A Closer Look at Sweden's Success with Reducing Prostitution; Skeptics Rebutted
Posted by NPNAdmin at 6/24/2008 4:25 PM 
Categories: Feminist Perspective, Organized Crime, Impact of Porn, Ordinances and Regulations, Child Molestation, Debate on the Issues, Prostitution
Categories: Feminist Perspective, Organized Crime, Impact of Porn, Ordinances and Regulations, Child Molestation, Debate on the Issues, Prostitution
We have previously written with approval of Sweden's approach to prostitution. In 1999, Sweden made it a crime to buy sex but not to sell it. The Swedes removed legal jeopardy from prostituted women but increased it for pimps and johns. After the police were trained in the implementation of the new law, the incidence of prostitution and sex trafficking plummeted.
Julie Bindel and Liz Kelly study the Swedish experience in their 2003 report, "A Critical Examination of Responses to Prostitution in Four Countries: Victoria, Australia; Ireland, the Netherlands; and Sweden" (PDF). We present some excerpts here, then respond to objections from skeptics with the help of Genderberg's S.M. Berg.
In 2006, S.M. Berg of Genderberg.com conducted a vigorous online debate with people who questioned Sweden's achievement. Genderberg is an activist resource to combat prostitution, pornography and sexual exploitation. Berg has kindly given us permission to reproduce the following arguments.
tearing down the "Sweden doesn't work" lie
Julie Bindel and Liz Kelly study the Swedish experience in their 2003 report, "A Critical Examination of Responses to Prostitution in Four Countries: Victoria, Australia; Ireland, the Netherlands; and Sweden" (PDF). We present some excerpts here, then respond to objections from skeptics with the help of Genderberg's S.M. Berg.
In Sweden prostitution is regarded as an aspect of male violence against women and children. The underlying rationale to reverse a legalisation approach was that prostitution, like all forms of violence against women, constitutes a barrier to gender equality. Since moving towards gender equality is a fundamental priority for Sweden, logically its policy must be based on an approach that seeks to end prostitution, rather than manage/legitimise it...
The government also recognised that criminalising demand without support for the women themselves, would be not only ineffective but also unfair, therefore monies were made available to NGOs and statutory agencies for drug rehabilitation programmes, exit strategies and longer term reintegration...
Since 1999 street prostitution in Stockholm has dropped by more than two-thirds. Before the law, between 350 and 400 prostituted women were working the streets in Stockholm...
One important aspect of the new legislation, which is seldom recognised outside Sweden, is that the women and children in prostitution are not criminalised; rather they are viewed as victims of a crime. This not only changes their legal status, but how they are seen and treated by others...
Several opinion polls, conducted in 2000 and 2001, show that approximately 80 per cent of the Swedish population supports the law. Of those who want to repeal it, the majority are men, with only seven per cent of women in support...
Although it is often argued that restrictions on street prostitution results in poor and drug addicted women losing their only source of income, there has been very little protest regarding this issue from opponents of the legislation. However, the Swedish government investment in drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes and other exit strategies has undoubtedly enabled more women to leave prostitution...
Decriminalising the selling of sex has meant those in prostitution do not have to contend with harassment and arrest from police, which can enable the women to feel less stigmatised. Furthermore, this system serves to prevent the ‘revolving door’, and means that services can be explicitly directed at assisting women to leave prostitution, and with reintegration into society...
It is also worth noting that in the few surveys which ask the opinion of those currently involved in prostitution, few support legalisation...
There are few legalisation or regulation regimes that extend to street prostitution, and recent experiments with tolerance zones, including in Edinburgh and Amsterdam, have failed to deliver the hoped for benefits. Arguments about legalisation for off street venues are based on a presumption that such a move would shift the sex industry off the street. This is more a hope than a reality. As the experience of Victoria, Australia demonstrates an expanding legal sector is accompanied by a similar increase in the illegal. This is for two reasons: some sex businesses seek to evade the demands of regulation; and women who are serious drug users are seldom able to comply with the rules and requirements of legal brothels. It is also possible that a proportion of customers prefer the street prostitution scene. It is clear from research that the majority of those in street prostitution have serious drug problems. A legalisation strategy therefore serves to further criminalise and marginalise them.
On the basis of the materials examined, the case for legalisation is weak and unsubstantiated. The rationale behind both the law in the Netherlands and Victoria, Australia was to “provide more control over criminal behaviour and to ensure women were protected from violence and exploitation”. Neither of these aims seem to have been achieved, with organised crime, including trafficking, flourishing in both localities, and the illegal layers of the industry continuing to accommodate women who are funding drug addiction. As Anne-Marie Lizin, a member of the Belgium parliament commented: "You cannot say you're fighting the trafficking of people and at the same time legalise (brothels) because you open the market" (Noelle Knox, 2003)...
