tearing down the "Sweden doesn't work" lie

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tearing down the "Sweden doesn't work" lie

Postby sam » Wed Mar 22, 2006 11:35 am

*stickied for easy access to the people who have asked me about it.

Through Lost Clown's Carnival of Feminists I found this conversation at the blog Reclusive Leftist where a pro-prostitution woman is trying to debunk the successes of the Swedish model. I'm reposting here what I wrote so people can get an idea of how to confront the sex industry's campaign of misinformation. It's not an action, but I thought it belonged in a public forum so non-members could stumble upon it as well.

Because the 20 unanimous women Petra Ostergren spoke with is commonly brought up to deny thousands of research studies done over decades in countries around the world, it would be good to familiarlize yourself with her non-study that is treated like a serious piece of research by pro-pornstitutioners.

http://www.petraostergren.com

There is a study pro-prostitutioners foolishly cite sometimes to try and prove the Swedish model doesn't work, but if they weren't so foolish they would realize that the paper, slanted as it is, actually concedes that the Swedish model is working better than the Dutch model.

I might run through this one in detail another time, but in short pro-legalization folk who put this together did not speak with one single working prostitute in Sweden. Pages 10 and 11 contain a lot of myth-debunking info about Sweden's success. Page 24 says, "The Netherlands has around twice as many inhabitants as Sweden. The scale of prostitution is about ten times of Sweden."

Purchasing Sexual Services in Sweden and the Netherlands: Legal Regulation and Experiences
http://www.dep.no/jd/english/012101-990578/dok-bn.html

I may touch up the following at a later date, and please let me know if you think somthing is weak and needs strengthening with either more proof or more explanation.

http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/?p=166

Did anyone else notice how Burrow's supportive comments on Sweden cited specific studies with specific numbers in comparison to other countries and Cicely's rebuttal contained not one concrete fact, only conjecture and hypothesis? I noticed.

"this law has been criticized by Swedish sex workers"

Which sex workers? Don't say the 20 women Petra claims to have spoken with who all unanimously agree with her that whoring is just a job and should be fully legalized. Any study where the population of 20 is unanimous should be suspect, especially when no other study done with prostitutes internationally has ever been unanimous.

the new legislation makes it harder to assess clients since “the clients are more stressed and scared, and negotiation outdoors must be done in a more rapid manner

Do rapists emit a rape-pheromone that only prostitutes can smell, and only if given enough time to adequately sniff? How did Swedish prostitutes tell the murderous clients from the non-murderous clients before 1999? Did prostitutes before the 1999 law hand out forms to prospective tricks with such questions as "Are you going to rob, rape, choke, cigarette-burn, or otherwise hurt me? Circle one: Y / N"?

there is now a greater percentage of ‘perverted’ customers and the ‘nice and kind’ customers have disappeared.

So when Swedish men rape prostitutes, the solution is not to hold those men accountable but to point the finger at feminists and blame them for changing the law that made men "have to" ask hookers for more perverted (dangerous, painful, permanent) kinds of sex acts? That makes no sense, and neither does suggesting that when the 1999 law changed suddenly a bunch of sadistic Swedish men decided to start using prostitutes.

I'm pretty sure those men were around long before 1999 because it is these men's violent and sadistic treatment of prostitutes that brought about the need for legal changes challenging men's "right" to have sex anytime and any way they wanted. If men who used prostitutes were nonviolent gentleman there would be no need for the law.

Sex workers are now more apprehensive about seeking help from the police when they have problems with an abusive customer.

Again, I ask for quotes from sex workers, because the Swedish reports say that not only are prostitutes turning abusive men in more, but those violent men usually have criminal records beyond assaulting prostitutes so they often are brought up on those charges as well, resulting in more criminals behind bars where they belong.

prices on the streets are lower since there are fewer customers and more competition. “This means that women in more desperate need of money will engage in unsafe sex and sexual activity they usually would not perform.

