconcerned with the welfare of people who don’t have it good.

     The plural of anecdote isn’t data, I know. But I do see a… meme… that suggests that there are The White Gals In It For Fun and then there’s Everyone Else and I’m just not so sure I buy that any more.

     And… well… there are different ways one could mean “too many resources” so… eh. I don’t know. “Let’s not bother trying to get those resources” is trickle-down-y and yucky, I agree. “Here’s what my org can realistically do right now” is not.

     So all I’m saying is: yes, that wording would give me major pause too. So I’m not saying anyone’s a liar, or that you should like what she said, or anything. But I’d follow it up with questions: “why is that hopeless? what does calling it hopeless mean? and how do we ensure that, if we do help people who are better off first, we remember to go back and help those others too?”

270. you can assume i’m lying or misinterpreting her if you’d like.

     FWIW I wasn’t assuming you were lying. But I wasn’t immediately going to jump to the opposite conclusion of “SWOP is terrible” either. I would just like to have as much information as possible before casting judgment in any situation.

271. I’m not going to speak for Robyn Few, but perhaps she was just talking about street prostitutes having very different needs from other sex workers. Basically, street prostitutes need to be helped with very basic poverty drug addiction, and abuse issues, and more often than not, need to be helped to get out of sex work entirely (though short-term harm-reduction is important here too). With more “middle class” (for lack of a better word) sex workers, the issues are more about better conditions for women who choose to stay in sex work.

     And, really, I get more than a little sick of radfems playing the “class privilege” card when it comes to different kinds of sex workers. (As if radical feminism wasn’t itself a largely white, middle-class movement.) How exactly are more privileged sex workers like Audacia Ray or Nina Hartley harming more downtrodden sex workers, such as street prostitutes? As far as I can see, if every high-end escort, stripper, and porn star quit tomorrow, exactly how does this help a street prostitute working the 2AM stroll in Polk Gulch? Or a brothel worker in Calcutta? Conversely, if our society got serious about helping marginalized prostitutes get out of situations they didn’t want to be in, exactly how would that necessitate putting an end to other kinds of sex work? It simply doesn’t follow.

272. Another thing that’s being missed entirely in this debate about “Swedish model” vs decriminalization is the fact that in most of the developed world, prostitution is moving off the streets and indoors, with the internet being the main “stroll”. If I wanted to see a prostitute within an hour from now, all I’d have to do is have a look through the Craigslist “erotic services” section or a site like Lovings.com. If I wanted to check on “consumer” recommendations for the women advertising there, I’d have a look at a site like TheEroticReview or SFRedbook. And guess what – unlike street-level curb crawling, I can do this and be 99.99% certain that I’m not going to face any kind of legal consequences for doing so.

     You think the “Swedish model” puts a stop to this? Think again. Do a simple Google search “escort OR eskort stockholm“. What you’ll find is a long list of women right in the capital of Sweden openly offering all manner of sexual services for money. Yes, they bust johns in Sweden – johns who go curb crawling for street prostitutes and are therefore highly visible. Hence, prostitution is more and more moving indoors, for this, and a number of other reasons. This is the exact same trend that you see in cities throughout North America.

     Occasionally escorts and escort agencies are busted in sting operations, but this almost never results in the arrest of clients. The evidence needed for prosecution is simply lacking.

     This is the reality of contemporary prostitution. Anybody who thinks prostitution can be ended by simply busting enough johns is kidding themselves.

273. Quoting IACB:

     Yes, they bust johns in Sweden – johns who go curb crawling for street prostitutes and are therefore highly visible. Hence, prostitution is more and more moving indoors, for this, and a number of other reasons. This is the exact same trend that you see in cities throughout North America.

     In other words….the “Swedish model” is far more concerned with busting mostly working-class and middle-class men who troll for street prostitutes than with more wealthy, affluent clients…regardless of whatever Shelia Jefferys might think.

     In effect, the fundamental result is that mostly working-class women and girls (and let’s not forget about the male workers, either) are being denied a base of clientele for their basic survival.

     And it should be noted that even with the “Swedish Model’s” stated goal of not going after the women, the authorities can use other means and other laws (including existing laws against “vagrancy” and “public nuisance” and even obscenity law) to directly control the women in ways that the “Swedish Model” laws do not. Even here in the United States, where some cities have adopted the “john’s school” method of shaming men who are arrested in the occasional prostitiution sting, they still do arrest women for solicitation….so that throws the effectiveness of the SM right out the window.

     No, thank you on that: I’ll hold out for full decriminalization combined with a radical change in economic policy that removes the real roots of economic equality and redistributes wealth and resources downward from those who have waaaay too much to those who don’t have enough to survive.

     That, far more than shaming and targeting men for merely having erections and seeking safe and consensual sexual outlets, would do far more good.

     Anthony

274. yeah, the kerb-crawling thing, the way people talk about it, like the taxi driver in that BBC article…it makes me think of the way y’know people talked about Giuliani’s campaign to “clean up” Times Square. iow more NIMBYism than anything else, you know. the actual street prostitutes didn’t suddenly turn into better-living, well-paid model citizens because they were told to move along elsewhere. where’d they go? oh well, out of sight, out of mind…

275. and yes, of course the other question of “get out now” is “get out and then what happens?”

