“…95% of them are problematic drug users.”

No, 95% of STREET prostitutes are problematic drug users. Most prostitutes aren’t street workers – don’t conflate the two.

Many years ago I went out with a young woman who was on the game. She was vibrant, bubbly,funny and very highly sexed. I got to know some of her friends too. She paid her way though university from sex. The last thing I heard of her was that she was a qualified vet and was running her own veterinary business.

I ended the relationship because I couldn’t handle the emotions that her work raised in me. She has a sucessful life, I live on less than £10k p/a.

Yes, there are victims out there, but the picture you paint is a false one that won’t be true for many women on the game.

Oh yeah, the whole “they’re all childhood victims of sexual abuse” thing is a bit of a problem too. Are you saying that if somebody was abused as a child then they don’t have the right to decide how to use their body later in life? WOuld it be okay with you if they slept with the same people but didn’t get paid?

If I hand cash over to a person who then spends it on food and drink – and I do so in exchange for sex it’s called prostitution.

If I buy a person dinner and drink in the expectations that it will lead to sex, it’s called a date.

Two essentially identical transactions but one is frowned upon and the other lauded.

“For most prostitutes their work provides a misery almost without limits. We know this because up to 95% of them are problematic drug users.”

Correlation doesn’t equal causation, a life of crime for most is a life of misery yet it would sound daft to suggest that we know this because X% of criminals are problematic drug users. Its more likely so that the individuals became criminals to sustain there drug use as opposed to becoming drug users due to the stresses and negativity of there profession.

By way of additional illumination, try this (depressing) recent Guardian report:

Behind the scenes at a lap-dancing club

Our reporter was granted unprecedented access to one of Britain’s oldest lap-dancing clubs. [20 July 2012}
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jul/20/lap-dancing-club-behind-scenes?google_editors_picks=true

OTOH compare: Confessions of a Working Girl, by Miss S (Penguin Books, 2007), supposedly an autobiographical account by a student who funds her way through higher education by working part-time at the local massage parlour down the road from her lodgings.

See too this report on the BBC website:

Greater numbers of students in England are turning to prostitution to fund their education, the National Union of Students (NUS) claims. [December 2011]

“No longer do they confront the other person as an independent sexual being with their own set of needs and desires, but rather as a ‘thing’ which is entirely subject to the whims of another. Prostitution is not simply about sex; it is about power and objectification.”

As far as I can tell this is presented as truth through revelation. Saying it don’t make it show, and you haven’t actually backed the claim up.

“The very act of paying for sex itself exacerbates the grubby inadequacy of the ‘John’ – the prostitute, then, becomes the living reminder of his own deficient premise. How can he not despise her for that? ”

Same as above – and I’ll add that you seem to have an unrealistically low opinion of human beings. Not everyone transfers their insecurities onto other people and turns them into hate figures.

Also, you seem to be assuming that the john judges people based on their sexual “achievements” as much as you apparently do. Perhaps some of them just want a shag and don’t get all philosophical about it?

Either way, the fact that you think a man who can’t get laid is “inadequate” says some rather unpleasant things about your sexual politics.

C’mon. One of the lesser problems that professional sex workers have is continuing competition from enthusiastic amateurs.

Try this interview of Catherine Millet in The Guardian in 2002:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/may/19/biography.features

‘If I hand cash over to a person who then spends it on food and drink – and I do so in exchange for sex it’s called prostitution.’
‘If I buy a person dinner and drink in the expectations that it will lead to sex, it’s called a date’

‘Two essentially identical transactions but one is frowned upon and the other lauded.’

These are, of course, completely different situations. A date between two people is not (usually) defined by the fact that one person is poor such that they have no other feasible means of earning money but by selling their body.

If 95% of street prostitutes have drug addictions, then the problem is not prostitution but drug policy.

If GPs could prescribe heroin for addicts to take in “shooting galleries” then there would be no need for people to fund their habit through prostitution or acquisitive crime.

‘Either way, the fact that you think a man who can’t get laid is “inadequate” says some rather unpleasant things about your sexual politics.’

Is this really what you think the whole thing is about? Men who can’t get laid? Are you completely impervious to the politics of it? The whole point of the article is that it is not just about sex per se but sexual control. The enjoyment of an unquestioned and one-sided power over someone. This is more than ‘revelation’. The fact that this is about power and control is underwritten by the violence which, for many people working in the industry, is a fact of life. Apart from making some derisive comments about my ‘sexual politics’ I note you haven’t addressed the actual statistics on violence the article cites.

“A date between two people is not (usually) defined by the fact that one person is poor such that they have no other feasible means of earning money but by selling their body”

In fact, the prostitution market is highly differentiated.

Revealed: The truth about brothels

“During 120 hours of telephone calls, we established the following: at least 1,933 women are currently at work in London’s brothels; ages range from 18 to 55 (with a number of premises offering “very, very young girls”); prices for full sex start at £15, and go up to £250. . .

“Of the brothels researched, 85% operate in residential areas. Almost two-thirds are located in flats and more than one-fifth are in a house. Wherever you are in the city, the likelihood is that buying and selling women is going on under your nose.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/sep/10/women.socialexclusion

@ 9 tony

“Is this really what you think the whole thing is about? Men who can’t get laid?”

The whole thing? No. But you seem to basing a portion of your argument off the assumption that everyone has your sexual politics. If someone DOESN’T see an inability to get laid as their failure as a man, then they’re not going to despise the hooker for symbolising this. And that’s before we consider how many people are immature enough to blame innocent strangers for their problems, too.

“Are you completely impervious to the politics of it? ”

No. I just disagree with your politics. If you can’t handle that then I don’t know what you hope to achieve, because you won’t win people over by telling them that they’re “impervious to politics”.

“The whole point of the article is that it is not just about sex per se but sexual control. The enjoyment of an unquestioned and one-sided power over someone. This is more than ‘revelation’. The fact that this is about power and control is underwritten by the violence which, for many people working in the industry, is a fact of life.”

So the whole point of your article rests on a total supposition. You’re a) presuming the reason for the violence on the basis of, thus far, zero evidence, and b) using the actions of violent johns to tar every single john in the world. Forgive me if I don’t assume an unsubstantiated claim is true just on your say-so.

“Apart from making some derisive comments about my ‘sexual politics’ I note you haven’t addressed the actual statistics on violence the article cites.”

Firstly, your sexual politics are relevant here because you’re assuming everyone shares them – see above. Secondly, other posters have criticised your figures, both in their accuracy and their extrapolation, so rather than just repeat what someone else has said I decided to wait and hear your response. Thirdly, I am addressing your *argument* and it’s not my fault if you’d prefer that I argue about a different part of your post.

“The very act of paying for sex itself exacerbates the grubby inadequacy of the ‘John’ – the prostitute, then, becomes the living reminder of his own deficient premise. How can he not despise her for that?”

Nice. You sound like a pleasant chap really.

Do you happen to know if The Council for Prostitution Alternatives did a similar study on “Johns”? Is it possible that any of them were also victims of child sexual abuse, incest, etc., etc.? No? The men concerned are just grubby inadequates? Ok, I think we get the picture. Your only concern is the minority of street prostitutes who actually comprise this mythical 95%. In actual fact, these street prostitutes are failed by the laws supported by those liberals who are so anti-prostitution they want to lock up the prostitutes and the Johns, thereby ruining their lives. It doesn’t occur to them that it is their views which cause the very misery they wring their hands over.

Try this recent news report in The Economist about the public debate in France over banning prostitution:

A new government wants to abolish the oldest profession
http://www.economist.com/node/21558612

This is an instructive contrast with governments in other countries which have taken the different course of liberalising the market – New Zealand, Germany, the Netherlands.

Grounding the discussion in reality is more illuminating IMO than fulminating over ideologically motivated fantasies about prostitution and prostitutes. I can’t really believe that either the likes of Belle de Jour or Catherine Millet fit the stereotyping. By many accounts, prostitution and brothels operate in highly differentiated markets. If anything, the related public debate over “the war on drugs” appears to be drifting towards the liberalising option.

There is evidence to support the key assertions outlined in the OP.

For example, Melissa Farley & Norma Hotaling conducted interviews of 130 San Francisco prostitutes (in ’94 + ’95).
’80% of the prostitutes we interviewed had been physically assaulted since entering prostitution – 54% of those assaults were by customers – 67% of our interviewees had been raped since entering prostitution – 45% of these were rapes by customers. Other research has shown that from 55% to 90% of prostitutes are sexually abused as children, often by more than one perpetrator. We know that members of the commercial sex industry recruit children into prostitution when they are, on the average, thirteen years old. Poverty and homelessness are major contributing factors to entering prostitution. 84% of the prostitutes we interviewed had been homeless at some point in their lives. Myth also has it that prostitutes who work on the streets are very different from other prostitutes. This is an assumption which has not been adequately studied. For example, research has shown that 75% of women who are escort prostitutes have attempted suicide. In my clinical experience, ALL prostitutes suffer psychological damage from the harm which is intrinsic to prostitution. Statistics can’t provide a picture of the devastating psychological effects of being prostituted. In order to work as a prostitute, it is necessary to shut down emotionally. The person who is for sale, then, is actually a pretend-self. This provides psychological protection, in much the same way a political prisoner protects himself during torture’.
http://thehousegroup.org/archive/res_hate_crime.pdf

It’s impossible to argue that prostitution does not have devastating consequences for some participants.

The dilemma as I see it is that prostitution is not going to go away, so it is unlikely that there will ever be a choice between a prostitute free world, or the one we have now, but rather a choice between safer and less safe exchanges in the sex trade.

Chaise: you started with this:

‘the fact that you think a man who can’t get laid is “inadequate” says some rather unpleasant things about your sexual politics.’

This is how you mistakenly summed up my argument in the first place, and though I have tried to say this is not what I claim, nevertheless you continue, utterly indifferent to the thrust of the article itself – when you say:

‘If someone DOESN’T see an inability to get laid as their failure as a man, then they’re not going to despise the hooker for symbolising this.’

I will try to be very clear about this. I never ever mentioned anything about the ‘inability to get laid.’ This is a fictitious creation entirely of your own making. It allows you, perhaps, to ventriloquize me – to turn me into some joyless moralist who exhibits an almost puritanical contempt toward lonely men who are desperate for some kind of physical and emotional companionship.

Now you can continue trotting out these criticisms but plese be aware that you are simply shadow boxing. I never ever suggested prostitution is based on the fact that of men who can’t get laid. Nor, therefore, could i go on to say that said men – ‘might despise the hooker for symblolising this’

Let me try again. There are men who are married, have girlfriends, still use prostitutes. Again the question is not about a lack of sex but rather a desire for power over another individual. The excitement of being able to control someone, to tell them what to do, to have them serve you almost without question. I believe this has a basis in a society in which, in all sorts of ways, men tend to have more power. I think prostitution is one of the more extreme expressions of this.

But if you abstract from this – only focus on the fact that a person who is paying wants sex, and might not be getting it elsewhere – then you manage to void the discussion of its political content and the relations of power which operate more generally are evaporated. Consequently my critique is reduced to one of moral superiority rather than an elucidation of a given set of power relations. But again, in doing this you manage to circumvent the actual thrust of my argument.

Chaise you began with this:

‘the fact that you think a man who can’t get laid is “inadequate” says some rather unpleasant things about your sexual politics.’

This is how you mistakenly summed up my argument in the first place, and though I have tried to say this is not what I claim, nevertheless you continue, utterly indifferent to the thrust of the article itself – when you say:

‘If someone DOESN’T see an inability to get laid as their failure as a man, then they’re not going to despise the hooker for symbolising this.’

I will try to be very clear about this. I never ever mentioned anything about the ‘inability to get laid.’ This is a fictitious creation entirely of your own making. It allows you, perhaps, to ventriloquize me – to turn me into a joyless moralist who exhibits an almost puritanical contempt toward lonely men who are desperate for some kind of physical and emotional companionship.

Now you can continue trotting out these criticisms but plese be aware you are simply shadow boxing. I never said prostitution was based on a group of men who can’t get laid. Nor, therefore, would I say they ‘might despise the hooker for symblolising this’

Let me try again. There are men who are married, have girlfriends, still use prostitutes. Again the question is not about a lack of sex but rather a desire for power over another individual. The excitement of being able to control someone, to tell them what to do, to have them serve you almost without question. I think this has a basis in a society in which, in all sorts of ways, men tend to have more power. It seems to me that prostitution is one of the more extreme expressions of this

But if you abstract from this – only focus on the fact that person who is paying wants sex, might not be getting it elsewhere – then you manage to void the discussion of its political content and the relations of power which operate more generally. And my critique is reduced to one of moral superiority rather than an elucidation of a given set of power relations. But again, in doing this you manage to circumvent the actual thrust of my argument.

“A date between two people is not (usually) defined by the fact that one person is poor such that they have no other feasible means of earning money but by selling their body.” – Well, maybe the guy is so hard-up that he can’t afford to “risk” his “hard-earned” on a “date” that “might go nowhere”. Not everyone is loaded, you know.

Yes, there are victims out there, but the picture you paint is a false one that won’t be true for many women on the game.

Well, clearly your own personal experiences negative what all the other studies say or show. Well done.

“actual statistics on violence the article cites” – “statistics”, the same statistics that “pressure groups” have been caught pulling out of goodness knows where to back up their cause. This whole article is very anti-man from a so-called liberal site, this is the sort of tripe that make people vote Tory. It is like those posters in London: “Go in a punter, come out a rapist” ?!

“The excitement of being able to control someone, to tell them what to do, to have them serve you almost without question. I think this has a basis in a society in which, in all sorts of ways, men tend to have more power. It seems to me that prostitution is one of the more extreme expressions of this”

What about the men who employ prostitutes to dominate, spank and hammer them up the backside with a plastic objects bought from an adult website? Or the men who just describe how they want the next 60 minutes to unfold and get on with it? I can not help but get the feeling your perception of this is based upon your perception and relationship to your own power in life.