Doesn't this actually mean Swedish men who use prostitutes have been shown to willingly take advantage of vulnerable women to economically coerce them into painful, degrading sex acts? Again, the notion that these Swedish men weren't asking for double-anals, vagina-tearing dry sex, “prosti-tots”, etc before 1999 is absurd.

National Police Board has observed that it is harder to prosecute sex profiteers because sex-purchasers won’t testify.

Of course tricks won't testify, and they didn't regularly before either. Quotes from tricks show that they are often afraid of violence or robbery from pimps just like prostitutes. One man who responded to a researcher's newspaper ad said, "I've never tried to rescue a girl. You can get killed doing that." You can get killed testifying against the organized criminals that lord over prostitution internationally.

Sex workers can be made to testify and have “neither the rights of the accused or the victim.

Not true, cicely. Under Swedish Criminal Procedure Law (Chapter 36, 6 Rattegangsbalken) a prostitute can refuse to give evidence that can reveal that she has undertaken a "disreputable" act. It pretty much guarantees the prosecution will have a hard time getting a conviction, but a prostitute is not forced to give evidence under Swedish law.

Driving prostitution underground, whether through moral condemnation or criminalizing purchasers, only exacerbates the most dangerous aspects of prostitution.

Actually, even groups working towards prostitution legalization have had to admit there is no evidence of an increase in underground prostitution since 1999. The best they can say is that there's not enough information, but nothing has shown numbers of underground, trafficking, or other organized criminal prostitution rising and it is clear that trafficking into Sweden has decreased dramatically.

In the real world, the demands of sex workers — better working conditions and complete de-criminalization

In the real world, 90% of prostitutes say they want out of prostitution immediately. One 5-country study of 475 prostitutes found 92% said they wanted out, and a 9-country study of 854 prostitutes found 89% wanted out immediately.

Please show where you picked up the belief that what most prostitutes demand is help staying in prostitution and complete decriminalization so they can stay prostitutes. You are demonstrably wrong about that, Cicely.

Here is what 475 prostitutes from 5 countries said:

United States: 56% don't want it legal, 88% want out now.

South Africa: 62% don't want it legal, 89% want out now

Thailand: 72% don't want it legal, 94% want out now

Turkey: 96% don't want it legal, 90% want out now

Zambia: 92% don't want it legal, 99% want out now


From http://www.prostitutionresearch.com

I would very much like to see whatever proof you may have to support your claim that what "sex workers" are really demanding is decriminalization and better whoring conditions.

Neutral observers in Sweden have conceded that it’s impossible to measure accurately the incidence of prostitution since the legislation took effect as methods of soliciting have moved dramatically to the internet and mobile phones.

That would go against what you said earlier about an increase in underground prostitution. It has been guessed at but not proven, and recorded phone conversations with pimps and traffickers have shown the new law effectively deters them.

there is a new crime in Sweden. Women posing as sex workers rob their ‘clients’, who are unlikely to report the theft to authorities for fear of being prosecuted

I think that's woman hating, unproven bullshit that feeds off men's loathing of women as gold-digging, conniving greedy bitches. What you're saying is that there's a new crime that no one has reported yet, but you're certain it's there anyway because women are lying bitches like that.

Sure, it's theoretically possible Swedish women might pretend to be prostitutes (who don't fear men's insane amount of violence towards whores for some strange reason) to begin robbing men, but for a long time now Swedish women could threaten to "cry rape" in order to steal from or blackmail any man, trick or not. That hasn't been happening, so saying that to give prostitutes the power to turn the men who abuse them has lead to malicious, lying Swedish women "crying rape" for an easy payday, oh but the men are too afraid to report it so there's zero proof, is misogynist bullshit.
Last edited by sam on Thu May 04, 2006 5:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Postby sam » Wed Mar 22, 2006 6:31 pm

I'm home now and I thought it would be good to look up the statistics from the other 4 countries that I left out of the first post.

Canada: 68% don't want it legal, 95% want out now

Colombia: 80% don't want it legal, 97% want out now

Mexico: 49% don't want it legal, 68% want out now

Germany: 65% don't want it legal, 85% want out now


Particularly interesting about Germany's numbers is that brothel prostitution is already legal in Germany but 59% of the prostitutes interviewed did not think legalization made them safer from rape and physical assault.

