Stop the woman who is speaking
More righteous enraged outraged indignant furious huffy anger:
!!!!! OPEN LETTER FROM A MELBOURNE SEX WORKER TO READINGS RE: HOSTING JULIE BINDEL. PLEASE SHARE !!!!!
Dear Readings,
I am a Melbourne-based sex worker writing to express my concerns about an event that is being held at the Readings store in Hawthorn on Thursday, the 26th of July: the launch of Julie Bindel’s book The Pimping of Prostitution. This event involves a Q&A between Bindel and Mary Crooks, the Executive Director of the Victorian Women’s Trust.
Where to begin.
Bindel is a whorephobe, plain and simple. She has spent decades doing her utmost to stigmatise sex workers, misrepresent and demonise our peer organisations, and campaign for the Swedish Model, an approach to sex work regulation that has been proven to undermine our labour rights and human rights. Where it has been implemented, the Swedish Model has led to increased violence against sex workers and other negative impacts on sex workers’ safety, health, and wellbeing.
Blah blah blah all the phobias blah blah well documented blah blah opinions blah blah platform blah.
Her (incoherent at best) writing is regularly featured in high-traffic news publications such as The Independent and The Guardian. She is regularly invited to speak on television programs and at public events. She travels the world to plug books she has the time to write and capital to get published. When she does, books shops are more than happy to profit from the ‘buzz’ created by her hatespeech.
It must be stopped!!1
And now Readings is one of them.
This is the point at which I’m accused of stifling ‘debate’. Surely, a bookshop is a place in which diverse views about controversial topics can be expressed and challenged?
I am actually quite comfortable with diverse opinions, and as a reader, writer, and heretic, I am grateful that stores like Readings stock texts that Dymocks won’t touch. I’m also a fan of debate, but only when it is fair — that is, when both sides have the platform and resources to make their case on their own terms.
Yes, that’s very clear – big big fan of debate.
She went on in the same vein for several more paragraphs. As far as I can tell the event went ahead as scheduled.
Also, this happened:
This afternoon pro-sex trade protesters broke into the #asase2018 conference to shout over world-renowned Professor S. Caroline Taylor speaking about her experiences of horrific child sexual exploitation. They threw objects at audience members and trashed display tables.
— Caitlin Roper (@caitlin_roper) July 28, 2018
They were unwilling to engage with us in our attempts to have conversations with them, they told us they were there to disrupt the event- again, the speech of a survivor of child sexual abuse who is now a strong advocate against #childsexualabuse.
— Caitlin Roper (@caitlin_roper) July 28, 2018
The tactics of the pro-sex trade are disgusting. I cannot fathom how anyone would think it appropriate to hijack the speech of a survivor of child sexual abuse and attack her in an attempt to advance their cause #asase2018
— Caitlin Roper (@caitlin_roper) July 28, 2018
Women present left shaking and crying after abuse from pro-sex trade protesters. One threw a bag in the face of speaker, a survivor of child sexual exploitation, while she was trying to address audience.
— Caitlin Roper (@caitlin_roper) July 28, 2018
Social justice, eh?
WE MUST BOYCOTT ALL AUTHORS WHO CAN WRITE BOOKS
SEX WORK IS WORK!
No discussion, criticism, analysis, or actual attention to the experience of those who have been exploited and abused is permissible, because…
I’m waiting for an answer. I know that the real answer is “a toxic melange of neoliberalism and misogyny,” but I’m willing to listen to an ATTEMPT at actual argument should anyone make one. But most don’t bother at all. And when they do, the arguments are never more than empty rhetoric, transparent rationalizations, and poorly concealed circular arguments which simply assume that which requires the most justification. Or, as in this case, “disruption” — i.e. shouting over and degrading dissenters, with strongly implied threats of violence if not outright violence. Which is exactly what one would expect from a toxic melange of neoliberalism and misogyny, come to think of it.
Which makes me wonder: How much of contemporary trans politics is infected with a neoliberal vision of identity? The misogyny is obvious, but I hadn’t reflected on the connection between the radical and ultimately incoherent conception of individualism offered by neoliberalism and the “I’m a X because I say I am” conception of gender.
A lot. That’s much discussed in the covens.
Plus, in my view, it’s all so painfully adolescent – so me me me, so I’m special, so why won’t you agree with me about how special I am. It’s as if people are freezing themselves mentally at age 15.
