Sometimes, Unity, you really live up to your name!

I’m wondering how anyone could possibly object to such a well supported, factually justified, rational and humane solution to the problem… eh well, I’m sure the Cath fringes and the Tory fringes will both be along shortly.

It’s a common misconception that earnings from prostitution aren’t taxable – there may be obvious difficulties in keeping paperwork and detecting evasion, but it’s established case law [1] that the legality or otherwise of a trade does not affect its tax status.

[1] Slightly surprisingly, involving Madame Whiplash herself – Inland Revenue Commissioners v Aken [1988] STC 69

Avery good read which tackles an emotive subject in an impartial and sensitive manner. Are we to assume that male prostitution breaks down in the same manner as female prostitutiion, or are there enough differences to make male prostitution a separate category?

Evidence on male prostitution is sketchy and mostly focussed on homosexual prostitution but while there are some obvious differences when considering some of the risk factors and extent to which they operate on men compared to women, the overall market profiles hold for both genders, and for transgender prostitution for that matter, which means the basic framework is sound and, in policy terms, applicable across the board.

“On the other hand, as is evident in the State of Nevada, properly licensed and extensively regulated brothel prostitution presents few of the problems associated with the unlicensed variety and offers women a considerably safer working environment that their main alternative, street prostitution.”

Are you sure you want to cite Nevada as the model?

http://www.bayswan.org/Laura.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/sep/07/usa.gender

http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2007/sep/30/nation/chi-brothelssep30

http://www.sexwork.com/legal/NevPimpHouses.html

http://jezebel.com/384994/father-gives-daughter-bikini-waxes-rides-to-work-at-a-brothel

It’s a bit of a straw man to argue that the anti-prostitution side thinks that all prostitution is the same. Just because a person objects to theft for example doesn’t mean that they don’t understand the difference between pick-pocketing, burglary and bank-robbery. Easier to make an argument though if you don’t actually engage with what the people you disagree with say I suppose.

There isn’t growing evidence that legalising and taxing it is the correct route, quite the opposite: wherever prostitution has been legalised, the traffickers and other criminals have moved in. Amsterdam is closing a third of its brothels for that very reason – they can’t keep the gangsters out. Turning pimps into businessmen and punters into customers hasn’t worked for them.

Why is it the john and pimp defenders keep using “rational” and “objective’ about their arguments BTW? Is that because they know they are anything but? I’ll give you a couple of new ones though – “callous” and “inhumane” , you can also have “ignorant” for free.

and for transgender prostitution for that matter

That group do seem to be the most heavily advertised, judging by the innards of various Central London phone-boxes I’ve walked past…

“Just because a person objects to theft for example doesn’t mean that they don’t understand the difference between pick-pocketing, burglary and bank-robbery.”

So is your position that all prostitution is wrong and in whatever circumstances, and its just a question of the degree of wrongness involved?

The problem with that position is the individuals (lets not worry too much about how many people they represent at the moment) who say they are prostitutes, they have chosen to be and they are happy to be. They aren’t a myth, even if they aren’t very representative. Now what exactly can you say to them? That their claims aren’t valid? That they aren’t in a position to evaluate for themselves what is good or fair for them?

By all means, don’t let their ‘happy’ voices crowd out the problem, but you must as a bare minimum respect their view as valid for themselves. That is pretty much the sine qua non of being a liberal – not judging other people’s choices that respect only themselves.

nevada is not a good example. listen to women who’ve worked in nevada brothels and you find a lot of bullying, coercion, exploitation.

street prostitutes are gonna be among the worst off of everyone you mention. im in favour of measures to stop kerb crawlers and put the responsibility and punishments on the punters and pimps, but as far as im concerned the prostitutes themselves should be given a range of support including housing and rehab, not given criminal records.

Cath – the research that you cite is very useful but it looks like the ones that actually give sex workers a voice (rather than imposing a narrative on the views available), tend to support Unity’s general position, that the solution is more liberalisation, besides emphasising the importance of sex workers being able to create their own institutional arrangements. It doesn’t suggest prohibition is a solution.

“Why is it the john and pimp defenders keep using “rational” and “objective’ about their arguments BTW? ”

This has nothing to do with “john” and “pimp” defending, the fact you have to reduce the discussion down to that to try and emerge victorious is more than slightly pathetic. Those of us that argue for legalisation, regulation and unimpeded support (through decriminalisation) do so because we think that’s the best route for the women, not for the customers and business owners.

delphyne:

There isn’t growing evidence that legalising and taxing it is the correct route, quite the opposite: wherever prostitution has been legalised, the traffickers and other criminals have moved in. Amsterdam is closing a third of its brothels for that very reason – they can’t keep the gangsters out. [emphasis added]

But delphyne, that still leaves two-thirds of their brothels open, so it doesn’t look like the Dutch are going to adopt the ‘Swedish model’ anytime soon. Unity’s point is that in a legalised, regulated system, the law can clamp down on traffickers and other criminals who break the law, while allowing every one else who wants to work to be left to do so.

Unity – at least you tried, but some folk just don’t want to know.

PS: Cath, I remember reading that Guardian article: the argument seemed to boil down to – the way to solve the problem of employee’s pay and conditions in legal brothels is to close them down and make the women find some other line of work – and that will somehow enable the state to deal with all the illegal brothels and mean that the state will also offer more funds for exit strategies for women (even though they could offer such funds under a legalised system). In short: if we recriminalise, punish people (sorry, men) really really hard and work up enough moral outrage, the problem will go away . I don’t want to see women exploited or abused any more than you do, but it’s clear that more of the same, with bells on, isn’t really a new policy.

Superb piece, Unity. Superb.

Couple of issues though – and i start with your proposal of stringent prohibition around streetworking…? Have re read a couple of times and see you are suggesting prohibition of streettrade – a complete ‘shutting down’ of that sector of the sector.

Is it rather romantic to imply that prohibition is the answer here? – I’ve said it a number of times over the past few days, but it is very much my view that prohibiting this particular activity distances the women involved in it from all legal recourse, police protection and even participation in society, and that the support they will require to address some of the problems that have led to the streetwalking in the first place (drug treatment in particular) becomes even more difficult to access as streetworkers are marginalised, etc. (This is the fundamental point that Cath and I disagree on, and that feminists are divided on). I believe prohibition leads to marginalising. Cath argues that prohibition is protection. I think we’re all trying to find common ground, though – as she has rightly said, we’re all approaching the thing from a human rights perspective.