Prostitution is also legal in Columbia, and the age that children are legally allowed to become prostitutes is 14. Prostitution is legal in Costa Rica and the acceptable age of entry into prostitution is 15. Unsurprisingly, both countries have enormous problems with child prostitution and are hotspot destinations for child sexual predators from around the world.

Across the 9 countries, 47% were upset by attempts to make them do what others had seen in pornography and 49% reported pornography was made of them as they were prostituted.
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Postby sam » Fri Mar 24, 2006 4:24 pm

The debate at Reclusive Leftist continues. As a reminder, everything I write can be used by any of y'all any time you like.

Here's how cicely responded:

Firstly, I did write earlier in this thread, or in another thread here on prostitution, that I accept that the vast majority of girls and women working as prostitutes want not to be. I wouldn’t contradict 90% plus, overall. It probably follows that these women would not want prostitution legalised. On the other hand, from your own statistics, a considerable percentage of sex workers surveyed would. 44% in the US, 38% in South Africa, 28% in Thailand, 4% in Turkey and 8% in Zambia. At least these women havn’t said they would not want prostitution legalised, since it would have been noted if they had.

Clearly there are differences between countries, which will have origins in those particular cultures, but don’t you agree that 44% in the US is a pretty significant minority? So, the next question, set against that statistic, is, why do 88% still want to get out in the US? Is it for some because of the unsafe conditions they are forced to work in, while prostitution is criminalised? What do you think explains this discrepancy?

My thing is, we do have to have these discussions directly with those women doing sex work, and who do want to continue but with legal protections and safe conditions. (and I can reference a few sex worker organisations which have websites if you’d like me to…) I can’t find any justification for ignoring them since they will demonstrably continue to be motivated to put themselves at risk even without these basic civil rights. What motivates them? Are they entitled to define for themselves what doing sex work means in their own lives? Conservatives say ‘no’ for moral reasons, many feminists say ‘no’ for political reasons, I say ‘yes’ for largely humanitarian and civil rights reasons. I believe that only de-criminalisation has the potential to fully protect sex workers, whatever the underlying reasons for their participation in the sex industry may be. And I don’t pretend to always know what they may be.

This is all I have time to write for now. I will return…

Here's my response


"My thing is, we do have to have these discussions directly with those women doing sex work...since they will demonstrably continue to be motivated to put themselves at risk"

Well first, thousands of prostitutes (male, women, transgendered) have already been spoken with and I have shown you where you can find what they have to say about it. Wendy McElroy started a study of women volunteering at sex worker rights organizations and she abandoned it when it became clear even among this most biased of prostitution populations the women didn't really want to be sex workers. Carol Leigh, aka Scarlot Harlot, said in a 2004 debate, "95% of my friends want out of prostitution."

You see, my thing is to stop looking at poverty-stricken, desperate women and asking them why they do desperate things for money they desperately need. My thing is focusing on men with disposable income who could freely choose not to sexually exploit drug addicted, sexually molested girls and asking them why they insist on their "right" to do so.

Your focus on prostituted women is not where the problem lies so you will not find the solution there either. You need to start talking about the men who choose to use prostitutes just because they want to and it gives them pleasure. Pro-prostitution advocates consider talking about the men who use prostitutes anathema, so they focus on the women as if changing women is going to change how violently and abusively men treat prostitutes, and all women really.

The male belief in their entitlement to sex is the problem, not prostituting women. A great thing about changing the prostitution debate to reject men's "right" to have sex any time, any way, as much as they want is that it goes right to the heart of rape culture and will benefit all women.

Men's widespread sexual violence against prostitutes is caused by the cultural acceptance of men's ownership and entitlement to access women's bodies. Men's sexual harassment of the women they work with also stems from a culture that accepts men's entitlement to access females sexually. Men who rape believe men have a right to use women's bodies to relieve themselves any time, any way, as much as they want. Anti-choicers believe men have a right to women's bodies by dint of the sexual use of her body by an impregnating man.