Given that this is not much more than a bog-standard cut-n-paste of every anti-sex work argument one repeatedly comes across, a sustained critical response would (a) take forever and (b) not change the writer’s opinion one bit. To take a couple of examples:

The very act of paying for sex itself exacerbates the grubby inadequacy of the ‘John’ – the prostitute, then, becomes the living reminder of his own deficient premise. How can he not despise her for that?

By hiring a prostitute the client is brought face to face with his own emptiness; in consummating the act, he is as well manifesting his own lack- the inability to connect with another person on a genuine basis of freedom and equality.

There are no links provided to any evidence for this, not even for any research into clients. It’s a typical assertion that implies that ‘real men get their sex for free,’ and all clients are ugly misogynist fuckpigs, neatly allowing the writer to pass judgement on other people’s sexual choices and behaviours in the name of ‘left’ politics.

No doubts such Belle de Jours do exist. But the point is they exist as an extremely tiny minority.

Anti-sex work campaigners are obsessed with Belle de Jour, yet have repeatedly dismissed both hers and any other sex work testimony that doesn’t fit a ‘misery-lit’ narrative. It’s as though they fail (or refuse) to recognise that there are as many experiences of sex work – good, bad and indifferent – as there are sex workers.

In short, the article says ‘Buying sex is NOT the same as buying anything else’ because the writer disapproves of paying for a sexual act or service. Somehow using one’s hands (or other parts of the anatomy) to earn a living becomes out of bounds when it involves giving another person sexual pleasure. (I note in passing that the author avoids any policy proposals to help protect sex workers from assault or to help them seek the arrest and conviction of anyone who assaults them, let alone to enable them to work in better/safer conditions.) . It is the ‘dull rehash’ of the arguments and logical fallacies made by every sexual conservative who can’t understand how or why other people don’t fuck the way s/he does.

PS: @Sunny – next time, find someone better when you want the readers to play anti-sex worker bingo – my card had more crosses on it than a pools coupon full of dull 1-1 draws.

Let us be honest: there is only ONE reason a man cannot “get laid” – lack of finance. As long as a guy has got money to burn her will get laid, in fact women will do anything, just so long as a man has MONEY TO BURN. You so-called left-wingers that want to criminalise “johns” and their “clients”, and by doing so RUINING THEIR LIVES!! What sort of sick person want gets off on RUINING PEOPLE’S LIVES??

It doesn’t matter how old a guy is, what he looks like, how out of shape he is. The secret is HAVING MONEY TO BURN. I wonder how it all squares with the anti-banker, anti-capitalist, Marxist philosophy.

To whoever wrote this garbage column instead of toadying to femininsts – it wont get you laid get yourself a WAD OF MONEY TO BURN then you’ll have all the women you can handle Your RICH

“The excitement of being able to control someone” – like a wife who wont “give it up” No wonder its mostly married men who frequent prostitutes.

@tony mckenna (16):

What part of your phrase ‘the grubby inadequacy of the “John”‘ isn’t indicative of ‘a joyless moralist who exhibits an almost puritanical contempt toward lonely men who are desperate for some kind of physical and emotional companionship’?

Incidentally, if you want to make it an argument about power relations, then the fact that in most legal and consensual financial transactions, where money is exchanged for legal goods or services, both parties have the right to say ‘No’ as well as ‘Yes.’ In British law it’s not illegal to pay (or be paid) for sex, and most sex acts between consenting adults are legal. The client doesn’t get to have sex simply because he (or she) is waving the cash around, and they don’t get the right to do ‘anything’ that hasn’t been agreed as part of the transaction.

Exactly Max, look at that formula one geezer – 80-odd years, face like a walnut, 5 foot nothing… then look at the gorgeous young Amazonian miss world beauties draped on his wrinkly arms… can’t be anything to do with the £40 billion he has sat in the bank, surely not!

Chaise:

‘So the whole point of your article rests on a total supposition. You’re a) presuming the reason for the violence on the basis of, thus far, zero evidence, and b) using the actions of violent johns to tar every single john in the world. Forgive me if I don’t assume an unsubstantiated claim is true just on your say-so.’

This is a mix of dissembling and conflation. It would be absurd of me to say that every man who has ever used a prostitute is automatically violent toward them. That, again, is clearly not the point I am making. The more pertinent question is – why do prostitutes experience a significantly higher level of violence than, say, the average blue collar or white collar labourer?

Could it be in some way tied to the difference in power relations which facilitate the prostitute/John interaction?

Are you seriously saying that the argument that prostitutes are more exposed to violence then a general labourer is ‘unsubstantiated’ and only based on my ‘say so’? Do you really believe there is ‘zero evidence’ of this?
You say:

‘Secondly, other posters have criticised your figures, both in their accuracy and their extrapolation’

They are not ‘my figures’ but provided by the homeoffice and the Object Human Rights organisation. There are other sources:

http://www.avaproject.org.uk/our-resources/statistics/prostitution.aspx

These tend to speak to the disproportionately high level of violence endured by prostitutes. I think it is deeply disengenious of you to simply keep repeating like a mantra that any of these claims are ‘unsubstantiated.’

Chaise:

‘So the whole point of your article rests on a total supposition. You’re a) presuming the reason for the violence on the basis of, thus far, zero evidence, and b) using the actions of violent johns to tar every single john in the world. Forgive me if I don’t assume an unsubstantiated claim is true just on your say-so.’

This is a mix of dissembling and conflation. It would be absurd of me to say that every man who has ever used a prostitute is automatically violent toward them. That, again, is clearly not the point I am making. The more pertinent question is – why do prostitutes experience a significantly higher level of violence than, say, the average blue collar or white collar labourer? Could it be in some way tied to the difference in power relations which facilitate the prostitute/John interaction?

Are you seriously saying that the argument that prostitutes are more exposed to violence then a general labourer is ‘unsubstantiated’ and only based on my ‘say so’? Do you really believe there is ‘zero evidence’ of this?

You say:

‘Secondly, other posters have criticised your figures, both in their accuracy and their extrapolation’

They are not ‘my figures’ but provided by the homeoffice and the Object Human Rights organisation. There are other sources:

http://www.avaproject.org.uk/our-resources/statistics/prostitution.aspx

All of which speak the disproportionately high level of violence endured by prostitutes. I think it is deeply disengenious of you to simply keep repeating like a mantra that any of these claims are ‘unsubstantiated.’

a&e charge nurse:

For example, Melissa Farley & Norma Hotaling conducted interviews of 130 San Francisco prostitutes (in ’94 + ’95).

You’re going to cite Melissa Farley as a source, despite the dodgy research and the fact that her testimony was thrown out of a Canadian court? Sample quote:

[353] I found the evidence of Dr. Melissa Farley to be problematic. Although Dr. Farley has conducted a great deal of research on prostitution, her advocacy appears to have permeated her opinions. For example, Dr. Farley’s unqualified assertion in her affidavit that prostitution is inherently violent appears to contradict her own findings that prostitutes who work from indoor locations generally experience less violence. Furthermore, in her affidavit, she failed to qualify her opinion regarding the causal relationship between post-traumatic stress disorder and prostitution, namely that it could be caused by events unrelated to prostitution.

[354] Dr. Farley’s choice of language is at times inflammatory and detracts from her conclusions. For example, comments such as, “prostitution is to the community what incest is to the family,” and “just as pedophiles justify sexual assault of children….men who use prostitutes develop elaborate cognitive schemes to justify purchase and use of women” make her opinions less persuasive.

[355] Dr. Farley stated during cross-examination that some of her opinions on prostitution were formed prior to her research, including, “that prostitution is a terrible harm to women, that prostitution is abusive in its very nature, and that prostitution amounts to men paying a woman for the right to rape her.” [356] Accordingly, for these reasons, I assign less weight to Dr. Farley’s evidence.

On the other hand, I do agree with your final statement:

The dilemma as I see it is that prostitution is not going to go away, so it is unlikely that there will ever be a choice between a prostitute free world, or the one we have now, but rather a choice between safer and less safe exchanges in the sex trade.

Trouble is, activists like Farley, and articles like this, aren’t enabling anyone to make safer choices.

And where did the Home Office get their statistics from? “Feminazis Against Men”?

@didi – You’re not helping – don’t give your opponents an excuse by calling them stupid names. There are perfectly good, reasoned arguments to use instead.

My apolgies, redpesto, I meant “Feminazis” as a term of endearment

No-one has mentioned that it’s the current draconian laws on prostitution that, paradoxically, prevent women from running brothels safely as a collective and make them far more vulnerable to exploitation. The answer is to give women the control.

But still, how many times have we heard about “statistics” being touted as if they had been hand-delivered by Moses himself from the mountain… only to discover later that they have been completely made up. Issues surrounding “prostitution”, “violence against women”, “porn”, “rape” “trafficking etc. are particularly infamous for this. I am sure if anyone want to do a search on say the Guardian they will find numerous examples of this.

@ Tony

“Let me try again. There are men who are married, have girlfriends, still use prostitutes. Again the question is not about a lack of sex but rather a desire for power over another individual. The excitement of being able to control someone, to tell them what to do, to have them serve you almost without question. I believe this has a basis in a society in which, in all sorts of ways, men tend to have more power. I think prostitution is one of the more extreme expressions of this”

Fair enough. It appears I leapt to conclusions about your views of the men’s motives. This is, nevertheless, a supposition. Don’t get me wrong: I take it as a given that some men get off on the power thing. But I don’t think that we can assume that this is a symptom or cause of something darker. And more to the point, it’s a massive mistake to extroplate from those individuals to every john out there.

Does anyone who writes this nonsense have any idea whatsoever of the actual dynamics of male-female relationships? Or do they just get of on “statistics” from the Home Office or wherever?

Why does the “left” always have the most right-wing views on “matters of the flesh”?

@ 28 tony

“This is a mix of dissembling and conflation. It would be absurd of me to say that every man who has ever used a prostitute is automatically violent toward them. That, again, is clearly not the point I am making. The more pertinent question is – why do prostitutes experience a significantly higher level of violence than, say, the average blue collar or white collar labourer? ”

You’ve misunderstood me. I’m not saying that you claim all johns are violent. I’m saying you’re ascribing an attitude that causes that violence then assuming all johns have that attitude, even if they don’t get violent.

“Could it be in some way tied to the difference in power relations which facilitate the prostitute/John interaction? ”

Probably, yes. And also that people generally are fucked up about sex. And also that prostitution is illegal or semi-legal and thus sex workers lack the protections from the state that they deserve.

“Are you seriously saying that the argument that prostitutes are more exposed to violence then a general labourer is ‘unsubstantiated’ and only based on my ‘say so’? Do you really believe there is ‘zero evidence’ of this?”

No; see above. This wasn’t the point I was arguing with. Absolutely prostitutes are in a high-risk profession when it comes to violence, and more besides.

“They are not ‘my figures’ but provided by the homeoffice and the Object Human Rights organisation.”

Cheap point. By “your figures” I meant “the figures you quote”.

“http://www.avaproject.org.uk/our-resources/statistics/prostitution.aspx”

That’s a political organisation, which makes me distrustful of their attitude towards statistics.

“These tend to speak to the disproportionately high level of violence endured by prostitutes. I think it is deeply disengenious of you to simply keep repeating like a mantra that any of these claims are ‘unsubstantiated.’”

It would be, if I was. Like I said, I’m not. I was talking about your psychological assessment of johns. But I would like to see your answer to the concerns raised by others above. Off the top of my head, one was that you’re taking stats for street-walkers and applying them to all prostitutes. I don’t know if that’s true but it would be dishonest if true. The other was a query over how you’ve distinguished between correlation and causation RE drug use and similar.

Stats matter, and any concerns about them need to be addressed.

Tony McKenna (@29):

The more pertinent question is – why do prostitutes experience a significantly higher level of violence than, say, the average blue collar or white collar labourer?

- Which jobs are you using as a comparison? Primary school teachers? Police officers? Soldiers on active duty? Bloggers?

Could it be in some way tied to the difference in power relations which facilitate the prostitute/John interaction?

Or…

- Could it be related to the way in which society regards sex workers simultaneously as victims of exploitation and ‘bad girls’ (or boys) who undermine the idea of love and sex by charging for sexual experiences outside of marriage?

- Or could it be related to the way in which sex workers who are assaulted or raped can’t get legal redress because of what they do for a living, and sometimes get arrested themselves when they try and report a crime?

- Or could it be that one outcome of the kinds of attitudes outlined above renders sex workers extremely vulnerable to acts of violence by individuals or groups?

- Or could it be because while the Home Office needs data on crime to inform policy, feminist advocacy groups such as Object use whatever they can get to support their abolitionist/prohibitionist agenda regarding sex work, so choose to focus on violence to the exclusion of other evidence?

Take your pick.

@ Tony again

Sorry, meant to clarify in my last post that I believe your misunderstanding of what I was saying (i.e. talking about attitudes rather than violence) was an honest mistake that, looking back, is at least partly my fault for being unclear. I’m not accusing you of straw-manning me, I’m trying to clear things up so we’re not at cross-purposes.

Incidentally, some complete twats have turned up on this page since I last checked it, and I want to get in early (although redpesto beat me to it) and say I hope we all realise that they don’t represent any non-twats present. ongi, however, is bang on the money.

No one here has mentioned the astonishing publishing success of the Shades of Grey triology by EL James, reportedly due to soaring sales to women readers. Try this Guardian report:

Why women love Fifty Shades of Grey: It’s the fastest-selling novel for adults of all time – and it’s very adult in content. Why have millions of women been seduced by Fifty Shades of Grey, asks Zoe Williams
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/06/why-women-love-fifty-shades-grey

Evidently, there are amazing numbers of women out there seeking inspiration and even vicarious thrills from the kinky sex narrative. According to other press reports: “Riding crops, intimate toys, silk ties and bondage gear have been flying off the shelves as the art of lovemaking has soared to new levels on the back of the hugely popular EL James books.” The Ann Summers shops have been doing great business in kit sales. My local superstore, where I buy my groceries, has a tub of the Shades of Grey books on special offer. I was left wondering if the store would soon start selling the accessories as well.