I’m not really too well read or informed on this topic, but I’ve never heard the Nordic Model referred to as the “Swedish” Model. Is this common? If not, shouldn’t someone interested in this topic (like this writer seems to be) actually know the relevant nomenclature? If so, then pardon my ignorance.
Heh. Julie Bindel is far from incoherent. Rather, she is cogent and concise. I’m guessing that the poster hasn’t read much of her writing; probably just enough to decide “A WITCH!” and to start lighting the torches.
It sounds like “Swedish Model” is a correct but older term:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Sweden
@G Felis,
Is sewing work? There does seem to be a lot of exploitation and abuse going on in the sewing business. There also seems to be a lot of exploitation and abuse going on in all kinds of other sectors. That never seemed to have been used as an arguments against sewing, harvesting, … not being work. It always seemed possible to fight the exploitation and the abuse without claiming the particular activity was not work.
Except with sex work, there the exploitation and abuse seemed to be treated as sufficient reason for it not being work. Now I am not claiming sex work is work, I am still undecided about that, I just don’t find the arguments against it being work that convincing.
@axxyaan
The argument isn’t actually about whether “sex work” is or isn’t “work.”
“Sex work” is an umbrella term for a number of different kinds of work, including prostitution, pimping, acting in porn, directing porn, producing porn, stripping, managing a strip club, etc.
It’s a term that obfuscates the issues involved.
When it comes to the work under discussion here, prostitution, well–prostitution is indeed work; I’ve never seen anyone deny that.
The unstated-but-implied premise of “sex work is work!” is usually “prostitution is work just like any other work.
Pretty sure seamstresses aren’t required to allow their bodies to be penetrated by strangers, however they happen to feel about it.
Not to mention that when abusive and exploitative working conditions arise for seamstresses (or pretty much any other occupation), there are calls for boycotts of those companies/products, pressure to improve human rights and generally much (well deserved) hand wringing. But when it comes to prostitution, there are these cries of destroying the agency of women who choose to undertake such work freely and denials that abuse and exploitation form enough of a part of the ‘industry’ to warrant any intervention at all.
Funnily enough one of the (justified) complaints of trans people is that they are so forced to the margins of society that many end up engaging unwillingly in prostitution to make ends meet. This is described as one of the violences practised against them. I agree. I also wonder why there are people who support every single thing trans people say, but also maintain that anyone who speaks out against an open sex trade as being whore phobes. yet another cognitive dissonance I guess.
@Lady Mondegreen #7
In what way is it not like any other work? What are the implications of it not being like any other work?
What point are you trying to make in your second statement except the obvious one that different kinds of work have different requirements? I am equally sure the prostitutes aren’t required to put a thread through the eye of a needle. In that way every work is not like any other work.
@Rob #8
Yes that is very true. But I would like to make a difference between looking at the question more or less in isolation. How should we treat prostitution legally in a society that provides the needed protection for the weak and looking at the question more practically where we might argue for more restrictive laws, because the current situation is so out of control that legislation that would answer the first question wouldn’t suffice for the situation we are in.
There are concerns with prostitution specifically that it may not be possible to conduct it in a way that offers adequate protections for the workers concerned.
For one, there aren’t services available that are more intimate, apart possibly from organ donation and pregnancy surrogacy. Laws and regulations are mighty ham-fisted by their nature to assess, measure, and mitigate psychological and physical risks there.
For another, humans tend to keep their sex private, very private, and are reluctant, often practically unable, to talk about it. Any abuse in that situation is likely to be a he-said, she-said situation, and one in which social values mean fair treatment of accuser and alleged perpetrator will be unlikely in the extreme. It’s a commercial interaction in which any slip in protocol gets you rape. Why are we eager to juggle that chainsaw?
For a third, commercial sex is likely to have negative externalities that other commerce rarely will. There’s nothing much else that makes the worker out as a mere object, and that’s going to affect attitudes outside that neat market interaction.
Libertarian – in any sense – impulses are fine and well and good, and I’m all for sex positivity, but we live in a real world full of delicate, fragile, stupid, and often wicked people who stand to get hurt, badly, by utopian assumptions taken as gospel.
@Jef Engel #11
So are you for a prohibition? Because as far as I understand all these arguments seem to work out in favor of a prohibition for prostitution.
