This is a cliché that anyone who advocates for sex workers’ rights will be familiar with. Faced with a sex worker who defies the abolitionist stereotype of a person physically or economically coerced into prostitution, who thinks their job is ok and isn’t desperate to leave it (but could if s/he wanted to), and who argues that the solution to the negative aspects of sex work is decriminalisation and enforceable rights, the inevitable response is:
You’re not representative. Why should the law be made for you?
This argument is problematic on a number of levels, and deserves a fuller response than I’ve been able to give it when it’s appeared in my comments. So here are my thoughts about it.
First of all, we need to question the basis of the assumption of non-representativeness. Abolitionists making this argument frequently cite this Melissa Farley study which interviewed sex workers in nine countries, and found an overall rate of 89% who answered the question “What do you need?” with (among other responses) “leave prostitution”. This statistic is often cited to make the claim that almost nine out of ten sex workers want out, and the ones who don’t are, you guessed it, not representative.
So what’s wrong with this claim? Well, the first thing you have to do with any survey is look at who the subjects are and how they were chosen. According to the study itself, the respondents were:
Canada: street workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, “one of the most economically destitute regions in North America”.
Mexico: Street, brothel, stripclub and massage workers in Mexico City and Puebla. No breakdown is given as to how many were chosen from each sector.
Germany: Subjects selected “from a drop-in shelter for drug addicted women”, from a “rehabilitation” programme, by reference from “peers” (presumably those found at the shelter and rehab programme) and through a newspaper advertisement, the text of which is not reported. Again, there is no breakdown of how many were found by which method.
San Francisco: Street workers from “four different areas”, not identified.
Thailand: A minority were interviewed “at a beauty parlor that provided a supportive atmosphere”, most at an agency providing job training.
South Africa: Subjects interviewed “in brothels, on the street and at a drop-in center for prostitutes”. No breakdown, again.
Zambia: Current and former sex workers were interviewed at an NGO offering sex workers “food, vocational training and community”.
Turkey: The subjects were women brought by police to hospital for STI “control”.
Colombia: Subjects were interviewed at “agencies that offered services to them”.
What is clear from this detail is that there is a heavy selection bias in the sample. It is not clear that any of the sex workers interviewed came from the less vulnerable sectors (ie independent indoor workers, or brothel workers in countries where they have labour, health and safety rights). The large majority clearly did not. Some of them were selected from agencies that cater to people wishing to leave prostitution, which is a bit like selecting people at a jobs fair to find out if they’re looking for work. Moreover, some of them were children, although the study only reports that this was the case in six of the nine countries and does not break down the adult/child division any further.
In short, this study does not tell us how sex workers feel about their work. At most, it may tell us how sex workers in particularly vulnerable sectors feel about their work. That 89% figure simply cannot be generalised to sex workers as a whole.
So here comes the next argument:
But the ones you call “particularly vulnerable” are the majority. The “less vulnerable ones” are (drum roll) not representative.
My answer: How do you know?
This is one of those assumptions that many people seem to consider self-evident. Not even worth questioning. Well, I’m going to question it. Where is the evidence? Where is the comprehensive research that has actually looked across all sectors of the industry – outdoor and indoor prostitution in all its myriad forms – and has actually come up with a reasonably credible estimate of what percentage of sex workers fall into this category or that one?
It simply doesn’t exist – and we’re certainly not going to get one as long as sex work remains criminalised in some parts of the world, stigmatised in nearly all. There isn’t even a universally-agreed definition; many of those who trade sex for some sort of cash-or-kind benefit don’t consider what they do to be prostitution or sex work. So even if you tried to reach all “eligible” populations for research, you probably wouldn’t be able to.
The most we can say without veering off into pure guesstimation is that street prostitution is a minority of all prostitution. How small a minority, nobody knows. In Ireland I’ve heard estimates from people on both sides of the issue that range from 3% to 20%; I’ve never seen an estimate from any other country that placed street prostitution in the majority. This isn’t proof, of course, but it means it’s not really a matter for debate – so we can work from the position that most sex workers are indoor workers. This right away means that the “unrepresentative” studies are those that focus solely or mainly on street workers. Unfortunately, that accounts for a significant amount of sex work research, for the simple reason that street workers are often the easiest population to get to. The far more hidden nature of indoor prostitution makes it unsafe to draw conclusions about the people involved in it. Most of those who work independently, in particular, will never come to researchers’ attention (an aside to certain Irish NGOs and Swedish government officials: they don’t all advertise on the internet) and we will never know how many of them there are.
Note that I am not asserting that a majority of sex workers fall into what I call the less vulnerable categories. It is quite possible that they don’t. But it cannot be proven that they don’t – and to cite Melissa Farley’s 89% statistic as evidence of anything other than the sample interviewed for Farley’s study, is junk science.
But even if we assume the accuracy of the 89% claim, it doesn’t necessarily mean everything that abolitionists think it means. It cannot be assumed that everyone has the same thing in mind when they answer the question “do you want to leave prostitution”. First, we don’t know how the question was translated into all the different languages of the respondents, so we don’t know if there was any ambiguity in the question they were asked. Second, there is some ambiguity in English too, because it could be taken to mean “right now”, “at some point in the next __ period of time” or “ever”. (Irish readers who think I’m splitting hairs with this should consider the polls that show a large majority who “want” a united Ireland.)
A fascinating insight into this question can be found in Nick Mai’s hugely important recent study on migrant sex workers in Britain (that link is to an abbreviated version of the report; I have the full document but can’t find a link to it). Dr Mai’s team spoke to 100 migrant sex workers, many of them undocumented (and hence really really really vulnerable), some of them having suffered exploitation. He asked them if they wanted to leave the sex industry, and sure enough, around 75% said yes. But what were the reasons they gave? It’s boring. It’s repetitive. It isn’t a viable long-term career option. These are not exactly factors unique to sex work. Furthermore, the research makes clear that “wanting to leave the sex industry” does not necessarily translate to being unhappy with one’s experiences in the sex industry.
Nor does it inevitably lead to the conclusion that abolitionists think it does, namely:
Those who want prostitution to be legal are only speaking for the elite minority (sic).
The assumption here is that those sex workers who would rather be doing something else, but don’t have those options, don’t think that what they are doing should be legal. Again, there’s a Farley statistic which seems to back this up: only 34% in her nine-country study gave “legalize prostitution” as a response to “What do you need?”.
But this statistic seems to be an outlier, because other research on vulnerable populations finds the exact opposite:
- the Nick Mai study referred to above, in which all participants said that decriminalisation would improve conditions for sex workers
- this study of San Francisco sex workers, in which street-based and drug-addicted sex workers clearly overwhelmingly supported removal of criminal laws and the introduction of laws protecting sex workers’ rights
- The Christchurch School of Medicine study of the impact of decriminalisation in New Zealand, in which upwards of 90% of street workers felt they had rights under the law, and 61.9% said the law made it easier for them to refuse clients
And here comes the next objection, that
Those studies aren’t (sigh) representative of all prostitution, only First World prostitution.
The claim that the sex workers’ rights movement is a purely white, western phenomenon is one of abolitionism’s biggest falsehoods. In fact, Global South sex workers could teach their Northern counterparts a thing or two when it comes to organising for sex workers’ rights. Here is a videoclip of sex workers in Sonagachi, Calcutta, marching against criminalisation of their industry. Here is a photo of members of the Asia-Pacific Network of Sex Workers holding a banner with their slogan, “Don’t talk to me about sewing machines. Talk to me about workers’ rights” (a reference to their annoyance at “rescuers” whose only interest in them is trying to take them out of the sex trade). Here is a link to Empower, the Thai sex workers’ rights organisation, and here is the African Sex Worker Alliance. You still want to argue that only privileged white westerners think sex work is work? Take it up with them, not me.
None of this should be really surprising, because as I’ve pointed out before, it is precisely the most vulnerable workers who are most adversely affected by criminalisation. For every Heidi Fleiss who goes to prison, how many “Tabithas” do you think there are? The same is true in Sweden, where native, non-drug using indoor sex workers like Pye Jakobsson are relatively shielded from the negative consequences of the law, while those who don’t have the luxury of working indoors have to fend with the clients that don’t care about being arrested, and those who are migrants are simply deported.
I hesitate to draw conclusions about it since it’s such a small sample, but on the rare occasions that I’ve heard a (current) sex worker speak in favour of criminalisation, it’s been because they like the idea that they’re doing something illegal. To prefer working in a criminalised environment because it’s “edgy”, and to be able to afford being so blasé about the risks you’re taking? Now that is fucking privilege speaking.
I’ll wind this up now because it’s already gone on long enough, but there’s one final point I want to make. This entire argument about “representativeness” rests on an odious position – that the (assumed) majority view is the only one worth listening to. That people who don’t fall into that (assumed) majority don’t deserve to have their needs taken into account. This is a position that feminists in particular should be wary about taking: feminism has already alienated so many “minority” women precisely because of its focus on the needs of dominant categories, its failure to understand that it doesn’t always get it when it comes to what women in more marginalised categories need. I would like to think that nowadays, most half-clued-in hetero white able-bodied feminists at least realise that it is not our place to decide who is The Authentic VoiceTM of Black women, or of LBTQ women, or of women with disabilities, so why would we outside the industry assume the right to decide who can speak for other sex workers?
If the aim is actually to improve the lives of people in the sex trade, that has to start with giving them the space to put forward their own views on how it can be achieved. And it means listening to them all. We don’t have to, and indeed logically couldn’t, agree with them all but we need to listen. After all, even the most privileged white western indoor high-class Happy Hooker type knows more about what sex workers need than non-sex workers do.
I worked as a sex worker for over five years, I know all about what should be done for the safety of sex workers. I know every inch of the sex industry here, I was fully independent and know the full scale of good things and bad things about prostitution. But I still don’t agree with you. I am still a representative of a sex worker though.
Hi Melissa, I didn’t say that all sex workers would agree with me! The problem is the attempt to shut down debate by dismissing the views of those sex workers who do agree with me – or to put it more appropriately, those with whom I agree. To argue that those sex workers are wrong for reason x, y or z is fine. To simply refuse to listen to them on the basis that (to quote a Tweet I received from a sex worker who identified with this post) “your life experience doesn’t count” – that is not fine. But that is exactly what is happening.
i guess i feel that your viewpoint and kind of the way you write communicates to me that my experience doesn’t count. This is Melissa by the way i’m not used to these things. I don’t want to get into a big conversation about it, but I don’t feel like I have any voice in these debates, only Ruhama and TOBL do, my voice doesn’t fit in with either, and I can’t risk my anonymity so I just get to read peoples opinions online, it’s pretty frustrating, I’m sure you can imagine.
i guess i feel that your viewpoint and kind of the way you write communicates to me that my experience doesn’t count.
I said “it means listening to them all.” All means all.
Anyway, you have a voice here, so feel free to use it
The big question Wendy — is who exactly are those sex workers who agree with you. I think it’s quite likely many of them are actually making a profit off the sexual exploitation of women besides themselves. Like Sheila Farmer, who pretends she was a prostitute when she actually was a madam. As a survivor of ten years of prostitution, based on my extensive experiences within the sex industry I know for a fact that precious precious few prostituted women share your views.
We all support decriminalization of the selling of sex — that’s a nonissue with us. But I’ve never met a prostitution survivor who wanted pimping decriminalized, unless this ‘survivor’ was currently commercially sexually exploiting young vulnerable women.
depends drastically on your definition of pimping
Throughout Europe there are sex clubs situated
These places hire women and men to work in them.
They are like strip clubs but with full sex on offer.
I dont see a problem with these
Well, I know plenty of sex workers who want to ensure that those who are not operating independently are able to enforce their rights through employment law. Something that isn’t possible under the legal regime that you advocate.
(Incidentally, the Swedish Health Board reported in 2007 that there are more pimps as a result of the sex purchase ban.)
Those who identify as “prostituted women” may well not share my views. But you know full well, through your online interactions with those who identify as sex workers, that quite a number of them do. You just don’t accept the validity of their identity or their experiences. Which is a shame, since they never seem to extend you the same discourtesy.
This was a great article Wendy, and the final part sums it all up with some pretty good common sense, that suggests that yes sex workers views and opinions should be listened to and heeded before any laws that would negatively impact them get to be considered, as many of these sex workers have clearly stated that they disagree with their clients being hunted by authorities for not just one reason , but in fact for many reasons, they also disagree with being branded with the helpless victim stereotype.
Not only do they say that their clients are their livelihood and that they don’t want them hunted down, (as a french male sex worker commented on in previous comments) but also many sex workers have said or have implied that encroaching in on their private adult relationships is just a waste of time as those pre planned arrangements for a service of their clients are made by themselves, they are adult sex workers, don’t treat them like a victim stereotype as that creates stigma for them leading to less rights and respect by society as a whole, instead of treating them like a bunch of teenagers, treat them like adults and give them rights so that they can feel empowered and protected, they are just business professionals trying to get some payment for offering a service to their target audience, Indeed in some countries they are seen as professionals and rightfully so.
To say that those particular breed of sex workers are the privileged minority in the industry, is again just all inaccurate, spiteful, disinformation being promoted by the activists who foolishly think that they can end sexual services in exchange for money, as discussed earlier, sexual services in exchange for money is seen across a widescale spectrum of everyday human relationships and marriages, it is natural human behaviour, sex workers are largely the same as the common wife, husband, girlfriend or boyfriend, most of these people are in relationships based around material wealth. Sex workers differ to lets say the common wife in that the sex worker does not commit to a relationship, the sex worker will choose multiple relationships to increase her material wealth to fund a venture etc, while wanting to remain single, thats fine and ok , after all marriage partners divorce each other for some other new partner, sometimes a more wealthy partner than their previous partner, and adult relationships contain loads of one night stands that had involved the use of material wealth to get a partner in bed… like buying drinks, some of which are very expensive by the way, or buying dinner in restaurant etc.. some of these purchases total in excess of what sex workers charge for a sexual service, which is quite funny and interesting.
There exists a negativity and discrimination around women who are promiscous, these women get degraded with all sorts of verbal attacks, they get called prostitute, whore, hooker, slag, slut etc, this is wrong to just attack these women for being in multiple relationships, its their choice, their lives, so leave them alone and treat them with respect and don’t interfere and encroach on their lives, the females who have multiple one night stands and sexual relationships are treated better than the sex workers who were intelligent and smart enough to charge a fee for one night stands while making profit, these sex workers have an admirable personality and its quite charming how they actually say damn these one night stands, lets make a profit from these one night stands to fund a venture such as buying expensive items or property.
Now these sex workers should have a right to this if they want to do it, after all its ironic how the common old wife or woman who frequents in one night stands would be first to get on the bandwagon and create a stigma around sex workers.
This is called the whore stigma.
Again sex workers disagree with being labelled as a whore, they prefer to be called sex workers in general, but just as a demonstration you will see that they are classed as a whore by some people and that makes the sex workers feel marginalised and discriminated against.
Examples of stigma against sex workers:
The “whore stigma” is, first of all, the belief that it is horrible and terrible to be a person who will offer sexual services for payment, Secondly, anyone who earns a living doing something naked or sexual is considered a whore in a derogatory assumption….. And thirdly, any person who behaves in any way considered sexually inappropriate by “society” is acting like a whore.
Catholic ireland is notoriously repressive when it comes to womens sexuality, as seen from the past magdalene laundry abuses etc, some old people from that era still have that same shameful mentality of thinking women who have multiple partners are carrying a disease, STD etc. .
Ruhama, the immigrant council of ireland and some of their trustees like the organisations that operated the magdalene laundries are continuation of that very same repressive view a negative view on women involved in multiple relationships
In fact some of these stereotyical nutcases are crucifix carrying morons hanging around outside strip clubs obstructing people from entering.
Examples of stigma against sex workers:
Legislation against the sex workers historically goes hand-in-hand with intolerance of sexual freedom in general, and women’s sexual freedom in particular. Sex workers (like lesbians) have always been the prime targets of this repression as they are seen as dangerously free; challenging the notion of female monogamy and refusing to bind themselves to one man.
Interesting how that lesbian in the seanad debate was guilty of using stigma against sex workers, even though she is apparently a lesbian, if anything she should understand marginalised people and the rights they need.
She was obviously being programmed and brainwashed by ruhama or something, she should have studied sex workers, before she commented on the sex industry, she had been guilty of the whore stigma mentality for sure.
The whore stigma is used against every sex industry worker at one time or another. It is used to control women’s sexuality. ,
With such contempt directed at sex workers, it is no wonder that society’s laws often don’t protect those who work in the sex industry
Even customers of sex workers are subject to the whore stigma being cast as low-lifes, deviants, and abusers just for accessing services offered by sex workers.
By not empowering sex workers, you are making them appear as victims of their own lifestyles thus creating stigma that makes them vulnerable to attack, like the fact that many sex workers have been murdered by serial killers cause they were seen as a trashy aspect of society that deserves to be put in the bin.
That stigma is HORRIBLE.
The irish anti sex work activists like ruhama and their supporters are wrongly and incorrectly assuming that there are only a minority of women and men choosing to be sex workers out of their own choice in ireland, wherever they are getting that idea from, it is most certainly incorrect, they also tag those male and female sex workers as being the privileged few etc, and that they can afford to stop being sex wokers and do something else, these prohibitionists are very inconsiderate and are being quite nasty in the way they are attacking these sex workers, who in fact come from a wide variety of social backgrounds.
The irish brothel offenses record of the last few years proove that ruhama and its allies are wrong about how much people are sex workers out of their own choice.
The brothel cases in ireland have the opportunist migrant sex workers as the criminals, which is quite ironic as they are funding studies or a venture in ireland and operating in twos for safety, yet the anti sex work activists are trying to make these women out to be victims of trafficking, which is insane.
example of opportunist migrant sex workers being treated like crap by the courts:
TWO 20-year-old women have pleaded guilty to brothel-keeping in a self-catering cottage adjoining a Killarney hotel complex a week ago.
Killarney District Court heard the women were “self-employed”, there was no question of trafficking, and they had moved around Ireland since January. The Slovakian women had not understood their activity was illegal here.
They had more than €8,000 in their possession when arrested on May 26, within days of checking into the Killarney premises, the court also heard.
The sex workers rights movements in ireland are telling more truth than ruhama and its allies, if you were to look at the brothel offenses alone.
The anti sex work activists Farley, Bindel, Mckay etc and organisations like ruhama are not being truthful about the sex industry, they only share one view of sex workers, and that view is that sex workers are wrong and bad cause they want to offer a service to their clients.
Its a stigma and repression of sexuality in women who do not want to be monogamous for a certain period of their lives.
This hatred for their sexuality and lack of monogamy is then reinforced with creating a social panic around the issue of trafficked victims and exaggarating the numbers.
If you were to dig deeper you can find hints that the majority of sex workers in ireland are mostly opportunistic migrant sex workers trying to fund a venture etc, judging by the brothel cases.
If a male or female wants to be a sex worker, then they should be respected and inform the gardai that they do not want their privacy invaded upon and their clients hunted down by officers who really should not be involved in spying on them in keyholes when they are servicing their clients, the sex workers do not want their privacy invaded and encroached on and they say that they don’t want their clients being hunted.
And these are only the sex workers who are bravely speaking up, even with so much stigma being against them, there are other sex workers who do not speak up cause of all the stigma.
It is important to listen to the views of sex workers themselves and not their haters.
That seanad debate was an abomination, and senator white was one of the only ones that started to see it as an abomination.
In all fairness like, you can’t say that the majority of sex workers are these helpless victims that need to be rescued and saved from themselves and then push the gardai and its resources to be directed at sex workers who do not want to be encroached upon and their livelihood taken away.
Who the heck do ruhama and the immigrant council of ireland think they are?
some some stupid magdalene laundry freaks wanting to be a guardian police force that hates on multiple choice sexual relationships and talking about saving sex workers souls and dignity.
Just look at their twitter, they boast about being involved with gardai.
What a bunch of morons in all honesty, and the senators supporting them without listening to sex workers are even worse.
Love this piece with one exception, anti-sex-work advocates who promote the use of policing and imprisonment as the remedy to sex work are not abolitionists. Abolitionists are opposed to slavery in all its forms, including its manifestation within the prison industrial complex–one cannot be an abolitionist if you seek to enslave the slaveholders. Abolitionists seek out alternative accountability and safety structures that do not rely on state violence and slavery. As an abolitionist, I am furious by the appropriation of the anti-sex-work movement of my movement.
Hi Cynthia, thanks very much for your comment. I know sometimes “neo-abolitionist” is used to distinguish sex work opponents from abolitionists in the traditional sense. But I’m not sure that’s appropriate either, since it’s also been used to refer to the 1960s civil rights movement. “The anti-sex-work movement” is probably more accurate but a bit clumsy! Any ideas what other terms could be used? (Bearing in mind I would not like to get bogged down in disputes with this movement over what we call them and what they want to be called!)
Sex Work Abolitionist?
“Abolitionists are opposed to slavery in all its forms, including its manifestation within the prison industrial complex”
The anti-sex-work(er) Abolitionists are very much like the pro-death penalty “pro-lifers” who oppose abortion. The lifers claim to be ‘pro-life’ when they are really just anti-abortion.
This is just like the prohibitionists who claim to be abolitionists and promote the criminalization of the clients as in Sweden. They frame all the service users and management as predators and exploiters, which is false. They want them charged with a crime. They do not deny this. No one should call them abolitionists. They are prohibitionists.
That’s a fair point Julie. I avoid “prohibitionists” simply because in my experience it only provokes them to argue why they shouldn’t be called that – and I really dislike arguing about labels. “Anti-abortion” doesn’t have the same effect! I’m going to keep trying to think of something.
Prohibition invlves consumables like drugs or alcohol. NO ONE wants to prohibit sexual freedoms. I am a prostitution survivor. I am not a consumable substance, although the Johns and society saw me that way.
The anti-sex-work advocates say that all forms of sexual services in exchange for material wealth is a form of slavery and exploitation.
That is viewing what they are saying from an esoteric perspective.
So really according to these cons, wives and girlfriends and women involved in one night stands are slaves too and are grossly exploited, cause wives and girlfriends and women who participate in one night stands will sometimes give a sexual service in return for material wealth such as money, gifts, financial security, etc to have a happy and healthy life.
Their definition of slavery and exploitation is insane.
From an an exoteric perspective, the anti-sex-work advocates say that all forms of sex work is slavery and exploitation.
That is why they sometimes call themselves abolitionists, cause they think they are on a holier than thou campaign to end slavery, they are so naive and dangerous, they mix the atlantic slave trade with sex work indiscriminately.
By portraying all sex work as violent and all sex workers as the naive enslaved victim desperate for rescue, the oppositionists perpetuate patriarchal stereotypes and silence the very people they are supposedly trying to help. That silence is done through the generation of stigma directed against sex workers, that makes them marginalised and discriminated against in society thus endangering them. By refusing to support sex workers in their quest for legitimacy and recognition as workers, they are condemning sex workers to lives in the shadows.
When sex work is illegal it creates a terrifying constellation of conditions for sex workers to contend with, most of which put their lives directly at risk. When sex work is illegal, or even when selling sex is legal but the purchasing of sex is not, as in Sweden, sex workers remain stigmatized.
They are forced to work in the most treacherous parts of town, away from safe, well-lit areas. They have no recourse to go to the police if something violent is done to them. If they do go to the police, they run the very real risk of being arrested for selling sex, or for being assaulted and harassed by the police themselves.
Sex workers and sex work allies have shown that when a government cracks down on sex work it can lead directly to police brutality against sex workers, including their rape and murder. These crackdowns are promoted and funded by some anti-sex-work advocates looking to ‘rescue sex workers who do not want their obtrusion, they call these sex workers “prostituted” in a derogatory fashion that implies that they are victims of slavery and exploitation, just because they have made a choice to be a sex worker. .
When sex work is illegal, people who provide sexual services are unable to receive medical care as they are often refused treatment, or sometimes cause of all the stigma they feel fear of getting a medical checkup cause they feel discriminated against and badly treated by people in society.
The anti-sex-work advocates say that whenever a woman sells a sexual service she is actually being raped, and that her very existence as a sex worker puts all women’s safety in jeopardy. “Just because the oppositionists don’t want to do sex work doesn’t mean it is wrong for other women who choose to be sex workers.
The oppositionists are bullies on a power trip against non monogamous sexual relations influenced by material wealth.
The oppositionists to sex work are frequently socially and economically privileged citizens of the global north who use their economic and political clout to support and promote the destruction of sex workers rights to equality and fair treatment in society.
And on their quest in attempting to destroy sex workers rights, the oppositionists spread the most insane lies about sex workers.
The oppositionists are usually females who are bullies against other females who want to offer a sexual service to men, sweden is a perfect example of that where it was the rich upper class privileged governmental females who led the charge against some of the lower class of females who sometimes wanted to provide a sexual service for a livelihood.
The swedish upper class Feminists and women’s movements had carried out considerable lobbying for criminalising purchase of sexual services.
The same situation is now seen in irish society where its basically the upper class womens movements wining and dining governmental political parties, including mayors and senators, taking them out to dinners and holding events spoonfeeding them with bullshit, while using subversion and psychologically chaining sex workers in a dungeon silencing their voices and attempting to destroy their rights to equality and their clients rights to equality.
Cynthia what makes all that even worse is the fact that some of the organisations that are pushing for the destruction of sex workers rights, are in fact the same organisations that enslaved an entire irish female generation in the magdalene laundries.
Irish society is puke worthy.
The magdalene laundries was real slavery and those culprits never answered to any judge, the same crowd are now leading the charge against sex workers rights.
If supporters and members of the crazy ruhama establishment wants to talk about slavery, then they need to have a long good look at their, who the heck are ruhama to talk about slavery? in all fairness like, when its trustees are guilty of enslaving an irish female generation, who are they to talk and preach about criminals?, when their own trustees under international law could be seen as criminals, just because they are christian institutions they automatically escape punishment
Great article and some really interesting and informative comments!