Correct me, please, if I’m getting this wrong but it’s rather looking as though the notion of “objectification” is becoming hugely popular in some quarters.

OTOH literary critics are saying the book is badly written and formulaic. The literary elegance of such erotic classics as The Story of O (1954) is greatly superior but then its author, Anne Desclos, was a distinguished translator and literary critic.

As many highly-paid celebrities have remarked: “If you weren’t a highly-paid footballer, what would you be?” “A virgin”.

“”As many highly-paid celebrities have remarked: “If you weren’t a highly-paid footballer, what would you be?” “A virgin”.”"

didi: Why does the “left” always have the most right-wing views on “matters of the flesh”?

Because sexual conservatives come in all shapes and sizes right across the political spectrum – in other words, anal sex is not a left/right thing.

@ redpesto

“is the ‘dull rehash’ of the arguments and logical fallacies made by every sexual conservative who can’t understand how or why other people don’t fuck the way s/he does. ”

I’m aware I could be accused of spamming this thread at this point, but just wanted to say that that link was awesome. I like this woman.

@Bob B – I think talking about ’50 Shades’ would be off-topic on this particular thread. The coverage in the Guardian veers between titillation and feminist disapproval (much like its coverage of sex work).

“There is, he claims, no difference between the exploitation of a prostitute and that of a person working in Tesco’s stacking shelves for twelve hours a day.

And how might we test the claim?”

The evidence provided here is inadequate to test the claim of no difference between the two because it only presents studies about the abuse of sex workers. This article provides no evidence (either way) of abuse that might lead someone to be exploited as a 12 hour shelf stacker. Not all abuse and the resulting problems and exploitation is sexual, in fact it accounts for only one part of emotional damage by parents. But then again the article being responded to didn’t offer any evidence to back that claim up either.

But let’s assume that there is a difference, that the evidence presented here is correct and there is no abuse creating the 12 hour shelf stacker. What is virtually the only policy, time and money being poured into with regards prostitution?

Some variation on prohibition laws.

Which, if this article’s premise is true, is like bolting the door after the horse as fled. Where is the campaign, by former exploited sex workers who talk about how they were abused as a child abuse, to pour resources into preventing child abuse by parents to prevent exploitation? Nowhere. It’s all send the Johns to Jail or John School.

And not only that, but in countries like America where prohibition laws already exist, it is STILL the only policy being advocated by anti-sex work groups. Instead of pouring resources into preventing child abuse which is likely to be the only approach that isn’t eternally dealing with symptoms, and will also have massive societal benefits, and nobody need waste time figuring out what is caused by child abuse.

Ending child abuse unrealistic you say? But the unequivocal difference it will make, including ending the cycle of the abused children growing up to be child abusers. That is worth all the resources being poured into prohibition laws, who’s benefits are highly questionable, and have moral problems of their own.

“It is merely a rehash of the dull conservative demand that those who are most vulnerable in society should be allowed to enjoy the only freedom they have – the freedom to be exploited.”

Perhaps you should not be accusing people of rehashes if you are rehashing the dull leftist straw-man of the liberty argument that it’s about the freedom to be exploited.

I have followed the discussion with great interest. I’d like to Chaise’s an Ongi’s emphasis on something which, hopefully, shouldn’t get lost in the debate – that is the ‘draconian laws’ which prevent people from being safe, or as safe as it is possible to be, doing this kind of work. I am for the legalisation of prostitution for this reason, because then it can be properly unionised, better regulated etc….

Chaise – I got the 95% stat from Object – a stat re prostitutes in general – not just street walking.

As for the drugs stuff – The high-level of drug addiction in prositution, i think, might be comparable to drug addictions human beings develop in often dangerous and violent and inhuman situations – wars etc. There are strong arguments to suggest that many prostitutes develop symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, which for me really indicates the damaging nature of the work they do.

And the funny thing is so many people just wanna say – oh its just a bit of fun, its just like any other job or whatever. But i wonder if they really believe that inside or whether they don’t on some level understand intuitively that it is demeaning and damaging for the person involved. I guess alot of parents would be happy if their teenage son or daughter got a job in macdonalds at the weekends for some extra pocket money, but i also rekon most parents would be devastated if they found out the same teenager had been selling their body for money.

Still i guess thats the luxury such liberals avail themselves of. Fighting against all these miserable feminists and leftists – demanding that people have the right to sell their bodies (just as long as its not their daughters, their sons of course)

Could it be in some way tied to the difference in power relations which facilitate the prostitute/John interaction?

Or…

- Could it be related to the way in which society regards sex workers simultaneously as victims of exploitation and ‘bad girls’ (or boys) who undermine the idea of love and sex by charging for sexual experiences outside of marriage?

- Or could it be related to the way in which sex workers who are assaulted or raped can’t get legal redress because of what they do for a living, and sometimes get arrested themselves when they try and report a crime?

- Or could it be that one outcome of the kinds of attitudes outlined above renders sex workers extremely vulnerable to acts of violence by individuals or groups?

The three things you list here are all related to the initial point about power relations – in other words they bolster it rather than negating it. The final thing you added about the HomeOffice deriving statistics because it is under the influence of a feminist type conspiracy strikes me as patently absurd

As for the violence in prostitution argument. When shelf stacking is as widely illegal, and more importantly as widely socially ostracised as prostitution then you can make comparisons between that and prostitution in terms of violence. Again you cite no evidence of how this difference affects the issue.

didi: Why does the “left” always have the most right-wing views on “matters of the flesh”?

That’s a good question – whether “on” or “off” topic.

As best I can make out, the left has traditonally been split between professing puritanical and utilitarian sentiments towards sexual relations: “utilitarian” being the notion that sexual needs equate with the need for “a glass of water”.

Try this on the proposed enlightened party line once Communism has been established: Theses on Communist Morality in the Sphere of Marital Relations
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/theses-morality.htm

Oh dear…

First can we refrain from citing studies by Melissa Farley, a serial statistics abuser, as if they’re authoritative – they’re not. Farley’s studies are riddled with porr methodological practices and enough confirmation bias to keep homeopath is delusions of competency for a lifetime.

The most recent study cited in the ‘evidence’ linked to in the O/P is over 20 years old and most of the studies cited deal with street prostitution in major cities in the US and Canada.

For the record…

a. You cannot generalise from street prostitution onto other types of prostitution.

b. You cannot generalise from studies carried out in the US and Canada to other countries without controlling for cross-cultural sources of confounding.

c. You certainly cannot make any inferences about prostitution today – and particularly about the prevalence of drug use – from 20-25 year old US and Canadian data, not least because you’re taking your data from the height of the North American crack epidemic. There were significant differences in patterns of drug use between North American and Europe then and those difference are even more pronounced today, especially in relation to Crystal Methuse which is endemic in the US but barely registers on this side of the big pond.

And if you can’t work out why selection bias is a major problem is study of self-describe ‘prostitution survivors’ then you really should steer clear of social science journals as you ain’t got a clue how to evaluate evidence critically.

Overall, the value of the evidence at that link is summed up by the following statements:

“The Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Portland, Oregon Annual Report in 1991 stated that: 85% of prostitute/clients reported history of sexual abuse in childhood; 70% reported incest. The higher percentages (80%-90%) of reports of incest and childhood sexual assaults of prostitutes come from anecdotal reports and from clinicians working with prostitutes”

The plural of anecdote is NOT data.

The entire O/P is basically built on a swamp, evidence-wise.

Tony McKenna:

I have followed the discussion with great interest. I’d like to Chaise’s an Ongi’s emphasis on something which, hopefully, shouldn’t get lost in the debate – that is the ‘draconian laws’ which prevent people from being safe, or as safe as it is possible to be, doing this kind of work. I am for the legalisation of prostitution for this reason, because then it can be properly unionised, better regulated etc….

You know, it would have been a much more interesting article if you’d outlined how this might be possible in the light of the evidence regarding violence, drugs, draconian laws, etc. But then it was probably easier to write flannel such as ‘[b]y hiring a prostitute the client is brought face to face with his own emptiness’ instead. And rather than come up with a substantive defence of your position in the original article, you now come up with the following sarcastic gem:

Still i guess thats the luxury such liberals avail themselves of. Fighting against all these miserable feminists and leftists – demanding that people have the right to sell their bodies (just as long as its not their daughters, their sons of course)

I’m afraid using the ‘Lady Chatterley’ argument (‘Would you want your wife or servants to read this book?’) doesn’t work here either: an adult daughter or son would be legally entitled and responsible for their own decisions, whether to do sex work, or vote Tory, or whatever else they choose to do. But then you’ve now clearly resorted to emotive argument rather than evidence-based thinking, when you’re not attempting the mind-reading powers of what people ‘really believe…inside.’ All that’s missing is a desperate plea of ‘Think of the children!’ and then I think we can call it a day.

This is from the study ‘Home Office 2004a’ study misquoted by Object on problematic drug abuse.

http://prostitution.procon.org/sourcefiles/paying_the_price.pdf

“problematic drug abuse – as many as 95% of those involved in street-based
prostitution are believed to use heroin and/or crack.”

Don’t take my word for it, but in my experience so far prohibitionist organisations tend to play it loose with facts.

So what are you saying? Crack down on men paying for sex? What evidence is there that prohibition of anything has ever worked? After billions spent fighting drugs, huge public information campaigns and constant tabloid moralising, millions of people still take drugs in this country alone.

Tony McKenna:

The three things you list here are all related to the initial point about power relations – in other words they bolster it rather than negating it. The final thing you added about the HomeOffice deriving statistics because it is under the influence of a feminist type conspiracy strikes me as patently absurd

Nope – the power relations you refer to are between sex worker and client; my comments suggest a much broader context which is distinct from that (it’s not as though your article acknowledged those countries where sex work is legal or has been decriminalised).

No – I don’t think there’s some kind of ‘feminist conspiracy’ re. statistics, rather that campaigning groups have a separate agenda, one part of which would be to influence Home Office policy regardless of the data that the Home Office has. If you are going to accuse others of putting words into your mouth, please don’t do it to other people.

The final thing you added about the HomeOffice deriving statistics because it is under the influence of a feminist type conspiracy strikes me as patently absurd

Clearly, Tony, you’re naive enough not to have come across the concept of policy-based evidence making, or young enough to not to have seen Yes Minister/Prime Minister.

Policy-based evidence making occurs when politicians with a pre-existing ideological commitment toward a particular policy objective commission ‘research’ – a term I use in its very loosest sense in this case – from campaigning organisations who share the same ideological commitment to the same policy in order to validate their pre-exist polic objectives.

Hence, under New Labour, we got prostitution ‘research’ carried out by anti-prostitution groups and ‘research’ on online safety, video games and ‘sexualisation’ of children carried out by celebrity TV psychologists much as we now have a Tory government commissioning ‘research’ on the same ‘sexualisation’ issue from the Mothers’ Union.

The common denominator is all this is that the evidence these reviews generates is typically a complete bag o’ shite.

One of my former ‘friends with benefits’ decided to make a little more cash on the side by going on the game, which given I’m a tight-fisted cunt who can get it for free, pretty much led to our current platonic relationship. Anyway a few weeks into their new ‘career’ they sent me the best message I’ve ever had chance to laugh at –

“I’m well horny, you got any dolla?”

I don’t think they’re doing it right…

. This whole article is very anti-man from a so-called liberal site, this is the sort of tripe that make people vote Tory.

Christ!
Please go and vote for who the hell you want – I don’t have the slightest interest. People who whine like this should be forced to vote Tory for being insufferable twats.

[30 + 54] OK, how about Rossler, et al (The mental health of female sex workers, 2010) who found, ‘The 193 interviewed female sex workers displayed high rates
of mental disorders. These mental disorders were related to violence
and the subjectively perceived burden of sex work’.
http://www.collegium.ethz.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/ch_pdfs/10_roessler_sexwork.pdf

They concluded, ‘Sex work is a major public health problem. It has many faces, but ill mental health of sex workers is primarily related to di?erent forms of violence’.

Put another way are you suggesting that this line of work, given the background of many of it’s participants is not going to inflict psychological, or indeed physical damage – if you do agree, what if anything should be done about it?

Alexander Teixeira indicate a rate of attempted suicide among prostitutes at more than 170 times higher than the Portuguese population in general.

Prostitution is not simply about sex; it is about power and objectification.

Surely all employment is to some extent about power and objectification, in that the employer is buying the right to tell the employee what to do for 8 (or whatever) hours a day, and that the employer is using the employee as a means to an end (getting work done) rather than being particularly concerned in the employee as a person.

the prostitute, then, becomes the living reminder of his own deficient premise

What does that even mean?

@62: what if anything should be done about it?

This is the important question.

My solution would be licensed and inspected brothels.

“OK, how about Rossler, et al (The mental health of female sex workers, 2010) who found, ‘The 193 interviewed female sex workers displayed high rates of mental disorders. These mental disorders were related to violence and the subjectively perceived burden of sex work’.
http://www.collegium.ethz.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/ch_pdfs/10_roessler_sexwork.pdf“

While not nearly as abysmal as the kind of “studies” carried out by Melissa Farley, the Rossler study still has the same flaw that the overwhelming majority of “prostitution research” has, namely that they are studies without any kind of control group. Not just no control group, but no control group from the same demographic that the sample of sex workers were drawn from. What does “high rate of mental disorders” even mean? 40% personality disorders in the survey as opposed to 30% in the general population? How do they know they’re survey methods aren’t overdiagnosing mental disorders if they don’t look at a control group? And without controlling for demographic factors, given the fact that an above-average number of sex workers are going to be poor women, a group with an already higher-than-average rate of mental illness, are they sure the rates among sex workers is even meaningful?

“Alexander Teixeira indicate a rate of attempted suicide among prostitutes at more than 170 times higher than the Portuguese population in general.”