I’ve got precious little interest in prohibition. I’m not interested in slamming the prostitutes – too many of them have it too bad already, thanks. I’m not interested in being made out as being interested in that either, and when the only response is to ask about prohibition, that’s the interpretation I suspect is being tailored for me.
But if a practice is going to be stopped, prohibition is certainly a plausible element. Certainly prohibiting measures that force someone to do it is: pimps aren’t any better than any other form of extortionist, mugger, or slave trader, and treating them better legally is a farce. I hardly think the johns are any better.
But it’s also ludicrous to have a nominally consensual transaction which is illegal for one party and perfectly legitimate for the other. On the other hand, there’s little to no benefit to punishing the party that the policy is supposed to protect, and making sure the prostitute is in fine condition to report the johns and pimps is important.
Realistically though, dealing with it as a problem is going to have very little to do with prohibition, but much more about changing attitudes to reduce demand, discourage supply, make sure people who’d be forcing it can be arrested, prosecuted, and deterred massively and reliably, and that no one is in a position that their circumstances are bettered by any of the troublesome varieties of prostitution. (That unicorn dream scenario of thoroughly safe, pleasant, uncoerced prostitution – well, if it exists, going after it is no reasonable use of anyone’s limited resources – except maybe the curious anthropologist trying to prove it even is out there somewhere.)
Sex work is a job, and it is a job like others: you do something and get paid for it. If it isn’t, it’s slavery, which is certainly work, though not much like other work, except perhaps being a wife, which is obviously not work because it’s obviously not a job. Obviously. And sex is what wives are for, apart from housekeeping, of course, so how can it be a job?
Seamstresses do not put petrol into cars, nor do they put catheters up penises: a job is whatever it happens to be, and isn’t like another job, except that it involves effort and time and payment.
But as has been pointed out, seamstresses may be cruelly treated and everybody complains, but sex workers get abused and nobody does a damned thing, except perhaps complain about the various clumsy attempts to address the situation. This is not because sex work is not work but because (a) it offends all sorts of twisty prickly scruples, and (b) it is mostly women who do it. And (c): because (a) is because of (b). And we have (b) because of (d) men.
All the arguments are about the enslavement of women and how women cannot be allowed to do sex as a job because. And how no one should stop the enslavement and no one should let women choose to do weird jobs if they like. Especially involving sex. We haven’t got very far from fulminating about committing fornication or adultery or SELF-ABUSE or lusting after the flesh.
So Julie Bindel’s arguments do not convince me. On the other hand, it is clearly a job to present her books to the public and get paid for doing so, and of course she should be allowed to do it, even if her opinions are incoherent. And telling lies about what she actually says is probably vicious and if not vicious stupid. It is the protesting sex workers that puzzle me. Are these the ones who have not experienced coercion or abuse? or the ones who want nothing better than to do what they like best all day and all night and get paid for it, too? Or are they pimps and MRAs? Incels, maybe? Neoliberals? (well, one would expect…).
@Jeff Engel
Objectification of workers is not common outside sex work? To consider here only women, what about being a film actor, or a news reader, or a weather forecaster, or an engineer or mathematician or astronomer or computer programmer or anything else where women are actually seen doing things in public. Women are always objectified, whatever they do. Really, we’re no better than extreme Islamic conservatives. We just like to think we are. We pretend quite convincingly, till we have (for example) debates like this one. We simply will not confront our prejudices and fears.
If we give the sex worker a boatload of money to arrive at the debate in high style, will it then be a fair debate from the sex worker’s perspective? That seems to be the real concern.
Why weren’t the members of the pro sex trade protest arrested? Can we now commit any number of crimes in the guise of protest? Who decides which protesters get to commit crimes without consequence and which get jailed for merely speaking? Pretty sure we need to switch that up.
Prostitution is not work. There’s no way it can hold up to regulatory scrutiny. http://logosjournal.com/2014/watson/
I thought this essay, Why Sex Work Isn’t Work, made good points.
I haven’t yet read Bindel’s new book. I’ve recently finished Robert Jensen’s book “Getting Off”, which is primarily about pornography, but the topic overlaps significantly with prostitution. Among the most compelling issues he addresses is that pornography isn’t simply about filming people having sex, but about women being abused, humiliated, and demeaned on camera, for the pleasure of men who find such things stimulating. Men are willing to pay, be it money or advertising, to watch women being abused or to engage in the abuse themselves.