When one prohibits an activity, one empowers that conservative strand of society that wishes to impose the view that the prohibited activity is somehow ‘wrong’ or beneath notice, and public investment. There is nothing to encourage inclusiveness there at all, and I don’t see any government that chooses to prohibit being simultaneously of a mind to invest enormously in drug treatment programmes, or anti-trafficking measures, etc. We certainly ain’t seeing that from Jacqui Smith atm. Prohibition and philanthropy don’t generally co-exist in the minds of policymakers, and if we’re really to find answers, we need to accept that. Legalising (statement of the obvious), legitimises an activity – in the minds of policymakers and the voting public alike. Put simply, a legitimate activity is surely far more likely to find political sympathy.

You have certainly begun to draw important lines in the sand and I hope we can continue to discuss this this evening, and over the coming weeks.

I just don’t think we can do three, and not one. They must all be legal – and programmes put in place to address the issues that see women on the streets, and/or trafficked.

kateB: Put simply, a legitimate activity is surely far more likely to find political sympathy. – true, but one can and does have laws about when and where that activity can take place. In other words, you can be a prostitute, but you can’t ply your trade (so to speak) on the street/in public spaces.

“nevada is not a good example. listen to women who’ve worked in nevada brothels and you find a lot of bullying, coercion, exploitation.”

I’m sure you do. You also find the same in a lot of other fields of work – legal or otherwise – and I doubt anyone would dispute similar examples exist where prostitution is illegal. No approach will remove these problems in their entirety. The question is, does that approach reduce these instances, increase the likelihood of the perpetrators being caught or offer better support for those who suffer?

Unity’s logic is powerful in suggesting that it would, but he has little to no evidence to support his assumptions about how things would actually pan out. Can enforcement work? Given the current problems with enforcing the laws on sexual crimes it seems unlikely.

Likewise, the articles Cath cited, don’t come near to answering any of these questions. The book cites horrifying experiences, but horrifying examples exist where it is illegal as well as legal. The author also appears to have gone to those brothels where such stories were most common (i.e. remote) and where regulation is likely to be weakest – so an opponent could argue that these are examples of the system failing, rather than effects of the system.

In short, neither argument convinces me at the moment.

Red Pesto is correct about Amsterdam brothels – the reason 1/3 of them were closed had nothing to do with the trafficking issue, but rather an (IMO misguided) attempt to “clean up” the image of Amsterdam and promote more respectable tourism. There’s a proposal to close many of the cannabis bars there for the same reason. And all of this is being done by the Amsterdam city government rather than representing a change in national policy, BTW. If a move toward the Swedish model or concerns over trafficking was the reason for the brothel closing, simply closing one-third of them would be an odd way to go about it.

Mmm.. decisions, decisions…

Do I go to the time and trouble of explaining why you cannot legitimately extrapolate from a 45 person anecdotal case study generated by an anti-prostitution campaigner (Melissa Farley) the generality of prostitutes’ experience of working within the Nevada system or should I just direct people to the wikipedia article on confirmation bias and let them figure it out for themselves?

Ah, stuff it…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

And then we’ll go with…

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jan/31/bewildered-academics-pore-over-sex-trade-hysteria/

From which we find that Farley’s ‘research’ was commissioned by the US State Department and that the US government will not fund legitimate academic research which examines the sex industry or which looks at the plausibility of legalising prostitution. So, what we have is the same basic modus operandi as the Reagan-era ‘study’ of pornography which set to prove that caused all manner of social problems but , ultimately, proved only that it causes masturbation.

Still, I suppose I should make some effort to address Cath’s point, so…

To clarify, what the Nevada system provides is a clear example of what is possible within the heavily regulated legal system of brothel prostitution by way of minimising negative externalities, public health risks and risks of violence perpetrated by punters, of which there is very little.

As to the working conditions experienced by prostitutes working in the Nevada system and whether they would be considered humane, overly restrictive to the point of being suffocating or even openly exploitative the answer to that question comes in two parts.

First, notwithstanding constraints imposed by the regulatory system itself, such as the mandatory HIV/STD testing, there will inevitably be significant variations in conditions depending on which brothels you look at. Some brothel owners will make for better employers than others, just as some companies are better employers than others.

That said,it doesn’t follow that, simply because we cite Nevada as a model with some considerable operational merits, we should automatically adopt that model wholesale without taking into account differences between the UK and Nevada or asking ourselves whether or not there may be ways we can improve on the Nevada system to make it rather more humane and minimise, even further, the risks of exploitation.

So the relevant questions we need to ask, in policy terms, are what can we learn from Nevada and what can we then improve on, and I consciously included one possible improvement on the Nevada system, that of encouraging and supporting cooperatively-owned brothels.

This isn’t a difficult proposition at all, in fact its a simple as engaging and working proactively with prostitutes in devising the regulatory regime.

As for Delphyne’s assertion:

There isn’t growing evidence that legalising and taxing it is the correct route, quite the opposite: wherever prostitution has been legalised, the traffickers and other criminals have moved in.

Sorry? Are you suggesting that prostitution didn’t exist in the Netherlands before legalisation and, if not, just who do you suppose ran the pre-legalisation prostition market?

The Amsterdam branch of the WI?

redpesto: yes, fair point, but simply prohibiting streetworkers will not not eliminate the trade while the problems that generate it remain an issue, and I say again that a government that pursues prohibition is very unlikely to be a government that simultaneously takes a sympathetic view of drug addiction, etc. That’s the flaw I find in Unity’s argument. Encouraging streetworkers to upgrade to brothels is a nice idea, but really, we need to move away from discussions about prohibition and talk about investing the kind of money that will make a shift off the streets possible. That ain’t happening while we’re being led by politicians who pant after Daily Mail voters.

Nick

“the research that you cite is very useful but it looks like the ones that actually give sex workers a voice (rather than imposing a narrative on the views available), tend to support Unity’s general position, that the solution is more liberalisation, besides emphasising the importance of sex workers being able to create their own institutional arrangements. It doesn’t suggest prohibition is a solution.”

I know. I wasn’t using them to back up any argument about prohibition, just questioning Unity’s use of Nevada as an example of best practise. It’s not, and those who have worked there, along with US sex workers’ rights groups, appear to back that up.

I’ll grant Cath this much – Nevada does not have a good model at all, and sex worker rights activists have been saying this for years. However, its more than a little bit of a red herring to say that this is the best model that legal prostitution can offer – the New Zealand/Australia-model is one that takes the rights of sex workers much more seriously and so far, is one that is not strongly associated with the abuse and externalities mentioned in the article.

Yeah Unity, god forbid that we should take any notice of what the women themselves had to say. Anecdotal evidence eh? Whatever will these silly unscientific women come up with next?

Renegade Evolution and any of the other sex workers who have been taking part in these debates – don’t bother on this one. Not unless whatever you’ve got to say has been peer reviewed and passed as plausible by a panel of middle-aged wankers in white coats first.

