It's about free choice over your own body
anonymous
June 28 2006, 21:10:36 UTC
For starters the rape rate in the US has been on a steady decline since the late 70's, with a marked drop occurring around the same time the internet really took off. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/rape.htm Given these stats, if one were to draw a parallel between the two, the conclusion would be pornography causes a decline in the number of rape incidents. After all, it is pretty obvious that the internet has made porn more readily available and increased the number of regular users of porn drastically. Yet the rape rate has dropped from 1.2 per 1,000 in 1995 to .04 per 1,000 in 2004.
But that would be ridiculous to claim that pornography keeps men from raping women, just as it is ridiculous to suggest that it causes it. I've heard that argument used in court, by monsters looking for leniency, but it's as credible an argument as claiming that eating too many Twinkies can turn you into a killer.
There is nothing inherently violent or degrading about prostitution. That is not to say that sex workers are never degraded or victims of violence. I would say those problems are more common in sex work, but this is mostly due to the illicit nature of prostitution and not caused by having sex in exchange for money or goods. Those who violate sex workers rely on the unfortunate fact that few of their victims report attacks due to fear of incrimination and distrust of law enforcement. Rape, assault and kidnapping are crimes regardless of the prostitution laws.
There is a misconception about prostitution shared by a segment of feminists. Prostitution does not involve selling your body to men to do with as they please. It’s about providing a service in exchange for money- not unlike housecleaning or hairstyling. A prostitute has a say in who she sees, what services she offers and how they are done. If a client forces an act on a sex worker or sneaks off the condom without her knowledge, then that is rape. It is no more an acceptable part of sex work than date rape is an acceptable part of courtship.. But like I said, the illegal nature of the business keeps most sex workers from reporting crimes against them, unlike in Australia where one sex worker won a lawsuit against a john who had slipped the condom off without her knowledge.
Regardless of how you personally view prostitution, there are many women around the world who have chosen sex work for their vocation and abolitionist efforts are a big threat to their livelihoods and happiness. In S. Korea there were hunger strikes and mass protests involving thousands of sex workers in opposition to the crackdowns brought on by threats from the United States. In Taipei, Taiwan, where they stopped issuing licenses to prostitutes due to pressure from the US, many sex workers who were no longer allowed to legally ply their trade committed suicide and began drinking heavily.
Sex work isn’t degrading; poverty is degrading. Yet somehow you seem to think that scrubbing toilets for minimum wage is a more valid and noble career choice than having sex for a couple hundred dollars an hour (or in Thailand, what amounts to more than 3x what a lower management position in a computer hardware assembly plant makes). Or is it just that you don’t like using a dirty public restroom, which makes you support that kind of degrading employment while trying to ban all forms of sex work?
Re: It's about free choice over your own bodydemonistaJuly 3 2006, 21:55:09 UTC
I'm debating whether I should bother replying to this. But here goes: I've detailed in this and previous posts on prostitution why what you say is, franlky, a load of crap. The rest of the project can be found here parts 1 to 4, in order: http://demonista.livejournal.com/42503.html (overview, def'n of prostitution, includes surrogate motherhood, def'n of trafficking) http://demonista.livejournal.com/42972.html PLEASE READ THIS ONE (how legalized prostitution fucks women in prostitution over, increases trafficking, child prostitution, etc., prostituted people generally do NOT want it legalized, nor do they beleive they will be safer, what factors make people more vulnerable to being in prostitution) http://demonista.livejournal.com/43252.html PLEASE READ THIS ONE, TOO. (exposing the false division between trafficking and prostitution, "what should that tell people about the nature of prostitution that between two and four million women and children need to be trafficked each year to help supply the demand for prostitution?", incidences of rape, child abuse, pimping, ages of entry, homelessness, suicide, PTSD, depression, multiple personality disorder, dissociation, all women in prostitution have some negative feelings toward it, over 90% of their feelings are negative, alteast 90% want to LEAVE.) http://demonista.livejournal.com/43279.html PLEASE READ, TOO. ("anecdotal" reports from women in prostitution)
Re: It's about free choice over your own body
anonymous
July 6 2006, 22:41:28 UTC
I agree that legalized prostitution (at least in this country) screws women over, which is why virtually ALL women in prostitution want it decriminalized, not legalized. The difference is that legalized prostitution means being pimped by a brothel on which you are a virtual prisoner (can't leave the compound). The establishment takes half their earnings, and if a customer arrives by taxi, an additional 20% of her earnings goes to the cabbie. Brothel workers must abide by strict rules and can't turn away clients unless they are intoxicated or have visible signs of an STI, yet they are considered contractors and therefore they don't get employee benefits and they must pay self employment tax, which is much higher than what they would pay as employees.