Cressida, our posts crossed in the mail. :-)
@Cressida
The problem that I have with this is the assumption that the existing laws of the United States represent a sufficient standard. I do not believe this. The laws of the United States represent American opinion at the the time they were drafted. I consider that opinion to be based on a puritanical rejection of sexual freedom which is opposed to the liberation of women, and is typically American in its protestant hypocritical stiff-lipped absolutism. By “liberation of women” I mean the right of women to do anything they damn-well choose on the same basis that men do already. (The fact that American women also assume this is what Bin Laden couldn’t accept. But American men are little different). The reason why “worker safety” and “sexual harassment” and “civil rights” are problematic is the same reason why women are oppressed. We don’t like “worker safety” if it affects our profits or our lusts, we don’t care about “sexual harassment” if harassment is what we want to do, and “civil rights” are an excuse to oppress us with taxation and social responsibility.
The other side to this is the implication that Americans represent the entire planet. This assumption is dangerously blind and stupid. It is why you chose Trump. Trump is now “American values” to everyone who isn’t American.
This argument rests on the complete denial of women’s rights. The issues are the right of women to choose without social stigma and to live their lives without judgment or coercion, just as men expect to do. Whether this or that form of behaviour is good or bad is a matter which will become clear with clear thinking about our collective experience, if that is possible. At the moment, we have only traditional bullshit and emotional confusion.
There’s four broad categories of approach to prostitution:
Prohibition. Make it illegal in some fashion, punish everyone involved.
Legalization. Make prostitution a legal profession, with regulations, inspectors, licenses and so on.
Decriminalization. This is the Glibertarian Dream–a complete lassez-faire approach to sex work, where there’s no attempt by the government to even monitor sex work to ensure a lack of abuse.
The Nordic Model. Prohibition for the pimps and procurers (Johns), legalization for the sex workers themselves.
Every last person I’ve seen argue heavily against the Nordic model ultimately also argues for Decriminalization. Which is a pity, because the Model DOES have some issues in its current form that need to be addressed (these have less to do with the core principle than with how the Model interacts with the often racist and classist nature of police forces). I’d like to see some reform on it. But you can’t even acknowledge the need for reform without a dozen wannabe johns showing up and crying because they can’t buy women legally.
And the problem with decriminalization, in particular, is that it does the same thing to sex workers that lassez-faire approaches to industry always do–it leaves the workers vulnerable to constant abuse, exploitation and desperate working conditions. And the nature of sex work means these abuses are always vastly worse in nature than they would be in virtually any other industry.
@Gordon Willis
I cannot parse your argument here at all. Do you oppose laws intended to protect workers from danger, exploitation, and discrimination? If you do not, then you need to address the points made in the Logos Journal piece. The fact that such laws are imperfectly enforced is irrelevant to the argument.
No, it doesn’t. The argument rests on attitudes about the relations between women as a class and men as a class. The point of the Nordic model is to discourage the perception and treatment of women as people who are to be used by males for sexual gratification–people, in other words, with no real sexual subjectivity of their own.
Nobody here wants prostitutes to be socially stigmatized. I for one would be perfectly happy seeing the johns stigmatized, though.
Well, do go on. What is the nature of sex work?
Abuses are bad because we like to be bad. Does this mean that sex work is intrinsically likely to produce abused workers, or does it mean that we must accept what sex workers are prepared to accept? You know, “no means no” and so on? Or is that too fucking hard?
Actually, it’s quite simple. I mean what I say. Women are oppressed because they are objects of sexual desire. I am not concerned about American laws but about the attitudes which make laws of some kind or other necessary. Nor am I saying anything about the enforcement of the laws you have. And laws reflect the assumptions of society, and these assumptions are often oppressive. Your questions are irrelevant. I think you are coming from somewhere else.
Yes it does. I am not talking about the Nordic model or any other model. Whatever the point of the Nordic model may be, my argument stands, and you have not addressed it.
Where is “here”? And what do you think I am talking about?
@Aaxyaan
See the Logos Journal article posted by Cressida and Sackbut. In addition, see my response below.
If inserting a penis in a human orifice were as simple as inserting thread through the eye of a needle, I might see your point. But human orifices are made of human tissue, and they are attached to human beings; human beings whose own sexual feelings are not the point of the transaction.