Gunilla Ekberg from the Swedish ministry states that, as a result of the legislation criminalising buyers, Sweden has become less attractive for traffickers. Ingela Klinteberg, Deputy Chief District Prosecutor in Malmo comments:The new law has had an effect on trafficking. The trafficked women have sometimes said to police that they overheard traffickers say that Sweden is a very unfriendly country to operate in, and that they should take them elsewhere, such as the Netherlands, where the traffickers can operate with impunity (Interview, 2003).Project Respect estimates that there are up to 200 women under ‘contract’ in Victoria at any one time, and that at least seven licensed brothels in Victoria have used trafficked women in the last year. Trafficked women commonly pay off debts between $30,000 and $50,000, experience significant physical and sexual violence, and are frequently deported...
[Amsterdam] is a major destination country in Western Europe, with 2000 brothels and numerous escort services, using an estimated 30,000 women (Benneto, 2001). Prostitution and related forms of sexual exploitation is a US$1 billion a year industry making up five percent of the Dutch economy. Sixty to 70 percent of the women in prostitution in the Netherlands are not citizens of the Netherlands or other European Union countries. In one study, 79 percent of women in prostitution gave an indication that they were in prostitution due to some degree of force...
...Since under Swedish law...anyone prostituted is now regarded as a victim of crime, it also became the first country where no prostituted woman, man or child is subject to criminal charges...
In its Factsheet on Prostitution and Trafficking in women (2003) the Swedish governments position is explained:...gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women and children by prostituting them... Prostituted persons are considered as the weaker party, exploited by both the procurers and the buyers. It is important to motivate persons in prostitution to attempt to exit without risk of punishment. By adopting the legislation Sweden has given notice to the world that it regards prostitution as a serious form of oppression of women and children and that efforts must be made to combat it. (Ministry of Industry, Employment and Communications, 2003, p1)Understandably there was resistance initially amongst law enforcers, at such a major reversal of approach. Some of this was articulated by police officers who argued that criminalizing men would undermine investigations of trafficking, since they had obtained important intelligence from buyers. They feared that the legislative change would mean men would refuse to help, since they would be implicating themselves in a crime. Such misgivings appear to have been overcome through training, and finding ways to work in practice in cooperation with prosecutors; in fact the dilemma is only the reversal of that under the previous regime, where the burden of incrimination fell on women. The training programme also exposed the extent to which some – but by no means all – police officers and prosecutors identified with male buyers.
Early implementation was mixed, with relatively few arrests and prosecutions. As the training programme rolled out, combined with the public debate however, and police and prosecutors entered into constructive dialogue the picture has changed. To date, 500 men have been charged under the legislation, and figures for the first nine months of 2003 are 300% above those for 2002; two thirds of charges result in a conviction. In addition as a result of a major investigation into a trafficking ring that advertised on the Internet, a further 575 men will be charged with this offence in 2003 (Ekberg, 2003)...
Police now have responsibility for monitoring areas where street prostitution takes place, and they report it is now very rare to encounter a foreign woman. The Stockholm-based social service unit Pros-Centrum, that works with persons in prostitution estimate that up to 60 per cent of Swedish women in street prostitution have left the industry...
...it is estimated that between 200 and 500 women are trafficked into Sweden in recent years compared to an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 in Finland...
There is no ‘revolving door’ in Sweden – whereby women are arrested for offences, fined and then return to prostitution to pay this off.
In 2006, S.M. Berg of Genderberg.com conducted a vigorous online debate with people who questioned Sweden's achievement. Genderberg is an activist resource to combat prostitution, pornography and sexual exploitation. Berg has kindly given us permission to reproduce the following arguments.
tearing down the "Sweden doesn't work" lie
Through Lost Clown's Carnival of Feminists I found this conversation at the blog Reclusive Leftist
where a pro-prostitution woman is trying to debunk the successes of the
Swedish model. I'm reposting here what I wrote so people can get an
idea of how to confront the sex industry's campaign of misinformation.
It's not an action, but I thought it belonged in a public forum so
non-members could stumble upon it as well.
Because the 20 unanimous women Petra Ostergren spoke with is commonly brought up to deny thousands of research studies done over decades in countries around the world, it would be good to familiarlize yourself with her non-study that is treated like a serious piece of research by pro-pornstitutioners.
http://www.petraostergren.com
There is a study pro-prostitutioners foolishly cite sometimes to try and prove the Swedish model doesn't work, but if they weren't so foolish they would realize that the paper, slanted as it is, actually concedes that the Swedish model is working better than the Dutch model.