Let’s be precise as to what Teixeira is talking about – his study was of street prostitutes, the most marginalized subset of sex workers. So we’re already talking about a group of essentially street people who would be expected to have a suicide rate dramatically above that of the general population.

So far “prostitution research” has not convinced me of anything other than the fact that the problems of prostitution are the problems of poverty, marginalization, and stigmatization and that these are the problems that need to be addressed. I am not convinced that sex work in and of itself presents any extraordinary danger or harm above that baseline.

The very act of paying for sex itself exacerbates the grubby inadequacy of the ‘John’ – the prostitute, then, becomes the living reminder of his own deficient premise. How can he not despise her for that?

By hiring a prostitute the client is brought face to face with his own emptiness; in consummating the act, he is as well manifesting his own lack- the inability to connect with another person on a genuine basis of freedom and equality.

Your use of the word ‘lack’ gives you away.

Your model of human behaviour is derived from Freud via Lacan, a model popular among literary theorists and psychoanalysis-based feminists, but which has fuck all to do with actual human psychology.

It looks like psychology but it is cargo cult science.

The knob-brain who who this pile of crap article is really taking a pounding on Twitter lol

“Marriage is legalised prostitution”

- Count Leo Tolstoy

“Marriage is legalised prostitution”

– Count Leo Tolstoy

@ Phil Hunt

Yes, Marx had the same view of the Boss-Worker relationship whereby the worker prostitutes their Labour in return for their daily bread. My own theory on why Capital so despises prostitution is that the nature of the transaction limits Capital’s opportunity to extract Value both from the transaction and from Surplus acquired through Labour to fund what is known as “dating” . C.f with the whole “dating game” malarkey; flowers, restaurants, rings, vacations, laptops etc. It’s all about money, you see! Who would have thought

Too right, Marx. The Worker-Boss “relationship” is by it’s very nature an “abusive” one.

So it seems the blogger can read studies. Unfortunately, that seems to be as far as it goes. And he makes no attempt whatsoever to validate many of the out-dated and inaccurate assertions he makes. Assertions which, I might add, harm sex workers.

He didn’t bother to check the credibility of the ‘professionals’ whose studies he quotes (or he did, and decided that pending complaint with the APA against Melissa Farley for malpractice was something to be ignored in pursuit of a catchy rhetoric), he apparently didn’t check the methodological integrity of the studies quoted, and he certainly didn’t account for variables other than sex work that may have provided him with statistics that seem alarmingly high (and yet conveniently supportive of his angle).

I’m sure the women in sex work are thrilled to have another moralising, meddling man taking up camp with the radical feminists and religious fundamentalists whose only objective is the advancement of their own agendas.

It’s not just crappy hack writing – it’s HARMFUL crappy hack writing.

And hey, just something to think about – next time a Tesco shelf-stacker gets punched in the face, assaulted, beaten, or not paid – they will use the protection and recourse afforded to them by a system that protects their rights as workers, human beings and members of society.

Red Pesto:

Your methods of arguing seem quite poor. I make a point about power relations. You then give further examples of abuse of power relations but all the while presenting it as a refutation of my points. I call you on it. And you just offer flat denials. –

‘Nope – the power relations you refer to are between sex worker and client; my comments suggest a much broader context which is distinct from that (it’s not as though your article acknowledged those countries where sex work is legal or has been decriminalised).’

Can you see the contortions you are making here? – ‘My comments suggest a much broader context’ – the context can be as broad as you like, never the less you are still making points which relate to distorted power relations in the three sentences i quoted. Lets be clear about this:

You said:

‘ Could it be related to the way in which society regards sex workers simultaneously as victims of exploitation and ‘bad girls’’

Elements of society tend to regard sex workers as victims because of all the statistical evidence which goes along with this claim. Evidence of violence, abuse etc. The people who regard them as ‘bad girls’ often assert this in the same way that ‘whore’ or ‘slut’ has derogatory connotations – the notion that they are corrupting otherwise normal nice men and ruining families etc….again the tendency to demonise poor people doing what is often a very nasty job is all about power and its modes of justification.

‘Or could it be related to the way in which sex workers who are assaulted or raped can’t get legal redress because of what they do for a living’

Nope! Nope! Rape and asssault are not about power at all is it Red Pesto?

‘one outcome of the kinds of attitudes outlined above renders sex workers extremely vulnerable to acts of violence by individuals or groups?’

Are you able to glean some insight about how warped your method of arguing is here? You assert these things which actually support the point i am making in a sarcastic and rhetorical fashion, then when i call you on it rather than concede the clumsiness of your approach, you simply deny it carte blanche. It really is not the most endearing way of approaching the topic

“Or could it be related to the way in which sex workers who are assaulted or raped can’t get legal redress because of what they do for a living” – utter, utter rubbish and you know it, Tony!

Tony, you appear to have some sort of “punishment fetish”. Can I ask you why you feel the need to interfere with a straightforward transaction between consenting adults? Why do you want to see prostitutes? and most definitely their “clients” criminalised. imprisoned, put on “sex offenders” registers, lives completely and utterly ruined. You appear to have a very strong desire to see others suffer. Does this turn you on, “excite” you in some sick way? Because, if I am not mistaken, Tony, you are flexibility sado-masochistic tendencies. Really, really most disturbing. Btw, Nothing personal, Tony, just some observations drawn from over 25 years of clinical practice.

exhibiting sado-masochistic tendencies – don’t know what happened there.

‘I’m afraid using the ‘Lady Chatterley’ argument (‘Would you want your wife or servants to read this book?’) doesn’t work here either: an adult daughter or son would be legally entitled and responsible for their own decisions, whether to do sex work, or vote Tory, or whatever else they choose to do. But then you’ve now clearly resorted to emotive argument rather than evidence-based thinking, when you’re not attempting the mind-reading powers of what people ‘really believe…inside.’ All that’s missing is a desperate plea of ‘Think of the children!’ and then I think we can call it a day.’

I notice your keen ability to respond with self-righteous contempt to an argument I never made. You say – as if triumphantly refuting my point:
‘an adult daughter or son would be legally entitled and responsible for their own decisions, whether to do sex work, or vote Tory, or whatever else they choose to do’

I take that as given. They would be responsible for their own decisions. And my hypothetical tries to imagine how others close to them would respond if they got a job as a prostitute rather than as a shelve stacker. Why don’t you address that? It might contribute more to the discussion that weary sneering. Am I write in assuming (and it is an assumption I admit) that most people will find this unpalatable for their (16 or above) daughter or son more than say working at Tescos.

At this point the personal really does have bearing on the poltical – because once certain consequences obtain for someone’s own family, we often are able to glean a fuller and more realistic sense of their true attitude to the issue in question because they cease to have the luxury of abstraction. And i haven’t done any ‘mind reading’. I’ve just asked a question. Which, up until this point, neither you nor anyone else has answered.

@ 76 Tony

“Am I write in assuming (and it is an assumption I admit) that most people will find this unpalatable for their (16 or above) daughter or son more than say working at Tescos. ”

I’m prepared to take it as given that most people would be far more uncomfortable with their son or daughter becoming a prostitute. What point does this lead into?

‘Tony, you appear to have some sort of “punishment fetish”. Can I ask you why you feel the need to interfere with a straightforward transaction between consenting adults? Why do you want to see prostitutes? and most definitely their “clients” criminalised. imprisoned, put on “sex offenders” registers, lives completely and utterly ruined. You appear to have a very strong desire to see others suffer. Does this turn you on, “excite” you in some sick way? Because, if I am not mistaken, Tony, you are flexibility sado-masochistic tendencies. Really, really most disturbing. Btw, Nothing personal, Tony, just some observations drawn from over 25 years of clinical practice.’

These kind of insinuations are regrettable and unnecessary, and I really don’t think you are doing yourself any favours here. If you had been bothered to read the thread you might know that I support the legalisation of prostitution. But what is utterly astonishing is this – ‘Can I ask you why you feel the need to interfere with a straightforward transaction between consenting adults?’ Do you lack imagination such that you are incapable of raising yourself to the notion that someone might consent to do a certain job but the nature of that consent is produced by economic desperation? Is that thought so radical that somehow you have managed to swallow it whole, it went down the wrong way, and now you have regurgitated it out in a sludge of bile and personal innuendo? I think you need a doctor, doctor!

‘And hey, just something to think about – next time a Tesco shelf-stacker gets punched in the face, assaulted, beaten, or not paid – they will use the protection and recourse afforded to them by a system that protects their rights as workers, human beings and members of society’

So it seems that the commentator can read Liberal Conspiracy articles. Unfortunately that seems to be as far as it goes. For if he had read the comments thread in more detail on this particular article he might have discovered that its author is against the illegalisation of prostitution precisely because it does not afford the victims any recourse to a system that protects their rights

A&E:

Although IACB correctly points to the lack of control group in Rossler, by far the most serious problems with that study are its retrospective design, use of one year and lifetime prevalence data and lack of any controls for subjects prior mental health history.

In short, it has the same serious flaws as Priscilla Coleman’s piss poor abortion/mental health studies.

What’s needed, if we want reliable data, is a large-scale prospectively designed longitudinal population cohort study and that precisely the kind of study that we don’t have at the moment.

Chaise wrote:

‘I’m prepared to take it as given that most people would be far more uncomfortable with their son or daughter becoming a prostitute. What point does this lead into?’

The article I was originally responding to argued that prostitution is just another form of exploitation. I have tried to draw attention to statistics which show, variously, that in fact the conditions in which the majority of prostitutes operate are dangerous and harmful. I really haven’t said a great deal more than this. Yet the ferocity of the backlash is quite breath-taking. How dare I point this out!

I think this is (somewhat) related to a broader issue. For those who clamour ardently for the freedom of people to be exploited; they are always faced with a dilemma. They don’t want such a freedom to bleed into their own personal realm. It is not a freedom they want members of their own family to enjoy

Such antagonism has a long history. The Madonna/Whore ideology is a product of it. The ability to rationalise some women as inherently ‘wicked, slutty whoreish’..etc (those who justify your exploitation of them in and through their wickedness) while the woman of the immediate family are thought of as ‘virginal, pure chaste’….and so on.

This is a necessary element of exploitation; its ideological rationalisation. By posing the question of whether people would like their own daughter to be working as a prostitute, and whether that is similar to working in a job stacking shelves, I am trying to show – though many might in theory defend the right of people’s sons and daughters to do this work – it is other people’s sons, other peoples daughters that they are truly referring to here.

If you cannot universalise the principle to your own personal realm, then in some wise you implicitly acknowledge the fact that this type of work is somehow dehumanising for the fact that you don’t wish your own family or friends to endure it. And, as I said, you aknowledge it is more dehumanising then a form of labour exploitation like stacking shelves, because again, most parents wouldn’t react too badly to a kid who got a Saturday job doing that.

In my experience its very similar to buying drugs, especially the more socially unacceptable ones. In fact the feelings of self loathing are very similar.

“Please go and vote for who the hell you want – I don’t have the slightest interest. ”

Really, I though that was just the sort of thing you would be interested in?

I think that uying drugs is exactly the same as buying sex, at least from my (the customers) view. The same excitement before, followed by the same feeling of self loathing afterwards.

81. tony mckenna

You state that ” in fact the conditions in which the majority of prostitutes operate are dangerous and harmful.” I don’t think you provided any evidence to this effect. A proportion of street prostitutes operate in such an environment but they don’t represent any thing like a majority of prostitutes. I think you have said a lot more than this, not least to voice your contempt for johns.

I think anyone would be reluctant for family members to engage in prostitution but this is principally because of the types of stigma engendered and perpetuated by articles such as yours.

@ Tony

I have tried to draw attention to statistics which show, variously, that in fact the conditions in which the majority of prostitutes operate are dangerous and harmful.

I don’t believe that’s true for a moment. Some do work on the street but that is usually because operating from organised premises has been made illegal or because they have other problems.

I also don’t think it is appropriate to compare a job in Tesco on minimum wage with the job of a sex worker, where the girls in the best parlours in Manchester earn in excess of £100 an hour.

And if my adult daughter told me that she had chosen the latter career rather than the former, I would not be outraged at all. It might well be a rational decision on her part but, in any case, it would be her choice and not really any of my business.

Or yours, Tony.

Please go and vote for who the hell you want – I don’t have the slightest interest.

Is that Labour’s new election slogan?

The article I was originally responding to argued that prostitution is just another form of exploitation. I have tried to draw attention to statistics which show, variously, that in fact the conditions in which the majority of prostitutes operate are dangerous and harmful.

And people have responded that those conditions are created by the illegality of prostitution, not an essential part of it.

I really haven’t said a great deal more than this. Yet the ferocity of the backlash is quite breath-taking. How dare I point this out!

Since your point of view maps perfectly on to that of the religious right you don’t get to accuse other people of a ‘bscklash’.

Tony McKenna:

Are you able to glean some insight about how warped your method of arguing is here? You assert these things which actually support the point i am making in a sarcastic and rhetorical fashion, then when i call you on it rather than concede the clumsiness of your approach, you simply deny it carte blanche. It really is not the most endearing way of approaching the topic

I took your comment as focusing on the client/sex worker relationship to the exclusion of, for example, the ways in which prostitution laws make it more difficult for legal and consensual commercial sex to take place, so even an agreement between a willing buyer and a willing seller is disrupted by officials, politicians and moralists who disapprove of ‘that kind of thing’. Your article doesn’t appear to focus on this latter aspect, not least, I suspect, because you state ‘Prostitution is not simply about sex; it is about power and objectification’ while overlooking the power of the state to determine what forms of sexual activity are acceptable, regardless of the consent of the participants.

‘And if my adult daughter told me that she had chosen the latter career rather than the former, I would not be outraged at all. It might well be a rational decision on her part but, in any case, it would be her choice and not really any of my business.’

Or yours, Tony.’