“Yeah Unity, god forbid that we should take any notice of what the women themselves had to say. Anecdotal evidence eh? Whatever will these silly unscientific women come up with next?

I call bullshit on that statement. The problem with Farley’s work isn’t so much that its anecdotal, but rather that its junk science. Far from being work that “takes notice of what the women themselves had to say”, its a study that used exceedingly dodgy methodology to simply put numbers on Melissa Farley’s pre-conceived opinions on the issue. That’s more than a little different from what Renegade Evolution or, conversely, somebody like Rebecca Mott is doing, which is to speak first hand about their own experiences.

Also, I get more than a little impatient with feminists who are all to ready to throw out statistics with an air of scientific authority, then when such studies are subject to scrutiny and rational analysis (as, indeed, any study calling itself scientific should be), comes out with a line of smack about “male rationality” and “middle-aged wankers in white coats” (which is shite name-calling to boot). Sorry Cath, but you don’t get to have it both ways.

“This has nothing to do with “john” and “pimp” defending”

It has everything to do with defending them. Both sides of the argument agree that people in prostitution should be decriminalised, the disagreement is over whether pimps and johns should be prosecuted for their crimes against women and children’s bodies, or whether their sexual abuse should be considered part of the free market (always funny to see leftists defending capitalism). The government’s new laws go after punters in a serious manner and that is what is causing the screams of outrage.

It’s noticeable that the most vociferous defenders of men’s “right” to buy women, are surprise, surprise men. They even manage to drown out the sex poz lobby which takes some doing. This is about a defence of male supremacy built on the vile belief that every man deserves the right to stick his cock into someone else’s body and if he can’t find anybody who wants him then he should have the right to buy.

You chaps will keep trying to tell us we aren’t seeing what we’re seeing, but it isn’t working any more. Your game is transparent.

Oh dear. I hope this isn’t going to descend into the massive argument fest the last thread was, with sarcastic shots galore.

delphyne – I don’t see any distinction between their ascension of the anecdote based trash science over its true form and that practised by feminists. I can’t tell one set of anti-science gibbering from another. In both cases the perpetrator allows their ideology to form their view of the facts rather than contrariwise.

The consequences are muddled thinking backed up by fake figures and more broadly a hazard to the place of the empirical in our culture.

Delpyne said: “It’s noticeable that the most vociferous defenders of men’s “right” to buy women, are surprise, surprise men. They even manage to drown out the sex poz lobby which takes some doing. This is about a defence of male supremacy built on the vile belief that every man deserves the right to stick his cock into someone else’s body and if he can’t find anybody who wants him then he should have the right to buy”

Which leads me to a small part the study.

2.2 (pg 14) “We do not include in the analysis the so-called “moral externalities”, i.e. the burdens supposedly imposed on others, and eventually on society at large, as a consequence of a behaviour that is considered immoral per se by conventional –or other kinds of- morality. As we noted above, we assume a right of self-ownership.”

Yes, well this is where albeit an “excellent” and “detailed exposition” fails to take into account that negative externalities regarding the far reaching implications of women’s oppression has to be taken into account when addressing prostitution. This is also a human rights issue where prostitution does not exist purely within an ’economic analysis’ vacuum. The overuse of the word ’moral’ is a dead give away to their obvious lack of any understanding of many of the actual functions of prostitution within male dominated societies. These externalities which are not addressed affects every women whether she is a sex-worker/ prostituted or not and societies as a whole. In other words the economists need to become educated in gender equality and the history of women’s oppression before churning out robotic analysis in isolation. Which obviously isn’t going to be happening soon, so this needs to be a multi-disciplined approach? Not just cold hard economic essentials.

And.

“As we noted above, we assume a right of self-ownership.”

Oh yes, assumptions, assumptions. The father of all f*** ups.

Renegade Evolution and any of the other sex workers who have been taking part in these debates – don’t bother on this one. Not unless whatever you’ve got to say has been peer reviewed and passed as plausible by a panel of middle-aged wankers in white coats first.

Of course, Cath, if you’re going to diss proper research methodology and peer review (and ignore the way in which governments might deliberately fund research or organisations or individuals simply to get the results they want – Reagan’s Meese Commission and Bush’s faith-based initiatives on sex education, anyone?), then we can just have a free for all by rounding up whichever sex workers – or random internet comments or anecdotes or whatever – best suit our purposes…but I don’t think ‘My milkshake is better than yours’ is really much of an argument. (It’s all too reminiscent of the way anti-porn campaigners kept parading Linda Marciano/Lovelace – as if she was the only woman who ever made any porn films – simply because her story fitted their campaign.)

“The government’s new laws go after punters in a serious manner and that is what is causing the screams of outrage.”

Ok, do you agree with treating people as individuals or as groups? Are all punters the same? Punters are human too, so they have rights, which should be respected until they violate someone else’s rights, and we suggest the diversity of prostitution shows that many of them have not.

The urge to make buying sex illegal but not selling also makes a nice slogan but doesn’t really help the problem. If you make buying sex a crime, all you do is ensure that the people buying sex are criminals. Hardly a way to make prostitution a safer activity.

MB – so do you believe that that people are self-owners, or that someone else owns them?

Sunny – it’s probably too late (sorry)

delphyne:

It has everything to do with defending them. Both sides of the argument agree that people in prostitution should be decriminalised, the disagreement is over whether pimps and johns should be prosecuted for their crimes against women and children’s bodies, or whether their sexual abuse should be considered part of the free market

This doesn’t make sense: if prostitution decriminalised, how can having sex with prostitute be deemed a crime? If a prostitute is allowed to work, what’s the point in prosecuting the people who provide her (or even his) income? And why mention children at all, when sex with anyone under 16 (and paying for sex with someone under 18) is illegal? And at what point in consensual commercial sex is the ‘abuse’ committed?* All I’m getting here is a burning desire to make men pay (in the moral sense) that overrides any logical or workable proposals.

Incidentally, making assumptions about the gender of people who disagree with you never works – IRL I’m a Labrador crossbreed with an IQ of 168

*(Hmmm…I’ve a few suggestions on that…hang on a mo…)

Cath Elliot your observations (22) vis a vis evidence are untenable.

First of all evidence (obtained using sound scientific methods) is not gendered – it seeks to either confirm or refute a hypothesis.

For example, the set of items highlighted by you (comment 6) may be a classic case of “cherry picking”.
In other words by only putting forward those articles which support your particular point of view (rather than a precis of ALL the available data) a form of selection bias comes into play which undermines the reliability of any point you were trying to make (i.e. that Nevada is an inappropriate model).

To quote the public health doctor Muir Gray:
“we made great advances through the provision of clean, clear water (in the last centuary): in the 21st centuary we will make the same advances through clean, clear information” – a reference to systematic reviews, one of the most crucial recent developments in medical research.