     Not specifically related to sex work, but Kim’s piece on the limitations of shelters feels at least somewhat relevant.

     per the Bush admin connection, among other things: this piece, “Why feminist should rethink on sex workers’ rights” at this site (piece itself is a word doc, can’t link directly) might be of interest, also.

     (no, the author of this does not seem to have a bakcground in sex work herself either; her bio’;sat the top of the piece)

     On the Swedish model, and kerb-crawling:

     The argument for criminalizing clients is largely based on assertions that sex work is intrinsically abusive, and on the implicit recognition that commercial sex, like other areas of economic activity, behaves like a market: if demand for a product is cut off, supply ceases.
     This was the rationale behind the Kerb Crawlers Rehabilitation Programme in West Yorkshire, from 1998 to 1999.This initiative was strongly opposed by several sex work projects, for a number of reasons, but it was abandoned because, after the pilot period, West Yorkshire police withdrew their support. Their evaluation cited dispersal of street soliciting to other areas, and minimal impact despite considerable costs . Although only Southampton has tried this approach since the West Yorkshire experiment – and after a couple of years it does not appear to have had much impact on street sex work in the city, several other places in the UK have pursued aggressive anti-client policing, using the anti-kerb crawling legislation. However, sex work projects have found that the immediate impact on sex workers of reducing the numbers of clients is to reduce their earnings. This can lead to higher levels of violence, with sex workers working longer hours, later at night, and in more dangerous areas to try to compensate for reduced business. A recent survey of 118 women conducted for a Channel 4 documentary found that, when clients were in short supply as a result of police crackdowns:
     65% worked more hours, 40% worked ‘a lot more’ hours. 71% worked later into the night than usual; 53% spent less time checking out punters before getting in a car; 24% agreed to sexual acts that they wouldn’t normally – like anal sex or sex without a condom. 66% said they earned less money, as a result of police crackdowns. Of those around a quarter (20%) were beaten up by partners or pimps as a direct result.
     Despite the evidence that targeting clients does not help sex workers, attacking “demand” seems popular. A number of attitudes and opinions aired within these seminars have expressed distaste or even disgust for commercial sexual exchanges, even where no violence or coercion is imputed, which indicates that the unpleasant aspects of sexuality are those most often associated with commercial sex.

     This is not the picture that I gained from the questionnaires we collected from clients in Birmingham in the late 1980s , nor from numerous conversations with sex workers over the past 15 years. It is perfectly possible that the reasons clients give for buying sex are somewhat different these days, but the demographic profile of clients does not seem to have changed greatly. A study of 45 men attending a rehabilitation course for kerb-crawlers in Southampton (Shell et al, 2001) , found that 65% were married or living with a partner, and 82% were employed. In Birmingham in 1989, we found that 66% had partners, and 87% were employed. Age distribution was also very similar.

     Age range of clients, Southampton (2000/1) and Birmingham (1988/9)

     Age group of clients Southampton 2000/2001 n=45 Birmingham 1988/1989 n=126
     20 – 29 21% 21%
     30 – 49 50% 50%
     50 or older 25% 28%
     Age range of sample 18 – 69 19 – 80

     On three different surveys in Birmingham, 85 -90% of commercial sexual services involved vaginal or oral sex or masturbation. Therefore the bulk of the demand for commercial sex could not be defined as bizarre or deviant or as demonstrating theoretically treatable sexual dysfunction. In our main survey of sex workers, in which 258 women were asked to report on services given to clients on the last day worked – a total of 1157 interactions – none involved the sex worker being tied up or beaten, although a few reported that the client wanted to be tied up or beaten. On the survey where clients were asked to give their reasons for seeking commercial sex (n=126), they were far more likely to say that the attraction of the sexual encounter with a sex worker was the fact that the sex worker was in control of the interaction than the opposite.

     The most frequently stated reasons for seeking commercial sex were the wish to avoid emotional involvement (47%) and lack of sex (42%), or not enough of it (30%), in non-commercial relationships. Other reasons given included: wanting a sexual experience not available from private partners – usually stated as oral sex (26%); shyness (21%); liking sex workers and enjoying their company (19%); wish for variety (15%); wanting an alternative to masturbation (9%), and loneliness or old age (4%).

     Personally, I do not find these explanations shocking or offensive. Perhaps in common with other heterosexual women, I have found men’s ability to detach their sexual behaviour from their emotions annoying or disappointing at times, but I do not think this facility is criminal or deviant, nor is it confined to men. Nor is it the whole story. At the last seminar we considered whether the concept of the “contract of mutual indifference” had anything to contribute to our understanding of commercial sex. While “lack of emotional involvement” was cited by 47% of the group surveyed in 1989, 53% did not give reasons of this kind, and 19% stated positively that they liked sex workers and enjoyed their company. In 1992, a researcher for a television programme persuaded one woman to keep a log of her customers over a short period, including reporting on the clients’ attitudes and her own feelings about her clients. I remember the researcher being quite disappointed at the low levels of abuse and discomfort she recorded. Her remarks about her clients included:

     (he treated me) very well, with lots of consideration and respect. I think he is a lonely man as I have never heard him talk about friends, etc.