I didn’t say ‘outraged’. I note how, with that one word, you manage to distort my point so as to once again make this all a question of prostitutes making ‘rational’ decisions, and then interfering busy-bodies coming along to poke their moral noses in.

Again, what you accomplish here is the annihilation of the objective social-economic forces which often compel people to make this ‘rational decision.’ I tried to get you to imagine the genuine and legitimate concerns of a parent in this situation – it was not ‘outrage’ I thought I might elicit – but rather ‘fear’; fear for the welfare of your child given the conditions which seem to obtain in this industry.

But of course that itself is a leap too far. Because all the statistics I have provided, have been repeatedly dismissed with the world-weary bravado of people who understand just how flawed or ‘politically’ motivated these statistics are. For instance, this priceless contribution:

‘You state that ” in fact the conditions in which the majority of prostitutes operate are dangerous and harmful.” I don’t think you provided any evidence to this effect. A proportion of street prostitutes operate in such an environment but they don’t represent anything like a majority of prostitutes.’

Now keep in mind this commentator is chastising me for my lack of ‘evidence’ – even though I have at least attempted to provide some statistical information in order to verify my claim. He then goes on to assure us in a very knowledgeable tone

– ‘a proporition of street prostitutes operate in such an environment but they don’t represent anything like a majority’

Can you not see the irony in this? This person berates me for supposedly not providing ‘any evidence’ and then makes a claim with precisely no evidence to support it. And isn’t this something which has been evinced more generally on this thread?

People have been repeatedly dismissive about the statistics I and others have provided – and yet, as far as I can see – not one scrap of statistical information has been provided which might confirm the other side – i.e. that prostitutes (even if they are not street walkers) experience more or less the same health risks and dangers the average person working in a supermarket might.

Claims that prostitution amount to exploitation hardly equate with what the English collective of prostitutes is saying.

They oppose calls for banning prostituion or fining paying customers and say they want brothels legalised so working girls have better protection. For illumination, it makes good sense to look at the downstream consequences of the legalisation of prostitution in New Zealand and Germany.

The discussion here completely fails to recognise the reality of enthusiastic amateurs like Catherine Millet – see the link to an interview @6.

An interesting thought: the movie Pretty Woman, starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, has been a huge financial success pulling in revenues of c. $600 million compared with the production cost of c. $70 million. How come?

@ 81 tony

LC keeps crashing on me, so this is my third attempt to respond – apologies if the same post comes up three times.

“I think this is (somewhat) related to a broader issue. For those who clamour ardently for the freedom of people to be exploited; they are always faced with a dilemma. They don’t want such a freedom to bleed into their own personal realm. It is not a freedom they want members of their own family to enjoy ”

That’s not a dilemma. Being liberal doesn’t mean only supporting the freedom of people to do things you want to be associated with. I wouldn’t like my family to join the BNP either but that’s not an argument for banning the party.

I notice you’re complaining about invective aimed at you while going out of your way to present the other side as pejoratively as possible, btw: “freedom to be exploited” indeed. You’ve said that prostitution should be legal so it’s not even clear which exploitative freedoms other people support but you don’t.

“Such antagonism has a long history. The Madonna/Whore ideology is a product of it. The ability to rationalise some women as inherently ‘wicked, slutty whoreish’..etc (those who justify your exploitation of them in and through their wickedness) while the woman of the immediate family are thought of as ‘virginal, pure chaste’….and so on. ”

I would say the Madonna/Whore dichotomy is more connected to the demonisation of prostitutes by the pro-ban crowd, myself. Either way, you’re putting words into people’s mouths. Which of the people you’re arguing with have called prostitutes “wicked” or similar? This is a straw-man argument.

“This is a necessary element of exploitation; its ideological rationalisation.”

No it isn’t. Not giving a damn works just as well.

“If you cannot universalise the principle to your own personal realm, then in some wise you implicitly acknowledge the fact that this type of work is somehow dehumanising for the fact that you don’t wish your own family or friends to endure it. And, as I said, you aknowledge it is more dehumanising then a form of labour exploitation like stacking shelves, because again, most parents wouldn’t react too badly to a kid who got a Saturday job doing that.”

Putting words in mouth again. I never said it was dehumanising. I accept that most parents won’t want it for their kids but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with those parents’ views on the issue.

I imagine there are various reasons for this:

1) Parents are bigoted about prostitutes.
2) Parents are afraid of being shunned/harassed by bigots in the community.
3) Parents are worried about the dangers associated with the job.
4) Parents aren’t comfortable with anything connecting their progeny to sex.

With reasons 1 and 2, the blame lies away from either prostitutes or clients. 3 is pretty understandable but fixible with sensible legislation. 4 is also understandable but not an argument for anything much.

Now you’ve said that you’re in favour of legalisation, I’m not sure where you’re going with this. What actually policy ideas do you support, and how are they different from those of the hated pro-exploitation crowd?

Shatter face writes:

‘I really haven’t said a great deal more than this. Yet the ferocity of the backlash is quite breath-taking. How dare I point this out!

Since your point of view maps perfectly on to that of the religious right you don’t get to accuse other people of a ‘bscklash’

Jesus Christ really? The religious rights criticism is (I presume) genuinely moralist – sex is a dirty and unhealthy thing and should be repressed unless it is intimately related with family and pro-creation; prostitutes are dangerous and subversive characters who will attract ‘good’ men and destroy loving families etc…..

By trying to draw attention to the way in which many women, a good few men and children – suffer in this profession; how their economic position does not express the ability to exert ‘power and control’ over clients, but rather renders them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation from the same clients – how can you possibly make the claim that my position bolsters the religious right? My position is an explicit inversion of theirs.

Oh and buy the way I get to accuse people of a backlash if I so wish. In addition I get to accuse them of being narrow minded and thoughtless – which is precisely what you are.

There’s an interview with Catherine Millet shown on YouTube – with subtitles – at this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TicidqAe18Q

She was conducting a survey.

This person considers it self-evident that street prostitutes represent a very small proportion of prostitutes working in dangerous conditions and did not feel the need to provide statistics when his interlocutor didn’t bother. The vast majority of prostitutes work indoors in safer circumstances. Here is some evidence for you, from the Home Office, no less, apparently one of your favoured sources:

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/horr27c.pdf

Street prostitutes in London represent about 12% of the total. Nationally, it’s reasonable to assume that much less than 10% of prostitutes work on the streets. Therefore it would appear reasonable to state that more than 90% of prostitutes work indoors with at least some security.

Tony McKenna (@me):

I notice your keen ability to respond with self-righteous contempt to an argument I never made. You say – as if triumphantly refuting my point:
‘an adult daughter or son would be legally entitled and responsible for their own decisions, whether to do sex work, or vote Tory, or whatever else they choose to do’

I take that as given. They would be responsible for their own decisions. And my hypothetical tries to imagine how others close to them would respond if they got a job as a prostitute rather than as a shelve stacker. Why don’t you address that?

I did – the problem with your hypothetical is that it grants others a veto over one’s personal choices, because of their emotional response (which in this case leans heavily on the stigma associated with sex work for its effect). Hence the husband and father gets to forbid the wife and servants from reading DH Lawrence because he doesn’t like it and thinks they shouldn’t read it.

Incidentally, neither of us know whether the other has any kids, or whether they are just ‘hypothetical’ ones used as a way of appealing to some hypothetical emotional response as a parent that overrides more rational thought and evidence-based analysis (e.g. a response such as ‘Sure I’d be upset if my son/daughter did sex work, but I’d want a properly regulated and decriminalised sex industry so that if they did choose sex work they would be safe.’) Moreover, your hypothetical example could have any number of outcomes, from outrage and condemnation, to empathy and emotional support – and that’s just to taking the job in Tesco.

Chaise. I say:

“I think this is (somewhat) related to a broader issue. For those who clamour ardently for the freedom of people to be exploited; they are always faced with a dilemma. They don’t want such a freedom to bleed into their own personal realm. It is not a freedom they want members of their own family to enjoy ”

You reply:

‘That’s not a dilemma. Being liberal doesn’t mean only supporting the freedom of people to do things you want to be associated with. I wouldn’t like my family to join the BNP either but that’s not an argument for banning the party.’

I haven’t made an argument for banning prostitution. I have made an argument that, in the majority of cases, this kind of work has adverse effects on those who are compelled, nearly always for economic reasons, to do this. Though morally reprehensible, I don’t think that joining the BMP is going leave people open to exploitation. On the contrary, I think such organisations encourage exploitation.

If you genuinely want to fight for the counterproposal to mine – you have to assert that, in the main, prostitution is no more unpleasant, no less dangerous than any other equivalent form of labour exploitation. The logic which flows from such a proposition would indicate that the person who made it is equally happy to have their 17 year old son or daughter work in this trade, as in any other.

Now someone has recently tried to introduce another caveat to this; they say – well the only reason why parents wouldn’t feel it acceptable to have their children working in such a trade, is because of the prejudice which is perpetrated by narrow minded writers like yours truly.

That is an audacious, outrageous proposition. Think about what it achieves. The real victimisation of prostitutes come not from the people who pay for their bodies, beat them up or rape them. It comes from those people who have the temerity to suggest that human beings deserve some type of a better life rather than selling their bodies for money. How morally despicable am I?

But even if we accept this caveat – it provides little more than a red-herring. The person has said that the generic parents we are talking about are predjudiced against the trade because of people like me. But the person who postulates this, is presumably not. They have seen through all my attempts. But the question remains – even with an ‘ubaised’ view of the industry – would you be as happy that your child did that, compared with working in a supermarket?

‘The vast majority of prostitutes work indoors in safer circumstances. Here is some evidence for you, from the Home Office, no less, apparently one of your favoured sources:

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/horr27c.pdf’

I asked for statistical information and got some. Thank you, Jim. But I don’t think this really counts as a refutation of the statistics I have provided. Rather it looks as though you are trying to show that the street walking variety of prostitution is more dangerous and has more damaging physical and psychological consequences associated with it than the ‘house’ variety.

But I have nowhere disputed that. What I have said is that prostitution, even in its less extreme forms, tends to cause more physical and psychological damage than a comparable form of labour more generally.
I suspect that most people are aware of this. I really think some people could do with taking a few deep breaths, stepping back from the situation, and genuinely consider why they feel so outraged by someone pointing it out.

Someone asked why Pretty Woman got had so much success. I dunno. But it was a perfect example of an attempt to idealise and cloak what is, in fact, a genuinely predatory relationship – between prostitute and john. I don’t how many times I am being told that I am being so unfair to all those fun loving, happy go lucky prostitute users – nevertheless their ability to use prostitutes depends on the majority of those women, men or children being in poverty.

“I haven’t made an argument for banning prostitution. I have made an argument that, in the majority of cases, this kind of work has adverse effects on those who are compelled, nearly always for economic reasons, to do this.”

If you don’t think it should be banned, why are you accusing other people of supporting “the freedom to be exploited” when you also support this freedom?

“Though morally reprehensible, I don’t think that joining the BMP is going leave people open to exploitation. On the contrary, I think such organisations encourage exploitation. ”

No True Scotsman – my point is that disapproving of something, and not wanting to see my loved ones involved in it, does not require me to want that thing banned. Again I’m confused on your position here, because you seem to be arguing for a ban then claiming you don’t want one.

“If you genuinely want to fight for the counterproposal to mine…”

A counterproposal requires a proposal to counter. So I have no idea whether I want to offer a counterproposal because I don’t know what you’re proposing.

“you have to assert that, in the main, prostitution is no more unpleasant, no less dangerous than any other equivalent form of labour exploitation.”

Why would I want to do that? I’ve made it clear thus far that I take issue with your demonisation of johns and of anyone who dares to disagree with you. I can quite happily maintain that position while admitting that prostitution is more dangerous and unpleasant than other jobs.

“Now someone has recently tried to introduce another caveat to this; they say – well the only reason why parents wouldn’t feel it acceptable to have their children working in such a trade, is because of the prejudice which is perpetrated by narrow minded writers like yours truly.

That is an audacious, outrageous proposition. Think about what it achieves. The real victimisation of prostitutes come not from the people who pay for their bodies, beat them up or rape them. It comes from those people who have the temerity to suggest that human beings deserve some type of a better life rather than selling their bodies for money. How morally despicable am I?”

You’re not, but this is an appeal to consequence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequence). The claim that attitudes such as yours harm prostitutes is factual. It might be right or wrong, but it makes a claim that is factual. You can’t dismiss that by saying, in effect, “that can’t be true because if it was true that would be offensive”. The universe doesn’t have to rearrange itself to avoid offending you.

“But the question remains – even with an ‘ubaised’ view of the industry – would you be as happy that your child did that, compared with working in a supermarket?”

I can’t tell you what my POV would be if my view was unbiased, because I can’t reprogram my own head to remove the bias. If my hypothetical child were to start working as a hooker, I would not be happy about it. No argument there. I just think that this is an appeal to emotion has little or no bearing on the moral and pragmatic issue on the table.

Just a reminder: it would really, REALLY help if you were to confirm what you stand for in terms of policy, and explain what you mean by “pro-freedom to be exploited”.

incidentally – if anyone is curious a longer version of my article can be found here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/tony-mckenna/hell-de-jour-the-sex-trade_b_1693518.html?just_reloaded=1

Tony McKenna:

The logic which flows from such a proposition would indicate that the person who made it is equally happy to have their 17 year old son or daughter work in this trade, as in any other.

No parent would be happy for their 17 year-old son or daughter to do sex work, because it’s illegal to pay for sex with someone under 18. Once they turn 18, they’re legally an independent adult.

But the question remains – even with an ‘ubaised’ view of the industry – would you be as happy that your child did that, compared with working in a supermarket?

It doesn’t ‘remain’: you just keep repeating it. I refer you to my previous answer.

PS: Re. social attitudes to sex workers: Melissa Petro – ‘I lost my job as a teacher because I once was a call-girl.’ It wasn’t the clients that got her the sack; it was the real-life counterparts of the Harper Valley PTA.