Surely Unity is to be applauded for adopting a similar rational approach ?

Re. delphyne’s belief that paying for sex constitutes ‘sexual abuse’: I’m going to cross-post an edited version of a comment I made at Shiraz Socialist, which attempts to analyse the arguments on those lines:

The problem with the ‘violence against women’ argument was first identified when feminists started using it about porn [...] The difficulty is locating exactly where the ‘violence’ [or abuse redpesto] occurs regarding prostitution, because it’s clear it’s not just in the use of threats or physical force.

One favoured trope of many anti-prostitution feminists is that the women is literally ‘bought’, and therefore prostitution is a form of slavery. Yet as others have argued, what is in fact ‘bought’ can either be a sexual service or the woman’s time and expertise – she is no more ‘bought’ than someone who is paid for any other kind of (non-sexual) service. (This about the only way one could distinguish between a consensual agreement to exchange money for a legal activity (sex), and a woman being coerced into it). Put it another way: if a man pays a woman minimum wage to scrub his floor, he’s an employer; if there’s an agreement that he pays her minimum wage to dress up in a maid’s outfit and pretend to scrub his floor because it’s sexy (at least for him), he’s allegedly committing an act of violence and the woman is degraded.

Assuming that no actual force or threats are used, the difficulty seems to be either with the idea of consent or the nature of the exchange. In the former, it boils down to a politics of ‘ickiness’ – someone else doing something or making a choice that one wouldn’t do oneself. Given the history of feminists insisting on respecting another woman’s choices, it seems odd to start criticising them for making ones they wouldn’t make themselves; one feminist might not do anal or BDSM, but she’s not in a position to criticise another woman who does (well, that’s the theory…). With the latter, it’s repeatedly hard to tell exactly what it is about the exchange that some feminists so vehemently object to: it could be the cash (drawing on an ideology that says ‘real sex’ is free, or that some things or activities are beyond price); it could be the sex (which takes place outside of a an ideology of romantic love/coupledom/ideas that sex is private); it could be the fact that it’s a man who’s paying (a tidy little symbol of alleged hetero-patriarchal power, which ignores the right of the woman to refuse, and also side-steps that women with enough economic clout and sexual wants might pay a man); or that he’s paying a woman (which would explain why feminist anti-prostitution campaigners have so little to say about commercial gay sex – there are no women to defend/help/rescue). It could even be that sex is such a private and personal matter – and the genitals supposedly even more so – that the notion of ‘buying’ the woman hinges on the idea that a woman’s vagina has huge symbolic value (which, funnily enough, patriarchal and religious groups have a habit of thinking as well, which might explain the inconsistent attitudes to prostitutes throughout history).

In other words, the ‘violence’ is no more than a cover for objections to sex which does not take place in a context of (in this instance) private, romantic, heterosexual coupledom, along with a horror of ‘trade’. It’s why punters are seen both as ‘losers’ (they pay for what ‘real men’ or ‘decent men’ get for free) *and* as ‘consumers’ (the like/want sex enough to be happy to pay for it, much as one might like food enough to pay a cook). It’s why prostitutes are regarded as both victims and as threats to hearth and home (and other women).

The reason the charge of sexual conservatism sticks is because of the difficulty anti-prostitution campaigners (like their anti-porn sisters) have with the idea of consenting adults entering a commercial agreement for an activity that already has its fair share of stigma, shame and awkwardness in the first place – paid-for sex is not ‘normal’ sex; sex is made an exception of when compared to other activities – otherwise they’d stick to helping the women who wanted assistance, and not invest so much time and energy trying to criminalise just about everything and everyone else. That was the mistake of the ’social purity’ feminists of the first wave; it’s what happened with the second-wave anti-porn movement; now it looks like their descendants are repeating the same mistake (having learnt and forgotten nothing) – or at least are just shouting more loudly about it in the hope of drowning out everyone else.

At the start of this thread, Unity made it clear that male prostitution was an issue too. Why has the discussion been hijacked by the “all men are pigs “brigade? Prostitution is not a women’s issue – it it a sociatal issue. Traffiickers, and prostitutes can be of either sex or trans-sexual. There is an increasing number of Janes to accompany the Johns. Can we go back to defining the problems and solutions rather than picking on sacrificial goats through prejudice and ignorance?

redpesto 33. Beautifully put.

To be fair, yes there’s plenty of male prostitution, but most of the consumers there are men to. Female customers, even female sex tourists, of course exist, but they’re a minority. Still, the fact that men happen to be the disproportionate buyers of sex is not really an argument for criminalization.

As for why the “all men are pigs” brigade has hijacked this, quite simply, porn and prostitution have been their wedge issue of choice for many years now.

redpesto 33 – what a fascinating comment.

For those interested I’ve written an article on the anti-porners here: http://www.scriboergosum.org.uk/revamp/2136

Tbh I have nothing else to add since RedPesto’s last comment was pretty thorough with regards to feminist opposition to sane prostitution policy and Unity presented one of the most sensible posts I’ve seen on this issue (as (s)he has done with so many).

So basically if you are rich enough to afford £1,000 a night for a high class callgirl you are doing nothing wrong but if you want a £15 handjob off a street prostitute you are?

Very New Labour.

“It’s noticeable that the most vociferous defenders of men’s “right” to buy women, are surprise, surprise men.”

Who says something is not relevant to how true it is. (Unless it’s me, everything I say is true.)

Unity,

I don’t see agencies mentioned in this. Many well paid escorts, and independent escorts work for agencies to bring in extra income, take their bookings and keep their lifes private. I assume you are considering agencies in the same way as the Internet and SMS, an advertising medium.

I am not sure about the definition of a house escort. Many independent escorts, who I would call high class, and medium class work from their own rented apartments, or even home. I really don’t see how this is regulated any differently from your high class escorts. Presently they work independently and there is nothing to show where they work. Or are house escorts in your definition, actually mini brothels with up to two women working together, a Fiona MacTaggert mini brothel.

I have an issue with Brothels. Brothels to me are divided into two types.

1. The women sharing a flat, no one in particular control, and maybe with a maid, all working in a flat in a residential area.

2. To a larger type setup with lots of women working for a brothel owner, and money spent on the premises, big business. Edinburgh would be a good example of the larger brothel.

Too me the two types of brothel should be treated differently. The larger should be well and heavily regulated.

The smaller should be encouraged but lightly regulated, to no more than a your house escort.

The trouble with regulation and licensing, is that if this becomes to difficult and complicated then it will fail, as most NL legislation. If the licencing is controlled by the local planning, then the nimbi element will occur. Licences will not be given, and the illegal brothels will instead flourish.