     (he was) kind and considerate and easily pleased. He said although he loves his wife very much, he sometimes needs a little change – this is the best way without hurting feelings.

     (he was) very, very lonely. He wanted more than he wanted to pay for. I personally think he just wanted my company – female company. (This client was a 29 year old widower).

     In all, over a 16 day period, she recorded 50 customers. Half of the days/nights worked she describes as “good”, because she has done good business, hasn’t been hassled by the police, and hasn’t experienced verbal abuse. The bad nights are those when she hasn’t made enough money because of too much police activity or too much competition: on only three of the “bad nights” was a customer verbally abusive or not wanting to pay.

     Admittedly, this is just a 16 day period in one woman’s working life. Obviously some clients are abusive towards sex workers – I have researched the question of violence against sex workers myself – but this example suggests that selfishness, sadism and exploitation are not ubiquitous or even frequent characteristics of clients’ behaviour towards sex workers. It also shows that sex workers are neither routinely indifferent to their clients, nor disgusted by them…

     on the Bush admin/right wing agenda connection:

     Similarly, I think that any feminist should feel huge concern about the implications of [Donna] Hughes’ condemnation of Ann Jordan, of the International Human Rights Law Group (US), whom she quotes as saying,

     To those who feel their moral hackles rising at the prospect [of legalized prostitution]: “We don’t support a woman’s right to choose because we think abortion is a great thing, but because we believe fundamentally that women should have control over their own reproductive capacity. The same argument can be made for prostitution. Women who decide for whatever reason to sell sex should have the right to control their own body-and should be assured of basic protection on the job. As with abortions, we can dream of a day when sex work is safe, legal, and rare.”

     It appears that Hughes has chosen this quote because it shows that Ann Jordan is a supporter of safe, legalized abortion. This suggests that Hughes is appealing to the anti-abortion lobby in the USA to support her crusade. [emphasis mine]

     The alliance between abolitionists like Donna Hughes and right-wing Christian groups in the USA and elsewhere is particularly ominous in relation to HIV prevention. Not only are some of the poorest nations of the world suffering from extensive economic, social and political chaos, arguably as a result of western political and economic agendas, but HIV/AIDS is threatening whole nations. US international aid is of huge importance in these areas. In the USA itself, many areas have no HIV prevention education except that which is “abstinence based” Few places have needle and syringe exchange schemes. One might think it was government policy to allow whole sections of their undesirable population to die. And they do. Possibly this seminar series ought to have considered Malthus as well as Hobbes and Locke. On the international level, the potential effects of this right-wing stranglehold on HIV prevention are extremely serious. Bush withdrew funds to international family planning organizations that offer terminations on his first day in office, and HIV harm-minimization programmes are under threat.

     Organizations known in my field for the excellent work they do in HIV prevention, such as the Durbar Mahila Samanvay Committee (DMSC) of Sonagachi (Kolkata, India), Empower in Thailand, and even the highly respected international aid organization, Medecins Sans Frontieres are condemned by Hughes for supporting legalization of sex work and promoting sex workers’ rights. Also, proposals before USAID, one of the largest donors to HIV programmes worldwide, make a clear threat to these organisations’ funding by suggesting that “Organizations advocating prostitution as an employment choice or which advocate or support the legalization of prostitution are not appropriate partners for USAID anti-trafficking activities”.

276. I would just like to here point out that I hate my name. That is all.

277. Jack Goff writes:

     “I would just like to here point out that I hate my name. That is all.”

     So, why did you adopt it? Or is it your real name? If that’s the case, your parents must have had a really twisted sense of humor. (LOL)

278. My name is John. This thread is indicative of why I hate my given name.

279. t wll nvr stp bng fcntng t m tht th ppl wh clm t b th nl ns wh cr abt “ctl wmn” r s nvstd n mntnng th stts q. n sggstn tht mb – jst mb – wmn rn’t pblc tlts s mt wth ccstns f shkng p wth th “rlgs rght”, ccstns f gnrng th “ctl wmn”, ccstns f clsssm, rcsm, sxsm, ccstns f bng slf-rghts prhbtnsts. ll n n ffrt t jstf th cmmdfctn nd xplttn f fml flsh.

     Wh bthr t tr nd stp th xplttn f wmn, whn t wld b jst s mch sr t mk th xplttn sr? Wh bthr trng t d nthng t ll, bcs thr ffrts hv fld? nd mst f ll, dn’t VR tr t cnvnc bs wth rctns tht th rn’t ttll nttld t sng wmn’s bd t gt ff. Bcs thr’s sm wmn t lk bng sx wrkrs nd tht mns, f dn’t ncld thm n vr sngl dscssn n th tpc, ‘ dn’t cr bt thm (vn thgh th rn’t th tpc t ll)!! (Rthr lk, f dn’t tlk bt ml vctms f DV r rp/Sxl sslt n thrd bt fml vctms, thn dn’t cr bt thm!!)

     f tht s “crng” bt “ctl wmn”, ‘m Snt Cls.