If anyone is interested in their experience as a sex worker being heard, I’m currently trying to put together a short radio piece for DIT FM about peoples experiences in the sex industry in Ireland.
E-mail me at jennyrosedunne@gmail.com if you’re interested in taking part or would like more information about it.
There’s a lot of stigma in society in my opinion and not just in relation to prostitution/sex work. Take the 2002 SAVI report, the Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland report. This report only reports on sexual related violence and the numbers are huge! 35% of all Irish men and women have experienced rape or sexual abuse during the course of their lifetime! There’s a whole subculture of rape and sexual violence and abuse in Irish society. Our Government, it seems to me, is not facing up to this systemic crisis. This goes, hand in hand, in my view, with the failure of the Irish government to vindicate the social, labour, civil, human, labour, health and political rights of sex workers. From the top down, our government is refusing to face these social problems and conundrums.
I expect the answers to these problems will be coming for the most part from the global south during the course of the 21st century, led by the BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, rather than from the USA led “West”.
YES YES YES. So much vigorous agreement on my end. As a sex worker who is currently working and currently a student majoring in Women’s Studies, I’ve been getting a lot of flack from one of my profs who says things to me like, “well, your experiences are one in a million and not representative of the whole, you have so much privilege” blah blah. And it doesn’t seem to matter how many times I tell her that actually, no, most of the women I know who work in the industry are very much like me–generally educated (many of us have at least university level educations), working indoors, relatively free from police surveillance and so forth. She is still convinced that prostitution is an extension of male privilege and I’m ignoring my complicity in patriarchy and on and on. Since the seminar is on Sex, Feminism and Globalization you can imagine the number of discussions we’ve had with regard to agency and I feel like I’m always defending prostitution and decriminalization. Anyway, it was just very refreshing to read this and have someone say all the things I’ve been feeling but haven’t been able to articulate.
Lindsay the problem is the fact that there is so much misinformation being spread against sex work, people are just not really educated enough to be commenting on it, for instance many ignorant people do not realise that sex workers service their clients to fund a project, like many of the migrants in ireland are opportunistic sex workers, they come to ireland because they know they will get a good price for their service, thats why theres so many sex workers out there in ireland, sex workers at the very least just deserve respect and rights in society, but thats very hard to achieve when you are being promoted as victims being abused by your clients.
This even makes your sex work more dangerous cause of such a stigma being brought against you, its important that sex workers should have a right to earn their livelihood without it being taken away, its also important that you are made to feel safe when offering a service to your clients, you should not fear reporting any crime made against you, in fact it is said that most of the crimes against sex workers are not from clients but from the members of the public who think its ok to commit a robbery against you, this stigma gets increased when sex workers are seen as mentally and physically abused victims who need rescue.
The stigma and discrimination needs to stop and your rights need to be improved upon, its as simple as that.
Taking away your livelihood and then making you out to be victims in need of rescue is just absolute discrimination and hatred being directed against you, it needs to be vanquished.
Interesting article, and I strongly agree that the *sale* of sex should be decriminalised, but my issue with prostitution is the purchase and the commodification of women and their bodies.
I have never worked in the sex industry, but know quite a few who have none of them see it as “just work”.
Criminalising purchase would put a powerful tool into the hands of sex workers as well as sending an unambiguous message that buying women for sexual purposes is not ok. On the other hand if you choose to sleep with someone and they choose to give you money then that’s no-one else’s business.
It us privilage to assume that because you have choices, ability to exit and to ensure your safety other women have the same. Many end up in the industry through poverty, abuse and addiction and are then the prey for the sexual preditors who pay to further abuse them.
I have never worked in the sex industry, but know quite a few who have none of them see it as “just work”.
One of the slogans that many sex workers use is: “Sex work is work”. So clearly, some of them do see it that way.
It us privilage to assume that because you have choices, ability to exit and to ensure your safety other women have the same.
I don’t know of any sex worker who assumes that to be the case for all others. In fact, sex workers know better than anyone else what leads people into the industry.
Anyway, for those who don’t have other choices, how would it help them to criminalise their clients and take away their only source of income? If they have no other choices, what else are they going to do?
I speak only of those who I have known who are/have been involved in the industry. I’m not denying that some see it as “just work” but there are a substantial number who don’t, and generally they are the ones with the least choices who come to prostitution as a last resort rather than as an informed choice.
It is the demand which leads the supply in the industry, I strongly support the decriminalisation of those who sell sexual services, but at the same time *buying* sexual services is abusive. The same arguments used to be made for prosecuting domestic violence – that if abused wives have no options but to stay with their partners what good does prosecution do. It normalises the industry, it makes it acceptable and tolerated. It is none of my business if someone chooses to accept money in exchange for sex; however if someone offers money for sex, IMHO that becomes abusive as the consent is then economically coerced.
It is the demand which leads the supply in the industry
It’s more complicated than that. A number of studies of the industry based on economic models have shown this; it’s also shown by real life in jurisdictions where measures have been brought in with the intention of reducing demand. Even where they work to some extent, there is still a supply – in fact, there is an oversupply, which is a very dangerous situation for sex workers since it creates a buyer’s market.
The same arguments used to be made for prosecuting domestic violence – that if abused wives have no options but to stay with their partners what good does prosecution do.
And in fact a lot of people who work with domestic violence sufferers oppose mandatory prosecutions for that very reason – because it fails to take into account individual situations where you might in fact make a woman’s situation worse by prosecuting her abuser.
Anyway, as Matthias says you haven’t answered my question as to what becomes of the sex workers whose only income source is taken away from them. Is it your position that making those sex workers utterly destitute is an acceptable price to pay to “send a message” about buying sex?
It is none of my business if someone chooses to accept money in exchange for sex; however if someone offers money for sex, IMHO that becomes abusive as the consent is then economically coerced.
That’s an absurdly reductionist statement. People offer other people money for things all the time – is it always economic coercion to do so, or only when it comes to sex?
PS: Thanks for the kind words Matthias
You are so wrong when you say that sex workers sell their body, they do not sell their body, they are providing a service for a fee, your stigma does not help.
Yes, you have never worked as a sex worker, the people who are sex workers see what they do as sex work, you just disagree with them cause you don’t like their choices and you do not want them having rights. Read the comment from the sex worker above you.
Taking away the sex workers livelihood is not fair to them, as its removing their choice to be a sex worker, again you wrongly assume that sex workers bodies are purchased, they do not sell their bodies they provide a service for a fee, just get over that fact. And again if a sex worker sleeps with someone who gives them money for the service she is providing, its really is no one elses business just like you say its certainly shouldn’t be your business to intervene on such relationships.
Sex workers have stated that they prefer to do sex work than other choices presented to them, you should just respect sex workers own choices, you are also wrong to assume they all come from impoverished backgrounds and have abuse or addiction issues, if you read the comment from the sex worker above you, it is found that a lot of them are college educated, but that is not to say they all are, in fact there is a wide variety of backgrounds that sex workers come from, some of them rather would do sex work than cleaning toilets, you just begrudge sex work.
1) Replying to mhairi
I’m afraid I take issue with quite a few of your statements.
“my issue with prostitution is the purchase and the commodification of women and their bodies.”
This statement is in line with that of many in the anti-sex work movement as you appear to sense a commodification of bodies only when it’s female bodies that are purchased. Do you feel the same when male or transgender bodies are purchased?
“Criminalising purchase would put a powerful tool into the hands of sex workers as well as sending an unambiguous message that buying women for sexual purposes is not ok. On the other hand if you choose to sleep with someone and they choose to give you money then that’s no-one else’s business.”
First of all, I find your statement inconsistent. You cannot, I believe, advocate to make the exchange of sex for money a criminal transaction but then say it’s nobody else’s business if it actually happens. You also fail to reply to Wendy’s questions
“…for those who don’t have other choices, how would it help them to criminalise their clients and take away their only source of income? If they have no other choices, what else are they going to do?”
I would like to hear your answers, too.
“I strongly support the decriminalisation of those who sell sexual services, but at the same time *buying* sexual services is abusive. … It is none of my business if someone chooses to accept money in exchange for sex; however if someone offers money for sex,”
I beg do differ. Abusing sex workers is abusive. Buying sexual services they offer is not.
How come it becomes your business if someone offers money for sex to someone other than yourself?
2) Replying to Wendy
I would like to give you a round of applause for your well-written article. I admit that more often than not, I have difficulties getting to the end of articles such as yours, simply because they are, in my view, somewhere between belligerent and incoherent and seemingly intended to preach to the converted. While the anger with which those articles are written is well understandable, given the sensitive topic and dire circumstances, it still makes reading those articles to some extent uninteresting and repetitive. Your style is pleasantly different and I look forward to more.
“We don’t have to, and indeed logically couldn’t, agree with them all but we need to listen. After all, even the most privileged white western indoor high-class Happy Hooker type knows more about what sex workers need than non-sex workers do.”
Well said indeed.
For what it’s worth, the ‘happy hooker’ author, Xaviera Hollander was a madam, a female pimp. She wasn’t a prostitute. She was making gobs of money off the sexual exploitation of young, vulnerable women. She wanted to hype her business.
Quite apart from the methodological flaws and response biases that you have rightly identified, I also find the “would you like to leave” or “why do you do sex work” questions a peculiar red herring, and one that only seems to come up when discussing the sex industry. It is unfortunate that lots of people find themselves in lots of jobs that they don’t want to do, or that wouldn’t be their first choice. Add to that the stigma surrounding sex work and it’s small wonder lots of sex workers will say they’d rather do something else.
If Farley’s hang up wasn’t about the sex aspect, she would ask: “given the range of options open to you, and the incomes and disadvantages you get with each option, which would you choose”. But the truth is, Farley and her ilk would rather see people live lives of poverty and destitution than help them work more safely in an industry they can’t abide.
Farley has been known to view sex workers rights advocates as pimps, that just shows you the type of mentality she has, anyone seeking to promote safer conditions and rights for sex workers are seen as pimps by farley and her ilk.
Shocking stuff really!
There are a lot of people in society that would just begrudge sex work as being a valid option of earning a livelihood, the people who disagree with such a earning will spread the most insane lies in an attempt to marginalise sex workers in society, and create stigma for them by playing them out to be victims, just so they can dictate to them as if they are superior.
Its sickening how much little respect sex workers have in society from people who would begrudge them their own relationship options.
I worked for a long long time as an independent sex worker and I would call it selling my body… I don’t disagree with earning a living, unfortunately for many women it’s a matter of survival, doing what they can to survive, not a career choice. In fact in all five years of working I never met another girl who did it out of a career choice, or a desire to do this job. This is beside the point though. Selling sex should definitely be decriminalised, to take into account all the different ways women get into sex work. There is no ‘Choice v Trafficking’ here, it is far more complex than that and every case in unique. The thing that always troubled me was the types of men that were punters. They’re mostly not so nice, in my experience anyway. I’m sure I’ll get a load of backlash for this but please be gentle, i’m just trying to say how I feel about my own experience.
Melissa if you are a former sex worker like you say you are, then your experience is indeed valuable.
Melissa), there are also many sex workers who do not agree that they are selling their body, they see what they do as being a selling of a sexual service for someone who is interested, people in the past who purchased a sexual service from you Melissa do not own your body, your body belongs to yourself and not to anyone who purchased a service from you.
Melissa) ,you say that you don’t agree with sex workers using sex work to make a living, sure there is indeed a lot of sex workers doing sex work as a means of survival, but there is also a lot of sex workers doing sex work as an alternative to doing something else that pays them lower than what they can make while doing sex work, many sex workers opt to do sex work because they can make a lot more money in less time than other alternatives, thats why there is such a lot sex workers doing sex work to fund student fees and other ventures that requires a lot of money….. Sex work is a part time career choice for a lot of people who sometimes use the option of sex work over many years to get a quick flow of money, it happens and these people should have rights too… and be free from encroachment.
Melissa look at the very definition of what the word career means.
Career : An occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person’s life and with opportunities for progress.
This was a career for you for over 5 years, even though now you didn’t like being in such a career choice, maybe you did not see any opportunities for progress, because you did not like the occupation of sex work and did not like the clients you were servicing while doing sex work, then Melissa you really should have never got involved in it, but you probably knew that there was more money to be made in less time while doing sex work, so you done it, even though you did not like it, a lot of people do occupations they don’t like, but that does not mean a particular occupation should have a repressive restriction that would harm other sex workers livelihood and safety.
Melissa you should have stopped doing sex work if you did not like it, but you did make a choice to do it even though you didn’t like it.
And since you did not like the men you offered your service to, now you kinda imply that they should be convicted, but when sex workers clients are convicted it harms sex workers livelihood and increases stigma and discrimination and danger against sex workers according to many of the sex workers themselves.
You kinda said yourself that you don’t disagree with earning a living while doing sex work.
Melissa, you found the people you serviced not so nice, maybe its because of the stigma in society, they see you in an inferior position to them, so they think they can treat you whatever way they want, but from the sex workers advocates point of view the sex worker must be the one in full power of the situation and full control over the client, the client must be made to feel like they are not in control of you, that to attempt to do anything bad against you would be a crime in the same way its a crime to do anything bad against a woman in a one night stand or in marriage etc and other occupations.
Its your service, you’re own your boss, you make your own rules, you say what and what is not allowed.
When the sex worker is empowered and options are made available for them to hire security guards and install panic buttons that would alert attention to any trouble, they are in a safer environment, but of course Melissa in ireland when a sex worker protect themselves with a security guard or assistant or another sex worker, it is seen as being brothel with pimps.
When sex work is not seen as a valid form of occupation it creates huge hatred and stigma.
But anyway Melissa your experience is just as valuable as other sex workers experiences, who have commented here such as Lindsay and Thierry.
I started replying, but I’m not going to waste energy on such a patronising and assuming reply, that was insane to read about,
I should have got out of it, should i? Where did i say that I wanted to?
I never said that I didn’t agree with it as a way to earn an income, i said i agree with decriminalisation. Why are you so defensive. You are assuming my position on the industry, when I didn’t really give one.
You are so judgemental, assuming why I ended up in the industry and that i ‘should’ have gotten out of it. Insane. I do not need your opinion on how the sex industry works, or should work,
how long have you been punting for?
The thing that always troubled me was the types of men that were punters. They’re mostly not so nice, in my experience anyway.
I wonder how much of this is down to the fact that they can afford not to be nice, since they’re dealing with people who don’t have any rights. In the qualitative research that’s been done into the New Zealand decriminalisation – which was done with the primary objective of giving rights to sex workers – a lot of them seem to feel that the law reform has put “manners” on the punters.
Wendy, why you you take a stand instead of acquiescing to this punter buffoon posing as a ‘guest sex worker rights advocate”
Melissa its easy to see what your standpoint as regards sex work, just from some of your comments.
Melissa your comments = Selling sex should definitely be decriminalised, . There is no ‘Choice v Trafficking’ here, The thing that always troubled me was the types of men that were punters.
From those comments alone it implies, that you think sex workers offering sexual services should be deciminalised, when sex workers are deliberately attracting clients to avail of those services, yet you imply that the client should be convicted for availing of the purchase of those freely offered services by sex workers, just because sex workers are vulnerable in society.
Of course they are vulnerable its from lack of rights and protection while doing sex work, their options are limited as regards the environment they to do sex work in..
But even with such vulnerability from lack of rights, they still are continuing to offer and advertise their sexual services for purchase Melissa.
As the saying goes Melissa it takes two to tango, one party can not be convicted when both are consenting adults, its insane and unconstitutional to attack one of the party involved in the transaction in exchange for sexual services, between two fully grown adults. Both are responsible for their own decisions, stop treating one of them like as if they are braindead victims.
The patriarchal argument falls flat on its ass when its not only women who are sex workers, but its also men. Anyway taking away the empowerment from a sex worker and her privacy and livelihood by hunting her clients, is taking away power from the woman herself to choose her own livelihood sustainability options and her own sexual relationship choices. After all it is usually male police officers breaking in their doors and taking away sex workers livelihood and rooting through their belongings looking for evidence to convict her client, such a law is anti-women and anti-power-to-womens-sexuality. And the law enforces a patriarchal attitude, where its the male police officers and male judges encroaching on female sex workers privacy.
The swedish law is a complete and total fallacy and their idea of gender equality is retarded. It is anti-feminist in fact.
As regards forced trafficking its different to a man or woman who deliberately offers sexual services for purchase.
Anyway Melissa when you were a sex worker, you should have been empowered and legally enabled to choose your own environment and conditions when you carried out sex work, and since you don’t want this type of an opinion then you won’t be bothered with it again in replies, so feel free to jump on the swedish side of the argument if it makes you feel any better when discussing the matter of sex work.
Another thing Melissa, sex workers chosen option to sustain a livelihood or funding of a venture is at great risk when the sex workers are seen as brainless victims and are seen as stupid and incompetent decision makers who need rescue from the clients they offer their services to, also when their client gets criminalised… the sex workers are forced to take more risks in a more dangerous environment, while also facing huge discrimination by landlords and other people in society who will treat them like nothing, basically treating them like crap, its amazing if you as a former sex worker can not see the fallacy of the swedish law, there are loads of sex workers currently active in sex work who say they despise such a law as it takes away their rights and livelihood.
The currently active sex workers and their opinions and views are what matters the most, but your input is valuable.
Of course my input is invaluable, I worked for over 5 years in the industry! Don’t try to imply that it is less valuable than that pof a currently working girl. Do you know when I stopped? no you don’t.
I didn’t say anything about what I thought of criminalising the punter. Stop assuming and putting words in my mouth.
‘ stop treating one of them like as if they are braindead victims.’
When did i do this?
Im not jumping on any side of the argument, although it is clear that you wish i would.
I should have been empowered and all the rest of what you said. Who said i wasn’t? Where did I say that I was a victim?
STOP stereotying me, you know a tiny miniscule tidbit about me, that i used to work, dont any more, and dont really like punters. That is Literally ALL you know so stop assuming and judging, it’s shocking.
Melissa its just that in ireland, sex workers rights are lacking and there is huge discrimination used against sex workers, the more rights for sex workers to create a safer environment for themselves the better, sex workers are professionals doing a profession and rights to do that profession must be improved, and any crimes against sex workers, the sex workers should not be afraid to report them just cause a couple of them are doing sex work together, this must not be seen as a brothel, when a sex worker keeps some assistant or another sex worker for safety reasons.
And since they are in a profession, then their clients are part of their profession too and are the sex workers livelihood sustainability options and are used to fund ventures such as student fees and just simply to make a lot of money in a small amount of time, sex workers have every right to look for better safer conditions in their profession.
The swedish law is just anti-sex-work and its counterproductive to sex workers and their rights, it was specifically made to attack and infringe upon the rights of sex workers and smear them and their profession, in sweden the landlords treat the sex workers like crap, cause they would be seen as pimps if they leased a property to a sex worker. the sex workers mental health would be at strain when they are not empowered and are seen as victims that should be rescued from their criminalised clients, who are hated just as much as the sex workers themselves in such a society.
A lot of damage has been done with videos against sex work in Ireland, for instance a lot of people think sex workers are trafficked victims having to indiscriminately have sex with a train load of men around the clock, this creates massive damage against sex workers rights, it increases stigma too, it makes the sex workers look like brainless zombies, a lot of crap videos like that gets used in an attempt to stop sex workers.
In reality there are many women and even men choosing to do sex work, like come on now, sex work is very high paying, when women use their sexuality to attract clients, a student who is a sex worker can make in a couple of hours what she could make in a whole week doing some other profession, of course a lot of students are choosing to do sex work cause of the pay, they advertise their services and they see their clients when they want to see them and how often they want to see them. A sex worker may decide to see 1, 2 or 3 clients a day, now thats her own business who she wants to see in the privacy of her own room, from a sex workers rights advocate our point is that these women are entitled to that privacy and sexual adult consensual relationships, they should also have a right to choose their professional environment to the best of their ability, and have an assistant or another sex worker in the same accomodation with them obviously for safety reasons. Its the sex workers themselves who are actually paying for their own accomodation, they are quite entitled to have their own adult relationships in privacy, without “biddy noseybody” or “mary whatsherface” trying to stop them and report those sex workers freely carrying out their profession or part time profession that is sex work.
Its time for irish society to grow up and stop interfering in peoples adult consensual relationships in a profession such as sex work, more power needs to be given to the female sex worker to be safer, just like the quote “girl power”.
Melissa from a sex workers rights advocates point of view its better when more power is achieved for the sex worker to freely carry out their profession of sex work, in a safe environment of their own choosing, without their clients being hunted or their sex workers rights, reputation, and professional rights being encroached upon by biddy noseybodies.
Sex work is just as valid a profession as any other, and the more safety being promoted in such a profession then the better the health and safety for people choosing to do such a profession.
Sex workers should also be moulding their profession and always looking to improve it, and install a standard level of professional quality all across the board, this should be done in a regional basis or a national basis specific to a particular region and what way the professional aspects of sex work should be best applied, sex workers need to grow up on the issue and take responsibility and control of their profession and stop letting other organisations be their voice and who hate their profession.
Sex workers rights are human rights, and if massage therapists and physios have a livelihood from touching their clients then sex workers are allowed to use touch too and be seen as professionals.
I actually support decriminalising prostitution. As someone who has worked for a substantial amount of years in sex work, I don’t understand why you are lecturing me on how sex industry works, and how it should work, I know all about it. There’s also a shit load of abuse that goes on in sex work, and in the websites that run the sex industry, and will go on forever in sex work whether it is legalise/decriminalised or not.
Melissa, sorry for coming across a bit crude sometimes, its just a lot of minformation is being spread against sex work, and it is good to bring balance and discuss the issues surrounding sex workers, and yes agreed on your claim of a shit load of abuse going on, no doubt that some of the advertising websites need to take some of the responsibility for some of the abuse going on in sex work.
A lot of the websites are indiscriminately publishing advertisements with no real background checks at all, and a some of the advertisements are quite possibly unfortunately trafficked victims under coercion and threats, but from the looks of the brothel cases that type of stereotype seems to be in the minority, whereas the opportunist migrant independent sex workers seem to be the majority, also as you know they are a lot of threats and assaults being used against a section of the majority independent sex workers who are sometimes bullied by criminals trying to run them out of the area. You know all that already of course.
The advertisement websites are illegal though, so how can they be required to create safer advertising, when they are not properly being regulated by an overseer regulation body.
The longer these websites are indiscriminately taking out hundreds of advertisements without background checks, then its only adding ammunition to ruhamas arsenal of weapons and use of stigma and discrimination against sex workers.
And as a lot people already know here, ruhama are no angels themselves either, their history was founded by organisations that enslaved thousands of women who were held against their will.
Guest Sex Worker there is no excuse for what you wrote to Melissa. It was hurtful, cruel and false. She knows the sex industry, you don’t. Don’t try to erase her voice. Wendy, it’s quite telling that when actual prostitution survivors comment on your threads you allow them to be attacked. Not what one would expect of an ‘advocate.’
…Proving once again why it’s wise to read all the comments before adding your own.
Melissa, as another former sex worker, I find the Guest’s reply to you troubling, even though I generally agree with her/his points. I too see these long tirades in response to you as patronizing and dismissing. Instead of talking to you, instead of a dialogue, those posts talk all over you.
What do you feel we need to make the lives of people in the sex industry better? When you say you disagree, what is it you disagree with? What kind of abuse do you see and do you have any vision of support that could be put in place to decrease it?
You mentioned, I think, that you had ideas about improving safety but I didn’t really see you sharing them. May I ask as to why? My immediate thoughts were that you did not feel safe to do so or sure that your input was wanted, but that is an assumption.
I realize I may be too late to this conversation…
Why don’t you read what she said Ingrid
Melissa said: Selling sex should definitely be decriminalised, to take into account all the different ways women get into sex work.
That seems to be quite blatant support for the swedish model where decriminalisation is given to sex workers, yet their livelihood is targeted to get destroyed and their rights to choose accomodation to do sex work is met with hostile stigma and with aggressive people who are going to neglect them and walk all over them including the police.
Melissa spoke almost exactly like the way, supporters of the swedish law speak.
Melissa also didn’t agree with Wendy’s original post, if anything she seems like a converted former sex worker with a grievance of her time as a sex worker, where the conditions were poor and dangerous, so instead of wanting to agree with sex workers rights advocates views and Wendys views of looking to try and improve the conditions, she seemed to inadvertedly support even worse conditions through sympathy for swedens model.
She said almost everything hinting towards her support of the swedish model, but failed to say that yes she supports the swedish model, which will trample the rights of current sex workers, who she particularly doesn’t give a fuck about, being a former sex worker with a grievance.
Thats one way to put it. .
But Melissa also sought to distance herself from Ruhama, so I don’t think it’s fair to just automatically lump her in with them. I was hoping she would expand more on where she differs from them (as well as from me), but if she wasn’t comfortable doing that then so be it. Listening to people also means respecting their decision not to speak.
And I really don’t think it’s fair to say that she “doesn’t give a fuck about” current sex workers! The fact that she supports decriminalising selling sex indicates that she does. The Swedish government has really abandoned this support IMHO and has taken on a position that those who stay in the sex industry deserve what they get, but I don’t think that’s at all true about most of the people (at least outside of Sweden) who support the law. If indeed that is what Melissa supports in the first place.
Be nice on my comments page please
The point should not be whether or not Melissa sought to distance herself from Ruhama, but that she is a sex industry survivor speaking out about her experiences and opinions. There’s nothing more difficult than coming out as a sex industry survivor.
well the problem is that outliers can’t represent the majority. That principle is the very foundation of statistical analysis. And it’s been well documented by a variety of sources that the vast majority of sex workers have been coerced into prostitution. The average age at which a girl starts is now 11, *I think*.
And the argumentation which is being used is not internally consistent. Your first reason is that outliers are more important than the vast majority and then your second reason is that outliers are not important — anything which doesn’t support your claim is an outlier and should be disregarded. Seriously very sorry but I get compulsive about that sort of thing.