As an example in my small market town, there are at least three mini brothels. They operate quietly causing not disruption to the local residents. I am sure the police know about their existence. Imagine if a sex shop wants to be opened or a lap dancing club wants to open. There is total outcry and none are given permission. Imagine trying to open a licensed brothel in those conditions. Not a chance. So the illegal brothels open in a two tier system as in many states in Australia.

Thanks Cath, but sorry, I’ll talk on my own terms, thanks. Gods, imagine that, a sex worker actually speaking for herself! I think Farley is full of crap too.

However, the Nevada system is far from ideal and really should not be held up as a fine example of “how it should be”. A lot of really bad shit goes down in the Nevada brothels; the women working are confined to the house, are deprived of sleep, are sometimes encouraged to particpate in unsafe sex, are promised money they do not make. I’m sure that is not the case in all the brothels out there, but women I know personally who have gone out to NV to work have come back shell-shocked and not at all in favor of such a system.

I was fascinated by the “study” that a branch of the WI made in to all this. They travelled to Nevada, they travelled to Amsterdam…they didn’t travel to Sweden but in the context of the program it would have probably been a wasted journey…and they also landed in New Zealand where they…the WI members…were most impressed by the conditions and situation of the sex workers down there.

Certainly it seems that every slightly objective look at this situation says Nevada is a good start in theory but is a bad example in practice, that Amsterdam’s model is too oppressive in practice, but that New Zealand at least makes it safe and controllable for the actual workers. It’s interesting to see Renegade’s opinion on Nevada back that up too.

To follow on to Elrond, the trouble for me is that while regulation is the only answer as to the way forward on this issue, without tight regulation…pushing all sex work in to escort or brothel models with as much of a security measure as Gala bingo has over knowing who is going in and out (so to speak)…there are not going to be enough assurances of people’s safety. But going over the top with that level of regulation would mean the death of the legal business, in an age of data losses and tabloid sex scandals the number of “johns” would surely decline dramatically, certainly the more shady ones. Or worse still the “black market” would continue unabated. The balance is crucial.

Lee Griffin

You contradict yourself. You seem to favour New Zealand, I thought that was the place with least regulation. i.e. Street soliciting is allowed, brothels are allowed, basically operating where they want. Only regulation being employment law. So how come you then side with regulation.

Because I (thought I) said that New Zealand’s success was in empowerment and conditions. That doesn’t necessarily mean success in trafficking or success in reducing violence (too early to tell). Without regulation on top of the New Zealand model the final two are unable to be controlled adequately, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not set in my view but that’s where my opinion currently stands.

Ummm… Cath. You can’t really chuck around stats like Farley’s (indeed, especially Farley’s well-criticised studies), and then cry sisterhood to those such as sex worker activists whose standpoint Farley is ranged against, when her views are subjected to legitimate scrutiny. She chose the terms of the debate by doing such studies in the first place.

Elrond:

Escort Agencies, by and large, fall into the upper end of market and, as such, fall within the categories where minimal regulation in return for discretion would be the appropriate response.

A couple of women sharing a flat and operating with, perhaps, only a maid is something I’d see as a variation on house prostitution and not a brothel per se, which would, again, place them in the minimal regulation category.

So, yes, those set ups would be treated differently from what I suppose might be considered the stereotypical brothel.

delphyne@24′s addition of the words “and children” is a good exposition of the utter bankruptcy of the anti campaign’s case. It’s as if a campaigner against shoplifting were to say “defenders of shoplifters don’t believe that people should be prosecuted for their crimes in stealing from shops, and hacking kids to death with samurai swords”…

On Nevada – AIUI, certain counties have legalised prostitution, but most counties have partially decriminalised prostitution. Do the people on this thread, who seem to know quite a bit about NV between them, have a view on how they compare with each other?

(finally: why exactly is it more abusive if someone gives me gbp100 for sex, rather than giving me gbp100 to do hard manual labour for 15 hours? both are entirely valuing me for my body, both are physically painful and potentially risky; one is 15x better rewarded than the other…)

Renegade:

As I pointed out in responding to Cath, while the Nevada system may have considerable flaws, its importance in the context of this debate is that is does demonstrate that a regulated environment can be constructed which addresses some of the negative aspects of prostitution, such as the public health risks.

I’m not holding Nevada up as an ideal system, merely as a ‘proof of concept’ which supports the contention that the most appropriate approach to brothel prostitution is

a) legalisation and regulation rather than prohibition, and

b) a regulatory regime in which the prostitutes, themselves, take the leading role in devising and developing the legal and regulatory framework within which they operate.

One useful parallel here may be aspects of the evolution of the porn industry over the last twenty years or so, in which women have started to move out of being simply performers into production, direction and other areas of the industry which very used to be almost exclusively male preserves. If that kind of transition can take place within one facet of the adult entertainment industry then there’s no fundamental reason why it cannot occur in others, particularly if we proactively work to facilitate such changes.

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, brothel prostitution actually lends itself pretty well to cooperative business/ownership models which allow for prostitutes to control their own working environment, which is ultimately what you’d need to be aiming for to make a legal, regulated, sex industry work effectively while minimising, if not eliminating, exploitation.

“I’m not holding Nevada up as an ideal system, merely as a ‘proof of concept’ which supports the contention that the most appropriate approach to brothel prostitution is

a) legalisation and regulation rather than prohibition, and

b) a regulatory regime in which the prostitutes, themselves, take the leading role in devising and developing the legal and regulatory framework within which they operate.

One useful parallel here may be aspects of the evolution of the porn industry over the last twenty years or so, in which women have started to move out of being simply performers into production, direction and other areas of the industry which very used to be almost exclusively male preserves. If that kind of transition can take place within one facet of the adult entertainment industry then there’s no fundamental reason why it cannot occur in others, particularly if we proactively work to facilitate such changes.

OK, but the problem is that, of all the legalization/decriminalization models in different parts of the world, I think the Nevada system is actually least likely to reform itself in this way. It truly is an old boys system, in the hands of a small number of brothel owners and county sheriffs.

BTW, I think your sentiment is a good one, Unity, I just don’t think Nevada brothels are the best model for it.

Unity- Oh, I’m not disagreeing with much here, just Nevada…from what I’ve read, seen, and heard, New Zealand and parts of Austraila really have a much better thing going on than NV. But yes, even the NV system HAS made things safer medically, no question.

And yes, there are a lot more women involved in the sex industry in business owner/producer/ so on positions than there ever were before, in all kinds of sex based businesses, from porn to strip clubs. I think this is a good thing. There are those who do not think the sex industry can change at all from within…I am not one of them.

Kate:

Is it rather romantic to imply that prohibition is the answer here?

Not if you’re being hard-headed in understanding the objectives of implementing a severely prohibitive regime.

In this case, the objective is that of breaking the cycle of coercion and exploitation.