280. Well, since that’s exactly what everyone opposite of you has been arguing, Vera, that makes perfect sense.

     I’ll be over here playing “Turkey in the Straw.”

281. Vera, see 236.

282. Ahhh….sorry, but my understanding of gibberish escapes me right now.

     Anyone wants to give a translation into normal English of what Vera just said??

     Anthony

283. I devoweled the post for the reasons listed in comment 236.

284. Pingback: The SmackDog Chronicles » Blog Archive » The Death Penalty For Porn Producers:The Final Frontier For Radfems??

285. So what was wrong with Vera’s comment? Seriously, after the constant feed of pro-prostitution comments in the latter part of the thread, I feel that this balanced things up somewhat. Especially after comments by Kennerson and IACB both fiercely pro-prostitution. As usual, a radical feminist woman is silenced in preference to the men advocating the prostitution of women. I find it humiliating for a woman to be silenced by a man when she is defending her beliefs surround women’s issues.

286. What was wrong with Vera’s comment was that it was completely rehashing exactly the argument that I specifically requested not be rehashed back in 236.

     It was an attempt to take a thread that had become interesting by focusing on the needs of sex-workers and what we could do to help them now and was trying to hijack the thread back to the topic that Vera wanted to talk about, instead.

     I’m very sorry you feel humiliated by that, but that’s the truth. Vera is welcome to express disagreement over the methods that are being talked about, or to suggest other alternatives, etc. I was a good sport and I let sam and Miller and others get the anti-sexwork view expressed quite clearly and in depth earlier in the thread, but that’s not what we’re talking about anymore, and I’m not interested in going back to that conversation again. It’s been done a thousand times over, and it’s not productive or interesting anymore.

     I absolutely encourage disagreement, but I don’t like Thread Hijacking, which is what this was.

     If people want to participate in this thread, they need to do so by contributing to the conversation taking place- not the conversation they wish were taking place.

287. Well, its at least partly Roy’s blog, so his moderation policy goes. Personally, I think a “no personal attacks” policy should be sufficient to keep coversation on-track. (And typical APRF rhetoric to the effect of “if you defend porn, its because you personally are sexual abuser, or simply don’t care about women” is a basically personal attack.) Not quite sure if Vera’s post rose to that since I can only make sense of a little bit of the “devoweled” portion. Devoweling is a new moderation tack, and I’m not sure if I agree with it – let something through or don’t, but the text itself shouldn’t be fucked with.

     In any event, if you have an actual counter-argument against the substance of what I’ve argued, I’d love to hear it.

288. JessieG, give me a break. Plenty of radical feminist views have been expressed in this thread, on numerous sides of this debate. I’m a radical feminist myself, I should know. Suggesting that gender oppression is at play because Roy devoweled one post out of nearly 300 — after giving fair warning that he would if thread hijacking persisted — is pretty laughable.

     But more than that: it’s dangerous. When we attack each other (yes, I surely consider Roy a feminist, and a pretty darn smart and vocal one at that) with divisive low-blows like that, we’re just using up energy that could be used to fight real, actual gender oppression. Should cisgender male feminists do or say nothing at all unless they agree with your personal politics completely, lest they risk “humiliating” you by taking a stand you might not agree with? If so, perhaps you should issue a complete set of position papers, so they can at least know what your positions are in advance.

     Or maybe you could stop personalizing things that have nothing to do with you personally, and just agree or disagree with Roy’s arguments on their merits, just like you would any other dedicated feminist.

289. First of all, JessieB…my first name happens to be Anthony. If I want you to call me by my last name, then I will say that.

     Secondly, my post was no more “pro-prostitution” than an reproductive rights’s activist can be construed as “pro-abortion”. I merely defend the right of women in the sex industry to defend themselves, and to participate in the discussion to make sex work safe and humane and more egalitarian. Disagree if you like, but don’t insult my intellegence.

     Third point: This is Roy’s blog to run as he sees fit. If he decides that a post here is considered to be thread hijacking, he reserves the right as blog moderator to do whatever he likes with it, with fair warning. Personally, I don’t like devoweling someone; I’d rather allow a troll enough rope to hang himself with before I show him the door; and I would have rather have seen Vera’s comments unfettered. But, it’s not my blog.

     As for this notion of “censorship” and “silencing”: my, my, my. Interesting that APRF’s make such a huge deal of being “silenced: anytime they attempt to bully their way into any thread (and remember, it was Sam who stuck herself into what was a thread on Iran’s porn death penalty law with her attempted defense of the “Swedish Model” to begin with)….while they themselves basically practice what amounts to the same thing, if not worse, in their own blogs and venues. Sam makes it her own business to intervene in other blogs to attack “sex-positive” feminists and other critics of APRFs…yet they have the gall to say that they are being “silenced” when people who disagree with them respond in kind???