Thats a load of nonsense, what you are saying lol.
The majority of sex workers are not forced or trafficked, there was a study done recently in the UK, that prooved that the majority of sex workers are not forced or trafficked, its the same in ireland, its reality.
And no they don’t start being sex workers at 11. thats nonsense.
Such rubbish you guys spread, its ridicolous.
In new zealand there was study done with over 700 sex workers and they liked the law there, its safer.
And it’s been well documented by a variety of sources that the vast majority of sex workers have been coerced into prostitution.
No, it hasn’t. Did you actually even read the piece? The vast majority of research has been done on the sectors where coercion is more likely to occur. That doesn’t make those results represent “the vast majority of sex workers”.
And that’s not even getting into your no doubt overly broad definition of “coercion”.
The average age at which a girl starts is now 11, *I think*.
Wrong again.
Wendy indeed, all they have is a few studies done by Farley and co, who deliberately look for worst case scenario with a naive view of trying to eradicate material exchanges for sexual services, how on earth would they be so silly to think they could eradicate those forms of transactions when it is seen everywhere in society among human relationships.
And for all farleys or bindels biased research or misinformation campaigns, they are always some counter research prooving them wrong, for instance Dr Nick Mai’s government-funded research found that out of a 100 of interviewed sex workers in the biggest city of europe, London, the study found that the majority of sex workers are not coerced nor trafficked, they are freely volunteering to enter sex work as a valid profession option.
It is also interesting that out of the 6% or so that said they were trafficked or coerced in that particular study, a lot of them said that after they paid their debts or were free of coercion, they were freely choosing to be sex workers and remain independent, whats with that?
And anyway just look at the fact that out of the 100 sex workers interviewed by Dr Nick Mai over 90% of them said they were not trafficked nor coerced, and that they liked the independence of being a sex worker freely choosing when they want to service their clients, who they seek to attract by advertising themselves in provocative poses inciting interest to people who want to avail of the service that sex workers choose as a livelihood and source of profit.
So Dr Nick Mai is a pimp now according to Andrea and ruhama? what a joke.
Where the heck is the balance at all?
Why all the sensationalism like saying sex workers start at 11, its crazy to suggest things like that, at least from a western european perspective anyway.
The age they start being sex workers in west europe is probably 20-30 age group, just as an estimate.
I can understand someone’s desire to see themselves represented, or their presence at least acknowledged, but patriarchy and people who enjoy exploiting women would LOVE to take your presence and pretend it’s the majority — as you have done here.
And speaking of which, unless you yourself are a sex worker who was brought up in a woman-respecting environment and who has other equally lucrative options available to you, it seems kind of suspicious to find you more concerned with five mythical women rather than the vast majority. Kind of like somebody who would rather direct attention away from a holocaust and towards Disney Land.
What’s your actual motive here? Is the purpose a personal one? So you can tell yourself most men aren’t total shits? And that fond wish will be automagically true if you just convince enough people to see things through your lens? Seriously, humble apologies for being such an unmitigated pessimist, but something else is going on here.
Actually when you remove sex workers rights, it creates a worse patriarchal society, where its the male police men who start encroaching into sex workers lives and trying to remove their livelihood, sex workers need to be empowered to make their own relationship and livelihood choices, without interference from biddy noseybodies like you Andrea, you’re full of nonsense.
The majority of sex workers are voluntarily choosing sex work Andrea, as its profitable, Andrea, you really are one bitter minded begrudger of womens rights.
Claiming someone hurts your feelings or that their argument is nonsense, doesn’t actually disprove their point. Grow up.
The only model which has been shown to truly “empower” prostituted women is the Swedish model. Decriminalization merely legalizes rape.
I hit post too soon. lol But unfortunately while searching for a quote by Susan Brownmiller, I found this:
“In theory of course there’s nothing wrong with it, but as this discussion over at the F Word showed recently, the reality is somewhat different. If, as feminists have been claiming for years, the IUSW are not the authentic voice of prostituted women, nor indeed the voice of those working in the industry, who exactly are they?
Douglas Fox, who posted comments on the F Word thread, and who signed himself off as “D Fox sex worker and IUSW activist” is the founder of and a business -partner in, one of the country’s biggest escort agencies, Christony Companions. The agency was set up by Fox in 1999 in the Newcastle Upon Tyne area, and has now apparently established itself as “the market leader in the North East.” Fox and his business partner John Dockerty also run agencies in Edinburgh, York and Carlisle, and have plans to expand into Leeds and West Yorkshire; they’ve also “franchised the name into Essex and Surrey with other areas coming soon.”
You folks are pimps. No wonder you pretend to speak for five mythical women. How utterly disgusting. Go out there and work the street corners yourself if prostitution is so empowering.
Anyway, here’s Susan Brownmiller:
“Perpetuation of the concept that the “powerful male impulse” must be satisfied with immediacy by a cooperative class of women, set aside and expressly licensed for this purpose, is part and parcel of the mass psychology of rape.”
The only model which has been shown to truly “empower” prostituted women is the Swedish model.
“Those individuals who are being exploited in prostitution say that criminalization has strengthened the social stigma associated with selling sex….Even if it’s not forbidden to sell sex, they feel hunted by the police. They feel as if they’ve been declared incapable of managing their own affairs in that their actions are tolerated, but their will and choices are not respected.”
That’s from the 2010 Swedish government evaluation of their law. Does that sound “empowering” to you?
You sex workers being exploited, thats nonsense, if anything its the sex workers who are exploiting the men they are targeting with advertising and providing sexual services where they can make thousands a week.
Andrea seriously you need to get a bit of cop on, women are always going to accept gifts or money for sex, its natural behaviour, its also seen in the animal kingdom.
Male nursery web spiders (Pisaura mirabilis) prepare silk-wrapped gifts to give to potential mates. Most gifts contain insects, but some gifts are inedible plant seeds or empty exoskeletons left after the prey has already been eaten (presumably by the male himself!). Males will also ‘play dead’ if a female moves away and then attempt to re-establish mating. New research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology examines the reproductive success of deceitful males and shows that females are not impressed by worthless gifts.
Andrea you speak nonsense and are a biddy noseybody who hates on sex workers, you are afraid when sex workers step outside non monogomous relationships and provide their sexual services for purchase, you are afraid because sex workers in society make your sexual power over men weaker, but to intefere in some other womens adult sexual options is not your business.
As a former sex worker who fully agrees with the original article and even with many of your points, I feel very strongly that posts like yours do a lot more harm than good to sex worker rights.
You assume about others and speak over them. This post refuses to acknowledge the complexity within the industry and many of the vulnerabilities that exist.
You silenced one former sex worker who came here to speak for herself. You are still speaking for us while claiming to be an advocate. If you want to be an effective ally, learn to listen to others. Right now, I see you as an embarrassment to us.
Any sign of of supporting the swedish model will be met with antagonism from real sex workers rights advocates, who care about the freedom of sexual expression of freely consenting adult sex workers and the clients they want to target, as true advocates, real safety measures must be fought for, through the promotion of equality for sex workers in society.
Real sex workers reject the swedish model and they face stigma while fighting it, from a general assumption of Melissas replies it seems she was a convert of the swedish radical feminists view of decriminalization that makes the sex workers out to be retarded individuals in need of rescue, Melissa was beating around the bush, and was hesitant to say she supported it, from her general replies, unless she says different, this is the assumption.
Real advocates who care about sex workers, do not want the sex workers portrayed with negative stereotyping within a rubbish totalitarian law model such as swedens crap.
Real advocates care about current sex workers who are selling sexual services as the main priority over former sex workers, who are not currently selling sexual services, therefore former sex workers are not as important as the current sex workers, however former sex workers experience can be considered valuable, but their views do not always have to be seen as more important than the views of current sex workers who are currently selling sexual services for money, and should have safer rights to equality just like anyone else in a society that freely chooses their own adult sexual consenting relationships, in the privacy of accomodation that they are paying for.
Ingrid, you are a former sex worker just like Melissa, thats fine, but there is current crop of sex workers operating now, that are selling sexual services, the true advocates real main priority is fighting for the equality and safer conditions for those particular sex workers, who say they want less stigma, these are the sex workers who have said they want better rights to equality and no negative stereotyping that generates more stigma, these sex workers totally reject the swedish model.
A lot of sex workers are their own worst enemies, they bury their heads in the sand and let others speak for them, that will take away your rights and treat them like crap in society, sex workers need to speak out more, and create better conditions for themselves, or else they are going to be stepped on and walked all over in society.
Sex workers rights Advocates real concern is fighting the stigma for sex workers and creating rights to equality, any notion of decriminalization in the swedish direction will be frowned upon. Melissa was hinting towards the swedish direction IMHO, and she still has not declared whether she supports it or not, so an assumption was made, until she states whether or not she supports it or not, then people can only assume what her views are.
Also Ingrid, you and Melissa are former sex workers, advocates concern is with the current sex workers who face horrendous conditions and negativity when applying their trade, your input may be valuable Ingrid, but the current sex workers fighting through the fire of neglect and fighting the horde of haters, THEY ARE THE NUMBER 1 PRIORITY, FIRST AND FOREMOST.
And if you think these views are an embarassment, then thats your own opinion, you are a former sex worker as you said, not a current sex worker who is fighting for their rights, who needs support and help, and people to fight their corner against their haters, who want to see them treated like shit in society.
No one has silenced Melissa, shes free to say whatever she wants, but that doesn’t mean that sex workers rights advocates have to agree with her views all the time.
The real concern is with the sex workers who strive for better rights in their chosen profession of sex work. Not with any former sex workers with a grievance about the poor conditions in the profession, and then trying to make poorer conditions with support of a law model that treats current sex workers like as if they are nothing but a threat to society, so are therefore going to get trampled on.
agreed.
The swedish model is a complete and total fallacy as it does not empower sex workers or women, its pro patriarchal, and anti gender equality and anti feminist and its unconstitutional as it takes two to tango.
Andrea you are full of crap, you say sex workers when freely providing a sexual service are raped by clients who avail of the service, your views are so stupid.
Nonsense absoute nonsense Andrea, you’re full of contempt for sex orkers.
The only way to empower sex workers is to give them equal rights and opportunities for safe practice in their profession of sex work. Like in New Zealand, they prefer the law as it gives them rights and respect.
In sweden the law is the total opposite of rights and respect.
Taking away their livelihood or telling lies about them is counter productive to empowering them as human beings. In fact its a violation of their human rights and their partners rights.
The majority of migrant sex workers in UK are not trafficked and choose to sell sexual services because it earns more money than other jobs, a study has found.
The majority of sex workers questioned believe that working conditions were better than in other occupations and gave them more free time.
Other perceived advantages cited in the government-funded study include “the possibility of meeting interesting people”, travelling and the ability to help their families.
The research was carried out byi Dr Nick Mai of the Institute for the Study of European Transformations (ISET) at London Metropolitan University.
Andrea you’re so full of crap, you sound too funny lol.
And if you want to talk holocaust of womens rights and freedon lets talk about ruhamas trustees and their many victims Andrea.
That research by Dr Nick Mai must have really hit a nerve in you lot, lol,
LOL Andrea its about money, if these women can get thousands in a month or a couple of months for providing sexual services, then they are going to attract every tom, dick and harry they can, and take their money.
Just leave them alone.
These sex workers are smart enough to profit from one night stands, they can make a serious lot of money for coming to ireland and advertising their sexual services for tom, dick and harry to pay for and put a hole in their wallets.
If they can make in a day than what they would make in weeks doing other stuff, then fair play to them.
After all, its their own choices, who is anyone to spy and butt in on their privacy and relationship choices.
Certainly not you and your ilk Andrea.
@m Andrea
“Now it actually says, in the context of the law, it says that no
prostitution is prostitution out of free will. It means that
everybody is a victim. If you scream and shout that you’re
not a victim you are suffering from a false consciousness.
And if you try to convince them that you’re not even suffering
from a false consciousness, they will say: “Well you’re not
representative”.
{www.swannet.org/node/1512}
case after case in Ireland shows that women have come here and freely chosen to work in the trade.
They are then prosecuted under brothel keeping laws.
97% of all prosecuted in this field are women
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/2-women-fined-for-keeping-brothel-157159.html
Yes KMJ, its important for balance, cause of a government-funded study done in London, it found that out of a 100 sex workers interviewed, THE MAJORITY SAID THAT THEY WERE NEVER FORCED, COERCED OR TRAFFICKED INTO LONDON, THEY WERE FREELY CHOOSING TO ENTER LONDON TO BECOME SEX WORKERS.
ITS PROBABLY THE SAME IN IRISH CITIES. ITS SURELY THE CASE FOR DUBLIN.
So the management of that hotel in Killarney complained to the police that two Slovakian women may have set up a brothel in one of their rooms. The Gardai set up a surveillance operation the next day and 2 days later a warrant to search the premises was obtained.
Don’t the police have more important things to do with their time and resources?
People need to ask themselves why are there so many women choosing to be sex workers?
Whats the most likely explanation?
Its obvious, the most likely explanation is the fact that these women make upwards of over thousands of bucks a month. All while having sexual relationships, and doing sex work in whatever hours they choose and avoiding lesser paying alternatives.
Name some other alternative where women can make thousands of bucks a month? while having way way way less hours than other women who make way way way less money in the same month doing some other alternative to sex work.
Go figure, why there are so migrant female sex workers entering western europe to make huge profits, when compared to anything else they could do in their own country.
These are the sex workers who are driving the whole industry, and to get at these women by spreading disinformation by saying they are all victims or trafficked is just retarded.
If you do not want less women doing that, then improve on poverty in their own countries and until you can do that, just shut up and stop trying to endanger those womens livelihood and professions and trying to make them look like brainless idiots for wanting to provide sexual services for profit, they have every right to improve on their lives by using sex work as a tool to achieve better options.
Who are you Andrea to say that these women need to do lesser paying alternatives for way more hours and way way way less pay than they would be doing in sex work where they make way way way more money for lesser hours than anything else they can think of.
Just empower them and improve on their rights and safety for fucks sake.
They are not going to go away.
@Melissa if still around
In an ideal world what law(s) would you like to be introduced
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M Andrea,
I dated a prostitute in Korea for about 8 months. As in, not paying for sex. I was her boyfriend, in effect. I fell into the relationship because she was a remarkable person. And it was raining.
But her experience as a prostitute was not remarkable. Many women in Korea accept money for sex. Men want sex more (many times more ) than most women do; in fact, it’s less like a desire and more like a desperate compulsion. That women mistake this is a tragedy in gender relations.
This will always render men paying for sex on some level. She understood this and felt it was both natural and extremely convenient for her.
She never felt abused, by the industry: neither did the girls she knew. She was specifically abused by two men who raped her, but she could have been raped by an uncle or, like her closest friend, by her mother (who sexually abused her friend for most of her teenage years).
It’s bizarre that all kinds of human activities can be transactional but somehow sex is some kind of sacred, pure experience that must be above the marketplace. Get real. And as for power imbalances – welcome to the Human Race. No activity in human life isn’t governed by power imbalances. This the very nature of the “marketplace”.
What about Sugar Daddies and all the scores of women who marry for money or security? From a man’s perspective, the only difference between a woman who marries a rich man because he’s rich and a prostitute is the price and the service. There is no other difference of any kind. The transaction is identical.
I detect a distinct vein of sexual puritanism cloaked in the tattered rags of gender identity politics in much of the anti-sex trade bafflegab of M Andrea.
* That you would even pretend to compare violent rape to the consensual exchange of money for sexual services does such a disgusting disservice to actual victims of rape, you need to have your moral compass reexamined. *
I find this statement of hers – that prostitution is by definition rape – so delusional and repugnant that it makes me want to retch. Any woman who makes this argument is an enemy to women everywhere, in all possible respects. It’s repugnant on so many levels it’s hard to name all of them.
And as for the power imbalance in the trade, I ask you this:
What about the power imbalance when a waiter is forced to work for slave wages to serve the rich who dine in a restaurant?
Get real. Sex is exactly like all other human activities. In many cases, women have more power than men in this transaction.
My ex-GF had any sentimentality on this point pounded out of me. I was a white-knight champion of the anti-sex-trade until I met her. She schooled me thoroughly.
The very last thing she ever wanted was 1) pity, 2) coercion (by those claiming to speak in her interests) and 3) Judgment.
Her attitude: If she wanted to fuck someone for money, usually a lot more money than she could ever make working in some hellish office sitting behind a desk dodging the bullets of office nattering and politics, then the rest of the world could stuff it up their collective arses and eat it. She was going to fuck men for money because the men wanted to pay her. Frankly, you can call it rape all you want but doing so doesn’t make it so, any more than calling the moon cheese makes it camembert.
And you can take that to the bank. She certainly did.
As much as I had problems with what she did, I respected her will and her choices.
Your opinions are so profoundly insulting to female agency and independence that it makes you the most dangerous dupe paternalistic patriarchy ever to have walked in the path of supposed female liberation. I hope you don’t call yourself any kind of “feminist”, because at best you’re a patronizing infantilizer of women. It’s actually somewhat disgusting.
And you can take that to the bank, too.
And one more thing for you to deposit:
What another woman does with her body is of exactly zero concern to you. There is no amorphous “Our bodies” or “our femininity” or “Our Gender” that other women betray or sell.
Your are affected exactly 0%. Your body is not what they’re selling. An individual makes a choice; they’re making no kind of gender statement.
You have no claim whatsoever on what anyone else – male or female – ever does with their bodies or their minds. They have none on you.
A woman owes exactly nothing to the Sisterhood.
My ex would have eaten you for lunch and taken your supposed compassion and told you to reserve it for other objects of your own delusions. I know. She did the same with me.
M Andrea,
All human activity is based on the inequal exchange of services and goods. It’s not imperialism or oppression. When I get desperate and sell property at a loss, a musical instrument or a house, I’m disadvantaged. When I sell my services to my employers for as much money as I can get, it’s called self interest.
Unless sex is some spiritual exercise meant to be above all human nature (and not the cornerstone of it), then all sexual transactions – which is what they are, no matter how you delude yourself to the contrary – will follow the rules of all other human transactions.
All human activity is transactional. All ape social activity is transactional, for that matter. All social behavior is transactional in every possible way.
If this is difficult for you to deal with, perhaps you should apply to emigrate to a different species, because being human is clearly going to be a problem for you.
People working in sweatshops to make clothing are at the bottom end of the exchange train. Some women in the sex trade are also at the bottom. A very large number are at the top – and make more money than you will ever even imagine.
My ex owned two apartments in Seoul after 5 years in her Industry of Rape. There were MALE CUSTOMERS who worked for 20 years who didn’t own their own places. Her story was remarkable *ONLY* because she was smart with money: She made no more than any other woman among her peers. She saved and invested it all. Her peers often blew it on clothing and trips abroad and manicures, while she scrimped and saved.
I asked her once if she would advise a daughter to do this. Do you want to know her exact words?
I’d assess whether or not my daughter was pretty enough to make enough money and be comfortable. And then I’d say do it t make money, not as a lifestyle. And I’d help her.
Sex is not above human nature. Give me a break.
This is why it’s so hard to speak to prohibitionists: they have delusional ideas about human nature and society. And they refuse, refuse flat out to see people as individuals.
For once, try to see beyond your own personal narcissism. We are not members of categories to be manipulated or legislated for or against.
Mhairi,
If someone offers money for sex it’s coercion, but not accepting it? Please: If one end of a transaction is legal, then so must be the other. You’re trying to imply motive and thus make purchasing sex a crime.
This bothers me:
the commodification of women and their bodies.
Male attention and resources are deeply commoditized. I hear no complaints from you about that.
Face reality: Because men are compelled to have sex in far greater degree than women, women have become commoditized *throughout history*. In fact, this is exactly as true of great apes, too. Men don’t have access to wombs: we must fight for and purchase access through the provisioning of resources. This is how we’re programmed.
Sex for *ALL SPECIES OF ANIMALS* is a commodity, the most valuable commodity because it means genetic survival.
if you have a problem with commoditizing sex, and hence female beauty, then how do you deal with getting up in the morning?
Every conceivable aspect of life is commoditized. This is not just true today. Every aspect of life throughout history, in even the most ancient records, has had a price tag attached to it. Economic exchange is the very nature of not just human but all animal socialization.
We are animals – exactly like every other animal. No different. Our society emerges as a complex structure from an exchange-based social order so rooted in biology, in the very nature of life itself, that it’s hard to parse out individual elements.
Men are exactly as commoditized as women. What bothers you, I suspect, is this:
You are required to compete on a socio-sexual marketplace for the attention of the males you find attractive with females that are competitive. If men desire a higher value mate and you find it difficult to compete, or if your monopoly on the access to sex and reproduction is broken through some women selling it at a cheaper price (prostitutes, women who like flings or one-night-stands, women who don’t seek any commitments, etc.), or by women who are much more attractive, then you get angry.
You resent your value being measured against others in what is, in effect, a marketplace. Because make no bones about it: The dating and sex world are marketplaces in exactly the same way as the market for VCRs and houses. This is so obvious and so demonstrable as to be nearly a truism.
Women commoditize men in the same manner, often in exactly the same manner. Are you proposing legislation against this?
The gender that wants more sex – not companionship, not emotional support, not understanding, but SEX – will end up becoming a Buyer in a Marketplace. This is as true for sex as it is for any other conceivable good or service. That men desire, on average, sex much more is a rock-solid anchor of all psychological research. Social experiments have proven this endlessly. They continue to do so. This is also obvious to anyone but the ideologically blind, too, but science proves it with every possible experiment ever conducted.
If you want to exempt sexual attraction and sex from the marketplace and commoditization, I suggest you start banning nightclubs, online dating services, “hot or not” on the web, most television, the Star System of all movie industries (because some aspect of sexuality is always commoditized), and anything else that links sexual attraction, sex and money. In other words, 90% of all human activity. Because, let’s face it: we spend most of our time thinking about sex, planning for sex, or trying to plan for sex, when we’re not engaging in sex. Love songs, ie the whole music industry commoditizing emotions and sex, a good percentage of art, which probably emerged as a tool to acquire mates much like the peacock’s tail, clothing that serves anything but a purely pragmatic function, etc. All of human activity.
Sex is naturally then linked to social status. Social status is designed to get you better sexual partners, those seen as more desirable. It’s why rich men and women commoditize sex and those who provide it: Because they can and it’s what all humans do all the time, they just have more money and status and can therefore get snazzier partners. You can deny this but my suggestion is for you to open your eyes.
If all you want to do is privilege women – some aspects of feminine identity – over men, then please, by all means, come clean and be honest about it.
But note that while you do this, you’re infantilizing women and treating them like babies.
Most women not only have no problem commoditizing themselves, they actively engage in it. The ones who complain are those who lose out in those stakes.
If you dislike this, I propose that you move to Saudi Arabia – there, they agree, and Respect the Rights of Woman to Self-Respect and Modesty. There, you don’t need to worry about being commoditized.
But then you must accept permanent childhood.
You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Either you are an individual and you live in the marketplace of the human world as an individual, or you’re the digested puppet of some series of labels and categories flung hither and thither for the benefit of supposed Greater Identities.
I would suggest that your fate will be infinitely better as an Individual.
Your fundamental problem is that you can’t accept the human race for what it is. Your ideology, ingested wholesale from the textbooks of misanthropy, can’t deal with humans
as they are.
So you need to invent some bizarre worldview where humans are some sort of pure ideological essence, some non-animal lifeform.
I objectify my partner sexually. I absolutely do it. She objectifies me. It is the very essence of sexuality: We objectify as sexual beings because sexuality is based on the objectification of the object of desire.
Objectification is desire. Commoditization is social life.
Deal with it.
Making policy on your whacked-out versions of some species of human that’s never existed is a recipe for gross injustice and rank social chaos.
Come to think about it, the similarities between your ideological viewpoint and those of bizarre religious conservatives with their apriori notions about human virtues are telling. You both come at the problem of human existence with the same attitudes, and it’s why it’s so easy to label this entire branch of feminism as a kind-of marxist inspired Victorian puritanism – because that’s exactly what it is.
Decide to be a member of the human race. Deal with the fact that there are “Others”, and they Want Things From You and You Want Things From Them. It’s what you do anyway, no matter what you tell yourself.
You are a social animal. An animal. Deal with it.
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@Wendy
Wendy says: But Melissa also sought to distance herself from Ruhama, so I don’t think it’s fair to just automatically lump her in with them.
Melissa ironically seems to support the same stuff, that ruhama speaks about, yet never got straight to the point and just admit her standpoint, instead she was just beating around the bush and was not fully sure what she wanted, she was obviously inadvertedly against sex work in general though at first.
Melissa said: I worked for a long long time as an independent sex worker and I would call it selling my body… it’s a matter of survival, doing what they can to survive, not a career choice. Selling sex should definitely be decriminalised, to take into account all the different ways women get into sex work. There is no ‘Choice v Trafficking’ here, it is far more complex than that and every case in unique. The thing that always troubled me was the types of men that were punters.
Now from that general stance IMHO, she is supporting the organisations like ruhama who want sexual services decriminalised, so they can remove the sex workers from getting a foothold in society, as their clients/livelihood AND RIGHTS TO ACCOMODATION would be shot down by the police.
Melissa seemed to be supporting the swedish model.
She also said that it was not a career choice, yet she fully done sex work for 5 whole years, well all careers are a matter of survival if you are dependent on that career for a livelihood.
She also said there is no choice vs trafficking, that is not true, as there a huge difference between consenting choices to be a sex worker and a victims lack of choice to stop being being a victim, no one forced Melissa to do sex work, she done it as an easier way to make money, 5 whole years she done it, she could have stopped stopped if she wanted to and got less pay most likely and be in longer hours doing an alternative livelihood, but no, she would rather do sex work cause of the pay even though the conditions are less than adequate.
