Please feel free to re-post in the feminist group.

Kick

Im glad you brought this up. I will be quiet and listen.

Btw . . . . KnR

it's not mine. This was written by a Canadian sex worker.

Life is nuanced. Too bad not everyone sees that. This is definitely a nuanced side of feminism.

Ciswomen? I don't understand the need for more & more labels.

To believe prostitution has no victims, one must ignore these statistics published in Farley's Fact Sheet:

78 percent of 55 women who sought help from the Council for Prostitution Alternatives in 1991 reported being raped an average of 16 times a year by pimps, and were raped 33 times a year by johns.

62 percent reported having been raped in prostitution.

73 percent reported having experienced physical assault in prostitution.

72 percent were currently or formerly homeless.

92 percent stated that they wanted to escape prostitution immediately.

83 percent of prostitutes are victims of assault with a weapon.

75 percent of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide.

67 percent meet diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

More at the link:

http://crime.about.com/od/prostitution/a/prostitution.htm


Great OP (which will probably devolve into flamebait) but a good distraction from Laptop Dad?

Isn't your argument a re-framing of the "she was askin' for it" meme?

on a regular basis.

by the 55 specific women who requested help from that single organization?


Correct?

Legalizing it does not stop the violence. It only expands prostitution and opens the floodgates on illegal trafficking for women and children.

Ever meet a female cop who walks a beat?

Granted, the cop knows how to subdue the attacker - and perhaps there is your solution. Self defense courses for CSWs.

And I'm not the one who effectively said, the prostitutes were asking for it

the violence numbers are different and job satisfaction is in line with mainstream careers where it is legal and regulated.

http://faculty.unlv.edu/brents/research/violence.pdf
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16398/1/Charlotte_Seib_Thesis.pdf


You're no doubt right about the flamebait, but I have my little stone fort: courtesy of our wonderful admins. It's designed to withstand even the harshest flame.

In Amsterdam, Netherlands, 80% of prostitutes are foreigners, and 70% have no immigration papers, suggesting that they were trafficked. (Marie-Victoire Louis, "Legalizing Pimping, Dutch Style," Le Monde Diplomatique, 8 March 1997)

In the Netherlands, 33% of the prostitutes come from countries outside of the European Union, this increases to 50% in the larger cities (Altink, 1995) ("Trafficking of Women to the European Union: Characteristic, Trends and Policy Issues," European Conference on Trafficking in Women, (June 1996), IOM, 7 May 1996)

Since 1990 in the Netherlands, the number of trafficked women from Central and Eastern European Countries has tripled. ("Trafficking of Women to the European Union: Characterisitics, Trends and Policy Issues," European Conference on Trafficking in Women, (June 1996), IOM, 7 May 1996)


It is violent.
The Netherlands are now trying to rein in "legal" prostitution because it is so violent: from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_Netherlands)
"When the Dutch government legalized prostitution in 2000, it was to protect the women by giving them work permits, but authorities now fear that this business is out of control: "We’ve realized this is no longer about small-scale entrepreneurs, but that big crime organizations are involved here in trafficking women, drugs, killings and other criminal activities", said Job Cohen, the former mayor of Amsterdam.[7] Recently, officials have noticed an increase in violence centered on this irregular industry, and have blamed this increase on the illegal immigration of individuals into Amsterdam to participate in the sex industry: "The guys from Eastern Europe bring in young and frightened women; they threaten them and beat them", said a resident of De Wallen.[7] Prostitution has remained connected to criminal activities, which has led the authorities to take several measures, including detailed plans to help the prostitutes quit the sex trade and find other professions.

In 2005 Amma Asante and Karina Schaapman, two councilors for the Labour Party (Netherlands), wrote a report, "Het onzichtbare zichtbaar gemaakt" (Making the Invisible Visible). Schaapman had once been a prostitute and was getting information about the influx of organized crime and violence into the business. Other reports came out around the same time. They concluded that a large number of prostitutes in Amsterdam were being forced to work and were being abused by pimps and criminal gangs, and that the goals of legalization were failing

In response to the problems associated with the involvement of organized crime into the sex trade, the Dutch government has decided to close numerous prostitution businesses. Concerned about organized crime, money laundering and human trafficking, Amsterdam officials under Mayor Cohen denied the license renewals of about 30 brothels in the Amsterdam red light district De Wallen in 2006; the brothel owners appealed. To counter negative news reports, the district organized an open house day in 2007 and a statue to an unknown sex worker was unveiled, "intended to honor those employed in the industry world-wide."[21] In September 2007 it was announced that the city of Amsterdam was buying several buildings in the red light district from Charles Geerts in order to close about a third of the windows.

