Every young boy will learn that women and girls are commodities
Jimmy Carter in the Washington Post:
It is disturbing that some human rights and public health organizations are advocating the full legalization of the sex trade, including its most abusive aspects. I agree with Amnesty International, UNAIDS and other groups that say that those who sell sex acts should not be arrested or prosecuted, but I cannot support proposals to decriminalize buyers and pimps.
Some assert that this “profession” can be empowering and that legalizing and regulating all aspects of prostitution will mitigate the harm that accompanies it. But I cannot accept a policy prescription that codifies such a pernicious form of violence against women. Normalizing the act of buying sex also debases men by assuming that they are entitled to access women’s bodies for sexual gratification. If paying for sex is normalized, then every young boy will learn that women and girls are commodities to be bought and sold.
Emphasis added.
I’d love to know how the libertarian feminists get around that – really know how they do, not just hear their babble about “agency” again.
Carter prefers the Nordic model.
Critics of the Nordic model assert that mature adults should be free to exchange money for sex. This argument ignores the power imbalance that defines the vast majority of sex-for-cash transactions, and it demeans the beauty of sexual relations when both parties are respected.
Sex between people who experience mutual enjoyment is a wonderful part of life. But when one party has power over another to demand sexual access, mutuality is extinguished, and the act becomes an expression of domination. As author and prostitution survivor Rachel Moran explained in her book, “Paid For,” once money has exchanged hands, a woman must deliver whatever service the customer demands.
Check out Rachel Moran on Twitter to see her passion on this subject.
In May 2015, when the Carter Center held a global summit to end sexual exploitation, sex-trade survivors, including Moran, described their painful journeys through exploitation. They told of the abuse they suffered — abuse that should be understood as torture. They expressed their determination to speak not only for themselves but also for those who are either too traumatized to come forward or who perished as a result of homicide, suicide, drug abuse or disease. They compare their movement to the abolition of slavery, an institution that once also seemed like a permanent fixture in society.
Prostitution is not the “oldest profession,” as the saying goes; it’s the oldest oppression.
Those survivors told us that they once believed that selling sex was their choice but that this attitude was a requirement for survival — that only once they were fully free from the fetters of the trade were they able to fully understand their lack of choice.
If full legalization is adopted, it will not be the “empowered sex worker” who will be the norm — it will be the millions of women and girls needed to fill the supply of bodies that an unlimited market of consumers will demand.
Women and girls as commodities to be bought and sold.
Answer: They directly quote it and emphasize the same sentence only to dismiss it as self-evidently false.
http://jezebel.com/former-president-jimmy-carter-wrote-a-bad-editorial-abo-1779833741
This is horrific. I hope that someone makes them come to their senses before more harm is done.
They say things like this bit of feigned ignorance: “But Amnesty stopped supporting the Nordic model after doing something we’re not sure President Carter has ever tried: they talked to sex workers about it. ”
The sex industry lobbyists say that sort of thing to exited women on tumblr almost daily.
Do they mean, like Carter hosting a whole conference at which ex-prostitutes could talk about their experiences?
I find this trend in modern politics and activism of outright lying (wilful blindness?) of the other parties actions or statements quite disturbing. It’s dishonest at best and I would find it demeaning of myself to act that way. Sure, disagree about the argument. There are some sex workers who say it’s a box of roses and they love their work. That makes the policy outcome a result of balancing the different views against the measurable facts in the framework of societies understanding of ‘what it wants’.
This is fabulous.
These are the words of a person who truly cares about women – women as people, not women as a political tool.
Cressida @ 1 – ugh – thank you for that. What a contemptuously off-point response from Jezebel.
“World’s oldest oppression”
Spot on.
The prostitutes need to be de-criminalized and the johns, and in particular the pimps, arrested, fined or jailed.
The sex trade “workers” I’ve encountered ( like on my way to work at 5AM) are so rail-thin, emaciated, sunken eyed and drug addicted, that they remind me of ghouls. I’ve seen 25 year old “workers” going on 45. These women need shelter and protection. They need a safe, secure sanctuary where they can straighten themselves out, a place where no man can touch them. They need good food, nutrition, medicines and just simple things like clean sheets, clean beds and long, hot, soaking baths to soothe both body and soul
How much do the male owners at Jezebel pay these women to advocate for their own commodification?
I don’t see how the latter follows from the first.
Paying for labor is normalised and it didn’t learn us that the providers of that labor are commodities to be bought and sold.
Sure if you see paying of sex as inherently exploitive, you can get to such a conclusion, but then you just concluded, what you started off with.
Labor is not the same thing as total access to a person’s entire naked body to use however you like.
#9 if it were the case of the laborer doing the job you would be correct, sorta. But it isn’t them doing for you like a manicure or a haircut, is it. The concern is what you, the john, do to them. That is the stuff of nightmares.
#10.
Total access to a person’s entire naked body to use however you like, is sex slavery. Paying for sex doesn’t imply total access to a person’s entire naked body to use however you like. I agree it all to often is in practice but Carter’s statement seems more like a principalled argument instead of a practical argument.
I also don’t see how Carters statement supports the Nordic model. If one accepts his statement I think one can equally accept the statement: “if offering sex for pay is normalized, then every young boy will learn that women and girls are commodities to be bought and sold”. At this moment I don’t see why I should accept Carters statement and not the above, so IMO Carters statement supports the criminalization of prostitution more than it supports the Nordic model.