“annihilation of the objective social-economic forces”, tell me about it, Tony – when was the last time you “treated” (if you don’t pony up there is no way you are going to get your leg over a woman to a night out. As a Londoner I can tell you it is bloody expensive, mate, and 99 times out of 100 the “lady” make her excused and pops into a taxi after she has been “treated” to her free night out. Sometimes, I am sorely tempted to pop-in round Soho way for a quick bit of how’s you father – that’s the annihilation of the objective social-economic forces for you, Tony

98. tony mckenna

You don’t think my statistics count as a refutation of the statistics you’ve already provided? They weren’t supposed to. You asserted that “the conditions in which the majority of prostitutes operate are dangerous and harmful.” My statistics refute this because they show that the vast majority of prostitutes work indoors in circumstances which are intended to enhance their security. The sources of your “statistics” have already been very well critiqued here, coming as they do from some very partial sources indeed.

You have claimed that prostitution “tends to cause more physical and psychological damage than a comparable form of labour more generally”. It has been pointed out to you on numerous occasions that this damage pertains less to the sex than to the stigma of prostitution and the fact that prostitutes operate outside the law and without the protection of the law. The fact that they do so is due in no small part to the attitudes of people who denigrate prostitutes and punters as you have. You claim to support the legalisation of prostitution but, IMHO, your protestations here belie that fact.

You claim that punters owe their “ability to use prostitutes depends on the majority of those women, men or children being in poverty.” You have not presented any evidence of this. Save for the small minority of prostitutes who work on the streets to finance drug habits, the majority of prostitutes are almost certainly earning several times what they would earn in typical unskilled jobs such as at Tesco. Such women are unlikely to meet the definition of living in poverty. Indeed, they are far more likely to be said to be trapped in prostitution because they cannot earn as much money outside of it and are unable to contemplate living on less.

In common with most anti-prostitution commentators, you paint a deceitful, dreadful and emotive picture of a prostitute’s lot that would sway the minds of the majority of people. Unfortunately, however, you are dishonestly portraying the situation of all prostitutes based upon that of the smallest minority of street prostitutes. The vast majority of prostitutes make a decent living out of it in relative safety, the only disadvantage of the job being the stigma associated with it by people such as yourself.

Speaking as a parent I would be quite happy if my daughters went into prostitution – there, Tony – said it.

sorry – my last comment got sent prematurely. I dont think I demonise Johns in the way people seem to insist i have – i haven’t tried to paint them all as rain coat wearing middle furtive slippery individuals loitering under a red light glow – rather i’ve tried to suggest that,however sexy, good-looking or whatever else the person is, they are nevertheless relying on conditions of poverty of other people and that is……a bit sad and predatory. In other words it is about the objective relationship and the social conditions in which it emerges from, which provide the key to my criticisms

Of course we are now being treated to this topsy turvy alice in wonderland spectacle in which people are dancing forward to tell me just how okay with it they would be if their children went into prostitution. Or how many loving relationships are forged between prostitutes and johns and just what delicious gushing self respect flows between them (besides bodily fluids and cold hard cash i mean)

I would hope that some of you might be able to register that a parent who was okay with their children becoming a prostitute might not be the most….how can i put this diplomatically….the most level headed of people.

Is that really such a controversial statement for me to make? And if you agree with it, then well maybe its not a great leap forward to say – if you don’t like it for your children, maybe its not good for other peoples.

Chaise – I think you really have fabricated my stance when you say i demonise anyone who disagrees with me. Just look back over this thread – I hope you wont feel im being too self-indulgent when i tell you that really, it seems to me, ive been ‘demonised’ if anybody has, not just in the open and repeated misinterpretation of my views, but also in terms of being described as having ‘sexual masochistic tendencies’ etc…….

that’s okay – as a sexual masochist it quite arouses me to see myself described in those terms! But nevertheless even we sexual masochists get tired, and i have said as much as i can say and there is no point in repeating myself any more. so i’m gonna give it a rest now – im glad the article got so much ‘play time’

tony

@ 105 Tony

“Chaise – I think you really have fabricated my stance when you say i demonise anyone who disagrees with me. Just look back over this thread – I hope you wont feel im being too self-indulgent when i tell you that really, it seems to me, ive been ‘demonised’ if anybody has, not just in the open and repeated misinterpretation of my views, but also in terms of being described as having ‘sexual masochistic tendencies’ etc……. ”

So you weren’t trying to demonise “those who clamour ardently for the freedom of people to be exploited”? What exactly were you doing?

In your general reply you claim that you weren’t trying to demonise johns. This is simply rewriting history. Your article literally spends three straight paragraphs painting an ugly caricature of clients, presenting them as pathetic failures driven by hatred. This, of course, is intended to skew the issue by dehumanising (that’s right) some of the people involved, making it easier for people to accept a solution that puts blame on their shoulders.

It’s also clear that it’s not just the poverty that bothers you. Otherwise you’d be just as strident in damning people who shop at places that pay their staff minimum wage. You would be just as appalled that someone on £100,000 can go to a shop and get served (and called “sir” into the bargain) by someone earning chicken feed.

The poverty might exacerbate the issue for you but it’s clear that this is in large part about sex. If not, you wouldn’t have focused on prostitutes over, say, low-level drug dealers. You wouldn’t keep using that tired appeal to emotion about “how would you feel if your kids were on the game?” No. You, like most people, treat sex as a special case. So do I, but I think we should be upfront about that.

I am rather annoyed that you’re leaving without clarifying what you’re proposing in terms of policy rather than rhetoric. I have asked several times now, and as it stands you’re contradicting yourself by saying it shouldn’t be banned while damning everyone who, um, says it shouldn’t be banned.

Tony McKenna:

sorry – my last comment got sent prematurely. I dont think I demonise Johns in the way people seem to insist i have – i haven’t tried to paint them all as rain coat wearing middle furtive slippery individuals loitering under a red light glow –

From the original article:

The very act of paying for sex itself exacerbates the grubby inadequacy of the ‘John’ – the prostitute, then, becomes the living reminder of his own deficient premise. How can he not despise her for that?

By hiring a prostitute the client is brought face to face with his own emptiness; in consummating the act, he is as well manifesting his own lack- the inability to connect with another person on a genuine basis of freedom and equality.

A meticulous search of the rest of the article failed to produce any examples where clients were portrayed in a different or more favourable light.

hope you wont feel im being too self-indulgent when i tell you that really, it seems to me, ive been ‘demonised’ if anybody has, not just in the open and repeated misinterpretation of my views

Summary: ‘Ignore what I actually wrote! Don’t bother paying attention to any criticism! I’m the real victim here! ‘Snot fair!’ Appealing to the readers’ sense of pity isn’t a point in favour of your original argument.

I also love the fact that when challenged on ‘how would you like it if your kid…’ etc he switches focus the imply that such people are bad parents rather than ones who might love their kids enough to stand by them despite their adult choices. There’s no point in asking hypothetical questions and then dismissing the hypothetical answers that don’t ‘fit.’

‘Bye Tony. Your concern is duly noted, as is the lack of coherent proposals. Maybe everyone at HuffPo will cheer you to the echo for making the same poor arguments at even greater length.

Interesting, and slightly excitable responses to some of the imperfect research mentioned earlier – but are the nay sayers claiming that women are not in fact terribly damaged by the job, or that they are being damaged but until the factoids are presented in the correct way it remains a none issue (nobody seemed very interested in addressing that point).

@65 made me chuckle when he says (for it almost certainly is a he) ‘I am not convinced that sex work in and of itself presents any extraordinary danger or harm above that baseline’ – what is that observation based on – I mean if you are in the sex trade yourself then you might have some grounds for making such a claim, but I am going to go out on a limb here and guess you work in an office, possibly with computers?

And @72 is is the clown prince of comedy when he claims (for it is almost certainly a he) that ‘I’m sure the women in sex work are thrilled to have another moralising, meddling man taking up camp with the radical feminists and religious fundamentalists whose only objective is the advancement of their own agendas’ – so there’s no middle ground, eh – sorry for suggesting there might be a possible downside to years of cash dependent, and mostly joyless sex.

I’m sure sure some of the johns are very nice but statistically a % must be pretty unpleasant (sweaty, boorish, desperate, etc) – now I’m not saying that sweaty, boorish, desperate, and possibly even slightly intoxicated men are not entitled to get their end away, of course they are, but at what point do the financial gains stop outweighing the psychological damage if we consider the transaction from the service provider’s perspective?

Tony Mckenna: “But I have nowhere disputed that. What I have said is that prostitution, even in its less extreme forms, tends to cause more physical and psychological damage than a comparable form of labour more generally.”

Quite possibly some or many sex workers work in the business for lack of alternative job opportunities or opportunities that pay as well. The consequences of banning prostitution – or fining those who pay for sex – will be to close down that chance of paid employment.

It’s not self-evident that they will all be better off as the result of closing down the option regardless of their personal choice. By reports in the news, increasing numbers of students have been turning to prostitution to fund their way through higher education. By accounts, the market for sugar dadies is expanding.

We learned that Dr Brooke Magnanti – otherwise Belle de Jour – turned to escort work to finance her transition from completing her post-graduate course for a PhD at Sheffield University to getting a research post in Bristol for which a doctorate was required. What will be the downstream consequences for those students from closing down this chance of part-time work? The escort work doesn’t appear to have done any harm to Dr Brooke Magnanti but it evidently brought a useful source of earnings during a time when the prospect of future secure employment was uncertain.

All the cautionary stories about prostitution pushing its victims into the drug culture would appear to apply to the pop-music scene on an even greater scale – hence tragic cases like Amy Winehouse. Is the pop-music scene to be closed down as well to protect its many victims?

By all means let it be made a criminal offence for anyone above the age of consent, raised to 18, to buy sex.

And, with exactly equal sentencing, for anyone above the age of consent, raised to 18, to sell sex.

Are women morally and intellectually equal to men, or not?

In the news:

Climate of fear surrounds children’s sports coaches: Regulations designed to protect children who take part in sports from sex abuse have created a climate of fear for coaches, according to new research.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9417560/Climate-of-fear-surrounds-childrens-sports-coaches.html#

There is a simple solution: ban sports coaching to remove the opportunities for abuse.

“So it seems that the commentator can read Liberal Conspiracy articles. Unfortunately that seems to be as far as it goes. For if he had read the comments thread in more detail on this particular article he might have discovered that its author is against the illegalisation of prostitution precisely because it does not afford the victims any recourse to a system that protects their rights.”

Tut, tut, Tony. I’m not a ‘he’.

As for criminalising prostitutes – I’m sure you’re not for it. Unfortunately, the unsupported, and sometimes intentionally fabricated (by your sources) information you provide here adds credence to the rescue industry and abolitionist movement that they just don’t need. And they DO want prostitutes criminalised, using ‘end demand’ and ‘criminalise the john’ rhetoric as a cover for their true agenda – criminalising an activity they personally find morally repugnant.

Anyone concerned in any way with sex workers rights and welfare should want to avoid giving them any more leverage than they already have.

@ 108

“And @72 is is the clown prince of comedy when he claims (for it is almost certainly a he) that ‘I’m sure the women in sex work are thrilled to have another moralising, meddling man taking up camp with the radical feminists and religious fundamentalists whose only objective is the advancement of their own agendas’ – so there’s no middle ground, eh – sorry for suggesting there might be a possible downside to years of cash dependent, and mostly joyless sex.”

That would be ‘princess’. Thanks.

Could you point out to me where I suggested that there were no middle ground? I expressed distaste for a hack writer using inaccurate and methodologically flawed studies to create a morally bankrupt argument, based almost entirely on emotive statements.

I’m sorry, but even when there is harm coming to a certain percentage (which I don’t know, and won’t make up) of sex workers, and that issue desperately needs to be addressed, I don’t react well to “SAVE THE CHILDREN” arguments. Especially when they aid the peddlers of fascist ideologies who wish to criminalise consensual transactions for their own ends, with quite literally no regard for any sex worker that doesn’t fit in with their “trafficked victim” spiel.

I accept prostitution correlates with various unwelcome/negative factors. But I don’t think that means it is *inherently* different from other ways of earning a living. The problems are caused by larger underlying social and economic patterns, I would have thought.

Like many others here I think the priority should be making prostitution safer for women (and men). I agree with most of what Chaise Guevara, redpesto and Ongi have said.

“Still i guess thats the luxury such liberals avail themselves of. Fighting against all these miserable feminists and leftists – demanding that people have the right to sell their bodies (just as long as its not their daughters, their sons of course)”

I don’t think being opposed to the views in this post mean you are anti-feminist or anti-left (though some may be).

[113] ‘Could you point out to me where I suggested that there were no middle ground?’ – oh, I think the tell tale sign is the instinct to sideline questions about the downside of prostitution as, gasp, ‘moralising, meddling’ men ‘taking up camp with the radical feminists and religious fundamentalists whose only objective is the advancement of their own agendas’.

You criticise the absence of high quality research (a field that has interested feminists for obvious reasons) then provide a crass polemic which characterises alternative opinions as aligning themselves with ‘religious fundamentalists’, a group hardly known for a nuanced take on matters of a sexual nature.

I’m not trying to save the children, in fact I’m not trying to ‘save’ anybody although some claim the age of recruitment into the game may be as young as 13 or 14 (a point we can perhaps overlook given the absence of gold standard, err, research)

I notice you duck the substantive point saying, ‘I’m sorry, but even when there is harm coming to a certain percentage (which I don’t know, and won’t make up)’ before quickly trotting out some tripe about ‘peddlers of fascist ideologies’ – when somebody use a phrase like ‘peddles of fascist ideologies’ (unless they are talking specifically about those expounding an extreme right wing agenda) I assume they have very little to add to the tone of the debate.

If you really want to discuss prostitution lets start with being open enough to accept that one person’s paid for orgasm, for some will be another person’s joyless groundhog day, and over time the sum of these experiences may not exactly be great for that person, or those close to them.