Anyone who cares about sex workers, are not going to support the swedish model, when other better options are worth fighting for, IMHO anyone who supports swedish model does not care about the rights of sex workers and this was the angle Melissa seemed to be coming from.
Those working indoors will find it harder to find rented accommodation from which to work and will be put off working with other girls for fear of attracting too much attention. The swedish laws effectively make the sex workers responsible for protecting their clients from arrest, or otherwise risk loosing custom and their means to earning a living.
No one who cares for the rights of sex workers are going to support swedens rubbish excuse for decriminilisation as a counter method to destroy sex workers rights.
the Swedish laws have forced sex work underground, increasing the amount of pimping and middle-men. Now they have internet pimps, who arrange where they can put their ads for a ridiculous amount of money, and apartment pimps because they are not allowed to rent an apartment and work from it.”
Anyone who implies that sex work is selling of the body (untrue) or decrimilisation in swedish method as being the best option due to situations why some sex workers get involved in sex work is only reinforcing ruhamas and the radical feminists agenda of portraying the sex workers as victims and not being responsible for their career choices, now trafficking is an entirely seperate issue to that mentioned above.
Any sex workers who choose to do sex work, are entirely responsible for their own choices if they entered it voluntarily, so theres no point blabbing on about how it was not nice or that radical feminists method of decrimilisation should be considered as being better for them, sex workers need to unite and improve the conditions, and if they don’t like sex work or find the clients not nice, then they shouldn’t be complaining about it, and reinforcing stigma like Melissa was doing IMHO.
Melissa says oh the clients were not nice?
Well look at the atrocious conditions the clients are taking advantage of, they should not be in control of the situation, the sex worker and her assistants or liason with police should be the ones in control, if the clients don’t like the price or the services offered, then they need to be thrown out the door of the sex workers premisis, if they don’t respect them. By using the swedish model, YOU ARE CREATING WAY WORSE STIGMA WHERE THE SEX WORKER IS GOING TO BE HASSLED AND SEEN AS A VICTIM AND NOT A PROFESSIONAL BY THEIR CLIENTS.
Ita very easy for Melissa as a former sex worker to imply by stealth that decriminilisation in the swedish method is a good option, yet the current sex workers are in real danger to be drastically affected by it and in danger from people who inadvertedly are supporting it by stealth.
It’s sad and ironic. You dismissed my points just because I am retired. When you know NOTHING about me.
We actually are fighting the same fight. I fully support decriminalization, I have been speaking up about sex workers in many places, I have volunteered for a harm reduction organization in my city. I AM a sex worker rights advocate just as you are, and I have been for years.
But your methods alienate me. The communication strategy of shouting over others, acting on assumptions, and claiming to be the “real advocate” dismissing anybody with a criticism hardly strikes me as effective. Because it reduces respect for the otherwise good points you bring. That’s what I am trying to get across:
Your strategy is not effective. The more you shout others down, the more they are likely to ignore you, rather than to listen to you. If you managed to alienate another ally – someone in full agreement with the key message! – how on Earth would you expect an opponent to actually listen to your arguments? What matters more – to express yourself – or to make a difference with your words?
Who said that you’re an ally?
IMHO if someone is supporting the swedish model by stealth or generally creating stigma around sex work by saying its selling of the body etc, like Melissa was implying and saying, then you might as well call up ruhama and jump on their bandwagon, because you sure as heck are not truly defending sex workers rights and safety in ireland and fighting the swedish disease that was implemented in sweden to piss on the sex workers, such a discriminatory strategy is currently being considered, because of ruhamas efforts of discrimination against sex workers.
You either fully support giving sex workers rights and equal status to be seen as professionals in a profession, or else just keep beating around the bush, continously going around in circles getting nowhere.
Sex workers also need to be seen as being responsible for their own decisions, and stop playing the victim as a matter of survival card, thats bullshit, there are hundreds of other livelihood options than sex work, if you didn’t like it, then tough shit, why even get into it in the first place, oh cause its easy money yes, well then be responsible for your own decisions to choose the profession of sex work, even though the conditions in such a profession is sometimes a disaster when its not fully legalized.
And don’t be playing the drugs card either, there are dozens of other professions used as a tool to get drugs, but sex work is an easy target, if sex workers are taking drugs, then they need to take responsibility for their decisions and not play a victim card so their clients can get criminalised and they can not, it takes two to tango, they are adults aswell, those street sex workers need to take responsibility for their own actions, as their actions are used AS A METHOD to attack freely consenting adult sex workers who practice better safety and use sex work not to get drugs, but for other reasons like a property venture etc. There is no rule applies to all in sex work, there are differences, but if any women or men wants to do sex work out of their own accomodation that they are paying for, then they need to be free from discrimination and encroachment and have the same rights as anyone else, a wife or girlfriend can call the police about problems with their partners and not face discrimination nor encroachment, AND NEITHER SHOULD FREELY CONSENTING ADULT SEX WORKERS.
The only way to get more rights is to crush the stigma, and fight the tide of rubbish, just because Melissa was a former sex worker, does not mean that i have to agree with her, or consider her more important or just as important as the current sex workers demanding better rights, who are not retired, IMHO, a lot of the former sex workers create huge stigma around sex work, due to bad conditions while they were doing sex work, under poor treatment from a rubbish law system.
I express an opinion yes Ingrid, make of it what you will, i am not changing my stance for no one, and that includes you.
My concern rests with the current sex workers who are demanding better conditions, and not with any former sex workers who are converts in the swedish direction, as they are just as dangerous as the radical feminists, who haven’t a clue what they are on about IMO.
And no!, IMHO your views and opinions as a former sex worker are not as important as current sex workers who demand better rights, not everyone might agree with such a view, but this is my opinion, and i stand by it, whether im minority or not.
Wendy, why are you allowing this buffon to attack sex industry survivors speaking out in your comments thread? It’s very telling.
You should read the whole thread, before trolling and chastising.
Hello,
I actually reposted this on my blog with a link back to you. I think this is an interesting debate. I am wondering if you could provide me with the research/articles/opinions that finally helped you form your opinion around this issue.
I am a trauma counselor in my city working with women in prostitution who have been sexually abused. We also do outreach (harm reduction). I always ask new people I meet in this field (therapy/advocacy/outreach) what stand they take, and it has always been abolitionist.
I could never deny that for some women it is truly a choice, I could NEVER deny that – but I guess I wonder where our responsibility lies in regards to the vulnerable populations who ARE enslaved/coerced/pimped, etc? How do you separate the two? In my city pimping and street prostitution is what I see and street prostitutes are who I work with, and as the marginalized in this hierarchy of the sex industry, it seems like you are saying “so what” to the women in Farley’s research (the most marginalized..
What do you propose as a solution to this debate? Do we differentiate the two “groups” of sex workers, or do we legalize everything for the ones who are in it willfully?
LGBTQ youth, economically disadvantaged women, those with histories of sexual abuse, the homeless who turn to survival sex, are the populations who are in need in this situation and whose circumstances trump their “choices.” How do you view this?
Also, I don’t think saying “we need to listen to sex workers” is a valid argument. There are women on both sides of this debate who are or have been involved in the sex industry.
Thanks!
If a female or a male wants to advertise their sexual services on the internet and have promiscous sex indoors with the clients calling their ads and availing of sexual services in the sex workers own accomodation that they are paying for, then they should have every right to do it, just like a wife or a girlfriend can recieve material gifts and have sex in their own accomodations, sex workers also should have every fucking right to accept material items for sexual services, its their own fucking business as consenting adults who they sleep with, if a sex worker has a problem with their partners, then they should never be in fear to report anything they deem worthy enough as a crime. If sex workers want to have another with them for safety reasons, then they should be given such rights.
This also applies for outdoor sex work, although with outdoor sex work zones should be applied and the sex workers should be feeding some meter system, its safer that way.
Enslaved, pimped, coercion are totally seperate issues to freely consenting adult sex workers, no matter how much people try to mix the two, they are not compatible.
seperate laws should be made to tackle enslavement, coercion and pimping, one size does not fit all as regards peoples rights to equality and safety in a given society.
Hi almostclever,
I am wondering if you could provide me with the research/articles/opinions that finally helped you form your opinion around this issue.
My opinion was originally formed by listening to sex workers I’ve known, and since then I’ve literally read hundreds of pieces of research and other articles on this, so it’s not really feasible for me to provide you with stuff. But it’s easy enough to find. Start by looking up sex workers’ organisation websites, look up what the HIV sector says – they’re a really good resource because they deal with the issue from a health perspective.
I always ask new people I meet in this field (therapy/advocacy/outreach) what stand they take, and it has always been abolitionist.
I don’t know what city you’re in but I can assure you there are plenty of outreach and advocacy groups that are not abolitionist.
it seems like you are saying “so what” to the women in Farley’s research (the most marginalized
That is not at all what I am saying. In fact, as I pointed out, it is the most marginalised who are most hurt by laws that render their industry illegal. I’d refer you to this post where I discussed the particularly vulnerable sex workers and pointed out that if they really don’t have any other sources of income, taking away their income from sex work leaves them with nothing – and then what do they do? I’ve never seen an abolitionist satisfactorily answer this question; they talk about providing other options, which I agree with, but always skirt around the issue of what becomes of those for whom these “other options” don’t materialise, which frequently, they don’t.
Also, I don’t think saying “we need to listen to sex workers” is a valid argument. There are women on both sides of this debate who are or have been involved in the sex industry.
And we should listen to all of them and learn from their experience. Frankly, I find it amazing that anyone would reject that as a valid argument. The first people we should listen to are always the people whose lives we’re discussing, whether it’s sex workers we’re talking about or anyone else.
“And we should listen to all of them and learn from their experience. Frankly, I find it amazing that anyone would reject that as a valid argument. The first people we should listen to are always the people whose lives we’re discussing, whether it’s sex workers we’re talking about or anyone else.”
Let me clarify: I hear it thrown around a lot by sex-positive feminists, that they are correct because they are “listening to sex workers” which is bunk in my opinion because I am listening to sex worker’s also and what I am hearing is very different from what you are advocating for.
Therefore, basing one’s argument on “listening to sex workers” doesn’t make one’s claim more or less valid, because both sides of this debate are doing that, and coming up with very different answers.
In other words, saying “I am right because I listen to sex workers” doesn’t cut it as an argument. Anyone invested in this cause is coming from that same position.
I hear it thrown around a lot by sex-positive feminists, that they are correct because they are “listening to sex workers” which is bunk in my opinion because I am listening to sex worker’s also and what I am hearing is very different from what you are advocating for.
Therefore, basing one’s argument on “listening to sex workers” doesn’t make one’s claim more or less valid, because both sides of this debate are doing that, and coming up with very different answers.
Well I haven’t made any such claim, first of all. What I’ve said is simply that we need to listen to them, just as we would listen to the people whose lives we’re discussing in any other context.
In other words, saying “I am right because I listen to sex workers” doesn’t cut it as an argument. Anyone invested in this cause is coming from that same position.
I’m afraid that’s simply not true. Refusing to listen to sex workers is actually very common in the abolitionist movement. The Swedish Minister for Justice said in the Swedish Parliament that the idea that sex workers should have a say in all matters affecting them was “a strange view, a view which is very hard to attach to the view of prostitution i think one should have”. Many other abolitionists regularly deny that sex workers are capable of speaking for themselves (at least when they speak up for their rights). I find these approaches abhorrent, patronising, infantilising and totally incompatible with basic democratic and republican principles. They are also a breach of sex workers’ human rights in international law. All people have the right to a say in the matters affecting their lives.
I can agree with that, needing separate laws.. I don’t agree with full legalization, which would legalize pimping.
Its great that you agree with seperate laws for seperate issues, thats where real progress can be made for entirely seperate issues.
However, you don’t agree with full legalization, thats a shame, you see theres a problem when the advertising of sexual services for a price is not legal and not fully recognised as a form of legitimate professional undertaking that sex workers as business people use as a livelihood tool.
The problem is the fact that sex workers operating under a law that is illegal, is very detrimental to their profession, health, rights, and equality, sometimes those sex workers seek out pimps and work in brothels where their sex work is directed and controlled by an overseer, many of the sex workers choose that, because they have very little options under an illegal law to effectively and safely create conditions where they can apply professional standards to the best of their ability, so because of a lack of rights, many sex workers prefer to give a cut of their earnings to what you would call a pimp, these so called pimps then arrange the accomodation and clients for the sex workers due to safety reasons, the sex workers prefer to be using those so called pimps as a method for better safer conditions, of course there is going to be very abusive situations with that system, especially from the pimps, cause they are the boss at the end of the day, in such a set up, its putting the female sex workers in a vulnerable situation with male overlords as their boss.
I don’t like to see sex workers as being subservient to anyone, i like to see sex workers create their own set up to create better conditions in their own accomodation that they are paying for, as they are paying for their own accomodation its their own business who they invite in and get jiggy with, if a couple of sex workers want to combine for safety reasons out of one premisis, then i don’t see anything wrong with that, i believe it should be fully legal, also if a sex worker wants to hire some sort of bodyguard or a secretary etc in the accomodation that they are paying for, then i believe its perfectly ok to do that, and should be made fully legal immediately, if a sex worker has a problem with one of her partners, then that sex worker should never ever ever be afraid to report a threat or a crime made against them.
I don’t like sex workers having to resort to using pimps for better safety reasons, i don’t like sex workers under the control of anyone, just like i don’t like anyone controlling a trafficked victims life through abuse.
I strongly believe that the rights of sex workers are a totally different issue to trafficked victims.
I like to see sex workers given the opportunity to be seen as professionals and be their own bosses, i particularly don’t like the idea of male overseers directing female sex workers activity, IMHO, i like to see female sex workers as being under no one, i like to see female sex workers being their own bosses, and since these sex workers are their own bosses, then i advocate them looking to improve the conditions of their premisis when they advertise and sell sexual services to their target audience.
Thats looking at it from an indoor perspective, outdoor sex work is different again to that, so other rules apply for that issue as its seperate from indoors, they are different issues.
As KMJ says, “pimping” is a scare word. If sex workers would rather leave things like bookings, security and advertising to a third party – and many of them would – they ought to be allowed to do so. Obviously great care is needed to ensure these types of relationships are simple business relationships and not exploitation, but you need a legal (preferably decriminalised) framework in order to be able to ensure that. It cannot be ensured where the relationship itself is illegal.
I am talking about pimping as it’s original connotation. It is not a “scare” word, it is a reality! This is the problem I have with sex positive feminism, they fail to see the reality of the situation.
I will not argue to legalize PIMPING, and your argument, in this seeming fairytale land of sex work, is not the area I am coming from.
I am talking about playa pimps, mac pimps, and the regular old street pimps, from the neighborhoods I work in.
Or do we not think about legalization making this category of men’s job legal? Is that something we gloss over, just as PTSD rates have been glossed over in your critique, or do you have a solution to that issue?
I am talking about pimping as it’s original connotation.
The problem is that most “pimping” laws cast the net far wider, and end up making it illegal for sex workers to pay someone to screen their phone calls, drive them to outcalls, serve as their bodyguard etc – even when there is no exploitation involved and the relationship is one where the sex worker is actually the boss. Potentially even live-in family members could be affected (the laws are usually drafted in terms like “living off the avails of prostitution”) although I don’t know if they are actually enforced in that manner anywhere.
Or do we not think about legalization making this category of men’s job legal? Is that something we gloss over, just as PTSD rates have been glossed over in your critique, or do you have a solution to that issue?
On the PTSD issue, I’ve addressed that a few places on this blog. Farley’s attempts to diagnose PTSD through a 15-minute self-administered questionnaire have been sharply criticised by a number of mental health professionals. In the South African case S v Jordan an affidavit submitted by the head of forensic psychiatry at Pretoria University Hospital stated flatly that “PTSD simply cannot be diagnosed in this manner”. In Bedford v Canada Farley herself was forced to admit under oath that she couldn’t actually say that the PTSD rates she found were actually linked to sex work, rather than being linked to other factors that she found amongst her subjects, such as high rates of homelessness.
But back to “pimping”, I’d address this two ways. First of all, sex workers often turn to pimps because criminal laws have made it more difficult for them to operate alone. Off the top of my head, I’m aware of research from Ireland, Sweden and Canada which shows a link between criminal laws and increased pimping. Sex workers might need bail and protection money, someone to look out for police, or someone to serve as a middleman between them and clients. So remove those laws and you eliminate that need. Secondly, bring sex workers within the laws applying to any other category of worker, which prohibit exploitation, and enforce those laws as you’d enforce them in any other industry.
@almostclever
Depends what you mean by “pimping”
Pimping is a deformity term which has negative continations.
If you just set up a bar where girls work mix and socialise with customers and provide sexual services. They pay as half of their earnings to the manager, all their earnings but receive a wage or pay a fee to work in the bar.
If this is agreed, known and regulated I dont see a problem
Take a legal and ligitamit beauty massage parlour,
Whats stopping them running an extra service of “happy endings” at a extra fee
In relation to your original post. You mention that most people you know support the abolitionist view point.
This may be a good position if you could wave a magic wand and get rid of all prostitution. But this is the real world and you cant.
Sweden Norway Iceland and the US have not removed prostitution and wont, therefore I believe you have to look at harm reduction protecting the men and women working in it (for what ever reason)
Do you think a law banning purchasing of sex, criminalising clients will stop a person who wishes to attack a sex worker doing so.
For example how would the law protect these sex workers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipswich_serial_murders#Coverage_of_related_issues
I am not talking about complex shit here, I am talking about street pimping. How do you propose this category of pimp be handled in a system of legalization?
@almostclever
It would be more helpful if you could actually clarify what region or city in the world, you are talking about, when it comes to street sex work.
This is an irish blog, not an american one, Wendy wrote the article presumably as a counter reaction to the current irish situation and how Farleys research is highly inaccurate when it comes to the irish and general western european region. Farleys research has no place in an irish debate in my opinion, as shes a radical feminist with biased views and she deliberately uses a lot of the worse case scenario type material as her core argument, which leads to highly inaccurate data being thrown all over the place making things a million times worse than they already are.
Since this is an irish blog, in my opinion it would be better to keep the focus towards the irish situation in general, and not conflate it or integrate it with other regions on the other side of the world and thousand of miles away from Ireland.
Farleys research is totally junk and meaningless when it comes to ireland in my opinion, as her research was never ever carried out in a fair non biased irish direction.
@almostclever, you said that you don’t think listening to the sex workers is a valid argument, thats just a retarded and ignorant view that you posses, when it comes to sex work the people that you are talking about in regards to a legal/illegal stance, are the sex workers themselves who are creating the whole thing in a specific area, its extremely important that the views of the sex workers are heard by anyone who would seek to talk about laws and how it should apply to them as people.
You also have blatantly disregarded the many forms of sex work @almostclever, they are many forms of sex work, there is street sex work which is the one you have an issue with, but there is also a totally larger area of indoor sex work which involves incalls to a sex workers residence, sometimes those sex workers do outcalls aswell to a clients residence.
There are many different areas to be considered, its not all about the streets you know, thats only a minuscule part of it, at least from an irish perspective anyway.
Now since this blog is usually about ireland, lets look at the irish law model.
Prostitution in the Republic of Ireland is, itself, legal, but most activities associated with it (such as soliciting in a public place, operating brothels, and other forms of pimping) are illegal.
As you can see street sex work is already illegal in ireland, however, a lot of the street sex workers, would not be pimped or coerced, a lot of them would be doing it to feed a drug habit perhaps and a lot of them would also be doing it if they were stuck for money and faced difficulties, so they do a few tricks on the side to get a little bit extra as something part time, however it is probably not always like that, perhaps there would be also instances of coercion and some force used from a third party to put girls on the street, however, thats only a speculative viewpoint as there hasn’t been any independent research carried out in ireland. I will simply never trust the ruhama organisation when it comes to research on that area, given their assocation with magdalene laundries and their members which are anti-sex nuns, so that rules them out of the equasion from my perspective anyway, always giving tea and biscuits and never giving out condoms or even clean needles, and directing gardai activity towards forcing sex workers out of areas does not cut it as an outreach support service in my opinion.
From an irish perspective, it would be better if they relaxed the laws when it comes to street sex work, don’t over pressure the sex workers to leave the area, instead direct activity to talk to them, see is everything ok, look into creating a zonal system where they could move to and be safely monitored, if there are problems with the neighbours etc late at night, create a meter system that they would have to pay to use the zones, that in turn could eventually relieve some of the funds as regards some type of car park for these sex workers, talk to them, listen to them see is everything ok, that they are not forced or coerced etc.
Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.
It is absolutely disgraceful for the gardai to be directed by the abusive magdalene congregations behind ruhama, and force sex workers out of an area into darker more dangerous underground situations, when their clients are hunted down and ruhama gets joyful when men are named in newspapers.
The ruhama group could never be trusted given their founding history and current members involvement with the groups that abused thousands of women, its common sense really.
Now @almostclever, this was a view and an opinion from an irish street sex work perspective, that hasn’t even gotten into talking about the larger area of indoor sex work aka escorting etc.
It would be more helpful if you could state the country or city you are talking about as regards street sex work, that you you said you have an issue with, it would be better if you could state the current law in that particular region, rather than conflating the issue with the irish one.
Interesting perspective. Regarding my statement on listening to sex workers, I have already clarified that position to Wendy so will not reiterate again.
I am in Milwaukee, WI United States – the most segregated city in my country. In my city street prostitution and traditional pimping is what we see most often at our agencies, so is what I focus on. It is also a race and class issue. Most women are of color, and socioeconomically disadvantaged. Most began as teenagers being pimped, and as adults remain in it as an only means of making money after years of being prostituted and trafficked for sex across state lines. A disproportionate number are of the LGBTQ community or communities of color. The women I see have been diagnosed with PTSD or display symptomology.
This is the population I advocate for and work with. I wonder how legalization will benefit them when they began in the realm of coercion and are dealing with trauma. Whether that trauma began before they ever got into the sex trade, or was a direct result of the trade – is anyone’s guess..
Does legalization benefit all, including the marginalized that seem not to be focused on by sex positive feminism? Does legalization help or further harm the socioeconomically and racially disadvantaged women, men, girls and boys that I work with? It seems there is no answer to that question. Everyone seems to default away from the marginalized and focuses instead on those who are conducting business transactions. How does legalization affect traditional pimping?
Also, in my city we have solicitation laws, where those who are prostituted are the ones who get prosecuted and jailed most often. I want a focus on the pimps and the Johns, not on the women in the streets.
Interesting perspective coming from the Irish side of things. I agree that we cannot make this issue a universal one. Each country is different and has different needs. Where I come from, I am completely against legalization and am in favor of the Swedish Model (so far, it seems to be the best approach).
Thank you almostclever for clarifying your region.
Now in Milwaukee Wisconsin, sex work in all its forms is totally illegal, this is again very interesting, from the look of the laws on prostitution there, it seems completely unbalanced and lacking logic.
Lets have a look.
944.30: Prostitution
Any person who intentionally does any of the following is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor:
(1) Has or offers to have or requests to have nonmarital sexual intercourse for anything of value.
Well if you were to look at the law as being an offense, where every adult having consensual sex outside marriage in return for material gifts is committing a crime, then every consensual adult in milwaukee who has recieved a material gift and given sexual favours in return, is seen as committing a class A felony.
Example: A boyfriend who buys his girlfriend a sweet gold necklace and a sweet gold and diamond ring, much to his girlfriends delight, she will have sex with him outside of marriage after such a gift is given to his girlfriend in return for sex, the unfortunate boyfriend would be seen as a criminal under that amazingly stupid american law.
Whoever wrote that law has no idea of natural human impulses, whoever wrote that law must have been some sort of robot with no regard for natural human sexual behaviour or emotions.
Now since the law on sex work is totally illegal in Milwauekee, its no surprise why there are pimps used by drug addicted street sex workers for protection and to bring in clients, such pimps no doubt will get some of those young women when they are teenagers perhaps addicted to a drug and use that addiction of drugs as an implement of control to use the drug addicted victim to sell sex, so the pimp can profit and keep the victim dependent on the drugs, which are then used to control a victims mind and keep the victim under the drug dealers thumb.
Thats one example of what could be happening in street sex work.
@almostclever, Its interesting you say that most of the women at your agencies are from disadvantaged backgrounds and are non white, no doubt, a lot of drugs and gangs would be in such areas of those ghetto areas, and its a common fact that such desperate individuals are going to prey on the female youth and use and abuse them in the area and traffick them across state lines through their gang affiliates and contacts.
This seems like a social issue due to poverty and not really due to selling of sexual services.
So to combat such a problem, it could be dangerous to use police forces to go after the people having sex with those victims, it would likely force the problem into a more violent underground situation not really visible to the public, or then again it might not.
Anyway @almostclever, the laws are completely illegal in milwauekee, the people who buy sexual services can already be targeted, even the common girlfriend or boyfriend could be targeted too, under that crazy law as these relationships very often involves money or material items as a tool used to get sex from a partner.
However to correct such a problem then the socially disadvantaged ghetto areas need real development and cleansing of crime and drugs from the area.
There shouldn’t be a one law applies to all, not all street sex workers would have been coerced or forced into selling sexual services on the street, they have their own reasons for selling sexual services, like paying bills etc, so to go after these womens clients on the street seems to endanger those womens freedom to make extra money to pay or buy something, that is not always going to be drugs, as it would be naive to portray all street sex workers as being addicted to drugs, there are individual cases, where there is real differences.
@almostclever, im not too familiar with the indoor section of advertising and selling sexual services in Milwauekee/Wisconsin, however i would suspect that the majority of sex workers in that indoor section, would be using an outcall service and some of them (if they chose to) would probably be monitored by an agency for protection and safety reasons, a lot of those women would be freely volunteering to be call girls, but of course, to bring balance here, there is also going to be some trafficked victims in the indoor section too, so its important to highlight all areas.
When you apply one law to all in attempting to abolish sex work, in an attempt to combat trafficking and exploitation, then there are going to be serious consequences.