Decriminalization means that sex for money is not a crime. It doesn't make slavery legal, it doesn't make rape or physical assault legal. It means that adults can engage in consentual sex for pay/profit without fear of getting arrested for it. The overwhelming majority of prostitutes will tell you that they don't want to get arrested and they don't want a decrease in the demand side of the equation. Less demand means more risks taken and lower earnings. When business slows, gut instincts are ignored as character assessments become non-existent.
When you read numbers like 2-4 million women and children trafficked annually, don't alarms go off in your head? That's a margin of error equal to 2 million or 50%-100%. What do you make of these numbers? Did you notice that a few years ago, the State department said that 50k women were trafficked into the US, and now it's < 15k? This can't be due to the efforts of law enforcement since they haven't had much success in finding these trafficked women.
Remember Operation Gilded Cage in San Francisco? 100 women deported, and of the people charged with sex trafficking, some were convicted under the Mann act and charged with using a telephone to facilitate a crime- sentences were < year total for each person found guilty with credit for time served. Many didn't even go to trial because all of the women came here voluntarily. This isn't surprising given the crackdowns in S. Korea after being bullied into action by the US.
Re: It's about free choice over your own body
anonymous
July 6 2006, 22:44:27 UTC
The findings of the abolitionist-minded researchers, such as Melissa Farley, Donna Hughes and Janice Raymond- just to name a few, are highly suspect. Here's a great paper that points out the flaws and flat out manipulation of research results these women have used http://www.woodhullfoundation.org/content/otherpublications/WeitzerVAW-1.pdf Reliance on unrepresentative samples is widespread. Although random sampling of sex workers and customers is impossible, too often the findings and conclusions drawn from convenience and snowball samples are not properly qualified as nongeneralizable.
Farley’s (2004) article is a wide-ranging discussion of a variety of harms in prostitution, rather than a single research study. Her title reflects her central argument: “Bad for the Body, Bad for the Heart: Prostitution HarmsWomen Even if Legalized or Decriminalized.” To support this conclusion, she draws very selectively from the literature, citing her own work and that of many antiprostitution activists (including Barry, Dworkin, Giobbe, Hughes, Jeffreys, and MacKinnon). Moreover, most of the empirical studies she cites are deeply flawed methodologically. Sampling biases and other procedural problems, in greater or lesser degree, pervade her literature, yet Farley never addresses this problem because that might undermine her sweeping claims.
What about Farley’s own research procedures? Much is left opaque. In one study, Farley and Barkan (1998) interviewed street prostitutes in San Francisco. No indication is given of the breadth or diversity of their sample, or the method of approaching people on the street.
Even the UN is starting to question the crazy estimated numbers purported as fact by these women pretending to care about the women in prostitution. http://www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=1022 When it comes to statistics, trafficking of girls and women is one of several highly emotive issues which seem to overwhelm critical faculties. Numbers take on a life of their own, gaining acceptance through repetition, often with little inquiry into their derivations.
Here are a few more important links I really hope you'll read. I'll address the other issues you've brought up in another post.
But that would be ridiculous to claim that pornography keeps men from raping women, just as it is ridiculous to suggest that it causes it. I've heard that argument used in court, by monsters looking for leniency, but it's as credible an argument as claiming that eating too many Twinkies can turn you into a killer.
There is nothing inherently violent or degrading about prostitution. That is not to say that sex workers are never degraded or victims of violence. I would say those problems are more common in sex work, but this is mostly due to the illicit nature of prostitution and not caused by having sex in exchange for money or goods. Those who violate sex workers rely on the unfortunate fact that few of their victims report attacks due to fear of incrimination and distrust of law enforcement. Rape, assault and kidnapping are crimes regardless of the prostitution laws.
There is a misconception about prostitution shared by a segment of feminists. Prostitution does not involve selling your body to men to do with as they please. It’s about providing a service in exchange for money- not unlike housecleaning or hairstyling. A prostitute has a say in who she sees, what services she offers and how they are done. If a client forces an act on a sex worker or sneaks off the condom without her knowledge, then that is rape. It is no more an acceptable part of sex work than date rape is an acceptable part of courtship.. But like I said, the illegal nature of the business keeps most sex workers from reporting crimes against them, unlike in Australia where one sex worker won a lawsuit against a john who had slipped the condom off without her knowledge.
Regardless of how you personally view prostitution, there are many women around the world who have chosen sex work for their vocation and abolitionist efforts are a big threat to their livelihoods and happiness. In S. Korea there were hunger strikes and mass protests involving thousands of sex workers in opposition to the crackdowns brought on by threats from the United States. In Taipei, Taiwan, where they stopped issuing licenses to prostitutes due to pressure from the US, many sex workers who were no longer allowed to legally ply their trade committed suicide and began drinking heavily.