@115 Sounds like you’ve just described pretty much every boring crappy job going there with your groundhog day spiel. It’s not called ‘wanking for coins’ for nothing.

@ 107 Redpesto

“Maybe everyone at HuffPo will cheer you to the echo for making the same poor arguments at even greater length.”

When I looked at the HuffPo article, the handful of comments were critical, and he or a moderator was accused (rightly or wrongly) of deleting further comments by sex workers who disagreed with him.

To give Tony his due, he DID update to say that he’d found the stats applied to street workers only. He deserves credit for that because a lot of writers would have kept quiet about it.

I recommend that everyone commenting here (and the OP if he hasn’t already) reads this blog:

http://secretdiaryofadublincallgirl.wordpress.com/

From an ex-prostitute based in Dublin, about her experiences. She was not a street worker, she worked out of a flat while she was at college, and I think she is probably better qualified than most people on this comment thread to provide a dose of reality as to what this job can be really like.

Most of the people who have anything less than a super fun time with prostitution do not have access to any means of telling their story. This woman has, and it’s very informative and important imo.

Maybe start with this entry…

http://secretdiaryofadublincallgirl.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/empowerment/

Although, of course, it is wrong for anyone to try to interfere with the voluntary contract entered into by prostitute and client (and that includes the state) there is a sense in which the headline of the OP is correct and it rather explains the hurtful surprise exhibited by Tony as he has been routinely savaged by many he might have considered to be fellow travellers.

Because there is surely no more profound example of the objectification of a woman than prostitution and feminists and lefties often assert that men treating women as sexual objects is, in some way, reprehensible.

I usually find this meme amusing because it is an obvious example of well meaning people trying, but failing, to recreate the world as they would like it to be but, in this case, I have some wry sympathy for Tony as he dodges the unexpected bullets.

About the claimed absence of high-quality research on prostitution, try: An empirical analysis of street-level prostitution (2007), by Steven Levitt and Sudhir Venkatash
http://economics.uchicago.edu/pdf/Prostitution%205.pdf

Steven Levitt is Professor of economics at Chicago University, a John Bates Clarke medalist and author of: Freakonomics (2005) and Superfreakonomics (2009).

Try also: Victorian London – Crime – Prostitution
http://www.victorianlondon.org/crime/numbersofprostitutes.htm

No one is answering the question about alternative employment opportunities for prostitutes, escorts and call-girls if paying for sex is made illegal. Try this report from my local press for further light on this aspect:

An MP’s wife has allegedly been selling sex for £70 in two massage parlours in Sutton and Cheam.

A Sunday paper claimed Mike Weatherley’s Brazilian wife Adriana Alves had been working at North Cheam Massage in Lavender Avenue and Sutton Angels.

The MP for Hove and Portslade, 53, said the couple had separated in February with divorce proceedings under way.
http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/local/topstories/8381112.Sex_shame__MP_s_wife_in_North_Cheam_massage_parlour/

The Sutton Angels pub has closed and is now being converted to a Tesco Express store.

About the claimed absence of high-quality research on prostitution, try: An empirical analysis of street-level prostitution (2007), by Steven Levitt and Sudhir Venkatash
http://economics.uchicago.edu/pdf/Prostitution%205.pdf

Steven Levitt is Professor of economics at Chicago University, a John Bates Clark medalist and author of: Freakonomics (2005) and Superfreakonomics (2009).

Try also: Victorian London – Crime – Prostitution
http://www.victorianlondon.org/crime/numbersofprostitutes.htm

No one is answering the question about alternative employment opportunities for prostitutes, escorts and call-girls if paying for sex is made illegal. Try this report from my local press for further light on this aspect:

An MP’s wife has allegedly been selling sex for £70 in two massage parlours in Sutton and Cheam.

A Sunday paper claimed Mike Weatherley’s Brazilian wife Adriana Alves had been working at North Cheam Massage in Lavender Avenue and Sutton Angels.

The MP for Hove and Portslade, 53, said the couple had separated in February with divorce proceedings under way.
http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/local/topstories/8381112.Sex_shame__MP_s_wife_in_North_Cheam_massage_parlour/

The Sutton Angels pub has closed and is now being converted to a Tesco Express store.

@ a&e charge nurse: given your username, I’m sure you must be well aware of the potential for trauma when dealing with people who are ill, injured, or a victims of violence – plus the added risk that despite your best efforts they might die right in front of you. Of course, not all cases are that serious, but how is it that medical staff cope under such circumstances? How do they deal with the risk of PTSD?

You may know about this already, but I’ll refer you to the work of Arlie Hochschild, particularly her concept of ‘emotional labor’. Interestingly, there seems to be a parallel between nurses, actors and sex workers regarding the role of ‘emotional labor’ in their respective professions.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Tony knew all along that by posting this article her would receive a bloody good spanking. Don’t be fooled by his “why are you all demonising me” little boy act! I know Tony’s type Yours spankingly Miss Whiplash

About the claimed absence of high-quality research on prostitution, try: An empirical analysis of street-level prostitution (2007), by Steven Levitt and Sudhir Venkatash
http://economics.uchicago.edu/pdf/Prostitution%205.pdf

Steven Levitt is Professor of economics at Chicago University, a John Bates Clark medalist and author of: Freakonomics (2005) and Superfreakonomics (2009).

@ 115

-quote-
You criticise the absence of high quality research (a field that has interested feminists for obvious reasons) then provide a crass polemic which characterises alternative opinions as aligning themselves with ‘religious fundamentalists’, a group hardly known for a nuanced take on matters of a sexual nature.
-quote-

I didn’t deny that there are downsides to prostitution. You attributed that to me without any help, because I pointed out the one-sided nature and potential harmful effect of this article. The ‘trafficked victims’ and ‘prostituted women’ rhetoric is as harmful to real sex workers as the ‘happy hooker’ myth is.

You accuse me of using a ‘crass polemic’ – and state that I say that anyone with an alternative opinion to my own is taking sides with religious fundamentalists. One is therefore forced to wonder whether your accusation is indeed a clever tactic to cover your own polemic. What I stated, and stand by, is that radical feminists and fundamental religious groups align on this issue very well, and often combine their lobbying power to pursue a similar agenda. The reasoning is perhaps different – the goal the same. End prostitution, no matter the cost to sex workers. For a well-known example, look up Ruhama – the Irish abolitionist NGO, set up and run by the same orders of nuns that ran the magdalene laundries – before the laundries were closed.

-quote-
I’m not trying to save the children, in fact I’m not trying to ‘save’ anybody although some claim the age of recruitment into the game may be as young as 13 or 14 (a point we can perhaps overlook given the absence of gold standard, err, research)
-quote-

Why would you overlook it? Surely, the best thing to do would be to look for studies that have been done, check their methodological validity, and draw conclusions from them. What we shouldn’t do, and what many abolitionists do do, is trot out these scare numbers, avoid contextualising them in any way, and hope that the public suck them up wholesale without ever looking further into the issue.

-quote-
when somebody use a phrase like ‘peddles of fascist ideologies’ (unless they are talking specifically about those expounding an extreme right wing agenda) I assume they have very little to add to the tone of the debate.
-quote-

I’d apologise, but I’m not really sure how describe peddlers of fascist ideologies in any other way. You seem to be conflating my objection to abolitionist agendas with a denial of anything ‘bad’ ever happening in the sex industry. Bad things happen all the time in the sex industry. I’m just of the opinion that infantilising women in sex work, removing their agency, denying them rights and campaigning for laws that will harm them is not the most productive way to combat the ‘bad stuff’.

-quote-
If you really want to discuss prostitution lets start with being open enough to accept that one person’s paid for orgasm, for some will be another person’s joyless groundhog day, and over time the sum of these experiences may not exactly be great for that person, or those close to them.
-quote-

The issues with prostitution are numerous and varied. The fact that sex work can be monotonous and detrimental to some is not something I’ve denied. Perhaps this time you could try reading what I write and responding to it, rather than reading it, trying to imagine what I -mean-, and going with that instead.

@ 118

In the interest of balance, you could also try:

http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/

http://aksmithbooks.com/

http://harlotsparlour.com/

…and many more like them.

[118] I did read what you had written, and quoted it ……. verbatim.
Lets just check, ‘religious’ fundamentalists’, fascist ideologies’, ‘radical feminist’, yes, all cliches present and correct – perhaps you would be good enough to point to a single comment I have made that is synonymous with any of these put downs other than the fact I had the temerity to mention the limited number of papers that have tried to address some of these issues from a research perspective (I do not dispute methodology is flawed or that investigators have their own agenda) – but despite these weaknesses dismissing all of the findings in their entirety is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

At least you are now belatedly admitting there are ‘harms’ for those in this line of work so perhaps the next step is to fully identify, and quantifying the extent of them, such as frequency of rape, prevalence of mental illness, levels of physical or psychological assault, background of child abuse, drug addiction (sex work to pay for habit, etc), and so on.
I have no doubt there are happy, and perfectly well adjusted sex workers, and more power to their elbow, but in my opinion providing this type of service brings with it occupational demands that are some of the most challenging in the workforce, yet because of the stigma and issues surrounding legality, are, in the main, largely ignored.

Mind you some argue (@16) that there is no difference between prostitution and working at McDonalds, although those subject to the downsides of the game are probably not ‘lovin’ it’ – it has been a little while since I’ve such an idiotic bit of whataboutery .

Sorry, last post [127] directed @125

Violet (@118):

Most of the people who have anything less than a super fun time with prostitution do not have access to any means of telling their story.

Really? As Brooke Magnanti explains:

As you can see, my books are outnumbered by hooker memoirs that predate mine (Tracy Quan and Xaviera Hollander in particular). Outspoken strippers also chalk up plenty of contributions to the genre.

But outnumbering all of us by far are the ‘misery memoirs’ about prostitution. (Don’t get angry at me for the sweeping generalisation. That is what the genre actually is called.) There are, to use the technical term, fucking shedloads of these books. You’ll notice more than a few bestsellers in that stack as well. These were just the ones I could fit into the graphic; there are dozens upon dozens more. Many if not most of which were published after my books first came out.

It’s probably fair to conclude that not only has my writing not stopped others from contributing their experience to the general debate on sex work, but that you’re actually more likely to get noticed if you’re unhappy with prostitution than generally satisfied with it. [original emphasis]

How difficult is it to set up a blog these days? I’m told you can even create one for free.

Let’s accept the proposition that prostitution isn’t all that glamorous and can often be dangerous and degrading and move on.
So what now?
I mean it’s not like the conditions that force some women into prostitution are exclusive to women alone, but prostitution IS an income stream that is more readily available to women than it is to men. Plus it’s not like anycunt has suggested owt to say, improve everyone’s lives to the point where they don’t feel the need to sell themselves to fund their way through university or whatever, but there has been plenty of high horses being mounted.

[130] So what now? – I think the ‘what’ depends in part on the extent of the ‘harms’ as well as some other things.

Given that we do not have a strong research base in this area some sort of objective picture across the workforce would be a good starting point.
It may be that things are nowhere as bleak as some imagine on the other hand obtaining accurate data may reveal the true extent of damage that is being inflicted?

In my opinion the best way to support those who go into the sex trade is via proper regulation – maybe the parameters could be defined by those with direct experience of the settings that prostitutes work in.
Obviously different countries have different ways to dealing with this issue.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/26/prostitution-laws-around-the-world-canada-in-about-the-middle-of-g8-countries/

I disagree very much with this article.
Obviously the OP has never been to a massage parlour/brothel or seen an escort.I think your so-called statistics are in my opinion nonsensical. Most prostitutes are not drug addicts,or raped.And they aren’t victims of child abuse as well.Certainly not in England. You only have to look at websites on the internet-which openly show reviews of girls that punters have seen.And furthermore hear the prostitutes themselves talking about there jobs.
Noone is saying that trafficking doesn’t exist,it does but this article is exagerating it,and the OP clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about.I don’t understand why people have such redicilous old fashioned views of prostitution.Most escorts and parlour girls are nmuch cleaner than the typical promiscious girl you may get down the local pub,furthermore may I add that most prostitutes choose to do there profession and shock horror some enjoy this.Also punters/johns are not sad old or pathetic weridos as you like to make out. there normal people like anyone else.You are intitled to your opinion but I do believe it is based on anti prostitution propergander

108. the a&e charge nurse

I think the following rather belies your views on the matter: “sweaty, boorish, desperate, and possibly even slightly intoxicated men are not entitled to get their end away.”

I don’t know if you’re male or female, gay or straight but I rather imagine that most people would find aspects of a nurse’s job even less pleasant than having sex with “sweaty, boorish, desperate, and possibly even slightly intoxicated men”. Although, of course, I gather that a lot of our degree educated nurses are too posh to wash and such duties are relegated to cleaners, ward assistants and such.

In general, when visiting prostitutes in saunas or flats, the punter is obliged to take a shower, often, in the case of flats, accompanied by the prostitute who makes the whole process of getting cleaned up ready for sex much more fun. I don’t think that drunk punters are much of a problem as they are generally screened before getting to see the prostitute and the obviously drunk ones can be turned away.

So, I think your imagined description of the typical punter is personal to you, shows your bias and couldn’t really be further from the truth on the whole.

131. the a&e charge nurse

“Given that we do not have a strong research base in this area some sort of objective picture across the workforce would be a good starting point.
It may be that things are nowhere as bleak as some imagine on the other hand obtaining accurate data may reveal the true extent of damage that is being inflicted?”

How much research do we need? Or should I say, how much biased research do we need? The harms of prostitution are fairly easy to enunciate:

1. The social stigma which is pretty self-evident and is also ferociously directed towards punters as your own effort in post 108 and the OP’s article amply demonstrate. This aspect is social and could be addressed by normalising the issue of prostitution and treat those who denigrate prostitutes and punters in the same way as racists, homophobes, etc., are.