Prostitution denies women’s sexual subjectivity. At best, it relies on women (and young men, and children) performing (or enduring) with a minimum of physical harm; but it is not about women’s sexual desires. It is about accommodating men’s. And the particular accommodation involves wear and tear and a host of inherent physical dangers.
I don’t see a job that entails asking a client to hurry up and come because the worker is sore as a job like any other. Many jobs are doubtless more easily endured if the worker disassociates from her or his body, but rarely in regards to such intimate bodily functions.
Gordo Willis
Men are objects of sexual desire too. Yet women as a class don’t oppress men as a class.
I think your argument is missing something there.
I think you are overlooking a couple of things, like the history of the Industrial Revolution, its abuses, and the Labor Movement.
But OK, yeah, I’m coming from somewhere else.
That’s because I find it incoherent. Maybe I’m stupid. Explain it to me again.
“Here” is this comment thread on this blog, plus the blog’s writer.
What you are talking about, I see I have no idea.
I support the Nordic model. Gordon, presumably, supports decriminalization. So the only real difference in our positions is that I think pimps and johns should go to jail, and Gordon thinks pimps and johns should walk the streets free. As for why Gordon is so worked up about making pimps and johns comfortable, to the point where he’s returning to this comment thread again and again – you’d have to ask him.
This is an important point, Lady Mondegreen, and you should expand upon it. How are sexual feelings not the point of a sexual transaction, and why do you use the plural?
Is this good or bad? And what exactly is it anyway? These statements must be supported. You can’t just throw them out as “understood”. What, after all, is “sexual subjectivity”? My whole argument is based on the fact that we do precisely what you are doing now.
Which women? If women are people, they are individuals. So stop talking about “women” as if you understood them all. You don’t.
Of course it is, but that doesn’t mean that women — well, some women, anyway — do not want to do it. It’s a job, after all. And some women may like it. And making all these declarations about what is so and what is not so is not going to help us find out what is actually so or not so. We don’t know, do we?
Look, I see it like this:
Men have oppressed women since the agricultural revolution or whenever.
This is a long time.
So we have all sorts of assumptions that are so old that we cannot believe they are not the ultimate truth about human nature.
But they might not be.
But we are confused, because there are awkward facts
and we keep trotting out the same old stuff, because that’s all we know, and only get more confused.
But what if it’s all rubbish?
If it’s all rubbish, what is true?
God helps us god help us god help us god he…
Or we could keep calm and try to find out.
I’m glad you said “presumably”, Cressida. I am not concerned with your American laws. Nor do I support any of the other opinions you attribute to me. You simply haven’t understood what I am saying. I am sorry I have not been able to be more explicit. Attribute it to my inadequacy as a human being.
Gordon, please be explicit. What basic form of control and regulation (or lack thereoff) do you support. If we have a context for your comments that would aid understanding and communication. Also, saying that American law is irrelevant on a blog written by an American with a very large number of American readers is possibly a bit facile.
I’m from New Zealand, RJW is from Australia, Latsot is from the UK. All of those countries have similar enough laws to the US that discussions about work, exploitation and criminality can be usefully had. Note: not putting words in the mouths of RJW or Latsot at all.
New Zealand is the only western democracy I’m aware of that has decriminalised sex work. Few, if any, of the purported benefits have come to pass. The experiment is increasingly viewed as a failure, but given the complexity of the politics involved and the lack of a clear ‘fix’ it looks like we’re stuck with it.
Duh.
I said the woman’s sexual feelings are not the point of the transaction. And they’re obviously not, even if in a given case she enjoys it.
Obviously. One party is paying the other. The point is the sexual satisfaction of the one paying. I’ll be damned if I see how you can deny this.
If I buy a cup of coffee from a barista, she may enjoy our interaction or hate it, but her feelings about the transaction are not the point.
It’s bad. And my statement has already been supported (see above.) You’re just hellbent on ignoring it.
And I don’t know what you think I am doing now, but at this point I don’t much care, because I don’t think you even know.
How ’bout we stick to what we do know, and argue from there.
Women’s sexuality is not a black box, Gordon. We do, in fact, know quite a bit about it.
I don’t think there are any easy answers here, but the Nordic model at least attempts to fight the use of women as a class of sexual objects for men’s use. (This is a fight to change social perceptions as much as it is an attempt to protect women from abuse and exploitation.)