The women or men freely choosing to be sex workers as a professional option to make money, are not going to agree with the victim stereotyping or lack of rights to choose who they want to see and have sex with, in return for gifts from their clients, that they are deliberately advertising their services to, in the accomodation that they are paying for as adults, as consenting adults their privacy and rights to their own adult consensual relationships needs to be respected, to use police forces to attack these people just seems crazy.
The swedish law is in reality anti-sex-workers just as much as it is anti-clients, do not forget that fact, that sex workers will face way way worse discrimination and stigma under that law as seen in sweden, norway and iceland, thus they will face more danger, discrimination, stigma, abuse, and lack of rights to see their clients.
The outdoor street sex workers would face danger of being heckled into unsafe sex, and into more dangerous areas to service their clients etc.
Now, a one law to all scenario in a swedish style model, may combat trafficking as it obviously makes the men availing of sexual services from a commercial aspect, more hesitant to buy sexual services, due to being frightened, however, these men would definetly be afraid to report any real trafficking, if they are seen as criminals, the anti-client law, could also make the lives of sex workers extremely difficult on the street or in the indoor section, as these sex workers will be forced to worry about protecting their clients and making them invisible, thus they will bring their clients into less visible darker regions of the streets (more dangerous), and from an indoor perspective into nightclubs and hotel sectors more frequently than private accomodation.
Wasting police resources to be encroaching into the private lives of consenting adults, just seems not right, instead they should focus their attention to criminals who are actually trafficking victims and exploiting victims.
The women in disadvantaged countries need to be educated about any attempts in moving to another country through criminal websites advertising work to them such as the restaurant sector or house cleaning sector, these women think they can make big money by doing restaurant work or house cleaning work in foreign countries, so they are using those websites and are being brought to other countries for a fee and then when they arrive they meet a representative from those websites who will lock them in a room to be held in slavery and debt bondage and force them to service men through sexual services, thats the real dark end of the whole thing, but its important to remember that this is not the case for all.
In fact the majority of sex workers are probably not forced or coerced into selling sexual services and advertising them, Dr Nick Mai’s government funded research in london pointed that out, but of course trafficking still exists and its terrible, but in the UK, people who visit trafficked victims and try have sex with them, will be held accountable for a criminal offense with no defense, and rightly so. People need to be responsible for who they actually are seeing.
But by going too far with attacking people who buy sexual services, you are going to strain police resources and create huge problems such as unconstitutional problems and massive problems for freely consenting sex workers, who would face huge discrimination, stigma and danger under the victim stereotyping from radical feminists and their swedish approach.
Its also very interesting about sweden and in general norway aswell, like to think of themselves of being great for human rights and protection of the female, this claim gets exposed when both of those countries rape rates and crimes against females are a real pandemic and a worry in their societies, yes sweden has a strange law as to what they consider to be a rape, nevertheless, sweden and norway has serious problems with their indigenous females getting beaten up badly and raped badly, some of those raped victims committed suicide, in particular the case of Eva Helgetun, who commited suicide after being raped by about 3 people, in other words the norwegian system failed her, sweden also has severe instances of their indigenous females getting badly beaten and raped on social nights out returning from nightclubs etc.
These rape rates of the nordic countries shows that when it comes to protecting their females, they have some of the worst protection mechanisms in the world, as their rape rates are off the chart, they are very very high.
However this has very little if anything got do with sex work, but nevertheless, given the general stigma and discrimination used against female sex workers in the nordic countries and these nordic countries lack of protection for their indigenous women who are sometimes badly beaten and raped, then it seems ironic for these nordic countries to portraying themselves as great for gender equality and safety of womens rights, they are a bunch of hypocrites and are dangerous IMHO.
@almostclever, i know you support decrimilisation in the swedish context, as you don’t like to see sex workers being guilty of offenses, however, you must remember that the swedish law is still anti-sex-workers, in fact it is a law to get rid of sex workers without concerns for their privacy and rights to see other consenting adults that they want to choose to see through advertising of sexual services and then seeing clients who are availing of those sexual services.
I don’t think a woman is a true feminist if they fail to give another woman such as a sex worker the right to be a sex worker and full rights to see who they want to have sex with in the privacy of their own accomodation that they are paying for, and not fear obtrusion and encroachment from third parties such as the police being pushed by other women who despise and reject other women advertising their sexual services to men who avail of them through paying the sex workers fee on her services she is offering.
I believe that some women in society fear sex workers, because when men can freely buy sexual services from women, then there are going to be other women who will see themselves as having less power to sexually attract these men and use them to get what they want.
Sex workers completely destroy the patriarchal system in society, and women who are against them are actually pro patriarchal, yet claim they are anti-patriarchal, these women who go against sex workers, are jealous IMHO, believe this to be very true and real.
And guns.
I want a focus on the pimps and the Johns, not on the women in the streets.
The thing about the Swedish model is that it actually leaves the focus on the women in the streets – because they’re the gateway to the pimps and clients, and because they’re the most visible sign of an industry which the police are under orders to try to shut down. The police might not be able to actually arrest the sex workers, but they can still harass them, and many of them do. This doesn’t make sex workers feel safe, it makes them feel that the police are still out to get them. In the words of the Swedish government 2010 evaluation, they “feel hunted by police”. It doesn’t improve relations between police and sex workers and so it doesn’t make sex workers safer.
As for whether “legalisation” would help the most marginalised, probably not, since legalisation generally just creates a two-tier system which excludes the most vulnerable. Decriminalisation, on the other hand, would allow the whole spectrum of sex workers to operate without facing the barriers to health and safety that criminal laws create. Research in New Zealand has found that the street workers and independent indoor workers alike feel more protected under decriminalisation.
(I’m going to have very limited internet access for the next ten days or so, BTW, so don’t be surprised if I don’t come back to this for a while.)
It is so odd how the information we have is so opposite, yet both sides touted as credible. It is maddening, to be honest.
From the peer reviewed articles I have read, Sweden reduced street prostitution from 4,000 to the low hundreds over the course of five years – it is being deemed a success and as a country with the lowest trafficking rates as a result. Organized crime goes to places like Germany because it is simply easier to traffik there.
Someone asked me a question, but then i kept reading it and have now lost it!
Here I am again anyway so if you remember the question go ahead, sorry about that.
That was me Melissa
Q. In an ideal world what law(s) would you like to be introduced
oh I don’t know. i have no idea. I’m finding commenting here really hard, as I am being judged by strangers who don’t know me, or my story. i simply said a few lines about nothing much to be honest. It’s quite scary how women like me are judged so harshly. Surely being non judgemental with all women in prostitution is a good place to start, regardless on how they feel about it. I have never spoken with any escort, retired or not, who reacted the way Guest reacted to me. It’s frightening how people who claim to be on the sex workers sides and totally liberal thinking and non judgemental are the cruellest, and most frightening. I speak in general, not just about reactions here. Apparently I don’t fit in with any stereotype, which is frustrating for those who want to box me off, i think.
Melissa why do you say now that you have no idea and that you don’t know as to what laws you want to be introduced on sex work?
In previous comments you said that sex work should definetly be decriminalised and that you were in support of decriminilisation.
Now you say you have no idea as to what law you want to be introduced in an ideal world, from another commentors question.
When i heard you talking about decriminilisation in your previous comments i fully suspect that you were supporting decriminilisation along the swedish route, just from your general viewpoint and opinion.
Well if you are still supporting decriminilisation along the swedish route, which i still feel you were supporting in your previous comments, then i think you have not looked into the consequences of decriminilisation along the swedish route.
Its a de facto ban on sex workers, theres nothing rosey about it, as maybe you have been led to believe from misinformation, the sex workers are treated in the most appalling ways under the swedish law, it was basically put in to stop all forms of sex workers and force them into a corner so they would eventually stop selling sexual services.
There was a study done by Petra Ostergren on the effects of the law on the swedish sex workers.
Here is some information on the study.
The new law which prohibits the act of buying sexual services is severely criticized by sexworkers. They find the law paradoxical, illogical and discriminatory. It further obstructs their work and exposes them to stress and danger.
Due to the law, sexworkers feel hunted by the police, social workers, media and sometimes even anti-prostitution activists on the streets. They find this unacceptable. One sexworker commented that no other vocational group would accept that the police “patrolled their workplace”.
Another consequence is that the sexworkers are now more apprehensive about seeking help from the police when they have had problems with an abusive customer. They do not want to be forced to report the client.
Another often mentioned grievance is how sexworkers feel treated by the authorities and by society at large. All sexworkers I have spoken to mention the stigma attached to prostitution where the sexworker is seen as weak, dirty, mentally ill, addicted to drugs and alcohol and viewed as a victim. Along with the difficult legal situation, this makes the sexworkers afraid that it will be brought to public attention that they sell sex, so they do all they can to ensure their anonymity. This includes for some women lying to friends, family and neighbours.
The sexworkers say that they feel incapacitated by the state and not respected. They maintain that their rights as citizens are violated.
The sexworkers report having had very little or no help from the social authorities and in any case, they would rather be left alone by them.
Most of the sexworkers Petra has interviewed reject the idea that there is something intrinsically wrong with their profession, or that they should be subjected to therapy or retrained in order to work as something else. They also consider this to be a treatment that would not be foisted upon other professional groups. Sexworkers say that contrary to the official belief, they are not the victims of their customers, but victims of the state. This is not only because they are not listened to, or that the state puts them into dangerous situations and forces some of them to become affiliated with the criminal world, but also because the overall situation makes it impossible for them to be open about their work, speak out against injustice and to organize themselves.
All the women Petra has spoken to report feelings of emotional stress due to the legal situation and how they are treated socially. They have to hide, lie and keep double identities. They fear harassment and ostracism for themselves, their children and their partners.
Sexworkers report an increase in their emotional stress subsequent to the introduction of the new law. The sexworkers say that they now feel more worried about being found out as well as more worried about future income. Several report that they now have more anxiety, sleeping problems, concentration problems as well as problems related to eating disorders, alcohol and drugs.
The sexworkers Petra has interviewed report greater feelings of powerlessness and resignation than before the introduction of the new legislation. They feel as if there is “no point” in trying to change the system (or its direct effects on their lives) and that no one supports them or speaks for them.
Sexworkers express anger about Swedish politicians who, in their opinion, brag and tell lies about the effect of the new law vis-à-vis other countries. They wish that other countries might find out “the truth” about the effects of the law. They also strongly discourage other countries from adopting similar legislation.
Sexworkers are subject to an invasive searches and questioning, so that evidence against the clients might be obtained in flagranti.
Melissa, you have not said if you fully support the swedish law or not, but from previous comments i believe that you were supporting the law or hinting towards promoting it at least.
The study done by Petra Ostergren highlighted the severe harsh effects of it.
Its not the rosey flowery model maybe you believed it to be.
Melissa this is what said in a previous comment
Melissa Says: Where did I say that I was a victim?
And now in another comment Melissa you practically said you were a victim of abuse.
Melissa says: For me PTSD was caused by abuse in my teenage years, which led me to become involved in prostitution which caused more trauma, so I guess there’s no answer to the chicken or egg question.
So it looks like you were a victim of abuse, which led to PTSD in your teenage years, just like you say Melissa, just what i suspected all along, you obviously got into sex work for the wrong reasons then, you were emotionally traumatised which led to PTSD, thats why i was stereotyping you as a victim of abuse.
You got into sex work for the wrong reasons in my honest opinion, you have just said in your comment to almostclever, that abuse in your teenage years led you into prostitution, which you now regret since you said it caused you more trauma.
Well this is what i was suspected all along Melissa, you are a former sex worker that has a grievance about your decision to be a sex worker for 5 years, since you blame it all on abuse and PTSD and said prostitution caused you trauma.
Melissa, not all sex workers are like you, and when you use your trauma as an excuse to create stigma against other sex workers who are currently consenting to do sex work and want better conditions, then i take issues with you, and try to defend the freely volunteering healthy sex workers that want better conditions.
Melissa, I don’t defend former sex workers like you, who regret doing sex work and converted to agreeing with decriminilisation along the swedish route by stealth, which i believe you were doing in your previous comments.
You sound exactly the same as sex workers converted by Ruhama, well what about the sex workers that were not abused in their teens like you were Melissa? what about the awful conditions that they have to deal with because of the stigma surrounding the choices they make?
When you support decriminilisation along the swedish route by stealth Melissa, then i see that as a danger to sex workers who do not want encroachment and refuse to be labelled like the victim that you just said you were.
After all, you did say that abuse from your teenage years led you into prostitution, and you suffered trauma while doing it, this makes you a victim in my opinion, thats why i stereotyped you.
Then you said, apparently you don’t fit in with any stereotype, even though you basically said you were abused, its very easy to fit you with a stereotype Melissa, you are like an offshoot of Ruhama and converted, maybe you really were in contact with Ruhama? hmm
But not all sex workers are victims like you Melissa, these are the sex workers that i defend.
This was my point throughout the comments.
The main focus is protecting the sex workers who refuse to be labelled with victim stereoyping and reject any idea of encroachment and arbritary interference from radical neo fascist feminists and police, and the Ruhama agency.
Melissa you just basically called yourself a victim, btw, it would have been far more helpful if you were just up front about it, rather than running around in circles and not getting to the point, of what i suspected all along, that yes you were a victim, who should have never got involved with selling sexual services in my opinion.
I don’t believe its the clients fault that caused you the trauma, after all you probably did freely consent to selling sexual services, you said you were an independent sex worker for 5 years, it can’t all be blamed on PTSD, there has to be some responsibility on your part too, you are an adult, who consented to selling sexual services, people always do things they regret, it would be wrong to make the clients out to be monsters if you freely consented.
If women can say yes, then they can say no too, you obviously didn’t say no for 5 years as your time as an independent sex worker, i don’t believe you were being raped.
Btw Melissa, your particular stereotype creates gigantic stigma influencing people like almostclever, who will use your experience as a sex worker as a tool, to go against all sex workers affecting them in a degrading way, even though many of them refuse to be labelled with the victim stereotyping and refuse arbitary interference from a fascist nosey society.
So the way i see it Melissa, is that if you really were supporting the swedish model, i believe you inadvertedly don’t care about supporting sex workers who want to be left alone by people who want to intrude on them. The swedish model affects these women in appalling ways as Petra’s Ostergrens study found to be the case.
Decriminilisation along the New Zealand route seems to be better option overall for the protection of sex workers both indoors and outdoors, a study of over 700 sex workers found this be better.
Im not reading that essay, I already said I support decriminalisation.
The sale of sex was not decriminalized by the Swedish Sex Purchase Act. That implies that previous to the law being enacted the sale of sex was illegal. It wasn’t. What the Swedish Sex Purchase Act did was add an extra tier of criminality by criminalizing the purchase of sex. Before the law was enacted, the prostitution laws in Sweden were somewhat similar to the Republic of Ireland and Canada. The purchase and sale of sex wasn’t itself prohibited but activities surrounding it were, such as keeping a brothel, pimping, pandering, procuring, solicitation and so on.
I’ve just skimmed it, and WHAT a judgemental reply. It’s you who doesn’t care about sex workers, not me. You are presuming and judging, something I would never do with any sex worker, as I know how complex the whole thing is. You sound like a bully. I’m not coming back here, but well done on silencing me, not that I said much.
“On the PTSD issue, I’ve addressed that a few places on this blog. Farley’s attempts to diagnose PTSD through a 15-minute self-administered questionnaire have been sharply criticised by a number of mental health professionals. In the South African case S v Jordan an affidavit submitted by the head of forensic psychiatry at Pretoria University Hospital stated flatly that “PTSD simply cannot be diagnosed in this manner”. In Bedford v Canada Farley herself was forced to admit under oath that she couldn’t actually say that the PTSD rates she found were actually linked to sex work, rather than being linked to other factors that she found amongst her subjects, such as high rates of homelessness.”
She utilized the same PCL instrument used to measure combat vets at the VA centers throughout America, it is a highly valid and reliable measure across ethnic cultures. That measure is how PTSD is diagnosed in the states, it is what psychiatrists and clinical psychologists use.
Of course we cannot say what has caused the PTSD, it is a chicken or egg question. Does trauma lead to sex work, or does sex work cause trauma?
Does it matter? Either way there are high rates of trauma, what do we do with that information? Nothing? Do we just deny it’s existence?
Best to ignore Melissa Farley, as she is a neo fascist radical feminist with a disgust for sex workers.
And even if some sex workers show signs of PTSD, then thats likely due to the less than adequate conditions that they chose and are allowed to do sex work in.
When ignorant neo fascist radical feminists like Farley are around, then sex workers conditions to freely operate as sex workers are even more hampered, thus making conditions even worse than they already are, while at the same time increasing stigma around the whole issue of freely consenting adults selling sexual services to their target audience i.e. their clients. By hampering sex workers rights, you are in effect jeopardizing their mental health which in theory would even increase PTSD.
These ignorant neo fascist radical feminists just need to acknowledge common natural human behaviour of people selling sexual services to get whatever they want, whether it be material items i.e. money through a casual affair as seen in sex work, or wheher it be the common wife or GF waiting for her husband or boyfriend to get her a new car, computer, jewellry etc, and a topped up credit card to go shopping to actually get what they want, its all the same behaviour, the only difference is that sex workers are ridiculed for having multiple partners and being involved in non monogamous relationships in return for financial rewards.
The common ignorant backwards society always resents sex workers.
Oh they chose to sleep with 5 men a day and got their money?
oh say it ain’t so, omg so awful, lets get the pitchforks ready this women might have a disease
Thats the common type of negativity shown in a backwards society, against sex workers, or prostitutes as the haters like to call them. Haters gonna hate.
Its none of their fucking business who a women wants to sleep with for money in the accomodation shes paying for or the cars shes getting into, don’t intrude into other peoples relationships, how would you like if people intruded into your life? and said you were a victim of your husband and boyfriend and arrested your partners! and forbode you from having accomodation to see them or a street to get into their cars.
They are not all victims, they are not all trafficked, the majority are freely consenting adults, treat them like adults and stop treating them like kids.
You can not hold cases of trafficked victims as an excuse to go against freely consenting adult sex workers and blame it on them, so you can take away their rights to livelihood or their own private relationship choices.
In fact a large part in why there is exploitation and trafficking in the sex work issue, is the fact that its so heavily sanctioned and people are not open minded to try and improve upon the circumstances affacting both the individual freely consenting adult sex workers and the trafficked victims.
Neo Fascist Radical Feminists, keep citing the swedish model as the holy grail, when in fact its the fascist grail and remover of womens rights and mens rights to their own private relationships, and anyway sweden has always had low rates of sex workers even before their fascist model was put in, and from recent reports their cases of trafficked victims has been increasing, and their model is totally unconstitutional and a heavy burden on police resources, its a complete fallacy, full of mindless rhetoric, filled with bombast and exaggaration.
By the way just because a law model has had a claimed effect in its country of origin, does not necessarily mean its going to have an effect in other countries, since it was introduced to iceland, they can not even police it due to it being so heavily reliant on resources.
None absolutely none, not a zip of the claimed effects of the swedish ban on purchase of sexual services is based on legitimate research and studies, the law is a load of poppycock, the sexual services for sale has simply gone underground and its more disguised now, while at the same increasing stigma thus endangering sex workers and removing their rights while also abusing their clients rights to partcipate in an private adult consenting relationship.
The swedish and general scandinavian neo fascist radical feminists truly are a bunch of nazi oppressors, and they have failed to protect their indigenous women who are being raped and beat up, sweden and norways rape rates are off the charts, even though sweden uses a funny term for what is classed as rape, nevertheless there are real cases of swedish women getting brutally beaten and raped while returning from nightclubs.
Combine that with the fact that female sex workers in scandinavia are heavily discriminated against and heavily marginalised and abused by the police, and you got yourself an absolute abomination of a region for the protection of womens rights and sex workers rights.
There is no real gender equality in sweden and norway, while their governments are playing silly games.
There is no gender equality when you forbid women from seeking to use sex work as an alternative to other livelihood options, there is no gender equality when you arrest a female sex workers client for wanting to avail of her freely offered services.
Guest ,
Can you point me to links to articles/research you base your knowledge off of? Even just names of researchers in the field that you respect?
This is not meant as disrespect to your opinions, but I like to form my own opinions off of evidence – not just another person’s opinion or value judgement.
I do not see Melissa Farley as anything but a fellow researcher concerned about what happens with women in the sex industry. In many ways, she is just like you. But I guess we hate those who are most like us, no?
I don’t think either side of this debate is “evil,” I think people are trying to do their best with what they are given – and I think people choose sides based on personal experience.
For me PTSD was caused by abuse in my teenage years, which led me to become involved in prostitution which caused more trauma, so I guess there’s no answer to the chicken or egg question. At least in my case there isn’t, it all fed in to each other. I’m starting the long road to dealing with it now though.
Melissa,
Your answer is quite a normal response, so many women have had to cope with trauma from childhood, and it really does all feed into itself until we are able to get our head above it all and begin processing our experiences.
I celebrate your process and your readiness to take those steps down the path of healing. You kick ass!
Thanks so much Almost clever, Happy Holidays
x
@almostclever
Most sides agree hat street prostitution reduced as a result of the law
That was in 1999 since then we have had an internet revolution and alot of sex workers moved in doors and started using the internet and phones.
Some reports suggest the amount of sex workers working hasnt changed much.
In Norway there is less evidence of it working (see post here)
just to add in relation to street prostitution
The stats are irreverent in Ireland and where you are as it is already illegal for both parties to solicit sex on the street
The laws where I am at are horrible.
And laws will always be horrible as long people like you are increasing stigma by supporting de facto bans against sex workers.
@almostclever
Radical feminists like Farley, or should i say radical neo fascists like her and her army of fascist devotees , have no regard for female sex workers who do not want to labelled with the ludicrous victim stereotyping, these sex workers also do not want encroachment or a lack of rights to see their clients that they are using as a mechanism to make money for a livelihood option or a part time option to gain funds to do something else like the ability to study, or to buy material items, clothes, phones, jewellry, apartments, you name it.
Its not unknown for sex workers to be able to buy an apartment after a time of doing sex work. That sort of purchase would take way longer to achieve than just doing lesser paying alternatives than sex work.
Its about money, simple as that.
Women spread their legs to make money, get over it, they are not being raped, they are simply a consenting party in a financial transaction. Oh that would be too much for Farley to handle, the mere possibility of a man that can buy the service from a woman choosing to open her legs, if you pay her enough.
Why should a man waste his time buying another woman drinks all night wasting a fortune, and sometimes not even getting any, when in fact all he has to do is get his moneys worth and get a sex worker and pay her for her consenting advertised sexual services.
Its also to be noted that some men are in wheel chairs and the services of sex workers are very valuable to their health and well being, it is a gross infringement of these mens rights when you make them out to be criminals for availing of a sex workers freely consenting services, these men need touch too.
Radical neo fascist feminists just can’t accept that fact, they just can not bear a women making her sexuality a commercial aspect for men to buy and enjoy as a service.
It decreases some females power over men, when sex workers are selling sexual services with no strings attached, these radical neo fascists are only concerned about stopping women from selling sexual services to men who will avail of them.
People must listen to the sex workers who want to remain being sex workers, its important to listen to what they want or should have in regards to choosing the profession of sex work, yes its a profession, BIndel and Farley just need to get over that fact, those womens lobby groups are pure scum in my opinion when they are viciously attacking a sex workers choice of livelihood and conflating those choices with other different issues such as trafficking, abuse, and exploitation.
They are not all abused, they are not all trafficked, they are not all suffering from exploitation.
What sex workers suffer from is severe stigma, discrimination, lack of rights, lack of respect, and general mistreatment by society as a whole.
That mistreatment increases when Melissa Farley or Julie Bindel is calling for the removal of sex workers rights and a de facto ban on sex workers selling sexual services indoors or outdoors.
They keep citing the fascist swedish model as the holy grail, its nothing but a fascist weapon in the hands of radical neo fascist feminists.
Petra Ostergren done a study in sweden with 20 sex workers, the study found that the swedish law which prohibits the act of buying sexual services is severely criticized by sexworkers. They find the law paradoxical, illogical and discriminatory. It further obstructs their work and exposes them to stress and danger. Due to the law, sexworkers feel hunted by the police, social workers, media and sometimes even anti-prostitution activists on the streets. The sex workers find this unacceptable.
Another consequence is that the sexworkers are now more apprehensive about seeking help from the police when they have had problems with an abusive customer. They do not want to be forced to report the client.
Another often mentioned grievance is how sexworkers feel treated by the authorities and by society at large. All sexworkers Petra has spoken to mention the stigma attached to prostitution where the sexworker is seen as weak, dirty, mentally ill, addicted to drugs and alcohol and viewed as a victim. Along with the difficult legal situation, this makes the sexworkers afraid that it will be brought to public attention that they sell sex, so they do all they can to ensure their anonymity. This includes for some women lying to friends, family and neighbours.
The sexworkers say that they feel incapacitated by the state and not respected. They maintain that their rights as citizens are violated.
Several sexworkers say that they feel used by politicians, feminists and the media. They think that sexworkers are only listened to and being paid attention to if they say the correct things, i.e. that they find prostitution appalling, that they are victims, that they have stopped selling sex and will never go back, and that they are grateful to the current prostitution policy and to the policy makers.
Sexworkers feel overlooked in decision-making processes regarding juridical changes etc., something they find undemocratic. They question whether any other social group would have been so consistently excluded from any relevant policy making process.
Most of the sexworkers Petra has interviewed reject the idea that there is something intrinsically wrong with their profession, or that they should be subjected to therapy or retrained in order to work as something else. They also consider this to be a treatment that would not be foisted upon other professional groups. Sexworkers say that contrary to the official belief, they are not the victims of their customers, but victims of the state. This is not only because they are not listened to, or that the state puts them into dangerous situations and forces some of them to become affiliated with the criminal world, but also because the overall situation makes it impossible for them to be open about their work, speak out against injustice and to organize themselves.
