The John Next Door

[homasse]

The John Next Door
The men who buy sex are your neighbors and colleagues. A new study reveals how the burgeoning demand for porn and prostitutes is warping personal relationships and endangering women and girls.Men of all ages, races, religions, and backgrounds do it. Rich men do it, and poor men do it, in forms so varied and ubiquitous that they

Comments

[serious_mccoy]

Very freaking important paragraph: "In 1999 Sweden decided that prostitution was a form of violence against women and made it a crime to buy sex, although not to sell it. This approach dramatically reduced trafficking, whereas the legalization of prostitution in the Netherlands, Germany, and much of Australia led to an explosive growth in demand that generated an increase in trafficking and other crimes. Sweden’s success in dealing with the problem has persuaded other countries to follow suit."

Let's not get stuck on discussing porn here, plz.

[hola_meg_a_cola]

I remember reading about the ruling in Sweden in 'Half the Sky,' and how traffickers pretty much avoid Sweden all around. Really, it's the right road to go down at this point.

[homasse]

I'm glad that the Swedish model seems to be spreading. It does seem to be the best way of actually slowing down trafficking, and to give trafficked women and girls a way to get out without being punished.

It does seem to be the best way of actually slowing down trafficking

[evildevil]

It may not be perfect, but given the alternative... What worries me is that there are still people who looks down upon this idea of these victims as being victims and we are already having politicians who refuse to be part of the solution and instead try stalling tactics to fix the problem. It's easier for them to win votes if it looks like they are being tough on prostitution instead of trying to educate the public that this situation is more complex than they think.

[homasse]

Too late. -_-

I had a terrible feeling this was going to devolve into "BUT MAH PORN~~~! PORN IS OK!!!! BUT BUT POOOOORNNNNNN" kinda thing instead of looking at, y'know, the actual point of the article.

[chaya]

This is interesting data. I think my previous opinion of "legalize, regulate, tax" is changing.

[copinggoggles]

Same. I've always come down very much on the side of, 'no matter what the law, humans are never actually going to stop buying and selling sex, so the best thing we can do is try and ensure legal rights and protections for the sex workers themselves'. It's... definitely interesting to see data that apparently turns that idea on its head.

That said, there's also the question of whether the Swedish model is so successful simply because... well, there are plenty of other places where sex traffickers and johns can operate with relative impunity. A major drop in sex trafficking in one country doesn't necessarily mean that [X] fewer women and men have been victimised; it's just as likely to mean that those victims are simply being routed elsewhere (especially if we're talking about the EU, where cross-border travel is comparatively easy). If the same framework was adopted e.g. across the EU and US, then my gut instinct is that the overall drop in sex trafficking would be rather smaller. Criminals adapt.

Still. Food for thought.

[chaya]

A major drop in sex trafficking in one country doesn't necessarily mean that [X] fewer women and men have been victimised; it's just as likely to mean that those victims are simply being routed elsewhere

This is a good point - just one country might simply result in criminal whack-a-mole, but the fact that it deters them from selling to that area at least implies that enacting the same legislation continent-wide could prove to make big changes. (Maybe I'm too optimistic?)

[copinggoggles]

just one country might simply result in criminal whack-a-mole

Haha, that is a better, more concise way of putting it, ty. Damn my convoluted sentences. But yeah - ultimately, it seems fairly intuitive to me that trafficking and sex work are always going to happen at increased rates where it is easier to do so, and happen less where it is harder to do so. Legislation on a broader international scale would be a step forward, at least in terms of eliminating what are effectively safe(/ish) havens for sex trafficking, but I also think that prostitution is going to happen at some level no matter what we do. If there's one thing in all this that we can hold as 100% fact, it's that mankind is infinitely resourceful, and never more so when it comes to getting its hands on sex, booze, and drugs.

To me, I guess the best case scenario would be blanket adoption of something along the lines of the Swedish model - that criminalises the buying of sex, but (since you then have a system where only criminals buy sex) that also includes specific

[baked_goldfish]

There's a lot of important stuff in this article, but the porn question is actually important too. If they're including guys who just watch, like, amateur vanilla stuff, then wouldn't that dilute their findings re. men who purchase sex? As in, if they have ten dudes, and eight of them watch free porn that's mostly mainstream while two of them watch porn but also go out and beat up prostitutes, then wouldn't the conclusion there be, "20% of men who buy sex beat up prostitutes" - and wouldn't it be somewhat wrong? It's not that porn is without issue, but I wonder if it's not actually even worse than they determined, if their sample included men who are on a completely different level like that.

[chaya]

This this this this this. Exactly. I'd be happy to see the venn diagram of where the violence overlaps between the two groups etc, but lumping them all together at the potential detriment to data results was my original issue.

[baked_goldfish]

I'm honestly not convinced that this isn't just a case of shitty reporting. Too many good studies get written up shittily in mainstream news publications. Would love to see the actual study, or at least a more rigorous bit of reporting.

[chaya]

If this turns out to be the case, I will have gotten like 2958953 lj notes for nothing.

[skellington1]

Exactly. Without being an, er, porn partisan, you really have to wonder about how it skews the results.

[clevermanka]

OT, but are those your kitties? They're adorable.

[romp]

That is an interesting point and one mentioned in the The Johns, a book I reference below. I'd like to hear a lot more about it because legalization makes sense to me. I'm not surprised it's abused--that's no different from where it isn't--so I'd like to hear about how sex workers could be truly able to go to the police safely and able to report intimidation and assaults. Maybe we simply can't accomplish that because of our culture.