What you’re aiming for is to remove the pimps, exploiters and psychos from the equation, transfer those women who voluntarily wish to work in prostitution from an unregulated and unsafe sector of the industry into a much safer environment and provide those women who involuntarily entered the street trade and who prefer to the get of the business with a range of effective escape routes.

In the short to medium term, the priority has to be to clean-up the street trade as swiftly as possible.

Taking a longer-term view, it may well be that brothel and house prostitution may not prove to be suitable for a proportion of prostitutes, in which case I’m perfectly open to suggestion for alternative models which may provide the relative safety of a well regulated industry with, what I guess we could call the ‘flexibilty’ of the street trade market.

I’m riffing here but something which allowed for street solicitation within a defined and well-marshalled area controlled by the prostitutes themselves – so maybe they’d collectively employ the security personnel who patrolled the area – coupled with a communally owned and operated environment in which the business end of the deal could be transacted – something akin to a Japanese style pod-hotel in which they could rent a room on an ad hoc basis – might provide a basis for a different kind of street trade, one that offers a much safer working environment without the constraints that go with working in a brothel.

If there’s one thing that is a certain its that there is no way on earth that any society could completed eradicated the street trade, not without going to unacceptable extremes such as summarily executing pimps, punter and prostitutes – and I’ve no desire at all to wake and find myself living in Megacity One.

What I think could be achieved, if sufficient pressure can be applied in the right areas, if the ‘forced evolution’ of, in particular, the street trade along lines which provide prostitutes with a much safer working environment and considerable greater personal control over their own involvement and participation in the industry.

Unfortunately, making that particular omelette appears to require us to break a few eggs to begin with and to tackle the issue a complete and cohesive package deal – piecemeal approaches are, I suspect, unlikely to prove successful as closing off one problem will simply open up several others to replace it. That’s why upscaling the investment in support and outreach services is critical element of the package, as critical as the draconian policing regime.

Unity

“Escort Agencies, by and large, fall into the upper end of market and, as such, fall within the categories where minimal regulation in return for discretion would be the appropriate response.”

I am glad you include the term “by and large”. Escort agencies run from the high class escort agency, to some pretty coercive escort agencies run by some rather unsavoury characters, to small women run agencies where the agency worker still works.

Add to that the incall escort agency where flats are rented and women take it in terms to work there as they are booked. Is this a brothel or an agency now.

You do end up with a pretty complex situation, in which abuse could easily happen and not be visible. So maybe some agency licensing and inspection could be implemented?

I kind of believe your term by saying escort agencies covers the high class escort will includes a very large percentage of escorts, and from that definition the ‘Belle de Jour’ stereotype is actually much more the common than others would have us believe.

“A couple of women sharing a flat and operating with, perhaps, only a maid is something I’d see as a variation on house prostitution and not a brothel per se, which would, again, place them in the minimal regulation category.”

Many brothels are actually very like that, but I am glad you would allow this in your categorisation.

“So, yes, those set ups would be treated differently from what I suppose might be considered the stereotypical brothel.”

The stereotypical brothel may still only be the size of the two women sharing, but instead is run for profit by an owner. Many women like this arrangement, because it requires no organisation from themselves. Many women will travel around several brothels in this way to get a regular income. Yes these do need to be controlled in some way to ensure the owner is not applying restrictive employment practices.

Again the ‘allowable’ two women brothel may be one women prostitute, who allows different prostitutes to visit and work with her on different days. A common practice, there is alot of movement and sharing of premises and working in different locations.

You have not commented on the licensing laws and the Nimby attitude that many small town local councils will apply.

Street prostitution is not nice, but is unlikely to get stopped. Lets face it,

1. many brothels owners would not employ a street prostitute for many good reasons.

2. You need a desperate fix, what quicker way to make some money then stand on the road.

All the practices presently of stopping it have pretty well failed. (Unless vast amount of money in police time and outreach work is implemented as in Ipswich) It generally gets dispersed around a city, causes more harm to the women concerned, and makes it more difficult for outreach workers to find their clientèle. As soon as the police disappear, the problem is back. I would like to see what happens in Ipswich when the money runs out.

There are several recent stories from Aberdeen and Edinburgh where the new legislation enacted in Scotland is causing more harm than good. Some drugs out reach organisations say the closure of the Aberdeen docks tolerance zone has caused more prostitution as the SW now operate from the street and doorways of the pubs and clubs in the city.

I would suggest contacting the NWSWP and view their recommendations on street work. But it probably goes down the line of tolerance areas, where the work does not disturb residents, keeps the work in one place so that some form of security can be implemented, even if its only the women looking after them selves. The outreach workers know where they all work, and drug rehabilitation and safe sex programs can be logistically implemented.

You do end up with a pretty complex situation, in which abuse could easily happen and not be visible. So maybe some agency licensing and inspection could be implemented?

The devil is always in the detail when dealing with these issues, which is why I’ve tried to set out, using the current evidence, a general framework without getting too bogged down in precise definitions or trying to either too closely assign specific working models to specific categories or define detailed regulatory frameworks for each category.

If we were to look at this in the context of the process of policy development then we’d be at the very early stage of saying, ‘hey, its looks like we might be on to something, lets go out and talk to a few people and commission a bit of detailed research and see whether any of it might be feasible and what the pitfalls might be’.

Unless you really throw a lot of time and resources at it, to get from here to a fully realised policy with draft legislation ready to take through parliament is probably at least three to five year’s work, including a two-year fully funded research programme.

I’m not suggest that open debates, such as this, cannot bottom out some of the issues, but if we’re going to do it properly and ensure that we’re working to, and with, the best available evidence, then we need to make a medium to long-term commitment just to development process in order to try and get it right and cover all the territory we need to cover.

Unity: You’ve made a fairly massive post on drug policy on your blog. Without wanting to get us too side-tracked here, is it not safe to say that the issue is rather intertwined in places? Having lambasted the anecdotal earlier I will plunge myself into useful hypocrisy by mentioning that I used to live on a street where this was very much the set up. There were around twenty to thirty prostitutes who operated on the stairs and doorstep of one of the street’s drug dealers (I don’t know exactly what that gets classed as under your system?) since their madam (his mother, bad luck “Tehy r oppressing teh womyns!!” feminists, a woman were “perpetrators” in this instance and contra your monochrome outmodality, they often are) wouldn’t let them inside. Given the number of tinted window cars rolling through the street at all hours I imagine that the set-up was pretty lucrative.