I might run through this one in detail another time, but in short pro-legalization folk who put this together did not speak with one single working prostitute in Sweden. Pages 10 and 11 contain a lot of myth-debunking info about Sweden's success. Page 24 says, "The Netherlands has around twice as many inhabitants as Sweden. The scale of prostitution is about ten times of Sweden."
Purchasing Sexual Services in Sweden and the Netherlands: Legal Regulation and Experiences
http://www.dep.no/jd/english/012101-990578/dok-bn.html
I may touch up the following at a later date, and please let me know if you think somthing is weak and needs strengthening with either more proof or more explanation.
http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/?p=166
Did anyone else notice how Burrow's supportive comments on Sweden cited specific studies with specific numbers in comparison to other countries and Cicely's rebuttal contained not one concrete fact, only conjecture and hypothesis? I noticed.
"this law has been criticized by Swedish sex workers"
Which sex workers? Don't say the 20 women Petra claims to have spoken with who all unanimously agree with her that whoring is just a job and should be fully legalized. Any study where the population of 20 is unanimous should be suspect, especially when no other study done with prostitutes internationally has ever been unanimous.
the new legislation makes it harder to assess clients since “the clients are more stressed and scared, and negotiation outdoors must be done in a more rapid manner
Do rapists emit a rape-pheromone that only prostitutes can smell, and only if given enough time to adequately sniff? How did Swedish prostitutes tell the murderous clients from the non-murderous clients before 1999? Did prostitutes before the 1999 law hand out forms to prospective tricks with such questions as "Are you going to rob, rape, choke, cigarette-burn, or otherwise hurt me? Circle one: Y / N"?
there is now a greater percentage of ‘perverted’ customers and the ‘nice and kind’ customers have disappeared.
So when Swedish men rape prostitutes, the solution is not to hold those men accountable but to point the finger at feminists and blame them for changing the law that made men "have to" ask hookers for more perverted (dangerous, painful, permanent) kinds of sex acts? That makes no sense, and neither does suggesting that when the 1999 law changed suddenly a bunch of sadistic Swedish men decided to start using prostitutes.
I'm pretty sure those men were around long before 1999 because it is these men's violent and sadistic treatment of prostitutes that brought about the need for legal changes challenging men's "right" to have sex anytime and any way they wanted. If men who used prostitutes were nonviolent gentleman there would be no need for the law.
Sex workers are now more apprehensive about seeking help from the police when they have problems with an abusive customer.
Again, I ask for quotes from sex workers, because the Swedish reports say that not only are prostitutes turning abusive men in more, but those violent men usually have criminal records beyond assaulting prostitutes so they often are brought up on those charges as well, resulting in more criminals behind bars where they belong.
prices on the streets are lower since there are fewer customers and more competition. “This means that women in more desperate need of money will engage in unsafe sex and sexual activity they usually would not perform.
Doesn't this actually mean Swedish men who use prostitutes have been shown to willingly take advantage of vulnerable women to economically coerce them into painful, degrading sex acts? Again, the notion that these Swedish men weren't asking for double-anals, vagina-tearing dry sex, “prosti-tots”, etc before 1999 is absurd.
National Police Board has observed that it is harder to prosecute sex profiteers because sex-purchasers won’t testify.
Of course tricks won't testify, and they didn't regularly before either. Quotes from tricks show that they are often afraid of violence or robbery from pimps just like prostitutes. One man who responded to a researcher's newspaper ad said, "I've never tried to rescue a girl. You can get killed doing that." You can get killed testifying against the organized criminals that lord over prostitution internationally.
Sex workers can be made to testify and have “neither the rights of the accused or the victim."
Not true, cicely. Under Swedish Criminal Procedure Law (Chapter 36, 6 Rattegangsbalken) a prostitute can refuse to give evidence that can reveal that she has undertaken a "disreputable" act. It pretty much guarantees the prosecution will have a hard time getting a conviction, but a prostitute is not forced to give evidence under Swedish law.
Driving prostitution underground, whether through moral condemnation or criminalizing purchasers, only exacerbates the most dangerous aspects of prostitution.
Actually, even groups working towards prostitution legalization have had to admit there is no evidence of an increase in underground prostitution since 1999. The best they can say is that there's not enough information, but nothing has shown numbers of underground, trafficking, or other organized criminal prostitution rising and it is clear that trafficking into Sweden has decreased dramatically.
In the real world, the demands of sex workers -- better working conditions and complete de-criminalization
In the real world, 90% of prostitutes say they want out of prostitution immediately. One 5-country study of 475 prostitutes found 92% said they wanted out, and a 9-country study of 854 prostitutes found 89% wanted out immediately.
Please show where you picked up the belief that what most prostitutes demand is help staying in prostitution and complete decriminalization so they can stay prostitutes. You are demonstrably wrong about that, Cicely.