All the women Petra has spoken to report feelings of emotional stress due to the legal situation and how they are treated socially. They have to hide, lie and keep double identities. They fear harassment and ostracism for themselves, their children and their partners.
Sexworkers express anger about Swedish politicians who, in their opinion, brag and tell lies about the effect of the new law vis-à-vis other countries. They wish that other countries might find out “the truth” about the effects of the law. They also strongly discourage other countries from adopting similar legislation.
There was a study done with over 700 sex workers in New Zealand, they enjoy the level of freedom and safety the government legality of sex work provides them with.
Guest,
Ok, I am done with this discussion, it has devolved to ridiculousness. Childish name calling and prejudicial language makes you look bad, and it kills any argument or intellectual understanding you may have had. You are obviously entrenched in a dogmatic point of view, so I’m no longer interested in what you have to say.
With peace.
@almostclever
How would the Swedish Model benefit you in america
The Swedish law basic aim is to kill prostitution by removing the demand
The concept is no clients no prostitutes
I know laws vary across America but over all the client does commit a crime.
So how would it cut down on levels of prostitution
In America (except in 10 counties in Nevada where brothels are legal), although our solicitation laws express a crime has been committed by both parties, in reality it is the people selling sex who are targeted – not the buyers or pimps. Solicitation laws lock up the women and men who are in the sex trade, not the people buying or pimping or profiting from sex workers.
This is what makes me attracted to the Swedish Model. From what I have read it puts the focus on the people we need to be focused on, instead of on sex workers. The Swedish government has also provided job skills training, literacy classes, and other social services (for free) to people exiting sex work.
I am attracted to this because of the high trauma rates being reported from more researchers than just Farley. I am attracted to this because the population I work with is the same population Farley reports on (the marginalized).
I am always open to new findings, I am not staunch in my views because the truth is that nobody really knows what works or what doesn’t.
For me, due to the high trauma rates, supporting sex work is supporting trauma of the marginalized, the coerced, and the enslaved. Let me once again reiterate that I do not believe all sex workers are of this population, but that this is the population I advocate for. For me, due to the hierarchy of the sex industry, the marginalized are never the focus, it is always the people who do have agency and consider themselves business people.
My question always boils down to the following: How does what you advocate for effect marginalized populations? Does it help? Does it harm? Or do we simply not know?
The population I work with is a part of the 89% who say they want out, my population is solely those who have been sexually abused and exploited (I am a trauma counselor and domestic violence advocate).
“The Swedish law basic aim is to kill prostitution by removing the demand
The concept is no clients no prostitutes”
– I support this because:
1. With the people I work with, I am against them being criminalized and re-victimized, I think the criminals are the Johns/Punters who buy sex from street prostitutes. I want to see this end and the responsibility placed on the shoulders of the demand.
2. I want to see pimping ended.
3. I want more social services available to people exiting, so they can build the skills needed to be able to make a living and be provided the counseling needed to regain their mental health. Women and men that I work with have either symptoms of PTSD or a full blown diagnosis. We provide our services to them for free and I want to see more of this happening for survivors.
From where I stand and what I see, and who I work with and what I hear from them – Abolishment is where we stand.
In social work there is a code of ethics, and part of that ethic is standing with the most vulnerable in our societies. For example, if I am mediating between a child and an adult – I would advocate for the child.
If I am mediating between a more privileged, more liberated, more powerful population, and a more marginalized population – I would advocate for the more marginalized.
It is called the hierarchy of vulnerability, which is why I find it an ethical obligation to advocate for those we never seem to focus on.
America is the continents of North and South America. You can call the USA “America” ’til the cows come home but the reality is that the vast majority of the 95% plus of the world’s population who do not live in the USA do not call your country “America”. Live with it. Your Spanish speaking and Portuguese speaking compadres south of the border call your country “Estados Unidos” translated into “United States” in English or, in full “Estados Unidos de America” in Spanish and “Estados Unidos da America” in Portuguese. Indeed, there are considerably more people from Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries in America (my definition) than there are people from the USA. Like me, they call the continents of North and South America, America.
The man for whom America is named, Amerigo Vespucci, never even visited what is today the mainland of the USA. He visited what is today Brazil. So perhaps Brazil has more of a stake to the name? The first European person to reach what is today the mainland of the USA was a Spanish explorer called Juan Ponce De Leon in 1513 when he reached Florida. I wonder if “Poncia” will catch on amongst the folks there.
Swedish Sex Worker and Sex Worker Representative, Pye Jacobsson, says otherwise and she knows better than you.
Melissa Farley is not a researcher. She is a propagandist. Like any good propagandist, she presents her so-called facts as the product of “research”. She has decided that all sex work is inherently bad, men controlling and raping women blaa blaa blaa, and then she conducts her so-called research to support the hypothesis. The facts were to be fitted around the ideology.
It’s like when George W Bush decided to invade Iraq. In the run up to that war, as reported in the Downing Street Memo, the intelligence and facts were being fitted around the policy. The policy was to get rid of Saddam Hussein and if no intelligence and actual facts were found that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, (that could then conceivably be detonated in US cities and therefore put the fear into the minds of the US public) then they damn well will be invented. George W Bush didn’t want to honestly say to the US public “I want to finish the job of toppling Saddam Hussein that my Daddy failed to do”. Within a few months of the Iraq invasion, the Iraq Survey Group reported that Saddam Hussein had abandoned all his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs in 1991.
KMJ
Take a look at this
Sexworkers express anger about Swedish politicians who, in their opinion, brag and tell lies about the effect of the new law vis-à-vis other countries. They wish that other countries might find out “the truth” about the effects of the law. They also strongly discourage other countries from adopting similar legislation.
This was from a study done Petra Ostergren.
The fact is, that the law is a total fallacy, and the radical neo fascist feminists constantly support it, the law is very heavy on resources, its basically junk, by the way, not all countries have so much money like Norway or Sweden to be playing silly games with sex workers.
Iceland do not even have the resources to enforce it.
The sexworkers say that they feel incapacitated by the state and not respected. They maintain that their rights as citizens are violated.
Of course these sex workers opinions and views don’t mean nothing to people like almostclever who are only concerned with the few victims, yet totally disregard the rights of thousands of sex workers worldwide who are being pressured and endangered with that junk law model.
Sexworkers feel overlooked in decision-making processes regarding juridical changes etc., something they find undemocratic. They question whether any other social group would have been so consistently excluded from any relevant policy making process.
New Zealand and Germany supports sex workers, they are then much safer.
Trafficking is not the fault of any sex workers.
And they should not be targeted just so people can go at traffickers.
Sex workers are are being walked all over, and its about time they got defended and supported by people.
Dr Nick Mai’s study in britain, found that the majority of sex workers are not forced,coerced or trafficked.
Several swedish sexworkers say that they feel used by politicians, feminists and the media. They think that sexworkers are only listened to and being paid attention to if they say the correct things, i.e. that they find prostitution appalling, that they are victims, that they have stopped selling sex and will never go back, and that they are grateful to the current prostitution policy and to the policy makers.
These sex workers should have a right to equality and not be labelled with nonsense.
Well your response is not surprising at all almostclever, given the fact that you support the same radical neo fascists that want a de facto ban on sex workers and their options of using sex work as a livelihood or part time tool to fund something like studies or to buy material items like clothes, phones and jewellry etc.
Of course the opinions of sex workers who do not want encroachment or intrusion from radical neo fascist feminists means nothing to you lot, you lot are only concerned with an exaggarated trafficking myth and portraying sex workers as abused so you can get your pitchforks ready to go on a hunt against their clients.
Sexworkers express anger about Swedish politicians who, in their opinion, brag and tell lies about the effect of the new law vis-à-vis other countries. They wish that other countries might find out “the truth” about the effects of the law. They also strongly discourage other countries from adopting similar legislation.
The swedish sex workers speak a lot of truth, the swedish officials were lying to the irish government and public in round table discussions, those discussions were engineered by the same congregations that abused thousands of irish women and children in the magdalene laundries and those same congregations also repressed womens sexuality viciously.
No one in their right mind is going to ever listen to radical neo fascists like Farley and Bindel and her followers like the magdalene laundry congregations that abused thousands of irish women and children.
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@Melissa, you are not a sex worker, you are a former sex worker, you seem like some sort of convert from Ruhama or something and you seem to be supporting what they want, which is a a de facto ban on sex workers in the disguise of decriminalization, the swedish model is not decriminalization its a de facto ban on sex work and a license to interfere in sex workers lives.
Theres hundreds of sex workers who would go nowhere near the likes of Ruhama as they are a bunch of anti-sex-work nuns, that want to stop consensual sex among sex workers and their clients.
You’re such a drama queen Melissa, no one has silenced you, i just criticise the stance you take as regards to sex work and how it would affect other sex workers, you are not a representative of a sex worker, as you simply are not a sex worker anymore, a representative of a sex worker must be a currently active sex worker demanding better conditions and to be free from encroachment and interference and to protect their livelihood i.e. their clients.
When conditions are improved dramatically in sex work, the sex workers once they eventually quit sex work, won’t be having such a negative view of the conditions during the time they were sex workers.
You are in nowhere whatsoever a representative of a sex worker in my opinion Melissa, you create stigma and basically support a de facto ban on them in the disguise of decriminalization in the swedish model, which of course is just a de facto ban, where sex workers would be treated more harshly and become more endangered and get pissed on by society.
Anyone who supports a de facto ban on sex workers and calls it decriminalization, is not concerned about sex workers health, safety and rights to choose to do a profession such as sex work.
Believe it or not, its not unknown for former sex workers to be talking negatively about sex work once they contact the Ruhama agency and get converted by them, and then start supporting a de facto ban, yet at the same time returning to do sex work part time and returning to less than adequate conditions, while Ruhama still generates stigma about sex work and tries all it can to put in a de facto ban on sex workers in the disguise of decriminalization, which of course would make conditions even worse, because a de facto creates danger and stigma for sex workers, Ruhama don’t care about sex workers and neither do their converts.
By the way representatives of sex workers, don’t call sex work by the word of prostitution, as that word has huge stigma attached to it, you really are fantastic at promoting stigma Melissa.
Name calling? Must be having a slow day.
1. All i said was that I support decriminalisation. End of. You padded out the rest of my ‘stance’ where I didn’t even give one.
2. As a retired sex worker, of course I am a representative of sex workers experience, don’t be so silly so say that I am not valid. Are you a sex worker? Who the fuck are you anyway?
3. Do you think I want to be stigmatised? Of course not, then why would I promote a stigma. I kept everything personal to avoid generalising, which i hate, and which you clearly love.
4. Why are you being so defensive and bullyish? I haven’t even engaged you in debate.
5. Why do you keep banging on about Ruhama?
Well done on attacking me out of this conversation. At least, I thought it was a conversation, not having some random anonymous internet person shove their opinion down my throat when I didn’t even ask for it. I didn’t say anything about anything, all I did was comment on my own, valid experience. And I never once called myself a victim, you did. Im a fucking survivor bitch. You might want to improve those debating skills of yours, where you don’t result to being disrespectful to others, particularly those who care very very much about the welfare of sex workers.
Melissa says: . All i said was that I support decriminalisation. End of.
Its obvious that you support a de facto ban in the disguise of decrimalization Melissa, its what you were hinting at it throughout the comments, thats why i criticised your support of it, you probably think all sex workers were a victim of PTSD like you and suffers from trauma during sex work and should be saved, you also disagree with sex work being a career choice, i strongly disagree with you there, i do believe sex work is indeed a full time career choice or a part time career choice.
Melissa says: a retired sex worker
Yes, you’re a former sex worker with a grievance about being involved in selling sexual services, you are not a respresentative of a sex worker demanding better safer conditions and rights, if you were a representative then you wouldn’t be stigmatising sex work.
Melissa says: Do you think I want to be stigmatised?
Seems like you do, since you said in earlier comments that you think sex work is selling a body, i disagree with that notion completely. You also said you suffered trauma while doing sex work, this makes you appear to be a victim of your own actions, you want stigma Melissa, then you are doing so good at creating stigma for yourself and currently active sex workers.
Melissa says: Why are you being so defensive and bullyish? I haven’t even engaged you in debate.
Im not bullying you, i am expressing an opinion of your comments and criticising your stance against sex work that you are doing by stealth.
Melissa says: And I never once called myself a victim,
Yes you did!, Melissa Says in previous comment: For me PTSD was caused by abuse in my teenage years, which led me to become involved in prostitution which caused more trauma, so I guess there’s no answer to the chicken or egg question
This is portraying yourself as a victim of post traumatic stress disorder, you said it all fed into you becoming involved in selling sexual services and suffering trauma while doing that. This makes you a victim of teenage abuse and a victim of the system, that should have protected you while you were young, i don’t blame sex work for any trauma you suffered while doing it, i blame the system for not taking care of you better.
I still stick firm to my opinion that if you support a de facto ban on sex workers in the disguise of a decriminalization, then you don’t really care for sex workers safety, read about the affects of the law on the sex workers, and stop listening to groups with an agenda against sex workers.
And when you don’t make yourself fully clear about what law model you are supporting by calling it decriminalization, then i’ll just trust my instincts, i still think you are supporting a de facto ban in the disguise of decriminalization, you keep changing your stance in a very stubborn way.
Melissa you said something in other comments when i suspected you of getting into sex work for the wrong reasons.
Here is what you said. Melissa says: who said i was a victim?
You just basically called yourself a victim of abuse in your teens Melissa in previous comments, this is what i suspected all along, but its great now that you have clarified yourself, that yes you suffered abuse in your teens and you suffered more trauma while doing sex work, and you are now on the road to recovery, well best of luck with your recovery, seriously i wish you the best of luck with that, you are indeed a tough cookie.
I suspected you were a victim of abuse and you got into sex work because you had issues, you also never stopped doing sex when you did not like it, this made you suffer trauma Melissa just like you said, but not all sex workers fit your stereotype, but your stereotype affects other sex workers by creating stigma for them. Its not their fault you were abused as a teenager and suffered trauma while doing sex work, therefore they should not be held responsible for whatever happened in your life. Then you come along and i suspect you support a de facto ban on sex work, the de facto ban is indeed disguised as decriminalization, but its anything but decrimalization, the de facto ban just adds an extra layer of criminality over the currently existing laws on sex work.
I criticise your stance Melissa and what you are leaning towards, i defend sex workers who have no negative baggage about sex work like you do, you are not a representative of them in my honest opinion, your experience is valuable that i agree, but i don’t believe you are in any way whatsoever a representative of a currently active sex worker demanding better rights.
I don’t believe your opinion and views are as important as currently active sex workers that want better conditions and reject a de facto ban in the disguise of decriminalization.
Not all people share this opinion, but im sticking to this opinion. .
I’ve spent a significant number of years as an escort. I have called myself sex worker, escort, and companion. I have never experienced violence. I enjoyed my work as a sex worker a lot more than the first corporate job I held. Most other sex workers I knew felt similarly, and many of them are still in the sex industry. I knew women who felt sex work was a calling – the thing they were put on this Earth to do or the best profession for them. I was part of consensual population you claim to be advocating for, and many of my acquaintances still are.
Which is why I find your tactics so abhorrent and damaging. You give ammunition to all the people who claim sex worker rights advocates lack compassion, are outsiders incapable of understanding the experience sex workers go through, and silence dissenting voices. All these people have a ground to stand on because of things you said in this thread! And yes, I strongly believe this is damaging to the very cause of sex worker rights and destigmatization.
Here’s an article put together by US-based sex workers (those who promote the New Zealand model) on being a good ally:
http://deepthroated.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/swop-nyc-thoughts-on-being-a-good-ally/
Your “advocacy” fails on quite a number of counts:
- “we must all be mindful to listen to each other and respect our differences as well as our common ground” – no respect for differences here
- “Part of respecting people with sex trade/industry experience is respecting people of all races, classes, immigration statuses, gender identities, gender expressions, life experiences, histories (including histories in the sex industry and experiences of coercion)” – you actively downplay and dismiss any negative experiences
- “Respect people’s self-identification. Many people who have what you might consider “sex work” experience do not identify as “sex workers.” Some other words that might be problematic for certain people include prostitute, hooker, whore, escort, etc. Please follow the lead of the person in question as far as how they would like to label themselves.” – complete failure here
- “Understand that allies should support and listen to sex industry workers rather than impose their own ideas about sex work on the community, and that leadership and decision-making will privilege voices of experience.” – Another complete failure to listen to voices of experience by conveniently dismissing them as “former” and utterly failing to listen to a word they say and understand that we too care for reducing stigma, safety and rights.
Not that a word I said here is likely to make a difference… But at least, I hope the readers of this thread will understand that not everybody supporting the New Zealand model acts like you. And that people can listen to others, acknowledge a variety of experiences, and still see decriminalization as the optimal solution.
so you’re not going to say who you are then? Are you a sex worker? no? You just think you can speak for them?
I don’t disagree with sex work being a career choice. it’s a completely individual thing. How can you not know that as a self proclaimed expert of prostitution.
Oh also I can call it whatever I like. Over the years myself and others I knew called ourselves hookers, prozzies, whores, escorts, call girls, whatever we felt like at that moment. Your point is moot.
Who are you to tell me whether I am a ‘victim’ or not. i am a survivor, for the second time. I don’t support a ‘de facto ban’ on the sex industry, and never said I did.
I don’t have a ‘grievance’. A grievance sounds like I’m a bit pissed off with something. I’m a little more than pissed off, I’m damaged because of the work I did. And that’s okay. You can’t tell me that I’m not. And it’s okay that others do the work and do not end up emotionally damaged, that’s fine too. But for me, personally, it did emotionally damage me and now I have to go to therapy.
My experience is my experience, it is completely valid, there is no wrong or rights with having an experience. And of course my experience is valid in talking about sex work. Why are you so scared of me to suggest otherwise? I’m sure that if I was saying that I had had a great time you would be fawning all over me.
I’m not stigmatising sex work you lunatic. I am giving a tiny bit of my experience. What are you fucking on about? stigmatising sex work?! By doing what exactly? Being honest about my experience? By not saying the type of things you want me to say. Also I’ve barely said anything about my experience.
You blame the ‘system’ for not taking ‘care of me’. What system? What are you talking about? You don’t know anything at all about the abuse that went on when I was a teenager, so you are not entitled to comment on it.
I guess blaming the multiple men who raped me and anally raped me when I was an escort are blameless for the PTSD I’m going through now. Oh or the one that blackmailed me, oh and the two stalkers and the one cyber bully. I could go on, but there’s no point with someone like you, you’ll just tell me that it was somehow my own fault for having them as clients.
You can’t argue me out of having the experience I did. If you were a friend of sex workers as you claim to be, you would be sympathising with me, not being weirdly defensive. Tell us again what makes you an expert on sex work? Who are you and who do you represent. I’ve only seen the phrase ‘anti sex-work’ written like
‘anti-sex-work’ by one person before so I’m guessing you are the same person.
‘Stop listening to groups with an agenda’. What groups? I am perfectly, after 5+ years in the industry, capable of forming my own opinions on this subject, but thanks for the advice.
I know that not all sex workers have been abused, raped, coerced, pimped out, as I have been, but all I can do, as someone who is VERY FUCKING INTERESTED in the safety of prostitutes, is to give my experience on how the industry works. I’m very sorry this isn’t the experience you want to hear about but it’s the truth, for me. and i’m allowed to speak about it. Wendy, the owner of this blog, welcomed me here, and said that I could have a ‘voice’ here. Because I don’t have a voice anywhere. You kind of just want me to go away I think.
Now you can parcel me off as an abuse victim but I am a lot more than that (thanks for saying I’m tough cookie
). I’m also very intelligent, highly articulate and well capable of debate, I just don’t like getting into them very much as I get upset. This subject is a sensitive one for me, and I think a lot of others, which is people don’t really hear from sex workers too much. it takes a lot of me, emotionally, just to write this.
So basically, you are saying, you don’t fit into this jigsaw I’ve created, so please go away? You defend escorts who have no negative issues with sex work? That’s great. What about when I was working, I still had lots of issues with sex but was still escorting. What about me then? Would you have defended me then?
Shouldn’t you (whoever you are) be on ALL sex workers sides?
What’s your experience of sex work then? What was your experience like?
Like another well articulated poster said, there is little point in engaging with someone as bull headed as you. You said yourself, you don’t ‘agree’ with me. There is not way you can agree or disagree with an experience. You also can’t change my mind about the experience I had, some was good, most was bad. Now I’m getting over it. I know it’s not everyones experience but why can’t I talk about it, after being welcomed here to do so?
And stop banging on about Sweden and how I support swedish laws ‘by stealth’,. What are you on about. Even if i did support it, why is that so terrifying to you that one ex escort on the internet does?
I don’t even know what the full law is there. I support decriminalising prostitution. I don’t know why I have to say it so many times. I would have felt a lot safer if the whole thing was decriminalised. I think all criminality should be taken out of it. I also don’t want it to be like Holland and Germany though. There is a middle ground somewhere, I just don’t know enough about the laws etc involved to comment on that. Either way the work itself isn’t exactly safe, so I don’t see how any new laws will make it safer, but I’m sure you’ll inform me all about it.
My views (in which you seem to be very interested) are extremely important, I have a lot of valuable insight into the sex industry in Ireland (in Dublin anyway). Don’t try to demean me by telling me that I’m not ‘as important’, that’s a silly argument and I have far too much intelligence to listen to that.
Merry christmas all the same.
Please tell us if you are a sex worker or not, or who you are representing.
Ingrid, there is no point. You have been respectful and polite throughout this entire discussion. I’m giving up.
This Guest person now denies that I as raped when I was an escort. I was raped multiple times, in multiple ways, but apparently that was impossible. Along the lines of ‘it’s impossible to rape a prostitute’ bullshit opinion of some specimens of the human race.
There seems to be this idea going about that prostitution has always been low in Sweden, both before and after the Sex Purchase Act became law in 1999. I don’t buy it. The only aspect of the sex industry in Sweden that was measured before the Sex Purchase Act was introduced was the street sex industry. It was found that the numbers of street sex workers working in Sweden’s cities was low compared to other countries. It’s cold in Sweden for 9 months of the year! What do you expect? Also, how could even this most visible aspect of sex work be measured accurately when even before the 1999 ban on sex purchase came in, surrounding activities like pimping, pandering, procuring, keeping a brothel, solicitation and so on was already criminalized? Sex work was already operating to some extent in the shadows in Sweden even before the Sex Purchase Act came into effect.
What are your sources? The US State Department? The Swedish Government? A hunch? Even the Swedish government in its own report last year said that street sex work was reduced by half.
@Mellisa
Melissa says: You just think you can speak for them?
Yes, i do speak for sex workers who fit neither the victim tag nor the trafficked tag, i defend these sex workers rights.
Melissa Says: Oh also I can call it whatever I like
Advocates don’t call sex work by the derogatory name of prostitution, the term prostitution or prostitutes needs to be avoided at all times due to the stigma attached to it, sex work and sex workers are a less stigmatising term to use. I disagree with what your friends in sex work called themselves, i don’t agree with any derogatory names for sex work, i believe many sex workers are very irresponsible and are their own worst enemies..
Melissa says: Who are you to tell me whether I am a ‘victim’ or not.
You basically just said you were a victim of abuse in your teenage years, and said you suffered trauma while you were doing sex work. You basically just wrote the victim persona yourself.i only suspected you were a victim, but thanks for bringing clairity, and good luck with the therapy, all the best with that and yes you a survivor, i admire that.
Melissa says : I don’t support a ‘de facto ban’ on the sex industry, and never said I did.
Well by hinting at supporting a de facto ban in the disguise of decriminalization, then you were seemingly inadvertedly supporting a de facto ban called the swedish model, i believe you have been led to believe that the de facto ban was good through following disinformation. I blame the people spreading disinformation that convinced you it could be good.
Melissa says: I don’t have a ‘grievance’. A grievance sounds like I’m a bit pissed off with something.
Yes you are pissed off about the fact that you were a sex worker seeing clients that you now think were not so nice, you come on a blog and call those clients not so nice.
Melissa says: I’m not stigmatising sex work you lunatic. I am giving a tiny bit of my experience. What are you fucking on about? stigmatising sex work?! By doing what exactly?
Example of you creating stigma = Melissa says: I guess blaming the multiple men who raped me and anally raped me when I was an escort are blameless for the PTSD I’m going through now.
It couldn’t have been rape if you consented to them having sex with you, if a woman can say no, then she can say yes too, you need to take a level of responsibility PTSD aside, about the fact that you said yes to those men to do sexual things to you.
I don’t agree that they raped you. Wouldn’t you think that if you agreed that one client was raping you? Then you should have stopped!, why continue to see multiple clients and take their money? You said yes to them for them money, it was not rape. It could never be classed as rape if you said yes to them paying you to have sex with you, using PTSD as an excuse doesn’t really cut it to be honest.
Its like saying oh but i took another mans money and agreed to have sex with him and was raped by him, but its all his fault, i have PTSD i was a victim etc. I will continue seeing more clients and take their money and then do sexual services, hmm there has to be a level of responsibility for your own actions there, you were taking their money and having sex with them for 5 years and you are still here and a tough cookie to boot.
The clients should not be guilty of rape just because you offered sexual services to them for money, this is where safety comes in, wouldn’t it have been better for you if you were not hassled by them into doing things you didn’t want to do in sex? after all, if you were in a more safer environment you could tell them to go and fuck themselves if you didn’t want to do things you didn’t like, if they tried any crap, then you could just always call the police and not fear reporting a crime. Wouldn’t it have been so much better if you could have had a friend with you? for a more safer environment and not fear the police shutting you guys down as a brothel.
Melissa says: If you were a friend of sex workers as you claim to be, you would be sympathising with me, not being weirdly defensive.
But you are not a sex worker anymore, you are out of the game and now generate stigma toward it in my opinion that could have consequences for currently active sex workers. I do sympathise with you in the fact that the system failed you as a teenager.
Melissa says: You kind of just want me to go away I think.