The problem, I mean The Problem, of sexism is that men feel they have a right to use all female bodies any time they want, any way they want. Feminists who cannot bring themselves to reject the patriarchal notion that men have a right to sexually access women's bodies are not going to be effective lessening any of these epidemic sexist ills if they keep looking at women as if it were women who had the problem that needs fixing.

The Swedish policy addressing prostitution as women experience it (harmful, humiliating, violent) instead of how men experience it (harmless, entertaining, pleasurable) is a revolutionary moment in the history of the women's movement. I hope more good-intentioned feminists can move away from the ideological place that accepts prostitution as inevitable because boys will be boys and men's "right" to sex from women will not be questioned.

Until more feminists start questioning men's entitlement over female bodies, significant advancements in women's right to be free from rape, sex harassment, and prostitution can't happen. Rejecting prostitution is consistent with the feminist belief that men do not have a right to sex from women, but too many feminist women still can't say this standing tall and without apologies for believing it.
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Postby Lost Clown » Fri Mar 24, 2006 5:29 pm

Yay sam, I knew you'd come back. I was going to pop in here and page you. I have problems arguing with illogical arguements.

So we should listen to the "significant" minority as opposed to the majority? These types of things make my head want to explode.
"One must care about a world one will never see." -Bertrand Russell

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." Clarence Darrow

"Pornography is to sex what McDonald's is to food." -Gail Dines
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Postby sam » Fri Mar 24, 2006 5:46 pm

Lost Clown wrote:So we should listen to the "significant" minority as opposed to the majority? These types of things make my head want to explode.


I know!

fyi, anytime you want to call on me for a debate you're in, either for behind-the-scenes back up or for me to jump in, let me know and I'll show up with bells on.
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Postby sam » Sat Mar 25, 2006 6:17 pm

Tearing down the "New Zealand decriminalization works" lie.

New Zealand is not protecting prostituted women and children. In April 2005, the naked body of sex worker Susan "Ritalin Sue" Sutherland was found in Christchurch. She was described as being in a disturbed state of mind the night she was killed after she was chased down the street by people to whom she owed money.

Tell me how decriminalization of prostitution helped Susan escape first from her addiction, second from her murderer(s). If men don't change their sexually exploitive, abusing ways, nothing changes. Decriminalization didn't keep Susan alive and it didn't help her beat her drug addiction.

I have a number of articles about prostitution in New Zealand I've collected.

Scoop Independent News reported on April 19, 2005 that, “A police survey undertaken in 2001 found just six brothels offering in-house services, whereas the most recent survey undertaken between November 2003 and April 2004 identified 93."

Is that what a successful prostitution law looks like?

Stuff reports the number of prostitutes rose 40% and that street prostitution jumped from up from 3% in 2001 to 11% in 2004. http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3252861a11,00.html

Scoop announced on September 27, 2005 that a Wellington brothel owner who sold a 14-year old, who was in the care of Child, Youth and Family Services to 24 paying men was given a paltry sentence of 300 hours of community service.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0509/S00279.htm

Is that what a successful prostitution law looks like?

Here's a Prostitution Law Review Committee report
http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports ... index.html

There have been just five convictions under the Prostitution Reform Act since it was enacted in June 2003. Five convictions in two years and the Prostitution Law Reform Committee released a report indicating 20% of those involved in street soliciting are under-aged and street prostitution has escalated to nearly 4 times its numbers prior to decriminalization.

Is that what a successful prostitution law looks like?

It's proven fact that trafficking into Sweden is down enormously since 1999. A Stockholm organization found a 75% decrease in men seeking prostitutes in Sweden since implementation of the new law. It is also true that the Netherlands has twice the population of Sweden but 10 times the prostitution. Those facts alone should be considered successes, especially when the new law has been in place a scant six years. I believe the Swedish law is meeting its goals where legalization and decriminalization have failed to meet theirs and I feel it's a positive step towards the evolution of humanity as a whole. There can be no equality and democracy while the human bodies are considered buyable and sellable

cicely says, the most disadvantaged women appear to be still left hanging out to dry, and working in more dangerous circumstances than they were prior to 1999., but that has not been proven. I'll need to see exact numbers and quotes from sex workers before believing this has come to pass and so far all I've seen is unproven speculation. A report that says "probably circumstances have gotten more dangerous" is not something I can take seriously.