At the end of 2008, Mayor Cohen announced plans to close half of the city’s 400 prostitution windows because of suspected criminal gang activity. The mayor is also closing some of the city’s 70 marijuana cafes and sex clubs.[8] This comes at the same time as the Government's decision to ban the sale of "magic mushrooms" and the closure of all coffee shops situated near schools.[8] Nevertheless, Mayor Cohen has noted, "It is not that we want to get rid of our red-light district. We want to reduce it. Things have become unbalanced and if we do not act we will never regain control."


The facts don't support your position that legalizing prostitution stops the violence: from CATW: (10 Reasons for Not Legalizing Prostitution, http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/laws/000022.html"

"The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women International (CATW) has conducted 2 major studies on sex trafficking and prostitution, interviewing almost 200 victims of commercial sexual exploitation. In these studies, women in prostitution indicated that prostitution establishments did little to protect them, regardless of whether they were in legal or illegal establishments. The only time they protect anyone is to protect the customers.

In a CATW 5-country study that interviewed 146 victims of international trafficking and local prostitution, 80% of all women interviewed suffered physical violence from pimps and buyers) and endured similar and multiple health effects from the violence and sexual exploitation (Raymond et al: 2002).

The violence that women were subjected to was an intrinsic part of the prostitution and sexual exploitation. Pimps used violence for many different reasons and purposes. Violence was used to initiate some women into prostitution and to break them down so that they would do the sexual acts. After initiation, at every step of the way, violence was used for sexual gratification of the pimps, as a form of punishment, to threaten and intimidate women, to exert the pimp's dominance, to exact compliance, to punish women for alleged violations, to humiliate women, and to isolate and confine women."

There's more at the link from the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women International (CATW)

Yes, they happen to be getting smuggled into the Netherlands to be prostitutes, but people are trafficked for all sorts of work. Wouldn't tackling the illegal immigration also tackle the violence? Native Dutch women do not report the level of violence the smuggled women do.

Also:

that has been lied about repeatedly as an increase. New Zealand also reported no increase and improved worker conditions.

The facts certainly don't support the idea that criminalization stops violence- I could throw a rock on Google and hit a few dozen stories about prostitute murders just in the U.S. alone. I posted a few samples elsewhere. The few legitimate studies in existence that surveyed legal workers showed a massive drop in workplace violence within a legal, regulated setting.

Which brings us to CATW. When you interview nothing but trafficked women, guess what! They'll all have been trafficked! With all the stuff that goes along with that- all the violence, abuse and trauma! Shocker! THIS IS ILLEGAL IN EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, with the possible exception of Somalia, no matter what the legal status of prostitution in that country might be. Support for criminalizing something that is already illegal, everywhere, helps no one and stops nothing. A story made the headlines recently from Afghanistan about a teenager tortured by her husband and in-laws for refusing to be trafficked- prostitution is illegal in Afghanistan, yet this still occurred. The trafficking numbers from places like the Philippines are downright frightening.

CATW, like Farley, peddles trauma porn for a living. They exploit the titillating tales of sexual horrors of TRAFFICKED women to weld them to the issue of prostitution and to keep prostitution illegal, ensuring a continued supply of exploitable victims and guaranteeing that their paychecks keep coming. This gets people killed. That has always been my biggest problem with the abolition movement- they build big, pretty ideological castles in the air about the horrors of prostitution, then enact laws that kill people and allow abusers to walk free. You and I can talk all day long about the issues of consent vs. coercion, past abuse and mental competence, empowerment through sexuality vs. objectification etc.- I have had those arguments before and they're interesting and informative, but the bottom line is that they're side issues. At the end of the day, the abolition movement is built on corpses, and that is my biggest objection to it. Everything else is window dressing.

Glad to hear it- most of the abolitionists I argue with feel that the more people in jail, the better. Your post certainly didn't read like someone who supported legalization, but if I misread you, I apologize.