     After all, it’s kinda lame to talk about “a woman being silenced by a man” when you do the same to other women regularly. (Ask Quare Dewd or Renegade Evolution or Brownfemipower or Nubian or Andrea or Zuzu about that when you have the time.)

     You have your spaces to vent, Jessie, and we have ours. We don’t go around attempting to disrupt your spaces (actually we can’t, since you don’t allow critics anyway); try not attempting the same with ours.

     Anthony

290. I can’t believe I read this entire thread, and it came down to this.

     My comment has nothing to do with sex work, so I’m sure I’ll be “disemvoweled” or whatever cutesy punishment is cued up, but:

     No matter whose blog post it is, the very idea that a man has the authority to silence any woman who simply disagrees with him is patriarchy at its finest. Let men continue to direct the conversation? Guess daddy had enough of radfem ideas and, rather than treating radfem women like people, decides to put his foot down and banish them.

     Radfem = troll? Welcome to feministe, I guess.

     Which is the reason you don’t find me here again. I’ll just Stumble myself out of this “feminist” blog, thanks.

291. I’m sorry you feel that way Just Another Brown Girl.

     My problem isn’t with radfems- it’s with thread hijackers. If you can look at my posts here at feministe and claim that I’m trying to “silence any woman who simply disagrees with” me, I don’t know what to say to you, except that, again, I’m sorry you feel that way.

     For the record: I never called anyone in this thread a troll, and I never insulted or patronized the people I disagreed with in this thread. I made clear and fair warning to everyone, and I followed through on what I said I was going to do. I understand that you’re unhappy about it, but it’s an unfair charactorization to say that I called Vera a troll.

292. You certainly treated her as a troll, Roy. Usually on the mainstream feminist blogs it’s only the most outrageously misogynist MRAs who get disemvowelled – you did it to a radical feminist criticising male belief in their entitlement to women’s bodies.

     It’s a disgrace that you were allowed to do this in a feminist space. It appears that you need to do a little more thinking about how you as a man can support feminism – here’s a clue it doesn’t include silencing feminist women whose opinions you find disagreeable. Why didn’t someone telling Sam she had a “vile, twisted mind” register but Vera’s rad fem position angered you enought to vandalise it? The answer is sexism.

     I urge you to reinstate Vera’s post.

293. No matter whose blog post it is, the very idea that a man has the authority to silence any woman who simply disagrees with him is patriarchy at its finest. Let men continue to direct the conversation? Guess daddy had enough of radfem ideas and, rather than treating radfem women like people, decides to put his foot down and banish them.

     JABG, I feel that that’s way too reductive of a statement. Roy isn’t “silencing” anyone – he is expecting people to abide by the rules/guidelines he set forth on his post. We’re kinda in his house here. If we don’t like the rules, we can go to our own house, or a friend’s house where we do like the rules.

     Also, this isn’t about “simply disagreeing.” Please. You read the whole thread and you really think that’s what it is? That strikes me as a bit disingenuous (and I HATE that word, but I don’t know what other one to use!). It’s about personal attacks, and deliberate thread drift.

     This reminds me of something Kevin said a few weeks ago…

     [T]he quickest way to get me thinking it’s time to ban you is when you start wagging on about free speech. Or as I said over at Ilyka’s, when someone (who am I kidding, it’s always some dude), starts yapping about how they “just want to have a discussion,” it usually means they want to be able to say stupid shit wherever and whenever they want. It’s a blog for chrissakes. The whole point is discussion. People aren’t getting pissed because you want to have a discussion. People are pissed because you’re being an asshole.

     Oh and as for silencing? If anyone is being silenced here, it’s sex workers. The more things change… oh wait…

294. I’m in the delphyne fan club on this one. Reading between the lines of Roy’s “Here’s what I want you to say!” tantrum, he apparently finds antiporn radfems at least some of:
     – unintelligent
     – unreasonable
     – uninteresting
     – hostile
     – unproductive
     Like radfems haven’t heard all this before from men oozing privilege and dominance.

     There’s an opportunity here to fix this stuff-up, Roy, and I urge you to do so as quickly as possible.

295. “I absolutely encourage disagreement, but I don’t like Thread Hijacking, which is what this was. ”

     Actually, Roy, I posted that then because I came back to convo after a break. I was responding to what happened in the interim and hadn’t gotten all the way to
     the end. Which, had you bothered to ask me – instead of deciding for little old female me what my intent was – could have been easily explained. I did what just about everyone else did when coming back to the convo but only I was silenced.

     “Especially after comments by Kennerson and IACB both fiercely pro-prostitution. As usual, a radical feminist woman is silenced in preference to the men advocating the prostitution of women. I find it humiliating for a woman to be silenced by a man when she is defending her beliefs surround women’s issues. ”

     I am 100% unsurprised. Roy has proven, once again, that when it comes down to it men will chose to other men over women, whenever the need conviently arises.

     I really miss Jill and Zuzu.