I would believe Petra's report if she didn't only use vague terms like "some" and "many". If she were honest she would lay her data out to be examined, maybe saying "Of 20 sex workers interviewed with methodology X, 10 wanted out of prostitution immediately, 8 wanted legalization and government assistance to stay sex workers, 2 did not want any government action, and here are some representative quotes from each viewpoint." That's what a quality piece of convincing research looks like, and that's not Petra's study.

cicely, it should come as no surprise I do indeed think your belief that men have a biological need to stick their penises in many more body holes than a prostitute-free world can accommodate is bogus. But I'm more concerned with the way you still can't seem to the look the extreme amounts of sexual violence men commit against prostitutes directly in the eye. You wax poetic about families, social cohesion, and the biological nature of human sexuality but you haven't addressed the incredible amount of violence men commit against prostituted women and I feel the generalities you've used in your last post serves to obfuscate men's abuse of women and men's responsibility to stopping that abuse.

You have to be able to explain why prostitutes are the most raped women in the world to see where people who reject prostitution as "work" are coming from when they deny that any person has a right to economically coerce others into sexual servitude.
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Monday morning fun

Postby sam » Mon Mar 27, 2006 11:31 am

My latest reply:

Your link to the source of the 3-11% jump in street prostitution is broken. I don’t know what that figure means.

You can read the original data at the Prostitution Law Committee Report linked. There’s a handy chart that shows in 2001 street prostitution was 3% of New Zealand prostitution and in 2003 the number jumped to 11% of prostitutes on the street. This, combined with a 40% increase in the numbers of prostituted women overall and the massive increase in brothels, make New Zealand the latest country to experience these well-recognized trends in countries where the government profits from selling women’s bodies.

After the Netherlands legalized the sex industry it was estimated to have grown overall by 25%, trafficking to the Netherlands increased to meet increased men’s demands, child prostitution increased, and street prostitution remained as dangerous and organized-crime controlled as ever.

Alon, from untrue and meanspirited comments like “New Zealand’s decriminalization policies is probably the world’s most successful, so anti-prostitution advocates won’t do any research about it” to comments accusing me of wanting prostitutes “thrown on the street so that you can feel better about it” to slamming the Swedish model with inanities like “So far there’s a clear reduction in the reported number of prostitutes and of abuse cases, but there’s also an increase in the unreported number,” when it’s oxymoronic to definitively report on unreported cases, I don’t care to do further keep-up on correcting your many mistakes beyond this post.

You said the Swedish model has failed and were given specifics about how it has reduced trafficking, reduced men’s demand and reduced street prostitution. Rumblings of increased underground activity may or may not be true and time will tell for sure, but trafficking, demand and street prostitution are down and those were the goals set forth by the Swedish law.

You said New Zealand decriminalizing brothel prostitution to try and reduce street prostitution is the most successful model and were shown New Zealand reports that there are 40% more prostitutes than before decriminalization, street prostitution has quadrupled, there have been only five child “prostitot” convictions in three years and pimps caught sexually selling children are given community service hours for facilitating systematized child rape. New Zealand has gone backwards in its stated goal to reduce street prostitution because decriminalization actually increased street prostitution fourfold.

You seem to think an adequate reply is the dismissive “Decriminalization won’t fix my socks, either” and “That sort of non-enforcement is the norm in every Western country,” but then how can you conclude that New Zealand’s decriminalization is working better than what is done in other countries?