I’m not going to engage your argument any further until you engage mine (and Cressida’s, and Rob’s). You’re just claiming we’re “trotting out the same old stuff” and appealing to unknowns.
I don’t see the point of that.
I don’t. Why would I? Please stop inventing arguments for me and read what I am actually saying. You are making assumptions which I believe to be not only wrong but principle causes of the problems we face. Your arguments are part of the problem, and it is so frustrating that you just don’t get it.
If you agree with me that–
then this–
–is utterly beside the point.
How about you extend me the same courtesy.
I have been reading what you’ve said, and I find it clear as mud.
Back at you.
Gordon, can I point you back to the first two sentences of my post @29. If pretty much everyone else in a discussion is saying they don’t actually know what you’re saying, chances are it’s how your saying it, rather than how they’re reading it. Be explicit. State your position re key points clearly using short sentences. I’m sure we’ll get it if you do that coherently.
I’m not even part of the discussion with Gordon and I have no flippin’ idea what point it is that he’s trying to make.
As a writer, it’s your job to make yourself understood, not the job of readers to puzzle out what you’re hinting at. Whether or not you are inadequate as a human being is neither here nor there and your comment here adds nothing to the conversation or to any understanding of what idea it is that you’re trying to convey.
@Jeff Engel,
I am sorry for not wording my question in a more charitable mood. It was not my intention of making you out anything. I just tried to give feedback on where I saw your arguments/concerns leading to.
Axxyaan – Thank you. For what it’s worth, of Freemage’s four option analysis, I’d regard the Swedish Model as the least hopeless starting point – it’s just that, with almost all the work still left to be done after that start, it’s immensely frustrating knowing that many people will be content to consider anything else afterward without either addressing the issues leading to prostitution or considering the problems still with the Swedish Model itself.
James & Lady Mondgreen; Yeah, Gordon’s completely incoherent. He’s just JAQing off, as far as I can tell, and not even doing that in an intelligible fashion. That said, I’m going to clarify my one point he opted to address:
The nature of sex work is that the worker is in a position of extreme physical and emotional vulnerability. In addition, in any case where things go sour, the odds of violence generally, and sexual violence specifically, are exceptionally (and, IMNSHO, unacceptably) high.
A key aspect of the Nordic Model is that it is the ideal structure for making ‘what sex workers are prepared to accept’ the legally enforced boundary. Johns have no right in the transaction, because they have no rights TO the transaction in the first place. Therefore, ALL rights in the encounter are retained by the sex worker. If a John pays a woman for sex, and then she does not feel like performing the act, or does not wish to perform it in the manner he believes he is entitled to (say, without a condom, or a specific act/position, etc), then he cannot threaten to sic the law on her for failing to perform, because as far as the law is concerned, he gave her that money for nothing in the first place.
Jeff:
I also agree that the SM is, at best, a starting point towards something better, ideally one that could be implemented in many areas and then tinkered with both with an eye to finding a stronger general model, and one that takes into account local social forces. It can be frustrating to try to take a nuanced view of it–if you bring up the SM at all, you’re immediately labeled a ‘puritanical neo-con SWERF’, and if you don’t paint it as the One True And Perfect Path, it’s assumed you’re one of the Glibertarian SWIFs who want total decriminalization.
@Freemage
As you explain the Nordic Model, my understanding of it, goes a bit as follows. The prostitute is allowed to accept money, and is allowed to let that influence her in being seduced by the person who tries to win her favors. However there isn’t any contract (not even a verbal one) involved, so he can’t by her favors. She is never under any kind of legal obligation to perform any sexual service.
Also the handing over money to the prostitute is not illegal. It just doesn’t buy anything. (except maybe some good will)
Is this more or less correct?
When I began to address this topic, it did not occur to me that the difference between work and slavery was problematic. Sex-work is a very new term, and it came into existence because certain people wished to establish that what they do is work — i.e. a job — and not slavery. I believe that the problem derives from our inculcated shame about sex and our seemingly ineradicable proclivity to regard women as solely responsible for what happens to them. If this seems confused, it is because it is. That is where we are as a society.