296. Vera, Jill’s still posting every day. You noticed that, right?

     As for your disemvoweling, you may feel it was unjust, but I’m a woman and I would likely have done the same thing. What does Roy’s gender have to do with it? The vast majority of the commenters on all sides of this thread seem to be women, no? How on earth do you figure that disallowing one post out of over 300 equals “choosing to [listen] to men over women”? You do realize that many, many feminists of all genders share Roy’s view on prioritizing the needs of sex workers, and that he, in fact, came to his view through some hard pushback by female feminists?

     Just because someone (even a cisgender man!) disagrees with you or does something you don’t like doesn’t mean they’re oppressing you. Shockingly enough, it doesn’t even mean they’re wrong.

297. “Jill’s still posting every day. You noticed that, right?”

     If I had would I have posted that? I hadn’t been reading the more recent posts.

     (snip)

     “Just because someone (even a cisgender man!) disagrees with you or does something you don’t like doesn’t mean they’re oppressing you. Shockingly enough, it doesn’t even mean they’re wrong. ”

     Strawmen first – I didn’t say anything about him “oppressing” me. The point of his gender was brought up by others, not me. And my statement that he chose men over women was referring to the fact that the blatant radfem bashing upthread was allowed to stay.

     It’s actually not the removal of the post I’m objecting to. It’s his deciding for me why I posted it, and declaring it as if he can read my mind. Like I said, in reality, I had simply returned to the thread after a break. I completely missed post # 236. It was a mistake; it did violate the new rule. No problem. I am objecting to being told my own intent and being treated like a troll while others, who have done the same thing, are unmodified.

     Is that clear enough?

298. Allowing people to criticize your “radfem” position does not equal bashing, nor does it equal choosing men over women. Most of the people criticizing your position on this thread are, in fact, women. I would have been one of them, had I not been traveling recently and only just returned.

     And just because you didn’t read the rule only a few dozen comments upthread from yours doesn’t mean you’re exempt from it, nor does it mean Roy decided anything about your intent. It means you broke the rule, and he enforced it. It’s common courtesy to read the recent posts on a thread you’re commenting on. If you can’t be bothered to do that, maybe you could at least have some humility about it when you miss something important.

299. He made up an arbitrary “rule” to suit his position and that of the john supporters on this thread and to silence the radical feminist position.

     Why doesn’t Roy try a little humility when it comes to respecting radical feminist arguments? Oh that’s right – they directly interfere with male interests.

300. “Allowing people to criticize your “radfem” position does not equal bashing, nor does it equal choosing men over women.”

     Criticism was not what I was calling radfem bashing. It was the blatant bashing up thread. My very first post remarked on it. He clearly chose men over women was it was men doing the bashing, and were not censored for doing such.

     “Most of the people criticizing your position on this thread are, in fact, women. I would have been one of them, had I not been traveling recently and only just returned.”

     And what – praytell – is my position that you would have argued with? That men aren’t entitled to use women’s bodies, or that sex workers deserve safe working conditions if it the job they chose?

     “And just because you didn’t read the rule only a few dozen comments upthread from yours doesn’t mean you’re exempt from it,”
     Which is why I admitted to the mistake and did not object to the post’s removal. How was that not clear?

     “nor does it mean Roy decided anything about your intent.”

     This is just incorrect. He very clearly declared that I was just trying to derail the thread, when in reality, I simply made a mistake. But, he made up an arbitrary rule – tha he himself admitted was “unfair” – because he was “cranky” and treated me like a troll.

     “maybe you could at least have some humility about it when you miss something important. ”

     You mean aside from admitting I was wrong and not objecting to the result? How much more humility would you like me to show? Shall I flagellate myself for the mistake?

301. You know, I gotta say, having seen radical feminist men “silence” women who don’t espouse their opinion on numerous occasions, including actual sex workers (Stan Goff, the former Dim Undercellar, Rich whosis, some strange, horrible troll on Jill Brenneman’s site), I’m not feeling too sympathetic here.

     Yes, it’s tu quoque, but I don’t really care. I’m sick of this. Oh yeah, and I don’t think a particular subset of feminism ought to need special delicate reverence, frankly. In this particular instance, the people who -most- ought to be speaking are the ones who know what the fuck they’re talking about, i.e. -the people who’ve done the actual work.- IMNSHO.

302. …alternately, maybe someone who has something to say about the original damn subject (i.e. what’s happening in Iran).

303. I neither asked for, nor am interested in your sympathy. I admitted to the mistake. This will not stop me form pointing out the hypocritical and assinine way this was handled.

     “Oh yeah, and I don’t think a particular subset of feminism ought to need special delicate reverence, frankly.”

     And who, exactly, is asking for some?

     “In this particular instance, the people who -most- ought to be speaking are the ones who know what the fuck they’re talking about, i.e. -the people who’ve done the actual work.- IMNSHO”

     The people who work with those in this line of work have absolutely nothing of value to contribute?

     And wrt the original subject – was there any dispute over the insanity of the death penalty for pornographers? Oh wait, I’m a radfem (well, not really, but apparently everyone else gets to decide what I am for me) and therefore am probably screaming for their deaths because I hate sex/men/freespeech etc ad nauseum.