No, i don’t mind giving your thoughts on the debate, but i don’t agree with you on many things, so i criticise any thing you say that i feel is inaccurate.
Melissa says : You defend escorts who have no negative issues with sex work? That’s great. What about when I was working, I still had lots of issues with sex but was still escorting. What about me then? Would you have defended me then?
Yes i support sex workers with no negative baggage about sex work. I would have supported you too while you were a sex worker, if you wanted better conditions.
Melissa says: Shouldn’t you (whoever you are) be on ALL sex workers sides?
But you are not a sex worker anymore, you are a former sex worker and not active, i have already told you, i advocate and support currently active sex workers that have no negative baggage about being a sex worker.
Melissa says : Like another well articulated poster said, there is little point in engaging with someone as bull headed as you.
You could always just ignore, the other user almostclever already has ignored any of my views. No one is forcing you to reply to my comments.
Melissa says: I know it’s not everyones experience but why can’t I talk about it, after being welcomed here to do so?
Tough cookie, you’re such a drama queen, im not stopping you from talking about anything, its not even my blog, its Wendy’s, as long as im alowed to comment here, then i criticise views i think are misleading, no one is stopping you from talking.
Melissa says: And stop banging on about Sweden and how I support swedish laws ‘by stealth’,. Even if i did support it
I still feel you support it. The law affects sex workers in negative ways.
Melissa says: also don’t want it to be like Holland and Germany though.
Germany is not so bad. don’t believe the disinformation about sex work being bad there.
Melissa says: Either way the work itself isn’t exactly safe, so I don’t see how any new laws will make it safer, but I’m sure you’ll inform me all about it.
I disagree completely about your notion that any laws can not improve the conditions of sex work and the safety of sex workers. Damn right i’ll inform you that the New Zealand model dramatically improved the conditions of sex work and the safety of sex workers. There was a study of over 700 sex workers that confirmed this.
Melissa says: My views (in which you seem to be very interested) are extremely important, I have a lot of valuable insight into the sex industry in Ireland (in Dublin anyway). Don’t try to demean me by telling me that I’m not ‘as important’, that’s a silly argument and I have far too much intelligence to listen to that.
I still feel your views and opinions are not as important as currently active sex workers who have no baggage about sex work. Make of it what you will, but that is my opinion and im not changing it, i basically know everything you know about sex work, your experiences is nothing new, but i have never said that it was not valuable, all i said was that i consider currently active sex workers fighting for improved laws as being more important, than former sex workers who had bad experiences while doing sex work, no doubt due to the horrendous conditions that bad laws generate.
Melissa says: who you are representing.
I advocate sex work rights to equality and safety.
Gosh, i disagree with you on some things, its only an opinion, you have yours too.
Have you ever been a sex worker? You can’t just say you are an ‘advocate’ without anything else about who you are. I have a feeling that you won’t be revealing who you are though.
It’s fine to have differing opinions. Indeed I am not trying quash yours, as you have been doing to me.
I don’t support the swedish model. I don’t support it because i don’t know enough about it. I don’t know enough about any model to say that I support it or not. Why is it so important to you?
How can you deny that I was raped by clients when I said that I was? Are you also saying that it is impossible to rape a prostitute? Of course you wouldn’t say that, so why are you saying it to me? That attitude is APPALLING. Without knowing anything of these rapes, you are going to presume and judge a situation you know nothing about?! You really are clutching at straws.
I am simply saying that my experience is valid and valuable, irrespective of how that informs my opinion. I do feel that I have a better idea on how the sex industry works than you do, however. I’m not a drama queen in the slightest, although apparently what we see in others is a reflection of ourselves…
Unless you’ve been a sex worker, or are a sex worker, why should I listen to you?
Also why do you keep saying that you blame the ‘system’ for the abuse I went through as a teenager? the only person to blame there is the man that abused me and pimped me out.
Are you a sex worker or not? Cos apparently if Ingrid and my views are not ‘as important’ as ‘current escorts’ and you’re not even an escort yourself why are your views so important?
I feel like you have an agenda against sex work Melissa, just a vibe im picking up from you.
Melissa says: How can you deny that I was raped by clients when I said that I was? Are you also saying that it is impossible to rape a prostitute?
I don’t believe you were raped by clients if you took their money and said yes to have sex with them, i don’t consider using PTSD as being a valid excuse that you were raped, when i don’t think you were. I never said that a sex worker can not be raped, but in certain circumstances they can, i don’t agree you were raped if you were an independent sex worker for 5 years taking mens money in return for sex, this was a yes to sex on your part, not a no.
Melissa says: I am simply saying that my experience is valid and valuable,
Never once in the thread did i say your experience was not valuable, however i don’t consider you as important as currently active sex workers still in the game demanding better rights. Thats my opinion.
Melissa says: I don’t support the swedish model. I don’t support it because i don’t know enough about it.
GOOD!, im glad you’re starting to see some sense, because in previous comments i felt that you were supporting the swedish de facto ban on sex workers.
Melissa says: Also why do you keep saying that you blame the ‘system’ for the abuse I went through as a teenager?
I feel the system should have protected you better from the abuse done to you in your teenage years. Its not your fault, its the systems fault for failing to keep you away from abuse.
Melissa says: the only person to blame there is the man that abused me and pimped me out.
Well from your first comment on the thread you said you were an independent sex worker for 5 years, why is it now that you are only starting to say that you were pimped out and abused? maybe before you went fully independent?
If you were really abused by that man who forced you to have sex with people you did not want to have sex with……
(1) Then yes, i would certainly class you as being raped and badly used and abused. Why did you call yourself an escort in the comment you made when you said you were being raped, why didn’t you call yourself an abused victim in that situation? I wouldn’t consider you a sex worker in that situation, i consider you a victim in the hands of an abusive controller.
(2) If you were a consenting fully independent sex worker for 5 years, like you said in your first comment, then i don’t think you were being raped if you accepted money and said yes to sex.
There is a difference between 1 and 2, the first one is involuntary sex, the 2nd one is voluntary if you were independent for 5 years, this is my opinion.
Im sure ruhmana would say you were raped in both situations, i disagree completely.
And another thing, its not unknown for women in your circumstances to recieve support from the Ruhama NGO, and agreeing with their bullshit to get their free services like massage therapy etc, and then continue to do sex work on the side while they are attempting to bring in a de facto ban and giving you free services. And in return for their free services women with a grievance about sex work support ruhamas views and foolishly think a de facto ban in the disguise of decriminalization is good for them, when in fact reports from swedish sex workers tell a much different story about the dreadful affects of the de facto ban.
Now im not saying this is you, im just saying its not unknown for women in your situation to be doing the above, its bad because it affects currently active sex workers who do not want encroachment and intrusion.
There should be an organisation in Ireland both fully supports sex workers who want to be sex workers and supports people who do not want to be sex workers anymore.
Ruhama is not helping, they make things much worse.
What is this ‘system’ you speak of? A man is responsible for the abuse. No ‘system’.
You cannot deny that I was raped. Do you realise how bad you are making yourself look for speaking to me like this? if you knew ANYTHING about sex work you would know how easy it is for a sex worker to get raped/attacked.
It’s just appalling and so disrespectful that you would even hint at that, let alone blatantly deny it as you have done. You think I’m making it up? You cannot deny it, as you have nothing to do with it. The only person who can deny it are the men involved, and they wouldn’t even deny it. You do know that this is a massive myth about prostitution, that they can’t get raped…? You know you are encouraging this myth with your fucking ridiculous notions? How dare you for speaking to me like that, you are the LAST person i’d want on my side if I was still working. You are still trying to judge my situation, of which you know next to nothing.
I was raped as an escort. as an independent escort.
This is fact. I am not divulging details of these rapes to randomers on the internet, sorry.
Yours is such a ridiculous attitude to have that I am not even engaging in further conversation about it.
This attitude disgusts me and you are no longer worth speaking to on any kind of intelligent level.
You still havent’ said whether you are a sex worker yet, so i’m taking that lack of response as a negative, and therefore, nothing of what you say has any meaning or substance behind it, as you have no idea what you are talking about.
@Ingrid
Again for the last time, who said i was your ally or an ally of the organisations you represent? Just because i agree with some of your points and the organisations that you represent, does not mean that i am ally of you or your organisation.
I have already stated that i only support currently active sex workers fighting for better rights, you are a former sex worker Ingrid, i don’t consider the views of former sex workers as being on a level playing field with currently active sex workers demanding better rights and becoming scared to death of the consequences of a swedish model de facto ban in the disguise of decriminalization.
The swedish model is nothing but a de facto ban on sex work and sex workers, it basically gives the law makers free legality to treat the sex workers and their clients in appalling ways.
I am expressing an opinion here, i couldn’t give a flying fuck what others make of it, im not changing my opinion to suit any other organisations or others claiming to be supporting currently active sex workers, i only comment on what i feel is misleading.
For instance i agree with some things the sex workers alliance of ireland fight for, but i don’t agree with them giving a link on their website to crazy dogmatic research done by the magdalene laundry congregations that enslaved thousands of irish women and children, for instance that crazy dogmatic study done by the magdalene launfry congregations is advertised on the SWAI website even though that crazy study was funded by the magdalene laundry congregations that repressed womens sexuality, the foreword of that crazy study was written by a nun that was accused of failing to report abuse while she was in power at the laundry slave camps.
Yet SWAI claim they support sex workers? Well you are not supporting sex workers if you advertise crazy dogmatic research on your website carried out by organisations that want a de facto ban, SWAI have not even generated a sex workers march, they are way behind other sex workers organisations, when it comes to defending sex work.
Turn Off The Red Light and Ruhama are constantly spreading disinformation all over the news media outlets, and Turn Off The Blue Light and SWAI are not even countering all that disinformation properly, they need to start organising events of their own. They are not even united.
The nuns are kicking their ass.
FFS women fight back and just stop agreeing or condoning any support of a de facto ban in the disguise of decriminalization.
@Melissa says: You cannot deny that I was raped, I was raped as an escort. as an independent escort.
I don’t think you were raped as an independent sex worker, if a client paid you for sex and you said yes to it, how convenient for you to say that after you took their money and they had sex with you, to say then that you were raped by them. You make it almost appear as if all your clients that paid you for sex are rapists, i don’t believe that.
By the way, it seems like you took whatever they gave you only for the money, and suffered trauma after you kept doing that for years, you must really hate sex now.
I don’t believe that men were just walking into your premisis as clients when you were independent and raping you on sight, you took their money, and you gave them sex, thats not rape if you agreed to that, it seems like you just only done it for the money to survive and you hated sex. You really should have called it fucking quits after someone abused you and pimped you out. There was no need to become an independent sex worker, if you were already traumatised, you could have done alternative options than sex work, but no!, the money is too good in sex work, so you put up with it and suffered more trauma as a result.
Melissa says: This attitude disgusts me and you are no longer worth speaking to on any kind of intelligent level.
Im not asking you to listen to my views, no one is forcing you to reply, im only expressing an opinion.
Stop getting so agitated, because i have a different opinion as to what ruhama were maybe telling you.
Yes i blame the system for the abuse you suffered. You should have never ended up being in the hands of an abusive controller.
Sweetheart.
I’m going to make this very easy for you to understand;
If I go see a client, and he has sex with me anally without my consent, that is rape. Not all my clients raped me, but three of them did. This happened, such is life.
If I go see a client, and once I’m inside he makes me uneasy and I try to leave, and he has sex with me without my consent, that is also rape.
I didn’t get into escorting for the money, I did it for other reasons. It is a very complicated psychological issue. Not everything is as clear cut and black and white as you want to see it. But you should know all of the complexities involved as a self proclaimed expert on prostitution.
What is this system you are talking about? Why can’t you just blame the man involved?
Why do you keep talking about Ruhama in relation to me? I’ve never had any interaction with them.
You don’t need to listen to me either, but you seem to want to very very much.
So you’re not a sex worker then? Why can’t you answer the question?
Melissa says : If I go see a client, and he has sex with me anally without my consent, that is rape. If I go see a client, and once I’m inside he makes me uneasy and I try to leave, and he has sex with me without my consent, that is also rape.
But you went to see them, in a way thats a little bit consenting, and not really a random attack of rape as such, if you took their money before you got into sexual motions with them, and fully went through with the motions even though you didn’t like it, what really can be classed as rape in that situation, theres two sides to every story. Im not convinced that you were raped as an independent sex worker. Oh what so you just walked in there and right away he shut the door in your face and raped you? I find that very hard to believe, i believe you got into a sexual encounter with him and felt uneasy once he started going through the motions, what so you told him stop in the middle of it?
Melissa you knew full well what would happen if you visited a client, without any protection, if the situation during the encounter was getting bad, then what platform had you to fall back on? how is a girl like you going to stop a guy from having sex with you, once you started going through the motions, you agreed to meet him probably late at night in his flat, while you were all alone, what the heck did you expect without any protection?
If you started going through the motions and wanted to stop then you had no real platform to fall on.
Why is it that men always get blamed for rape, damn those slut walks events aswell, a burden of responsibility lays with the woman too, for instance, a woman walking down a street naked in the middle of night is somewhat responsible if she gets attacked by a random stranger.
Its not all the mens fault in these sitiuations, they are animals with uncontrollable impulses just like women.
Sweden went really overboard as to what they consider as being rape.
If a woman was just minding their own business and not attracting attention, and a guy just jumps out of nowhere and attacks her and has intercourse with her, that is rape, real rape, where violence came unexpectedly.
The sex workers supporting better and safer conditions on the game, are what really matters in these debates.
Melissa says: you’ll just tell me that it was somehow my own fault for having them as clients.
In a way yes, if you suffered abuse before you were an independent sex worker, then you should have called it quits, of course you would suffer more trauma if you got into it for bad reasons.
However i blame the system for now allowing you a safer platform to be safe while choosing to do sex work.
During your time as an independent sex worker, the conditions must have been terrible, if a client assaulted you or forced you to do things you didn’t want to do after you accepted their money in return for sex, then a platform should have been there for you to hire protection or operate with a friend, this then should not have be classed as a brothel, you also should have never been in fear to report abusive clients that caused you trauma or assaulted you.
The swedish de facto ban on sex work, makes the sex workers afraid to report abusive clients, because the sex workers don’t want to get shut down by landlords.
Petra Ostragrens research = Another consequence of the swedish law is that the sexworkers are now more apprehensive about seeking help from the police when they have had problems with an abusive customer. They do not want to be forced to report the client.
In New Zealand the sex workers have no such fear of reporting abusive clients, and neither should any other sex workers in vulnerable situations like you were Melissa.
However i blame the system for not allowing you a safer platform to be safe while choosing to do sex work.*
mistake corrected.
.
so you’re not a sex worker then?
You agreed to go meet a client for sex Melissa.
There are many definitions of rape.
Rape definition: The act of forcing a person to engage in sexual activity
Did he really force you to go meet him for sexual activity?
You voluntarily agree to go meet up for sexual activity.
And you went through the motions of going there and becoming involved in a sexual situation where you had no backbone to forcibly end the encounter.
Its not all about the men Melissa.
Women play a part too.
I was raped three times by three different clients. You are a joke.
So are you a sex worker?
are you a sex worker or not Guest?
Men only get portrayed as monsters in those situations just because they are the ones with more physical strength and have a more masculine character.
What is influencing mens masculinity and forcing them to use their physical strength in those situations where they can not control their impulses ? its the sexual advances from women of course.
Women play a part too in violent sexual encounters.
Radical feminists haven’t a clue what they are talking about. They blame everything on man, man, man. Next those Radical Feminists will becoming men themselves and will never be women again.
are you a sex worker?
Why can’t you answer the question?
@Melissa
I respect your bravery and admire your strength for having the courage to open up and tell about the some of the bad experiences you suffered when you were selling sexual services. I know that must have a been a very hard and emotional thing for you to do, to tell about your bad experiences while you were selling sexual services and also when you were under the control of someone that abused you. I admire your great courage for speaking up about some of the bad situations you found yourself in, you truly are one tough little cookie and a very admirable person.
I don’t always agree with everything you say though about sex work in general and i also feel that you were putting yourself into dangerous situations that were always going to have the potential to cause you more trauma like that of which you said you suffered from in your teenage years (Please be more careful in future) I also find it strange how you could keep offering and selling sexual services to people, even if you think that some of them raped you. I don’t really feel you got involved in sex work for the right reasons, which leads to the conclusion were you really an escort or a victim of teenage abuse who was putting herself into dangerous situations only to potentially suffer more trauma? I’ll favour the latter.
I suspect you were emotionally traumatised deep down and you were putting yourself into potentially very dangerous situations when you were meeting up for sex, you put yourself into a situation where you agreed to meet up for sex and you had no way to escape the sexual encounter once it was initiated, where was your support on the outcall if things got sour? Where was your panic button that would call your protection? why was no one monitoring you in case something went wrong? Why even go through with putting yourself into a potentially very dangerous situation without any support at all in case something bad happened to you in an initiated sexual encounter with people you barely even know?
How could you be classed as a sex worker or an escort in those situations at all? the more you are starting to describe what happened, the more im starting to see in you from those times, a psychologically damaged and abused girl, who put herself into wild and potentially dangerous situations without any real safety net at all, as a consequence of that you suffered even more trauma and damage than what was inflicted on you in your teenage years.
Damn it, i hope you’re ok.
You saw some of my comments attacking anything got to do with talk about the swedish model, this model just makes things a way worse for sex workers IMO, thats why i attack it a lot. Like for example under the swedish model if a sex worker had an abusive client, then the sex worker would feel fear to report the problem , because the police would know where the sex worker was operating from and will look to intrude on their privacy and go through their stuff to get a conviction for their clients even when not all of the sex workers clients would ever try to hurt them. Sex workers should not be made to feel fear about reporting an abusive client, im sure sex workers would like to report some of the abusive clients, without fear from being stigmatised or harassed by the police.
Melissa says: But you should know all of the complexities involved as a self proclaimed expert on prostitution.
lol, i never once claimed that i was an expert on this topic, i just have an opinion about it, thats all. I trust my opinion about it even if its different to some of the stuff you and Ingrid say.
However, my opinions about sex work aside, Melissa, i think you are a truly amazing person to have survived so much danger and abuse from the dangerous situations you found yourself in.
I hope you are more careful in future.
.
If you’re calling yourself a sex workers rights advocate, you’d want to be an expert on the topic. Now you’re saying you’re no expert.
Also, are you/have you ever been a sex worker and why won’t you answer?
I have a strong opinion about the topic, whether that it is an expert opinion or an expert understanding of the ins and out of selling sexual services is up to other people to believe. Many people would call themselves experts and be considered experts on the topic, but i would still disagree with them and not view them as experts, its just up to peoples own opinions what they consider as expert.
I advocate sex work and the rights to do sex work in a professional and safe manner. Currently active sex workers these are the ones whose lives can be improved to be safer when they sell sexual services, what they want is more important than people who have formerly have sold sexual services commercially, thats just my opinion on it, after all they are the currently active ones, they are the ones lives, people are discussing, if you discuss their life, then their views should be considered more important than former sellers of sexual services, after all they are ones that have the potential to be discriminated against with dangerous laws.
I just think that currently active sex workers opinions and views would be more important than former sellers of sexual services like you and Ingrid, im not trying to belittle you and Ingrid in the debate, im just trying to state the facts that currently active sex workers are more important because they are the ones whose lives can be improved if their demands are met.
So, Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate knows exactly what the concerns and needs of current sex workers are and how to meet them. Even though he(?) refuses to state whether he had any experiences with sex work – repeatedly – or explain the sources of that knowledge.
But whatever that source of knowledge is, it is clearly far superior to that of former sex workers. They, of course, do not care about well-being of current sex workers and cannot possibly offer input into that. At least, nothing as good as what Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate offers.
Okay, Melissa, I am done and will now go do something productive. I just wanted to summarize these monologues
so you’re not a sex worker?
Are you a punter?
Why won’t you answer the simple question?
It’s shocking! It’s like what Joseph Goebbels said: “If you tell a lie big enough and you keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” I think Joseph Stalin said something similar. Dictators and propagandists understand this instinctively.
So it is with the sex work prohibitionists. They’re fond of telling big lies and keep repeating them ad nauseum. Small lies are forgotten. Outrageous lies linger in the memory. They want to confuse, bewilder and stupefy the listener. They calculate that most people won’t do their own independent research on sex work and no doubt that is true so they seize on the outrageous lie/memorable catchy soundbite: “TORL are a million strong organization”, “The average age a sex worker starts is 11″ and so on.
The people supporting “Turn Off The Red Light” campaign are a bunch of hypocrites, the congregations that ran the magdalene slave camps basically launched that campaign against sex workers.
Christy Moore supports the campaign against the sex workers and he has a song entitled the magdalene laundries and he sings it with his eyes closed and the sweat drips off him, and some of the lyrics actually talk about former sex workers that ended up in up the magdalene slave camps and got abused by nuns.
Only in Ireland would you find such utter hypocrisy and sheer rubbish.
There was an article against sex workers in the sunday independent recently by one of TORL’s agents, Joanna Kiernan.
The article ended with the quote: Remember ladies; there, but for the grace of God, go I.
It was so blatantly obvious she is a shill of the christian ruhama agency and their nuns, ending with quotes that sound like something a nun would say.
or maybe that was just her opinion. We’re all entitled to our opinions, however they are formed, aren’t we?
Are you a sex worker?
It was an opinion influenced by the ruhama agencies campaign, it was obvious she was a shill.
It is bad to see so many of their shills promoting disgust against sex workers.
The article ended with the quote: Remember ladies; there, but for the grace of God, go I.
typical nuns.
lets save some souls bla bla, same old nonsense from the church as always
why should anyone trust catholic organisations and their shills?
they declared women to be witches in medieval times, just cause they knew about herbal medicine and then systematically burned to death thousands of them.
did they end with the quote
there, but for the grace of God, go I. after the burning
typical crazy dogmatic nonsense from the church and their shills
France is about to introduce a Sweden style Sex Purchase Act in the new year, according to Jim Cusack.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/consequences-of-public-shaming-2966910.html
why won’t you answer the question: Are you/have you ever been a sex worker?
I think this is a hilarious term – sex positive feminist. What’s the opposite of a sex positive feminist? A man-hater?
Well, I suppose I am sex positive and because I am I am inclined to believe that there are 5 genders, not 2 – Men, women, transmen, transwomen and intersex. Do I think it is a scientific fact? No. But I’ll only stop one notch short.
There was a study done recently in the United States that showed that a staggering 41% of transgender people there have attempted suicide. That breaks my heart. When passing laws, our lawmakers must consider both the pull of their heart as well as their head. As far as transgender and intersex people go, that means giving them what they want most of all – recognition.
In my view, a 5 gender society is more stable and stabilizing than a 2 gender one. The Bugis people are a tribal people from South Sulawesi in Indonesia. Many of them organize their society along 5 gender lines. Perhaps our so-called modern societies can learn a thing or two from them.
Watch this YouTube video to learn more.
The narrator confuses transgenders with transvestites which is unfortunate but apart from that it’s a very informative video. Read the interesting comment section too.
There but for the grace of God (go I).
Literal meaning of that phrase. I would likely have experienced or done the same bad thing if God had not been watching over me.
Just getting back to this quote and its meaning, what god was ruhamas shill Joanna Kiernan speaking about?
The god she was speaking about was a metaphor for the christian church and Ruhama in general.
It just never fucking ends, the catholic church sticking their noses in other peoples business and trying to tell them how to live,and if anything bad happens to people who are not devout christians going to church every sunday and licking ass and obiding by the churches commandments, then they are not seen as being in the grace and favour of the churches lord, lol what a load of shit to be honest.
People need to be responsible for their own decisions and actions and not blame bad experiences just cause they rejected the churches god and just because they were not licking the churches ass on sunday service and obiding by their rules.
The church have always tried to control peoples lives in ireland, sticking their noses in everyones business, if a woman gets assaulted while shes a sex worker, its not so much the sex work itself that is bad, its the fact that those idiotic church morons create a society where these women can not get empowered to protect themselves and report abusive clients without fear of any consequences.
The Ruhama NGO and the irish catholic church are so fucking backwards it defies logic, the organisations behind their retarded dogmatism enslaved thousands of irish women in the past, thats a very deep hole of abuse by the way, its more than just the magdalene asylums.
It was only in the 80′s or something that condoms were made legal in ireland, women before that used guinness bottle tops as contraception, then believe it or not, their kids were being born with bottle tops stuck to their head.
WTF? this sounds like a joke? but its not a joke, this is insane that kids were being born with bottle tops on their heads, it defies logic.
Only in ireland, it just never ends, the church and their holier than thou attitude dictating about how people should live and creating immense carnage and devastation while sticking their noses in other peoples lives and directing on how best they should live, its not really much different from a totalitarian regime like iran etc.
The irish government never learns,why are they still funding the church, the church should not be seen as the saviours and moral guardians of irish society. Just look at their history, the catholic church in ireland have no morals.
Throwing thousands of irish women into the magdalene laundries and letting nuns abuse them, how could that ever be considered prudent, thats a lack of morals by the church, they create immense damage and neglect.
If a woman wants to sell sexual services to a man, its not anyone elses business, if a woman wants to report an abusive client, then the red carpet should be rolled out for, its rolled out for the wives and girlfriends reporting their abusive partners sometimes, sex workers should never fear reporting a bad encounter from one of their clients.
so are you a sex worker or not?
When a sex worker is given the legality to report an abusive client or threats, then a client who would be inclined to abuse them, would think twice about hurting a sex worker that does not fear reporting them to the police.
Under the current irish law, sex workers get attacked during sex work and are inclined not to report their would be attacker, sex workers fear the consequences of what would happen if they reported one of their abusive clients.
Under the swedish law the sex workers also fear the consequences of reporting an abusive client probably even more so than the current irish situation.
In New Zealand and many other countries like Germany etc, the sex workers do not fear reporting an abusive client, because the police are more friendly and welcoming to them, thats the way it should be.