2. The risk of violence which is exacerbated by the sheer illegality of the business meaning that prostitutes typically have no redress to the police and the law in these cases. This aspect is therefore also social in nature because of the perception that most people are anti-prostitution and support the laws against the various activities surrounding prostitution. In effect, the do-gooders are actually the cause of much of the misery in which prostitutes find themselves.

3. The psychological effects. IMHO, the psychological effects are mostly related to 1 and 2 above and far less to the physical act of having sex. Consequently, this can be addressed by promoting greater public acceptance of prostitution as a beneficial social endeavour.

4. The physical effects. The vast majority of prostitutes practice sex with condoms and so the physical effects are limited to assault. Obviously this can be limited by ensuring that prostitutes have access to legal redress against attackers just like everyone else.

5. Drugs. I felt I needed to mention this but, in reality, the same set of issues apply. Legalising drugs and prostitution should go hand in hand if society is intent on minimising harm to individuals and itself.

The advantages of legalised prostitution and greater public acceptance:

1. The most damaging aspect of prostitution, which is IMHO the social stigma, would be removed and prostitutes would cease to be damaged unnecessarily by their work.

2. Those who have need of the services of prostitutes would have access to the physicality of sex just like everyone else. Indeed, one could consider this a move towards real equality – everyone would have access to sex regardless of the physical, mental or personal choice issues which prevent them forming normal relationships.

3. It would free up police and legal resources to tackle those who really force people into prostitution against their while also reducing demand from punters who know where to go to find legal prostitutes.

4. A legal industry can be taxed.

5. Punters would know for sure that they are dealing with a prostitute who is performing a service of their own free will.

[133] ‘your imagined description of the typical punter is personal to you’ – I think you must have imagined the ‘typical’ bit, so let’s go back to what I actually said.

My comment (@108) was ‘I’m sure sure some of the johns are very nice but statistically a % must be pretty unpleasant (sweaty, boorish, desperate, etc)’ – so how do you make the leap from a % to ‘typical’ – maybe you think most exchanges are similar to the sexy french parlor in ‘Maison Close’?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8ZR3RtzcG9A/TFd5Byr2_vI/AAAAAAAACgQ/T96JEvqlGsY/s1600/maisonclose001.jpg

Any open door service must expect it’s fair share of unpleasant characters, thats just in the nature of things.

One study which looked at the characteristics of ‘men who buy sex’ obtained a variety of quotes – here are some of them.
“Prostitution is like masturbating without having to use your hand.”
“It’s like renting a girlfriend or wife. You get to choose like a catalogue.”
“I feel sorry for these girls but this is what I want.”
“No big deal, it’s just like getting a beer.”
“I like it if it’d be super expensive…she comes in, nothing said and she is instantly very sexual, a sexual creature.”
“My favourite experience in prostitution was when she was totally submissive.”
“I don’t like the ones that make no secret of it being a job. I like customer care. They try to finish quickly but I want to take a little bit of time.”
“I have sex as a means to an end to meet my sexual needs… It’s a financial transaction.”
“I found her on punternet.com and she looked at me with the look of a puppy dog in the Christmas window.”
“Look, men pay for women because he can have whatever and whoever he wants. Lots of men go to prostitutes so they can do things to them that real women would not put up with.
“If you go to the wrong one, you might as well be in a morgue, there’s a slab of flesh there.”
“We’re living in the age of instant coffee, instant food. This is instant sex.”

(Men who buy sex: Who they buy and what they know).

OK, I know the authors are going to be panned ( Melissa Farley, Julie Bindel and Jacqueline M. Golding – 2009) but all I’m saying is that not every John is without one or two teeny, weeny character flaws.

I believe I addressed the main points about how it might be possible to move toward a safer environment for sex workers @131

[134] ‘How much research do we need?’ – enough, so that we don’t have to rely on an anecdote based version of the issues (which is essentially the main substance of this thread – story telling of form or another).

You may be right about the harms but it would be helpful if there was a reliable evidence base to support the extent and implications of such assertions – thats something that is missing at the moment.

@ 132 Steve McDonald is correct and thanks for raising and interesting point. Believe it or not and as counter-intuitive as it may seem, but the No 1 reason that men frequent prostitutes is to remain free of sexually transmitted diseases. Your typical promiscuous girl down the pub will have more diseases than a petri dish, your typical bloke is “terrified” of “catching” something form these girl; guys who “play it safe” and stick with prostitutes – and this is coming from someone who work in an IUD clinic!

guys who “play it safe” and stick with prostitutes are actually disease free!

guys who “play it safe” and stick with prostitutes !

guys who “play it safe” and stick with prostitutes are actually disease free!!

@ Jim 133 “Degree educated nurses” as you say don’t clean up the poo, vomit, blood… this is the job of the “uneducated” auxiliary nurses, ward assistants. If always pisses me off they way the take all the credit (and the chocolate from patient) when all they do is sit in their station and pop out every so often to mark a chart. Angels, yeah sure lol

135. the a&e charge nurse

How do you make the leap from “some” to the majority?

From which study did you get the quotes? I can’t imagine that they’re representative of most punters. It sounds to me like a collection of quotes from early twenty-somethings and very immature ones at that.

“… not every John is without one or two teeny, weeny character flaws.”

In other words, a fair few Johns have problems much like the prostitutes themselves. They may have been sexually or physically abused in childhood, come from deprived backgrounds, etc., etc. They may have Asperger’s Syndrome or other psychological problems and yet they are vilified by people who sympathise only with the prostitutes. Dreadful double standards from people like Julie Bindel, et al. Essentially, certain elements of society relish the fact that they can still beat up on prostitutes and punters since they can no longer have an easy pop at gays, lesbians and transsexuals.

Let’s face it, few of the things said about prostitutes and punters by some people such as the author of the OP are particularly edifying and they’d never get away with saying such things about gays, etc. This whole thing is just one of the few last bastions of traditional sexual bigotry and it’s high time that the real liberals among us make the point and start the process of making it unacceptable.

[142] this is the link if interested
http://i1.cmsfiles.com/eaves/2012/04/MenWhoBuySex-89396b.pdf

The motives of Bindel and Farley are discussed above.

The quotes highlighted by these authors may not be representative of most men but they still tap into the idea that just because something can be purchased (sex) it distorts the buyer’s perspective of what it is exactly they are entitled to.

Times really are changing. After shopping in a local Sainsbury’s store – which btw had a prominent promotional display of the Shades of Grey trilogy by EL James – I went to sit on the bench at the nearby bus stop to await a bus to get home with my shopping.

I’d hardly sat down on the bench when a young woman, most likely in her early 20s or late teens, sat next to me, presumably to await her bus. She produced from her bag a book to read – it was the first of the Shades of Grey trilogy. I noticed she started to read at a book mark placed close to the end. There was no coy attempt to conceal the cover of the book in any way – or to disguise her evident interest in resuming her reading of the narrative.

143. the a&e charge nurse

I feel that Julie Bindel and other women who undertake such studies because they are mostly women are misandrist and bigotted with an axe to grind. They only sees the issue from one, warped perspective. I wouldn’t believe a word they say on the issue.

For example, the list of “selected comments”: they list 20 of the most crass statements with no context; no indication as to whether they were unique statements from individuals or possibly several per individual.

I’ve read most of the report and my basic impression is that the questionnaire was created in order to get the answers the questioners wanted and that, in fact, the results bear no relation to the truth whatsoever. Studies such as this are a danger to both the prostitutes and the punters because it seeks to bias the debate against prostitution for its own motives. The authors are not interested in the truth of the matter, just attempting to eliminate prostitution. This suggests to me an extraordinary level of delusion which should preclude such studies from general consideration.

@129. redpesto: “Really? As Brooke Magnanti explains…”

Really, what exactly? Brooke Magnanti established the Belle de Jour blog at the time that she submitted her PhD thesis. BM had previously written short (fiction) story pieces and had maintained a blog (Methylsalicylate) for a couple of years. At the time of her writing, the UK blogger community was small and tight, and she cleverly used her insider knowledge to draw attention to BdJ.

Fact or fiction? Do a few performances (accepting that they occurred in reality) qualify BM as an expert in prostitution?

It is up to the reader to determine whether the BdJ blog and subsequent books are tosh on a factual level. Two early blog pieces were criticised by readers on the basis of (ignorant) knowledge of the geography of London. I too know little about the geography of London, but I determined that one part of a story (to meet a punter in Bedford) corresponded with half of the journey from her digs in North London to Sheffield; another story describes the cross city trip to London rowers in Putney (where she rowed, and subsequently moved home).

If anyone has an archive of BdJ blogs, I am happy to point out other inconsistencies.

Belle de Jour is not the only published narrative of a student funding her course of higher education by what in American jargon is sometimes called “flatbacking”. There is also: Confessions of a Working Girl – A True Story, by Miss S (Penguin Books) and its sequel, Extra Confessions. Btw I originally came across this book in a Tesco display of popular paperbacks for family reading.

My understanding is that Dr Brooke Magnanti is not a native Londoner but moved to London from Sheffield because she believed this presented better market prospects for earnings from escort work to tied her over until she could get paid employment in a research post for which a PhD was required. If so, that could account for her published errors about London geography.

@Charlieman – you miss the point: anyone can set up a blog, write content for it and build an audience. In fact, the more sex workers who blog, the greater the diversity of voices and experiences – a point which Magnanti actually encourages. Magnanti also points out that an number of the books she refers to were published after hers was. The idea of ‘silenced voices’ is a little hard to take in this context.

BdJ is cut from the same cloth as the now-defunct News of the Screws “journalist” Anvar Khan (of Tommy Sheridan trial fame); Ms Khan wrote a book, the critically-lambasted “Pretty Wild” supposedly detailing one year of her “sexual exploits”, she later admitted that it was, well, made up. “Ms DeJour” will have made more money (that old chestnut) from her book sales than from “prostitution”, this is the way of such things.

BdJ is cut from the same cloth as the now-defunct News of the Screws “journalist” Anvar Khan (of Tommy Sheridan trial fame); Ms Khan wrote a book, the critically-lambasted “Pretty Wild” supposedly detailing one year of her “sexual exploits”, she later admitted that it was, well, made up. “Ms DeJour” will have made more money (that old chestnut) from her book sales than from “prostitution”, this is the way of such things.

BdJ is cut from the same cloth as the now-defunct News of the Screws “journalist” Anvar Khan (of Tommy Sheridan trial fame); Ms Khan wrote a book, the critically-lambasted “Pretty Wild” supposedly detailing one year of her “sexual exploits”, she later admitted that it was, well, made up. “Ms DeJour” will have made more money (that old chestnut) from her book sales than from “prostitution”, this is the way of such things.

BdJ is cut from the same cloth as the now-defunct News of the Screws “journalist” Anvar Khan (of Tommy Sheridan trial fame); Ms Khan wrote a book, the critically-lambasted “Pretty Wild” supposedly detailing one year of her “sexual exploits”, she later admitted that it was, well, made up. “Ms DeJour” will have made more money (that old chestnut) from her book sales than from “prostitution”, this is the way of such things.

The fact is that erotic literature is increasingly popular and has excellent earning potential as shown by the amazing publishing success of the Shades of Grey novels by EL James.

Who was it who suggested that the fundamental difference between wives and prostitutes was in the length of the contract? Recap: half the babies born in Britain are to unmarried couples.

@148. redpesto: “@Charlieman – you miss the point: anyone can set up a blog, write content for it and build an audience.”

I did not miss the point, and explicitly noted above that Brooke Magnanti used her past blogging experience to boost herself in the blog world (it was once described as “blogosphere”).

I agree that anyone can establish a blog (the exercise is trivial), but I would argue that it requires a lot of intelligence to promote it. BdJ was a great selling exercise.

Most of the blogs that I read are written by smart people who blog for the sake of it. Or for the sake of a book to be read by 3,000 people immediately, and for whatever that means in the future.

@147. Bob B: “My understanding is that Dr Brooke Magnanti is not a native Londoner but moved to London from Sheffield because she believed this presented better market prospects for earnings from escort work to tied her over until she could get paid employment in a research post for which a PhD was required. If so, that could account for her published errors about London geography.”

BdJ was published as a “biography”. Facts. Things that happened.

Who was it who said that a man isn’t paying a woman for sex – he is paying her to leave

One study which looked at the characteristics of ‘men who buy sex’ obtained a variety of quotes… but all I’m saying is that not every John is without one or two teeny, weeny character flaws.

Well er yes, very good, now wtf of relevance does that tell us? Other than providing the likes of Bindel et al with something to fill up pages with ‘why oh why men are all bastards’ stories, how does this information fundamentally alter the fact that both men and women will go about selling and buying sex? Regardless of it’s legality or not. As they’ve done for centuries? Does quote mining ‘Johns’ and chatting about inadequacies make said inadequacies up and fuck off leaving ‘Johns’ adequate? Does it make poverty piss off and make becoming a sex worker to pay the rent unlikely to occur?

This on the other hand is more like it:-

In my opinion the best way to support those who go into the sex trade is via proper regulation – maybe the parameters could be defined by those with direct experience of the settings that prostitutes work in.
Obviously different countries have different ways to dealing with this issue.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/26/prostitution-laws-around-the-world-canada-in-about-the-middle-of-g8-countries/

More of that please. Generally empowering the sellers of sex so that the transaction takes place more on their terms rather than the example Violet@118 provided.

As interesting as it is to psychoanalyse Thermos O’Flask, it doesn’t really do shit for helping women & men who sell themselves to stay safe.

Not a simple reliable piece of evidence, simply anecdote and unsupported assertions to support the writers belief that prostitution is wrong. In a supposed liberal magazine yet again we come across the lies and distotions of the anti sex work industry reported as fact.

@Charlieman:

I agree that anyone can establish a blog (the exercise is trivial), but I would argue that it requires a lot of intelligence to promote it.

That’s what Twitter and Facebook are for these days. For example there is a whole anti-sex work wing of ‘#feminism’ who will go for any narrative that presents sex work as hell on earth.