It seems to me that reform of drug policy could cause them to step up prostitution as the market for their other illicit wares diminishes, or visa versa. An alternative is that reform of either would weaken the influence of the exploiters over the other. Perhaps I’m counting my chickens even considering this, though…

john B:

(finally: why exactly is it more abusive if someone gives me gbp100 for sex, rather than giving me gbp100 to do hard manual labour for 15 hours? both are entirely valuing me for my body, both are physically painful and potentially risky; one is 15x better rewarded than the other…)

Because it’s sex (as I’ve had a go at explaining upthread). You know, that icky thing other people do with their naughty bits.

“why exactly is it more abusive if someone gives me gbp100 for sex, rather than giving me gbp100 to do hard manual labour for 15 hours? both are entirely valuing me for my body, both are physically painful and potentially risky; one is 15x better rewarded than the other…”

To be fair, most sex work that takes place under conditions other than the totally expolitative kind that most people here want to prevent, sexual labor is something that’s well-compensated on an hourly basis, for a whole lot of reasons, ranging from relative physical and emotional risk to there being a lot of front end and back end time and capital investment that isn’t always apparent to the consumer.

So, I agree, not inherently abusive, but the idea that sex work shouldn’t pay more than any other form of manual labor is a bit of a stretch.

You’ve made a fairly massive post on drug policy on your blog. Without wanting to get us too side-tracked here, is it not safe to say that the issue is rather intertwined in places?

Yes, very much so and on a number of different levels.

An excessively prohibitionist approach to prostitution, as with drugs, facilitates the creation and operation of unregulated black markets and the involvement of organised crime. Within street prostitution, in particular, drug addiction is also a significant coercive mechanism which propels many women into prostitution in order, simply, to service and facilitate an expensive drug habit that they couldn’t otherwise sustain, and there’s a shedload of other inter-related issues to be considered and bottomed out in order to make any significant progress.

So this is certainly not a small undertaking by any means, nor can we simply assume that legalisation/decriminalisation alone will fix any of the extant problems, hence the need for a systematic, evidence-driven approach.

“So, I agree, not inherently abusive, but the idea that sex work shouldn’t pay more than any other form of manual labor is a bit of a stretch.”

That wasn’t his point I think. I took it to mean “how can you call sex work abusive, given how much they earn for the conditions, if you’re not going to call minimum wage jobs abusive at the same time”

“That wasn’t his point I think. I took it to mean “how can you call sex work abusive, given how much they earn for the conditions, if you’re not going to call minimum wage jobs abusive at the same time””

Which socialist feminists would. Indeed, they have a fairly sound criticism of the opening up of the jobs market to female employees: now instead of being exploited for their labour at home by their husbands they are exploited for their labour at work by their employers. So the set of exploiters has been exchanged from one set of men to another, a minimal piece of progress.

Additionally, getting more women into high ranking positions would be no improvement. They’d have much the same job and it would still be a tiny, if now equally gender divided, clique of immensely wealthy capitalists, with the broad mass of women (and men) being expoited thoroughly.

As far as I’m concerned socialist feminism has always been a more truly radical form that the nominally “Radical” feminism, both in its analysis of the situation at hand and suggested solutions. I’d imagine that their standard analysis of this current debate is the radfems are fidgeting instead of aiming for the source of all our woe.

““So, I agree, not inherently abusive, but the idea that sex work shouldn’t pay more than any other form of manual labor is a bit of a stretch.”

“That wasn’t his point I think. I took it to mean “how can you call sex work abusive, given how much they earn for the conditions, if you’re not going to call minimum wage jobs abusive at the same time”

Yeah, I see the point now that its but that way. Its just that the way the prior statement was phrased, it sounded like sex work was being cast as something that wasn’t high-value labor. Sorry if there was any misinterpretation there.

Its just that the way the prior statement was phrased

That’s just John’s style – pithy and heavy on the irony.

Trust me, you’ll get used to it pretty quickly.

Since this is ,for the subject, a surprisingly rational discussion, others might like to look at a proposal for diminishing the most obnoxious negative externality of prostitution, trafficking in peole for it. The propoasal is here .

The Spanish researchers’ schematic division of the prostitution market seems coloured by a Spanish peculiarity – brothels labelled ‘Clubs’ which, like all businesses, require a municipal licence to open but are not fully legal. In most countries where prostitution is not fully legal, brothels shade into luxury trade and into house prostitution with no clear divide; and escorts, like house prostitution shade into the street trade with little clear distinction. (The overlap between brothels, escorts and house prostitution should have been evident to the researchers. It is clearly visible in the prostitution ads which are a staple of most Spanish newspapers classified advertising.)

“If we start at the top-end of market with high-value escorts and prostitution who can earn anything from several hundred to several thousand pounds per client then what we find is little or no evidence of any of the main social problems associated with other forms of prostitution”

Try going to the Cannes film festival, who did you think were hired for the boats etc? I would say high-end prostitution has a lot of drugs attached to it.

Gregory Carlin

Irish Anti-trafficking Coalition

Oh look, a posse of Conservative men extolling the virtues of upholding the status quo whilst patting each other on the back for – oh, being so amicable and status quo upholding.

Actually IACB (much to my surprise) I actually agree with you on quite a few issues – on several points. Watch out you’re loosing your creds.

And what are you calling “conservative”? I think many of the men and women here who are opposed to New Labour’s approach to prostitution, pornography, and the like to be a very conservative position, which is why we oppose it.

No, IACB current thoughts on pornography and prostitution as in the right wing, Conservative beliefs and let’s maintain the status quo IS what’s been demonstrated here.

Seriously, noone can see it?

“which is why we oppose it” says IACB

Which is why -I- say keep your US interference to yourselves, that’s if you can possibly imagine butting out of some other countries politics—–even for a moment.

Thank you.

Right, because the legal status quo is so friendly to sex work and porn. And kneejerk UK nationalism is so radical.

Can I lend you a speculum to help you crawl out of there?

Oh look, a posse of Conservative men extolling the virtues of upholding the status quo whilst patting each other on the back for – oh, being so amicable and status quo upholding.

Actually IACB (much to my surprise) I actually agree with you on quite a few issues – on several points. Watch out you’re loosing your creds.

Then:

Which is why -I- say keep your US interference to yourselves, that’s if you can possibly imagine butting out of some other countries politics—–even for a moment.

Thank you.

So apparently neither men nor foreigners are allowed to comment on this “women’s issue”. How very misandrist nationalist.

“Can I lend you a speculum to help you crawl out of there?”

You’ve been watching too much Max Hardcore IACB—–figures.

Cath Elliot:

“Renegade Evolution and any of the other sex workers who have been taking part in these debates – don’t bother on this one. Not unless whatever you’ve got to say has been peer reviewed and passed as plausible by a panel of middle-aged wankers in white coats first.”

Though you are dismissive of the peer review process, you really should have learned from attempts to use flawed research & statistics in your Cif articles that by adopting such an approach you leave yourself open to accusations of holding to the notion that proven facts are unimportant if you believe strongly enough in your position.