A sex worker needs a strong safety net of support and empowerment if they are going to let clients into their accomodation and visits clients, these situations will be more improved and much safer for the sex workers, when they are given the safety net to not fear the consequences when reporting an abusive client that treats them incorrectly.
The police should be more welcoming, to helping these women that are currently choosing to do potentially dangerous encounters under a bad law model, how much better would it be for these women to feel empowered and not fear absuive clients because the sex workers can easily report them? it would be a lot better for these sex workers safety, thats for sure.
When you give the sex workers the legality to report one of their abusive clients without fear of any consequences, then you are giving the sex workers a very valuable weapon to defend themselves in a potentially dangerous situation, when the clients fear that weapon of sex workers, then they will think twice about hurting someone under the protection of the law.
Its common sense.
Think about it, if people were sex workers, wouldn’t they want a safety net that allows them to report abusive clients without having to fear consequences from reporting an abusive client that would think twice about harming them.
Everybody attacks Germany and New Zealand for giving sex workers more empowerment, but at least those sex workers are safe, which is more than what can be said about the countries that have too much tiers of criminality in the law against sex workers rights to a profession.
De facto bans against sex workers are useless.
Are you a sex worker or a punter?
Why won’t you answer?
He’s a punter with some serious issues about women if he thinks that they can be responsible for their own rape.
No woman would think like that.
Be careful how you throw around the word “rape”. Rape is sex without consent. A woman who agrees to take some advantage or consideration for sex is not being raped; she’s being negotiated with. If some guy invites you out for dinner and you have dinner and end up having sex, even though you could have done without, but it was there and hey why not, and he really made a lot of effort – then you’ve negotiated a price.
You can dislike this characterization all you want, but “rape” as a concept is reduced to meaninglessness if stranger rape or spousal rape or forcible date rape is in any way associated with what prostitutes do.
My sister worked as a low-wage wage slave for a food chain for a number of years. She had no choice: She was economically disadvantaged, and had no negotiating power visavis her salary.
A prostitute who works because she needs the cash is in 100% the same position. To call what she does “being raped” waters down the concept so much that basically all sex between men and women in any context is rape. Which means, heterosexuality is rape and therefore rape is normal. It’s a disgusting way to conflate serious issues with normal human sexuality.
Have some respect for victims of rape, and stop pretending that consensual sex between adults – even if one has more power than the other, when is anything else not the case? – is rape.
If this is rape, then the powerful female boss who seduces a male underling, an event happening more and more these days, is also exactly just as much rape.
it’s absurd and shows a serious lack of understanding of human sexuality, a discomfort with male and female sexuality, or a hatred of heterosexuality altogether. It’s disingenuous and betrays an attitude of female infantilization.
A woman is a full, absolutely competent moral being able to make any choices she deems necessary. if she’s less powerful now and must have sex for dollars, then it’s unfortunate, but this is in no way, shape or form anything even remotely comparable to rape.
That you wold suggest this indicates a fundamental dislike of men having sex with women and women having sex with men.
Perhaps you wish to join another species of animal?
are you talking to me?
I was raped three times by three different clients during over 5 years as an escort.
Being an escort is not being raped.
Getting raped as an escort is.
Rape is sex without consent, whatever job you happen to be doing at the time the rape happens, it is still rape.
I can’t believe that I have to explain this.
‘If some guy invites you out for dinner and you have dinner and end up having sex, even though you could have done without, but it was there and hey why not, and he really made a lot of effort – then you’ve negotiated a price.’
Or maybe, maybe, she just wants to fuck him after dinner.
No price, no transactions going on. I certainly have never slept with a date just because he bought me dinner. I slept with him because I fancied him and wanted to fuck him. Nothing to do with who bought who dinner.
Women (non escorts) are not commodities for sale, that you have to negotiate a price into their knickers. You really have to stop seeing them that way or you’re going to have a life time of either really bad relationships, or a life time of escorts being your only contact with women.
Am I really talking to a grown man here?
If you agree to have sex, and then you have sex, and you at no point say you don’t want to have sex, and you both walk away –
You have not been raped. Period.
If you did not give consent, or were forced to under threat of imminent violence or forcible coercion, then you may have been raped; most likely this would be true.
Bing poor and choosing to do sex work is no more coercion than being poor and doing work in McDonalds.
In fact, i agree with you.
But prostitution in and of itself is not rape. Rape is an entirely different issue, and is a danger all women face.
This is strange. On December 28th, Gorbachev made a post apologizing for misreading Melissa’s comments and seeing that she was indeed talking about rape.
Looking at Melissa’s comment above, it’s easy to see why: **I was raped three times by three different clients during over 5 years as an escort. Being an escort is not being raped. Getting raped as an escort is. ***
Now, I saw in my never deleted subscription to this thread, that this post arrived on February 5th. And makes no sense in light of how this part of the conversation has already been resolved…
I greatly admire sex workers. I am not a sex worker and I never was one. I have never paid for the services of a street sex worker. I have paid to see a sex performer on a website called livejasmin a few years ago. But, my favourite has apparently moved on. I miss her. I don’t know if I financially contribute much towards the sex industry. I have used my credit card on occasion to pay for one or two paysites. I do view and download quite a lot of porn. If that means I am financially contributing towards those porn sites, so be it.
It seems to me that sex workers do face some risks such as the risk of catching an STI, especially street sex workers. I think they’re very brave, whatever branch of the sex industry they enter, to enter that profession. It seems to me that to be a successful sex worker, one needs a great deal of emotional maturity. Someone with emotional maturity will be able to see the approach of an ugly mug from a thousand paces. Like any other category of worker, they find strength in numbers and solidarity. They must unionize.
No offense, but I do consider sex workers to be almost the equivalent of bankers. Some of them do rake in quite a lot of money. Of course, it is not quite an equivalence. Bankers in the UK and the Republic of Ireland are pretty much exclusively male whereas there are a minority of transgender and male sex workers I understand.
I grew up in the Republic of Ireland. I was conditioned to consider prostitutes as non-humans, as criminal, as “fallen women”, as dangerous. Subsequently, like the good Catholic boy I was, I ignored them. I think many more were and are like me. I think the recent disgraceful event in Limerick where 21 punters were fined for solicitation and named and shamed in the national newspapers for approaching police officers dressed as prostitutes will only serve to reinforce that attitude amongst the general public. I think that is a pity.
We should embrace all categories of sex workers as workers and the Government should tax them where possible.
‘Someone with emotional maturity will be able to see the approach of an ugly mug from a thousand paces.’
Nice honest post, but I’d love to know where you got the above from, with no experience of sex work yourself. Supposing and generalising and imagining does not work with sex work.
Good grief. I had thought about putting all comments into moderation before I went away, but decided it wasn’t necessary. I think that may have been a mistake.
Guest, your comments to Ingrid and especially Melissa are disrespectful. I’ve already asked you to be polite – from this point on I will be intervening where necessary to enforce our comments policy. No ifs ands or buts here, just stop it.
I’m particularly appalled that someone who has (rightly) argued against the stigmatisation of sex workers would contribute to one of the most damaging forms of stigmatisation that sex workers face i.e. the suggestion that rape of a sex worker isn’t really rape. It is completely unacceptable to respond to a person who speaks out about their experience of rape by accusing them of putting themselves in a dangerous position – in or out of a sex work context.
Melissa, my apologies for not being around to intervene on this earlier.
Almost Clever, you seem to put a lot of faith in the peer review process, possibly more than most researchers I know put into it. Peer review is a filter, not a hermetic seal – it helps to keep some bad stuff from getting through but it doesn’t give the research absolute credibility. Bear in mind that Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent autism studies were peer-reviewed.
That said, there is no research, peer-reviewed or otherwise, which demonstrates that the Swedish sex industry has decreased since the introduction of the sex purchase ban. There can’t be, because there has been no research into most of the Swedish sex industry sectors. The only things that have been studied are the street sector and the internet sector; the validity of the internet sector research is particularly dubious and studies of the other indoor sectors are simply non-existent. The 2010 Swedish government evaluation even admitted this.
The fact that reported prostitution cases jumped 500% when the police started putting more resources into finding them simply underscores the total unreliability of claims of a decrease. It seems pretty clear that a lot of what was assumed to be a reduction in prostitution was simply a greater concealment.
Also, there were no trafficking statistics from Sweden before the law, so it is impossible to measure the law’s effect on trafficking. Cross-country comparisons are useless since there is no universal approach to either detection or to determination of who is a trafficked person. But since you brought up Germany, it’s worth pointing out that their own figures show a decline in trafficking since decriminalisation. (I take those figures with the same grain of salt that I take all trafficking figures, but again, you’re the one who brought it up.)
On PTSD, when I get back home I will find the affidavit in S v Jordan so I can quote exactly what the forensic psychiatrist said about the PTSD questionnaire. One thing I would point out is that Farley should not be using the same instrument used for vets because there is a civilian PCL version and a military PCL version. I would guess, too, that the likelihood of vets having suffered trauma from sources other than their military service is probably lower than the likelihood of sex workers in the sector Farley targets having suffered trauma from other sources, but of course that is just a guess.
But yes, of course it matters what the trauma is actually caused by. You cannot address a problem by misidentifying its source(s). To the extent that sex workers do suffer trauma, and I have no doubt that many of them do, it is important to understand whether the trauma came first and perhaps led them into the industry, whether factors that could be addressed through decriminalisation (eg police abuse) played a direct role, whether criminalisation indirectly contributed (eg through stigma, or through forcing them to forgo safety measures in order to avoid arrest and suffering violence as a result) – or indeed whether there was no way a change in laws could have prevented the trauma. Of course these things need to be considered. Farley’s attempt to pass it all off as “sex work causes trauma” does a great disservice to those sex workers who experience trauma, because it only allows for one solution – eradicate prostitution – even though that “solution” is highly unlikely to ever be realised, and regardless of whether the trauma could be alleviated by other measures for at least some of those who suffer from it.
And I think you’re being a bit disingenuous in saying that punters aren’t targetted for arrest in the US. It’s true that sex workers tend to be the main focus of law enforcement, but buying sex is also illegal in most states and there is plenty of evidence (from research, the existence of “john schools”, the inclusion of punters on some sex offenders’ registers etc) to show that those laws are enforced to at least some degree. So bringing in the Swedish law wouldn’t change anything from the punters’ perspective; they’re risking arrest already. I agree it would be an improvement over the current law for most US sex workers, but I cannot see how you think it would have any impact on the amount of prostitution in the US.
My question always boils down to the following: How does what you advocate for effect marginalized populations? Does it help? Does it harm? Or do we simply not know?
Everything I have ever read suggests that criminalisation harms those populations. Everything. Not one thing I have read suggests that it helps them. Even those Swedish and Norwegian sex workers who did leave the industry following the law change were only the ones who had other options – not the particularly marginalised ones who were in the industry because there was nothing else they could do.
I offer my apologies. I didn’t read your post. I assumed you were arguing frm the “All sex is rape / when it’s compensated in some fashion” philosophy. In fact, you were talking about actual non-consensual rape.
I dated a prostitute for about 8 months – as her BF, not a customer – because she was a remarkable woman, even though I had huge problems with her work. She told me a story about being raped before I met her, by a customer. Bad customers.
Anyway, she also said the cops were often more guilty of raping than anyone else.
But anyway, her story was terrifying. She took it in stride, and shrugged it off, but she was genuinely afraid for her life, had scars to show for it and took a month or more to recover (physically). She continued in her business for several more years.
So her story stuck with me. Please accept my apologies for not reading your post more closely.
Clearly, you were not saying what I thought you were saying, and my response was unwarranted. My bad.
Gotcha
Well, it’s common sense, Melissa. Some sex workers had and are having happier experiences in sex work than you did.
It’s not common sense at all.
How can sex workers see an ugly mug from a thousand paces?
Well, perhaps, I put it clumsily then. I think the more experience a sex worker has the easier it is for him/her to identity an ugly mug. Of course, it also helps if sex workers can unionize and work together. They are not even permitted to set up brothels in the Republic of Ireland. It’s common sense that sex workers should be endowed with health, human, civil, labour and human rights. If ugly mugs knew that sex workers have these rights, they will be deterred from harming them, in my opinion.
Take that serial killer in Canada. Robert Pickton. I haven’t followed the case closely. I understand he has claimed to have murdered 49 women, many of them street sex workers and drug addicts in the downtown eastside of Vancouver. It seems to be plausible that there was a time early on before his first murder where he was visiting prostitutes but not going so far as killing them or even physically harming them. Now, imagine if Canada had a New Zealand style law then that gave the sex worker her health, human, civil, labour and human rights. As soon as Robert Pickton raised his hand against a sex worker, she could go straight to the police and Robert Pickton would be apprehended, treated and punished. Perhaps 49 women would still be alive today.
I read some post by some guy who had the temerity to assert that Robert Pickton would have been caught if there was a Sweden style Sex Purchase Act in place. I don’t think so. In fact, I think Robert Picktons could very well thrive in the Swedish environment. The Sweden Sex Purchase Act is a hypocritical law and a hypocrite’s law because it cannot possibly be enforced. It’s going to expend considerable police resources and time just to survey one place where a sex purchase may take place and a touching of genitals observed. There’s no way that such a law can be systematically imposed throughout a country.
I’m pro-women. That’s why I say we should endow all sex workers with all the rights granted to other workers, including immigrants. Cead Mile Failte and all that. That way these citizens and guests of our country can go straight to the police to report any ugly mug or nascent Robert Pickton who would dare raise his hand against her.
Have a nice day.
There’s no contradiction between being generally happy in sex work and having an occasional unpleasant surprise from a punter who seemed ok but turned out otherwise. This can happen to anyone in the industry.
It does appear that sex workers generally tend to develop an intuition about the men who approach them, but intuition isn’t perfect.
It’s next to impossible to know. If you get a bad vibe on the phone, that is one thing, but that is rare. Mostly they are well able to conceal the crazy til they get to the door, or inside your premises.
Also I’ve had one punter who was perfectly normal until I refused to have anal sex with him.
There are also the sort of crazy stalkerish people but they are pretty easy to weed out. The more sinister types, less so.
There is no way you can say conflate being emotionally mature and also being psychic enough to know if a punter is a rapist or not. That is throwing the responsibility of attack back on the sex worker.
I’m not trying to villify punters, but I found pauls conflation of emotional maturity and not getting attacked a little insulting, to all sex workers, not just the ones that have been attacked.
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Guest’s post has been disemvowelled for deliberate breach of comments policy. Any further breaches will result in a ban.
Guest is now banned for a further breach.
Disemvoweled: That is amazing.
Something new every day.
“Stop being so childish in these situations and just acknowledge the fucking truth that women activate certain triggers in men that they can not control.”
I’m a currently active sex worker and sex worker advocate and statements like the above create more stigma and risk for violence in my work. Men can certainly control whether to act upon a ‘trigger’. The ability of higher cognitive reasoning is what separates humans from animals. Yes, we have drives and urges, but we can choose whether to act on them or not.
Rape is about consent. End of story. Regardless of transactional, relationship or professional circumstance. If I consent to a sex act for a specified amount, and then I am forced into a non-consensual sex act; I have been raped. The issue is CONSENT – not what I was wearing, or how much I was paid, or what safety-net I have available.
I have never been assaulted in my work; but the logic and rationalization that men can’t control themselves when sexually stimulated, presented by Guest Sex Worker Advocate, make me more of a target for violence. Shameful.
Sorry Guest, I was with you until you devolved into victim blaming and women needing to dress less ‘provocatively’ in order not to be complicit in being raped. It infantalizes men and detracts from the voices of sex workers who willingly choose sex work. By your logic, by consenting to sex work, we are consenting to rape. No Bueno!
Melissa and Wendy:
With all due respect, you are taking what I wrote out of context.
Here’s what I wrote in full:
It seems to me that sex workers do face some risks such as the risk of catching an STI, especially street sex workers. I think they’re very brave, whatever branch of the sex industry they enter, to enter that profession. It seems to me that to be a successful sex worker, one needs a great deal of emotional maturity. Someone with emotional maturity will be able to see the approach of an ugly mug from a thousand paces. Like any other category of worker, they find strength in numbers and solidarity. They must unionize.
Yes, I wrote that a successful sex worker ought to be emotionally mature. I think that’s common sense. I wrote that in the context that sex workers have their full health, safety, human, labour and civil rights, just like in any other profession. They are not mutually exclusive, emotional maturity and legal rights. One can work in a profession where one has full health, safety, human, labour and civil rights, on the one hand, and, on the other, exercise emotional maturity in the decisions one takes. That’s the same with any other profession. Sex workers are not infants who need to be led by the hand in everything they do. So both of you are taking one sentence I wrote, the ugly mug sentence, you’ve taken it out of context and you get worked up about it.
Melissa writes: “That is throwing the responsibility of attack back on the sex worker.” in response to my sentence that a sex worker of emotional maturity can see an ugly mug from a thousand paces. I never wrote anything of the sort. Life is not black and white. It’s shades of grey. That’s the real world. These so called radical feminists like to view the world in black and white terms, a cartoon world, where every subtlety of discussion defaults to good or evil. A George W Bush World. By the way, I am not saying Melissa is a radical feminist. I haven’t decided yet.
Allow me to throw this out. A woman suffered abuse during her teenage years. Later, she enters a profession, sex work, a profession that involves a lot of choices, especially so since it is not properly regulated in the Republic of Ireland and many aspects of it are criminalized. During her sex work career, she suffers more trauma (rapes and anal rapes by multiple men, blackmail, stalking, cyberbully )that also contributes to her current Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Isn’t it not fair to say that the fact that she suffered abuse as a teenager before she entered sex work would have made her more vulnerable to abuse after she entered the unregulated, large criminalized profession by virtue of the choices she made and had to make? Or am I crossing some politically incorrect line drawn by the so-called Radical Feminists for making such a suggestion?
Melissa wrote: “For me PTSD was caused by abuse in my teenage years, which led me to become involved in prostitution which caused more trauma, so I guess there’s no answer to the chicken or egg question. At least in my case there isn’t, it all fed in to each other. I’m starting the long road to dealing with it now though.”
Melissa wrote: “I guess blaming the multiple men who raped me and anally raped me when I was an escort are blameless for the PTSD I’m going through now. Oh or the one that blackmailed me, oh and the two stalkers and the one cyber bully.”
Melissa wrote that she supports decriminalization of the sex work industry but then she wrote that the large volume of abuse in the industry would continue even if there is decriminalization/legalization. So what’s the point of supporting decriminalization if she thinks it won’t make any difference in this important respect?
Melissa wrote: “I actually support decriminalising prostitution. As someone who has worked for a substantial amount of years in sex work, I don’t understand why you are lecturing me on how sex industry works, and how it should work, I know all about it. There’s also a shit load of abuse that goes on in sex work, and in the websites that run the sex industry, and will go on forever in sex work whether it is legalise/decriminalised or not.”
I’m getting tired of Melissa. She comes on here. In her first comment on this thread she writes that she knows everything about the sex industry after spending 5 plus years in it which does strike me as an arrogant statement to make.
Melissa wrote: “I worked as a sex worker for over five years, I know all about what should be done for the safety of sex workers. I know every inch of the sex industry here, I was fully independent and know the full scale of good things and bad things about prostitution. But I still don’t agree with you. I am still a representative of a sex worker though.”
As you can see, she claims that she knows all about what should be done for the safety of sex workers. Apparently, that doesn’t include criminalization or legalization. As I point out above, she thinks that won’t make any difference, as far as abuse goes, even though she does support decriminalization.
Melissa appears to think that because I am not a sex worker and never was one, I am not entitled to offer my opinions on how to improve the industry for the optimum benefit of clients and workers.
She comes on here and she, at best, offers a drip feed of information on her own history and her own opinions on what should be done with the sex industry.
Melissa blows hot and cold. She praises my previous post for being honest and then she takes one solitary sentence from the same post, decontextualizes it and claims that I am insulting not just to her but to all sex workers.
Melissa, you are *a* representative sex worker, you are not *the* representative sex worker. I give you no apology and I give no apology to all other sex workers, past or present.
Melissa is impossible to please. She comes on here and she comfortably hides behind her grumpy persona, expressing outrage at anyone who dares say a false statement about her.
Yeah, I think Guest and Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate may have rashly jumped to some conclusions about Melissa but, Wendy, if you review what Melissa wrote, you will see that it was Melissa who was being insulting to Guest Sex Work Advocate calling her a b.i.t.c.h at one stage. Yet, Wendy, you don’t criticize Melissa for this.
I find it amusing that Melissa is repeatedly asking Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate to identify herself, yet she herself hides behind anonymity.
Melissa is to be treated nicely. Because she’s a victim? Is that it? Therefore we should all treat her with kid gloves? Well, I’m not going to treat her with kid gloves. So, if that means you’ve got to ban me from your blog, Wendy, so be it.
Have a nice day.
So both of you are taking one sentence I wrote, the ugly mug sentence, you’ve taken it out of context and you get worked up about it.
It isn’t any more accurate in context. I agree with the rest of what you wrote in that paragraph, and I also agree that pre-sex work abuse may make someone more susceptible to abuse in the industry. I’m not sure why you even think that saying that would cross any lines. The thing about being able to spot an ugly mug is a complete non-sequitur.
Melissa wrote that she supports decriminalization of the sex work industry but then she wrote that the large volume of abuse in the industry would continue even if there is decriminalization/legalization. So what’s the point of supporting decriminalization if she thinks it won’t make any difference in this important respect?
Sex workers’ rights advocates generally do not believe that decriminalisation alone will stop the abuse. There are actually a number of jurisdictions in which sex work is decriminalised or legalised and yet abuse continues at a high rate. Decriminalisation is necessary to stop the abuse but it is not sufficient, there is also a need for positive enforcement of sex workers’ rights, destigmatisation and removal of associated harmful laws (such as immigration restrictions and loitering laws that are often used against sex workers).
I also think it’s reasonable that even if someone thinks they will still be abused after a law change, they would still support that law change because at least they couldn’t be arrested as well as abused.
if you review what Melissa wrote, you will see that it was Melissa who was being insulting to Guest Sex Work Advocate calling her a b.i.t.c.h at one stage.
“At one stage” = after Guest had already insulted Melissa.
I’m pretty sure Guest is a “him”, BTW.
I find it amusing that Melissa is repeatedly asking Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate to identify herself, yet she herself hides behind anonymity.
Where has Melissa asked for any more identification than she herself has given?
Melissa is to be treated nicely. Because she’s a victim? Is that it? Therefore we should all treat her with kid gloves? Well, I’m not going to treat her with kid gloves. So, if that means you’ve got to ban me from your blog, Wendy, so be it.
Everyone should be treated nicely. That’s in the comments policy: no personal attacks. You haven’t engaged in any, so I see no reason to ban you. At least not so far. Please keep it that way.
How do you know? Did “Guest” write some masculine things? As far as I can make out, there were two people, “Guest” and “Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate”. “Guest” was commenting earlier. Then Melissa got upset with something “Guest” wrote and then “Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate” took over.. Then Melissa got upset with him/her.
By the way, the person you first disemvoweled then banned wasn’t “Guest”, as you claimed, it was “Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate”. I know this because all the comments on this post of yours go to my email inbox. So, actually, the last two unedited comments of “Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate” went into my email inbox.
Well, it’s your blog. If I was in your shoes, I wouldn’t have banned Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate” or disenvowelled any of his/her comments. True, “Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate” did write some controversial things in those last two comments but that is unavoidable in any worthwhile debate or discussion in my opinion. Certainly, I think the contribution of both “Guest” and “Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate” are just as valuable as Melissa’s.
At one stage, Melissa called “Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate” a b.i.t.c.h. which would appear to indicate that she thought “Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate” was a woman. Later, Melissa addressed “Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate” as a man. Why, I do not know.
They are the same person. I see the email and IP addresses of everyone who comments here. As to how I can tell he’s a he, well, that’s pretty obvious.
All blogs have a comments policy. He was given fair warning that he was in breach of this one and made his own decision to continue to breach it.
Wendy Lyon | December 29, 2011 at 5:50 am
How do you know that Guest and Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate are the same person? Maybe, they’re two different people using the same computer.
How do you know Guest is a man? Because only a man can break the comments policy?
If Guest and Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate made some incorrect assumptions about Melissa then all Melissa had to do was set the record straight. There was no call for her calling Guest Sex Work Rights Advocate a b.i.t.c.h.
Maybe, they’re two different people using the same computer.
And the same email address and the same writing style and repeating several of the same points already made in previous comments? Sure.
I’m not discussing this any further. He was given fair warning and chose to ignore it.
I will only be around intermittently for the next week so I am going to do what I should have done when I started my holiday and put all comments into moderation for the time being. Posts that have something to contribute will be approved when I get the opportunity.
OK
I may not read through all that
Moving on: there was an article in the Sindo on Christmas Day of all days about student sex workers. It was critical of people saying they have no choice but to become sex workers
but had one interesting comment taken from a UK interview
“BBC radio actually carried an interview last week with a young woman called, well, what does it matter? It wasn’t her real name anyway. She revealed how she had become a prostitute at 18 to pay her way through college because “I couldn’t see any other option”. Listening to her speak, though, it was clear that she had plenty of options, it was simply that she didn’t like the minimum wage job that she had at the time, didn’t want to do bar work because the unsociable hours meant she wouldn’t feel like getting up in the morning for classes….So instead she signed on at an escort agency owned by a “friend” who’d been trying to persuade her to go on the game since she was 16. She went on [b]to earn £30,000 in her first two weeks of work.[/b] If this is the best hard-luck story the BBC could dig up, it was a pretty poor effort.”
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/going-on-the-game-isnt-only-option-for-students-2972936.html
Apologizing again.
I had to omuch soju, here in chilly Seoul, saw an update and read a snippet of conversation and did the online equivalent of tripping over my feet while looking for my cellphone. I hope the effect wears off before I go to work.