Everyone wants to see trafficking stopped for good; criminalizing consent doesn't help with that. Education, regulation and enforcement, properly applied, do help with that. It frustrates the hell out of me to keep repeating that to people, over and over, when we have the same goal: stop trafficking, stop abuse, keep people alive.

Making it disappear is a nice thought but unrealistic. It has existed all through history and will continue to as long as there is any form of trade.

"At the end of the day, the abolition movement is built on corpses."
No, it's not overstated. I wish it was, I really do. Count the bodies of dead prostitutes, just in this country alone, and you'll see what I mean.

I'm really a bit ambivalent in some ways.

I support legalization over criminalization, but most of all I support an END of all of it. But not through criminalizing it. Same for pornography. People who are pro-porn are forever misunderstanding and misrepresenting anti-porn feminists as calling for censorship (laws ourlawing porn). And that's really not the case. (Tho it is a separate discussion from this one so I'll drop it at that.)

And yes, my ideals and goals and preferences aren't all that practical -- never said they were. But that doesn't make them undoable, either. Once upon a time it was unthinkable that people could be persuaded not to drink and drive. Too many still do that, of course, but MAD really made big inroads into getting perspectives changed.

Yeah, those are valid statistics (/sarcasm)

Not saying anything about prostitution here. Just that your sample size is way too small to draw any conclusions, and you are sampling women who are seeking aid, not prostitutes as a whole. That also slants your small sample pool.

Fact is we don't have good statistics on prostitutes. All studies I'm aware of are done on women seeking to leave prostitution. Logically, that pool will contain no women "happy" with prostitution and will skew any sample. I am aware of one effort to get a much broader sample. But that one isn't done yet.

Who's doing it and where?

I vaguely remember it being based out of a university in NYC or DC....sorry, didn't write any of it down. I'm operating on the assumption that it has enough sex to get some media coverage when it's done.

But it seems to me that to consider people fully adults, you need to grant them the basic respect of agency of their own lives - even illegal and dangerous choices.

I think her situation must be extreme if that is the case...

What extreme situations can you imagine where the only way out of poverty is sex work?

I'm curious because I am very good friends with someone for whom sex work is actually the only way out of poverty and I know what the "extreme situation" is. I'd like to see if anyone here can figure it out.

and why wouldn't the same solutions apply to a woman?

The country we live in has the lowest social mobility in the western world. Why do you assume there would be a practical way out of poverty?

completely.

My point is that isn't necessarily the case, and statistics back me up.

That's a pretty hopeless and depressing assertion you are making. I understand that there are problems with 'social mobility' in this country. There are a lot of possible solutions to that and prostitution isn't a particularly good one.

My point wasn't about the issue of poverty, although it's certainly related. It was about the absurdity of saying prostitution is women's only hope for getting out of poverty. It was about how making that assertion derails what I think the author of the article was really trying to get at, which is specifically about the attitude in some feminist circles toward sex-workers.

I'll ask you the same question that I asked dogknob - if you think that prostitution is the *only* way out of poverty for women, what would your advice be to men stuck in poverty?

Let's take a theoretical woman that dropped out of high school. High school boyfriend knocked her up and then abandoned her and the kid. Parents are poor/struggling, so they can't help.

Before Clinton's "welfare reform" program, she could go to school, get a college degree and get a "good" job. Because we'd all support her and the kid while she did so.

Now? Not so much.

Welfare doesn't last long enough for part-time schooling to get a degree. Full-time schooling is unaffordable when you add in the babysitting/daycare needs. WIC will keep her and the kid from starving to death, but that won't fill up the car with gas to get to school, and she's in the ~95% of the population without working public transit. So she needs a job.

Employers that hire such people generally do not give them set schedules. For example if you're new at Wal-Mart you will not know what your schedule is 2 weeks from now, much less 4 years from now. That makes scheduling school extremely difficult, since we schedule undergraduate college as if school is your full-time job. She would need management to like her enough to enable her abandonment of them. That's really, really unlikely. It's much better for the store if she's trapped in that job for years.

That leaves our theoretical woman with 3 options: 1) stay in poverty. 2) Find a boyfriend (or girlfriend) to help her. 3) Prostitution - and I'm including things here that aren't technically prostitution, such as working at a strip club. Frankly I should probably merge #2 and #3 unless she's really lucky at love.