304. Lets hear from some women who know what they are talking about then:

     http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/6183491.stm

     “PAID TO BE RAPED’ – SAN FRANCISCO, US
     I am an ex-prostitute. Articles which make the [protected] car parks [for prostitutes and their clients in the Netherlands] sound so “cosy”, infuriate me because they do not tell the full story. Some of those girls in the Amsterdam car parks are servicing up to 100 men a night with devastating impacts upon their bodies and emotions.

     Prostitution is serial rape of our bodies. From a personal perspective I can say that not just the physical damage but the emotional and spiritual damage caused by prostitution is tremendous and it never goes away.

     To this day, I have physical problems and my emotional problems will fill a book.

     When I was in it, getting out seemed impossible because my sense of self-worth was non-existent.

     I have no solution as long as men pay to do this terrible thing to us.

     For all of you non-prostitutes out there talking about us women who have sold sex, you have to realise that the damage to us is massive. Financial help, a few encouraging words, won’t do it. Sticking us in ‘tolerance zones’ won’t do it. Maybe ongoing psychological care, over a period of many years, will help? I don’t know. Maybe there is really no escape from this rape prison called prostitution?”

     http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/MichLawJourI.html

     “The only analogy I can think of concerning prostitution is that it is more like gang rape than it is like anything else.”

     http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/mhvnev.htm

     “I am a survivor of prostitution.
     A survivor of brutal beatings and rapes.
     A recovering heroin addict.
     Five years out of the life and I will NEVER forget the smell of a crusty old trick.
     The Fear.
     The Pain.
     The knives and guns and fists and tire irons and jail cells.
     I will never be quiet!
     Too many times I have been beaten near death.
     Left for dead.
     The cops said it comes with the territory.
     Being a worthless whore.
     A Non-Human.
     If I had been murdered, no one would have remembered my name.
     I would have been a NHI.[i]
     Jane Doe.
     Thank you for remembering Emma.[ii]
     Remember the millions like her.
     Like me.
     Like you.
     Women, sisters, daughters, mothers.
     Murdered.
     Beaten.
     Considered less than human.
     Let us lift them up.
     Let us never forget.
     And never,
     NEVER
     Be quiet about the outrageous brutality that is prostitution!”

305. in any case, the menz are already out of here this week. hope y’all enjoy Flea and Bint. I know I do.

     http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/06/17/project-guest-blogger-week-four/

306. so, fine, maybe a warning first would’ve been better.

     fuck it, i’m cranky too.

307. Vera: You’re right, I should not have implied or suggested that I knew your intent. I’m not in your head and can’t possibly know what your intentions are behind posts. It’s frustrating for me to see people so completely misrepresenting my thoughts and actions in this thread, so I can understand why you’d be upset if I’ve misrepresented yours.

     For that, I am sorry.

308. Roy: Just a practical question. Is this disemvoweling a common useful tactic for keeping the discussion on track? Because it seems to have diverted the discussion far more than Vera’s original post could have. Not to mention the fact that I’ve invested much more attention to #279 than I would have otherwise, as the revoweling process is rather arduous. This form of “censorship” is only helpful to the censored.

309. I’m honestly not for deleting comments or for banning or disemvowelling or any such. It’s a very common thing on feminist blogs for people to be all “oh, I can stop so and so from talking here if I want, it’s not CENSORSHIP, only the government can do that so I’m safe!”

     and I know I’m in the minority here — hell, even my good friends disagree with me on this one, vehemently — but I don’t see how that’s at all useful. Yeah, we want to keep FemiWorld, in general, reasonably free of utter trolls.

     But too quickly it becomes one place saying: Radfem? BAM! Another: Not anti-“pornstitution”? BAM!

     Too quickly it becomes feminists silencing feminists, because what the core disagreement is here, really, is what counts as feminist and what doesn’t.

     So, y’know, I’m through. I personally feel a lot of views that some people call “feminist” very much aren’t, and I’m sure you could guess which ones. But even though I feel that way, I’m not one for the silencing tactics myself. If everyone disagrees with someone, s/he’ll eventually wander off. If a lot of people DO agree with that someone, maybe there’s a reason for it.

     I didn’t like Vera’s comment either — not one whit — but I don’t see anything worth disemvowelling.

310. First of all, JessieB…my first name happens to be Anthony. If I want you to call me by my last name, then I will say that

     Pleased to meet you and my name’s Jessica G. VonTinklemouse but I don’t use the full announcement as I do not expect people to type it out every time. I did not address you as Anthony – fearing that it would be too familiar due to us not knowing one another. I never thought of asking permission to use your second name, as it is often common practice here in the UK to refer to people by their surname. Please accept my deepest apologies for any perceived disrespectful slur to your integrity.

     BTW, it’s JessieG not B.

     Yrs Jessica G. VonTinklemouse.

311. Vera Venom opines:

     “I really miss Jill and Zuzu.”

     Zuzu, of course, being the blogger that had to leave Feministe for a while after being threatened with a lawsuit by radfem Ann Bartow.

     With “friends” like the radfem crowd, who needs Patriarchy?