"Thailand, where NGOs provided condoms and educated people about how to avoid STDs, resulting in an immense drop in AIDS infection rates among prostitutes"

What about the immense drop in men raping prostitutes, or the immense drop in men murdering prostitutes, or the average age of a girl’s subsumption into prostitution rising above the early teen years? What about men’s violence, a subject you and cicely assiduously avoid despite my best attempts to address that male violence? What if prostituted women’s lives mattered more than Western men’s fears of catching AIDS from a cheap, teenaged Thai whore while on vacation, and by saying that we mean no man has a right to sex on demand, with or without condoms?

Alon, you’ve been aggressively rude, don’t have facts to back up what you’ve said, and the weird logic you use to justify men’s “right” to selfishly, sexually use female bodies whenever and however they want defies reason.

Cicely said: “We are not going to change much at all in 6 or 3 years anywhere” and you couldn’t be more wrong because a lot has changed in the past 3 years in New Zealand and the past 6 years in Sweden. New Zealand’s 40% increase in prostitutes, explosion of brothels, and quadrupling of street prostitution are big changes for the worse. Sweden’s decriminalization of prostitutes but not pimps and johns, reduction in men seeking prostitutes in Stockholm by 75%, reduction in trafficking to the country, and increase in services available to help women transition out of prostitution are major changes of the past few years.

There is a huge difference between being economically and circumstantially free (say, drug addiction free) to choose sex work, and not being free to choose. That’s where our efforts should be being directed in my opinion.

I consider this rather offensive. Prostitutes are clear about where they want your efforts to be directed when they say they want help getting out of prostitution. They are saying they need drug addiction treatment, safe housing, job training, and childcare to meet their goals of escaping a life of prostitution and you’ve twisted that to say, “What they really want is the freedom to choose sex working as a career.” What gives you the right to rewrite their clear requests for help getting out of prostitution into them wanting to be “free to choose” prostitution? That’s not what they’re saying, and you need to listen to what they’re saying when they overwhelmingly say they want out.

Suggesting that we should wait until there’s a sexism-free world before we can determine if prostitution is sexist, humiliating, violent, health-wrecking, and soul-detroying is a slap in the face to prostitutes living now and an abandonment of responsibility to prostitutes living now who need help getting out from under the crushing weight of men’s demands for prostitution now.
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Postby sam » Wed Mar 29, 2006 9:54 am

It lives!

My latest; I've gotta say I'm very pleased with how the ending turned out:

What about men’s violence, a subject you and cicely assiduously avoid despite my best attempts to address that male violence?

I don’t think I’ve been thorough enough in responding to your posts at all Sam, as I’ve left you with the impression that I want to avoid the issue of male violence. I absolutely and unequivocally do not. I wrote my previous post without reading your last one and I hope it helps assure you that this is the case. Unlike you though, I haven’t come to absolute conclusions about the best way to approach the issue of prostitution, or that prostitution perse is always violence against women.


You’re still not even minimally acknowledging and addressing the men who do commit violent acts in huge numbers against prostitutes or the violence they’re committing. You’re written a lot of apology but I’d rather you skipped with the apology paragraph and move on to the “Why are prostitutes the most raped women in the world?” and “If laws against rape and asking pimps and tricks nicely not to rape haven’t worked so far, why believe pimp & trick decriminalization is going to stop men’s violence against prostitutes?”

Here’s another good one, “Why are legal brothels built with ‘panic buttons’ in them?” I believe if we have to build brothels with the routine expectation that many women are going to get violently attacked by many tricks then we shouldn’t be building them at all. A Dutch brothel owner complained about the regulation that there be pillows on the beds because, “You don’t want pillows in there, it’s a murder weapon.”

”I’ve never disputed that the vast majority of prostitutes in the world would rather not be, or that they should be able to access all the help they need to change their life circumstances.”


But you have. You do when you say, ”There are clearly requests from both sides - and from prostitutes, or sex workers, themselves,” which implies a near 50-50 split. To go with the numbers we have, 92% of prostitutes want help getting out of prostitution immediately, so to speak of “both sides” and “the other side” as you do really does dispute that the “vast majority” of prostitutes want out immediately.


Some women, who are prostitutes themselves, believe so. Should they stand accused of betraying all women, even being ‘responsible’ for the pain of unwilling participants - or do they have a right to their own position…?