As it stands, Melissa Farley is a particularly poor emaple of a research to base such a position on. Her research is, normally, privately published, thus enabling it to avoid both the peer review process & approval by a research ethics board; c.f.:

http://myweb.dal.ca/mgoodyea/Documents/Methodology/Flawed%20theory%20and%20method%20Weitzer%20violence%20AW%202005.pdf

http://www.scot-pep.org.uk/A%20commentary%20on%20challenging%20men's%20demand%20for%20prostitution%20in%20Scotland.pdf

Unity,

Whilst the general tone & thought processes displayed in your piece can’t be disagreed with, I must concur with the opinion expressed by others that the regulated brothel system, as found in Nevada is not a particulary good example to adopt.

Firstly, the Nevada system, as has been mentioned earlier, allows too much power to the brothel owners; in that the sex workers are required to live on site & can only operate under the auspices of such owners.

Secondly, the fact that they are required to undergo compulsory STI testing is not only invasive, but re-inforces the fallacy that sex workers, in Western Europe, North America & Australasia are major vectors in the spread of such infections, the reality is that they have a lower rate of infection than is found amongst the general population & that safer sex practices are near universal amongst such workers within these regions. The resulting perpetuation of this myth only serves to further the stigmatisation of sex workers.

Additionally, the requirement for sex workers to register as such actually increases the difficulties they will experience when seeking to leave the industry.

Finally, all such systems are open to corruption; as was evidenced by the similar system that was in operation, in France, during the earlier part of the 20th century.

A variation of the decriminalised New Zealand system; allowing for the specific conditions applying in the UK, together with investment in support systems for those who either wish to leave the industry or, due to factors such as substance abuse, could not find work in the newly decriminalised indoor sector, would appear to be a much better option than those put forward by the (neo)abolitionists or the regulationists.

Glen Parry

No, sorry, not a fan of Max Hardcore, but thanks for playing.

Do you actually have a serious point to make, or are you simply trolling?

Which is why -I- say keep your US interference to yourselves, that’s if you can possibly imagine butting out of some other countries politics—–even for a moment.

Thank you.

I’d rather have Americans participating in this debate than nationalists. See: logic obeys no borders.

“simply trolling” ? by IACB

No, I happen to be a UK citizen who objects to USian interference. Mk?

“So apparently neither men nor foreigners are allowed to comment on this “women’s issue”. How very misandrist nationalist.”

“How very misandrist nationalist.” (just repeating this)

Got any more “made up” words in your GCSE (‘O’ level) repertoire?

Its a phrase, actually.

And if you are typical of your ilk it would seem that my strong suspicion that “Radical” Feminists are in fact the most conservative strain of that variable ideology was entirely correct. Your nationalism is the height of isolationist absurdity and you clearly have nothing productive to contribute to this debate. You seek only to purge the sensible participation of others on the basis of their sex, your bizarrely and blatantly incorrect presumption of their party affiliation and their geographical location.

Your bigotry is exactly the sort of thing that the left requires none of. And finally, its “British Subject”. A nationalist should know that sort of thing.

I’d rather have Americans participating in this debate than nationalists. See: logic obeys no borders.

So what James? it’s not all about you—and yes prostitution IS a woman’s issue (along with boys, girls, gay men and transfolks)

Americans can butt out about what they think WE should do with our laws.

Oh my, wall to wall McD, KFC, Disney and Nevada whore houses— naa that’s not “nationalism” (as in the Tory sense) that’s avoidance of cheezy, tacky, negative globalization, cultural imperialism al la Yankee style. Sorry but not a great fan, myself.

I’ll cut to the chase LBk – you can fuck right off with your “radical” feminism and reactionary nationalism. And I’ll comment where I want, and unless you’re in charge of this blog, you really don’t have any business telling anybody who can and can’t post here.

Oh, and on the “interfering in other’s politics” and “conservative” business – this certainly didn’t stop several UK radfem sisters (hi, Delphyne) from throwing their weight behind the pro-Republican PUMA blogs during the last election.

God, you radfems truly deserve yourselves.

Interesting IACB but I am neither a “radical” feminist nor a woman.

And your point is?

Seriously, you believe that I am suggesting you cannot comment on this blog? Your paranoia and fragile sense of self serves you well my friend.

More like you cannot tolerate confrontation without dissolving into attack.

Ask yourself—” if you are having such a powerful reaction—then what are you in need of defending IACB” ?

Dear oh dear your hysteria serves you well.

l.bk? you say “conservative”, I say “fuck off”.

Big-C Conservative = controlling what people are legally allowed to do with their bodies; small-c-conservative = in favour of the status quo.

The people, both male and female, arguing in a country where the safest forms (i.e. advertised, not on the street and with physical back-up against abusive punters) forms of prostitution are illegal, that the criminalisation of prostitution is a Bloody Stupid Idea are definitionally neither Conservative nor conservative.

And finally, its “British Subject”.

Not since the British Nationality Act 1981.

So what James? it’s not all about you—and yes prostitution IS a woman’s issue (along with boys, girls, gay men and transfolks)

….

wtf? Even playing along with your assumption that there are not straight male prostitutes I completely fail to see why the solutions to the problems it raises wouldn’t be apparent to everyone.

Americans can butt out about what they think WE should do with our laws.

Why would being American prohibit you from suggesting solutions?

Oh my, wall to wall McD, KFC, Disney and Nevada whore houses— naa that’s not “nationalism” (as in the Tory sense) that’s avoidance of cheezy, tacky, negative globalization, cultural imperialism al la Yankee style. Sorry but not a great fan, myself.

What you are doing here is arguing that someone is not welcome in this debate as a consequence of them being foreign. That falls under the “Xenophobic comments” prohibition, I do believe, in addition to being utterly fucking stupid. Just because she “isn’t from ’round here” doesn’t mean she’s incapable of making valid suggestions, or at least you’ve given no evidence for why she should be.

Not since the British Nationality Act 1981.

Interesting, Iain. I hadn’t heard of that one.

“What you are doing here is arguing that someone is not welcome in this debate as a consequence of them being foreign. That falls under the “Xenophobic comments” prohibition, I do believe, in addition to being utterly fucking stupid. Just because she “isn’t from ’round here” doesn’t mean she’s incapable of making valid suggestions, or at least you’ve given no evidence for why she should be.”

Who’s talking about “she”?… IACB is male, please get even your minor facts right.

Hi Peter.

My error. Doesn’t matter much.

its typical of rich middle class women to tell working class women not to sell sex
why don’t these rich people give women the same money to stop selling sex? problem solved everyones happy.
then we can concentrate on trying to stamp out paedophilia in the religious industry