Sex work isn’t degrading; poverty is degrading. Yet somehow you seem to think that scrubbing toilets for minimum wage is a more valid and noble career choice than having sex for a couple hundred dollars an hour (or in Thailand, what amounts to more than 3x what a lower management position in a computer hardware assembly plant makes). Or is it just that you don’t like using a dirty public restroom, which makes you support that kind of degrading employment while trying to ban all forms of sex work?
- FrenchKiss
Reply
I've detailed in this and previous posts on prostitution why what you say is, franlky, a load of crap. The rest of the project can be found here parts 1 to 4, in order: http://demonista.livejournal.com/42503.html (overview, def'n of prostitution, includes surrogate motherhood, def'n of trafficking)
http://demonista.livejournal.com/42972.html PLEASE READ THIS ONE (how legalized prostitution fucks women in prostitution over, increases trafficking, child prostitution, etc., prostituted people generally do NOT want it legalized, nor do they beleive they will be safer, what factors make people more vulnerable to being in prostitution)
http://demonista.livejournal.com/43252.html PLEASE READ THIS ONE, TOO. (exposing the false division between trafficking and prostitution, "what should that tell people about the nature of prostitution that between two and four million women and children need to be trafficked each year to help supply the demand for prostitution?", incidences of rape, child abuse, pimping, ages of entry, homelessness, suicide, PTSD, depression, multiple personality disorder, dissociation, all women in prostitution have some negative feelings toward it, over 90% of their feelings are negative, alteast 90% want to LEAVE.)
http://demonista.livejournal.com/43279.html PLEASE READ, TOO. ("anecdotal" reports from women in prostitution)
Reply
Decriminalization means that sex for money is not a crime. It doesn't make slavery legal, it doesn't make rape or physical assault legal. It means that adults can engage in consentual sex for pay/profit without fear of getting arrested for it. The overwhelming majority of prostitutes will tell you that they don't want to get arrested and they don't want a decrease in the demand side of the equation. Less demand means more risks taken and lower earnings. When business slows, gut instincts are ignored as character assessments become non-existent.
When you read numbers like 2-4 million women and children trafficked annually, don't alarms go off in your head? That's a margin of error equal to 2 million or 50%-100%. What do you make of these numbers? Did you notice that a few years ago, the State department said that 50k women were trafficked into the US, and now it's < 15k? This can't be due to the efforts of law enforcement since they haven't had much success in finding these trafficked women.
Remember Operation Gilded Cage in San Francisco? 100 women deported, and of the people charged with sex trafficking, some were convicted under the Mann act and charged with using a telephone to facilitate a crime- sentences were < year total for each person found guilty with credit for time served. Many didn't even go to trial because all of the women came here voluntarily. This isn't surprising given the crackdowns in S. Korea after being bullied into action by the US.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/FL22Dg01.html
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200506/kt2005062316534211990.htm (Please read)
-FrenchKiss
Reply
Reliance on unrepresentative samples is widespread. Although random sampling of sex workers and customers is impossible, too often the findings and conclusions drawn from convenience and snowball samples are not properly qualified as
nongeneralizable.
Farley’s (2004) article is a wide-ranging discussion of a variety of harms in prostitution, rather than a single research study. Her title reflects her central argument: “Bad for the Body, Bad for the Heart: Prostitution HarmsWomen Even if Legalized or Decriminalized.” To support this conclusion, she draws very selectively from the literature, citing her own work and that of many antiprostitution activists (including Barry, Dworkin, Giobbe, Hughes, Jeffreys, and MacKinnon). Moreover, most of the empirical studies she cites are deeply flawed methodologically. Sampling biases and other procedural problems, in greater or lesser degree, pervade her literature, yet Farley never addresses this problem because that might undermine her sweeping claims.
What about Farley’s own research procedures? Much is left opaque. In one study, Farley and Barkan (1998) interviewed street prostitutes in San Francisco. No indication is given of the breadth or diversity of their sample, or the method of approaching people on the street.
Even the UN is starting to question the crazy estimated numbers purported as fact by these women pretending to care about the women in prostitution.
http://www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=1022
When it comes to statistics, trafficking of girls and women is one of several highly emotive issues which seem to overwhelm critical faculties. Numbers take on a life of their own, gaining acceptance through repetition, often with little inquiry into their derivations.
Here are a few more important links I really hope you'll read. I'll address the other issues you've brought up in another post.
http://www.nswp.org/pdf/KINNELL-FEMINISTS.PDF
http://www.allwomencount.net/EWC%20Sex%20Workers/SFCommunityDialReport.htm
http://www.justicewomen.com/letters_prostitution.html
http://www.petraostergren.com/content/view/44/38/
-FrenchKiss
Reply
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