You still haven’t talked about men’s responsibility for stopping their exploitation and violence against prostitutes, you’re still focusing on prostitutes and trying to make it as if it’s their “choice” to get raped, cut, slashed, burned, punched and kicked by men regularly. There is no sensible feminist reason to ignore the 92% of prostitutes who do not consider it work but slavery in favor of the 8% minority, especially when doing so only affirms the rape culture that affirms men’s God-given right to wet their penises with women’s holes any way they desire, any time they want it.

Like Einstein said about not being able to simultaneously prevent war and prepare for war, you cannot affirm men demanding and coercing sex from women anytime they want as acceptable at the same time you’re trying to get through to men that they do not have any right to demand or coerce sex from any woman, ever.

Einstein also said, “The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men.”

what do you say to the women who wish to continue to work as prostitutes?


Not much, because prostituting women aren’t the problem, men who use prostitutes are the problem and I’ve got a lot to say to them.

To women who want to legitimize men’s right to economically coerce poverty-stricken girls and women into sex they would otherwise not consent to I’ve got something to say. To anyone who says we should look at prostitution as an acceptable job for poor, brown, young females, to anyone who personally profits from the globalized pornstitution industries, to anyone who knows that prostitutes are brutalized by men more than any other group of women and still encourages vulnerable women to put their bodies in control of dangerous men who show no willingness to respect their basic human rights, I have some things to say.

Mostly it boils down to, “Stop pushing women to pain-filled lives highly likely to culminate in early and violent deaths because you can’t muster up the courage to tell men they have no right to masturbate with a woman’s body and their abuse will no longer be tolerated.”

Women who are prostitutes have my sympathy and my extended hand for the help they want. Anyone who pushes to have men’s right to demand sex from women at all times even more accepted and formalized in culture than it is gets my extended middle finger.
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Postby deedle » Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:08 am

Utterly brilliant, Sam. I am in awe.
Remember; resist; do not comply.
- Andrea Dworkin
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Postby sam » Wed Mar 29, 2006 1:52 pm

Thanks deedle. 8)

This may be my last post there, as I'm getting tired of repeating myself and I think I've done as much good for looker-ons as I can.

**

prostitutes are the most ‘available’, the easiest targets for male violence, (and all the more so the more hidden their workplaces)

That's not true. Kids are always the easiest (smallest, least able to defend themselves emotionally or physically) targets of male violence, which is why the average age of entry into prostitution is 13. How many women have pimps with a moneyed interest in "protecting" them from other men's violence like an estimated 80% to 90% of prostitutes do? Why are there burly bouncers in strip clubs but not the average beer-swilling establishment? Strip clubs are legal and very open, but that hasn't lessened the amount of violence men commit against strippers.

I know you read my question about why legal, open, regulated brothels have "panic buttons", so it isn't true that if prostitution is made more open then men will be less violent towards prostituted women.

I don’t see how criminalising prostitution is going to eradicate male on female violence in general.

I thought we were talking about male violence against prostitutes not male violence in general, but the amazing gender equity successes Sweden has had in other areas of its culture would certainly seem to tie into their rejection of men's coercive control of prostituted women or any other woman. To too many men all women are whores, just some more than others.

Sex isn’t violence. Violence is violence.

I keep saying that to pimps and tricks but the boogers don't seem to understand. How are you going to make prostitute-using men and pimps believe this when they show no inclinations of changing their fusion of sex and violence into sexual violence? I'm pretty sure these guys already know rape and battery are wrong and illegal, so adding to existing laws "...and that goes for sex workers, too" isn't effective at reducing men's violence, as every country that has legalized prostitution or decriminalized men soliciting has discovered.

Or do you think that the fact that prostitution exists is the root cause of all violence against women?