For sex-work to be work it must be a matter of choice. If it is a matter of mere economic necessity then we have to discover whether in any individual case it is seen as a mere job (better than working in a shop) or whether it is the result of coercion — which I regard as slavery. Of course, it is frequently the case that people who become prostitutes (as opposed to sex-workers as I understand the term) do so out of economic necessity, but I believe that in such cases they are victims of society and have been reduced by society to slavery, and therefore fall into the latter category (the coerced).
Many replies on this thread address the topic of sex-work as if it were a term for slavery. It is because of this assumption that there is confusion, and a failure to address the actual topic, which I take to be: should sex-workers hassle authors and why do they do it? and arising from this, who (or rather, what) do they think they are?
If people are agitating to be seen as workers, it is because they wish to be seen as neither coerced nor passive. Slaves are unlikely to wish for anything of the kind, even if they were permitted the opportunity to protest on their own behalf. Failure to address this distinction is the result of moral shame, fear, prudery and hatred of women and is the main obstacle to allowing any justice for either victims or workers in this matter at all. To put it another way, if you choose to see everyone as a victim, you will do justice to no one, because you will have victimised everyone; and the fact that not everyone is a victim will permit you to dismiss the real victims as liars. Does this seem convoluted? Conservatives do this all the time.
That is all I am going to say. I have observed that once people become insulting on line they are unlikely to give way, whatever is said on their own behalf by the people they are attacking. Suicides happen. I expect better from people on such a site as this. I will therefore not say anything else on this thread.
Not quite. Under the Nordic model, classic prostitution still occurs. Clients (virtually all men) still give prostitutes (the vast majority of them women) money in exchange for sex. However, under the Nordic model, the prostitute has committed no crime–the procurer, and the pimp, if any, have. Now, as a practical matter, the prostitute usually makes no waves–the economic need to satisfy the customer still exists, as she most typically wishes to retain his custom in the future. But, if some cause arises that she does not wish to perform, then he has no legal claim against her, and indeed, cannot pursue her legally, since the initial transaction was not a legally binding contract. Furthermore, if he attempts to use force or other illegal means of coercion against her, she can go to the cops, say plainly what has occurred, and get the man arrested. She also has the right of self-defense.
Compare this to the effects of such a change of course under either prohibition or decriminalization:
Prohibition: While the man is just as confined in his response to her refusal (she cannot be taken to court for the money), he can escalate the encounter with threats of violence, without fear that she will alert the authorities, because to do so, she must first admit her own crime. Furthermore, since he is likely to be a first-time offender, while many prostitutes are arrested multiple times, it may very well be that she is sentenced under repeat-offender statutes, and end up facing a higher penalty than her attacker.
Decriminalization: Here, the prostitute is arguably unrestricted from seeking relief from the police if her attacker turns violent–but the customer’s ability to bring the force of the legal system against her is enshrined in standard contract law. In short, he can force her into court under suit for fraud, breach of contract, etc. In some cases, he might even be able to justify use-of-force in attempting to regain his money, on the grounds that the breach of contract is tantamount to theft. (As a point of reference, de facto decriminalization is the norm in many American cities–the cops only use laws against prostitution in cases where they are looking for an excuse to bust someone. In at least one case, the scenario I describe above led to the acquittal of the man who shot the escort in the back as she left with his money, because it was considered ‘robbery’, and thus self-defense. Weirdly, the defense centered around the fact that the incident occurred at night–under Texas law, that meant that her attempt to leave with his money constituted robbery, a crime that is considered justification of lethal force.)
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I didn’t, and yet you spent quite a bit of time replying to me, without seeming to understand my argument at all. I was making a class-based argument.
I don’t think there’s all that much confusion on our part, and I don’t think that’s the “actual topic.” But here’s my answer: if by “hassle” you mean, characterize somebody’s work as “hate speech” and “whorephobia,” and try to get them no-platformed without addressing their arguments, then I think they shouldn’t.
(I think we all understand why they do it. That their motives are understandable doesn’t make their tactics defensible.)
(I should add that in addition to the class-based argument, I tried to point out that being repeatedly penetrated is hard on a lady’s bits, and doing it without taking physical pleasure in it–as most first person accounts I’ve read by prostitutes, even the sex pozzie, SWIW ones!–is probably not great for the worker’s own sexual health and well-being. Pointing out that prostitution is about the client getting off, and NOT the worker, is not prudery. On the contrary: I think that women should enjoy sex, freely, and feel free to pursue it. But as sexual subjects, not objects for use by penis-havers.)