Now, this particular woman has a lot of things stacked against her. Finish high school and she's much better off. Boyfriend doesn't abandon the kid and she's WAY better off. If her parents can at least provide babysitting and she's much better off. So it doesn't apply to all women in poverty. But there's also a non-trivial number of women who find themselves in this situation.

So what about a man in this situation? Well biology and our courts means he's far less likely to end up in this situation - he's far less likely to end up as a single parent. In the rare cases where it does happen, he's either stuck in poverty or puts forth such a herculean effort that it becomes a Wil Smith movie.

But there should be enough of a social safety net that there is no woman who has to resort to this awful type of life.

Saying that "sex work is my only solution to the problem of poverty" doesn't come off any better than saying "selling drugs is my only solution to poverty".

Poverty is a problem which obviously affects people regardless of gender. Arguing that a particular illegal activity is a solution to poverty isn't going to convince anybody. Tackling poverty head on might reduce the number of people who turn to illegal activities to get by, and that would be a good thing.

Any arguments about whether sex work should be legal or not seems like it needs to be a separate discussion - with a better set of arguments than "it's the only thing I can do that pays better than McDonalds".

Acknowledging that "there has to be a better way" isn't good enough. I need to not live in poverty. Not after the revolution. Right now.

Poverty is a terrible problem, but it doesn't excuse other types of illegal activity - why should it excuse prostitution when prostitution is illegal? Lots and lots of men and women have been dirt poor and not resorted to prostitution or selling drugs or robbing houses.

I don't buy the premise that it's a person's *only* choice. I also don't buy that arguing with that assertion makes someone clueless to the realities of poverty. That seems like nothing more than a cheap way of shutting down any discussion other than the ideas being put forth by the author of that article.

I'd prefer to see a better reasoned argument for the pros and cons of sex work.

was to put forward another viewpoint, from an actual sex worker, on who abolitionism is not the answer. When those of us who have/had primarily positive experiences with the trade (keyword primarily; no job is perfect) try to speak, we get denigrated as "happy hookers" and/or dismissed as liars, abused women in denial, or trafficking supporters. This was a different viewpoint, from a worker who is not a "happy hooker" and is certainly not saying that the trade is wonderful for all, but is still able to voice her opinion of her "rescuers" in a clear and coherent manner and to give her reasoning for it.

Yes, it's illegal in the U.S.; so were a lot of consensual sexual behaviors until people spoke out against it. Miscegenation ring a bell, or sodomy? Both used to be illegal. Homosexuality and "nymphomania" used to be classed as mental disorders. All this has been removed just within the last century- prostitution is just the next logical step. Modern culture has not yet evolved beyond fear of its own sexuality, or the impulse to ban things it finds ooky. It is NOT, however, illegal where she is, and she says so. This author is a legal worker. It's difficult to see how it can be equated with other illegal activities when she's not illegal.

Also, she does not say or imply that this is her only choice. She did say that given the options available to her, this was what she preferred. This is true of a lot of sex workers. Had she chosen welfare, in the U.S. at least, she'd be considered just as much a whore as she is now, even if most people would avoid using that exact term- and she'd be in substantially worse poverty.

and didn't have particularly bad experiences and who advocate legalizing it. I think it's a conversation worth having but I don't think many people will take the "I had no other option" argument seriously and consequently that conversation isn't likely to ever happen.

And actually the author did say "sex work is (her) only solution to the problem of poverty". That particular line was what I reacted to. I don't think it helps the discussion.

To what extent is this related to the starting point that a woman's sex organ is treated as something to protect and keep people away from --a golden treasure, a precious jewel? This idea that girl's shouldn't give it away but withhold it is something that is a strongly reinforced, it seems to me, as the idea that boys should "stick it in anything that moves".

Maybe if both genders were encouraged to treat their sexual organs with less exaggerated ideas, things would be different?

Again, to reframe the question if I am not being clear: IMO, girls are trained to "keep it safe" and not "give it away" or they are dirty in some way. And boys are trained that their penis is already a dirty thing (sort of) that can just be used and abused. See my point? Is this relevant to the issues being discussed?

and yes, I suspect that teaching both genders that their sexuality is a good and normal thing would solve a huge number of society's ills. Get rid of the puritan madonna/whore and macho-conquest complexes and we'd have a better world all the way around.

It's because of that socialization that the loudest and meanest critics of women who "give it away" are often women themselves. Just look at any jr. high or high school to see what I mean.