Men and their sense of superiority and entitlement are the root cause of violence against women and violence against prostituted women. You leave out men as the agents of the actions when you speak of "prostitution exists" as if there weren't actually people, men, who make it exist. I know some people say that about God, that he always has been and always will exist, but prostitution exists because men want it, not by some eternal mandate.
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Postby Lost Clown » Wed Mar 29, 2006 4:14 pm

I know sam, I'm amazed that you can do it. I've tussled with Alon before and wanted to smash my computer. I have a problem not being able to walk away, but thank you.
"One must care about a world one will never see." -Bertrand Russell

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." Clarence Darrow

"Pornography is to sex what McDonald's is to food." -Gail Dines
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Postby sam » Wed Mar 29, 2006 5:15 pm

Lost Clown wrote:I've tussled with Alon before and wanted to smash my computer. I have a problem not being able to walk away, but thank you.


Some people are not worth your time trying to convince and are easier to score points off of for the benefit of silent readers who can learn by your example. Like with Bitch|Lab, I usually know when my valuable time is going to be wasted so it's easier for me to walk away after making a few points.
Last edited by sam on Thu Dec 20, 2007 9:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Lost Clown » Wed Mar 29, 2006 5:19 pm

hehehe.

I try not to engage now. Seems like the only way I don't end up repeating myself or wanting to scream.
"One must care about a world one will never see." -Bertrand Russell

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." Clarence Darrow

"Pornography is to sex what McDonald's is to food." -Gail Dines
Lost Clown
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Postby sam » Tue Apr 04, 2006 8:52 am

I saw this at Women's Enews and wanted to stash it here somewhere, and this is as good a place as any. In Australia, the provinces that have legalized prostitution also have the highest rates of men's domestic violence against women. What a coincidence, huh?

Somewhere right now a pro-sex industry feminist is typing into her sassy, sexy blog, "I know! We'll affirm men's rights to use pornography and hookers however much they want and that will lead men to treat all women with more respect and with less acts of controlling violence!" and you better believe she means it seriously.

"New Zealand's top family court judge said the country is suffering a serious social breakdown shown by a high rate of domestic violence, The Age, an Australian newspaper, reported March 28.

Half of that nation's murders happened within families last year and 11,000 incidents of domestic violence-- one every eight minutes --occurred over a recent two-month period, the judge said.

In the United States, the rate of spousal homicide as a percentage of total homicides is between 11 and 12 percent, 40 percent lower than New Zealand's rate."
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Postby soopermouse » Thu May 25, 2006 11:26 am

I have recently been to Sweden, for May 1st. I have spent 3 days in Gothenburg, and been out at night a lot.
And being that we are metalheads, we ended up in the not so good part of town- I don't think there is such thing as a "bad part of town" in Sweden.

I have not seen prostitutes on the streets.
I have seen them in London, in Germany and in HOlland. I used to live in the red lights district in Stuttgart some 4 years ago because the rents were low.

I was surprised to not see even one prostitute on the streets in Gothenburg.

In Stuttgart, I was passing hem by every day. The lucky ones who worked in brothels and the unlucky ones who worked on the street. My neighbour was one, and she used to say "if prostitution would be good for women, why is it so cheap to buy??"
also, from a transgendered prodtitute who is my friend - " all of these girls got into drugs after they started selling themselves. Surely that is good proof that it's bad for them".
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Postby sam » Thu Aug 31, 2006 12:18 pm

This debate with Sweden's Gunilla Ekberg is helpful.

http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=2035
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Re: tearing down the "Sweden doesn't work" lie

Postby sam » Tue Sep 15, 2009 3:09 pm

Boosting to reiterate the points:

1. Women are not arrested in Sweden for being prostitutes.

2. Under Swedish Criminal Procedure Law (Chapter 36, 6 Rattegangsbalken) a prostitute can refuse to give evidence that reveals she has undertaken a "disreputable" act, meaning no prostitute is forced to give evidence according to Swedish law.

3. When Swedish men rape prostitutes, the solution should be to hold those rapists accountable, not to point the finger at feminists and blame them for "making" men sexually abuse prostitutes. It makes no sense to suggest the 1999 law increased the numbers of sadistic Swedish men seeking to use prostitutes to levels higher than they were before.
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