312. Zuzu, of course, being the blogger that had to leave Feministe for a while after being threatened with a lawsuit by radfem Ann Bartow.

     With “friends” like the radfem crowd, who needs Patriarchy?

     Ann Bartow does not ID as a radical feminist.

313. Zuzu, of course, being the blogger that had to leave Feministe for a while after being threatened with a lawsuit by radfem Ann Bartow.

     With “friends” like the radfem crowd, who needs Patriarchy?

     Ann Bartow does not ID as a radical feminist.

314. I’m really hesitant to wade into this, but I don’t like seeing the conversation devolve into a more-feminist-than-thou match between “radfems” and “sex-pos” or whatever terms we’re using these days. I consider myself personally sex-positive, but I disagree with a lot of what self-identified sex-positive feminists believe. I don’t consider myself a radical feminist, but I do borrow from a lot of radical theory, and I do think that a lot of it is spot-on.

     In other words, I’m both and I’m neither. As someone who doesn’t fit cleanly in either camp (a position that I suspect a great many feminists fall into), this whole thing feels very alienating and frustrating. When I read comments like, “With “friends” like the radfem crowd, who needs Patriarchy?” I take it personally. When anyone who isn’t entirely anti-porn and anti-sex-work is branded “pro-pornstitution,” I take it personally.

     I’m not advocating that we all hold hands and dance under the big feminist umbrella. It’s healthy to hash out our differences, and even to come to the conclusion that there are many things that we just aren’t going to agree on. But this dividing us up into camps and arguing over who is more of a whore to the patriarchy isn’t helpful. We’ve done it so many times that it isn’t even particularly interesting anymore. And since I suspect that most of us fall somewhere in the vast middle ground between “I totally love sex work and porn” and “sex work and porn are the root of all evil,” it doesn’t even seem to make much sense.

315. Here, here, Jill!

     And, I might add, when did the term “radical feminist” become owned by anti-porn activists? I’m not one, but some of my feminist views are considered pretty radical. Didn’t know I couldn’t use that term anymore.

316. I don’t think this is an argument between rad fems and sex-positives. It’s about a man thinking he should be able to dictate the terms of feminist debate and silence points of view of women he disagrees with. That’s sexual politics in action and as feminists it’s worth asking whether it is necessary to tolerate it or not.

     And it was another man who said “With “friends like the radfem crowd, who needs Patriarchy?” as if one argument between women was in any way comparable to the violence, prejudice and destruction that patriarchy has wreaked on women.

     You’ve got quotes from prostituted women right there who say that prostitution is rape, yet according to Roy their viewpoints are invalid and unhelpful.

317. Zuzu, of course, being the blogger that had to leave Feministe for a while after being threatened with a lawsuit by radfem Ann Bartow.

     With “friends” like the radfem crowd, who needs Patriarchy?

     Oh, don’t drag me into it. That whole thing had nothing to do with radical feminism.

318. “As for this notion of “censorship” and “silencing”: my, my, my”

     By AK

     JessieG did not mention *censorship* AK only silencing which has happened on this thread.

319. I understand the value of the current argument over who has the right to speak in a feminist blog, but I really would like to get back to discussing how we as feminists can help sex workers. Debates within feminism are relevant to this question, and I think that we can still have them while taking about practical measures to help people in the sex industry who want out or want to improve their lives and working conditions.

     I’m not at all knowledgeable about what groups work to help sex workers and what the pros and cons of different groups or tactics for helping people who are involved in sex work are. I would love if someone could steer the debate in that direction again. I’m not trying to silence anyone. I think that we can definitely debate feminist positions about the sex industry in the context of practical measures whether they be grass-roots activism or legal/political changes.

320. Ahhh, MG…

     No, she didn’t exactly say the word “censorship”..but she did imply that what Roy did in devoweling her amounted to “silencing” her…which isn’t that much different from the accusation of “censorship”.

     And…it’s so funny that delphyne and the rest are focusing so much attention on Roy as some kind of male invader of their “space”….as if Feministe was and should be only a space for them to control. So sorry to rain on your parade, ladies, but not all feminist blogs are or should be so dominated by your POV that opponents and critics should be shouted down.

     Of course, you can always do as you did a while back with Alas, a Blog and demand a seperate space solely for APRF’s to trash….ahhh, I mean, comment without fear of reproach.

     Until that happens, it’s Roy’s right as a moderator to run the blog as he sees fit. If Jill or Zuzu don’t like that, then they should exercise their option and remove him as moderator.

     Anthony

321. And for the record, I personally would have preferred to have Vera’s comment posted unfettered. I’d much rather give a response to speech I oppose rather than merely remove it….even if it did do nothing but derail a thread.

     Anthony

322. JessieG….my apologies for screwing up your ID.

     The point wasn’t that you disrespected me, but that you don’t know me enough to call me solely by my last name.

     Other than that, let’s agree to disagree.

     Anthony

323. I got a very angry email sent to me via SWOP East’s email about a post on this listserv. There is more than one Jill on this thread. While it is fine to angrily quote me either in a post or an email please quote me.

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