Here is what 475 prostitutes from 5 countries said:
United States: 56% don't want it legal, 88% want out now.
South Africa: 62% don't want it legal, 89% want out now
Thailand: 72% don't want it legal, 94% want out now
Turkey: 96% don't want it legal, 90% want out now
Zambia: 92% don't want it legal, 99% want out now
From http://www.prostitutionresearch.com
I would very much like to see whatever proof you may have to support your claim that what "sex workers" are really demanding is decriminalization and better whoring conditions.
Neutral observers in Sweden have conceded that it’s impossible to measure accurately the incidence of prostitution since the legislation took effect as methods of soliciting have moved dramatically to the internet and mobile phones.
That would go against what you said earlier about an increase in underground prostitution. It has been guessed at but not proven, and recorded phone conversations with pimps and traffickers have shown the new law effectively deters them.
there is a new crime in Sweden. Women posing as sex workers rob their ‘clients’, who are unlikely to report the theft to authorities for fear of being prosecuted
I think that's woman hating, unproven bullshit that feeds off men's loathing of women as gold-digging, conniving greedy bitches. What you're saying is that there's a new crime that no one has reported yet, but you're certain it's there anyway because women are lying bitches like that.
Sure, it's theoretically possible Swedish women might pretend to be prostitutes (who don't fear men's insane amount of violence towards whores for some strange reason) to begin robbing men, but for a long time now Swedish women could threaten to "cry rape" in order to steal from or blackmail any man, trick or not. That hasn't been happening, so saying that to give prostitutes the power to turn the men who abuse them has lead to malicious, lying Swedish women "crying rape" for an easy payday, oh but the men are too afraid to report it so there's zero proof, is misogynist bullshit...
I'm home now and I thought it would be good to look up the statistics from the other 4 countries that I left out of the first post.
Canada: 68% don't want it legal, 95% want out now
Colombia: 80% don't want it legal, 97% want out now
Mexico: 49% don't want it legal, 68% want out now
Germany: 65% don't want it legal, 85% want out now
Particularly interesting about Germany's numbers is that brothel prostitution is already legal in Germany but 59% of the prostitutes interviewed did not think legalization made them safer from rape and physical assault.
Prostitution is also legal in Columbia, and the age that children are legally allowed to become prostitutes is 14. Prostitution is legal in Costa Rica and the acceptable age of entry into prostitution is 15. Unsurprisingly, both countries have enormous problems with child prostitution and are hotspot destinations for child sexual predators from around the world.
Across the 9 countries, 47% were upset by attempts to make them do what others had seen in pornography and 49% reported pornography was made of them as they were prostituted...
The debate at Reclusive Leftist continues. As a reminder, everything I write can be used by any of y'all any time you like.
Here's how cicely responded:
Firstly, I did write earlier in this thread, or in another thread here on prostitution, that I accept that the vast majority of girls and women working as prostitutes want not to be. I wouldn’t contradict 90% plus, overall. It probably follows that these women would not want prostitution legalised. On the other hand, from your own statistics, a considerable percentage of sex workers surveyed would. 44% in the US, 38% in South Africa, 28% in Thailand, 4% in Turkey and 8% in Zambia. At least these women havn’t said they would not want prostitution legalised, since it would have been noted if they had.
Clearly there are differences between countries, which will have origins in those particular cultures, but don’t you agree that 44% in the US is a pretty significant minority? So, the next question, set against that statistic, is, why do 88% still want to get out in the US? Is it for some because of the unsafe conditions they are forced to work in, while prostitution is criminalised? What do you think explains this discrepancy?
My thing is, we do have to have these discussions directly with those women doing sex work, and who do want to continue but with legal protections and safe conditions. (and I can reference a few sex worker organisations which have websites if you’d like me to…) I can’t find any justification for ignoring them since they will demonstrably continue to be motivated to put themselves at risk even without these basic civil rights. What motivates them? Are they entitled to define for themselves what doing sex work means in their own lives? Conservatives say ‘no’ for moral reasons, many feminists say ‘no’ for political reasons, I say ‘yes’ for largely humanitarian and civil rights reasons. I believe that only de-criminalisation has the potential to fully protect sex workers, whatever the underlying reasons for their participation in the sex industry may be. And I don’t pretend to always know what they may be.
This is all I have time to write for now. I will return…
Here's my response
"My thing is, we do have to have these discussions directly with those women doing sex work...since they will demonstrably continue to be motivated to put themselves at risk"
Well first, thousands of prostitutes (male, women, transgendered) have already been spoken with and I have shown you where you can find what they have to say about it. Wendy McElroy started a study of women volunteering at sex worker rights organizations and she abandoned it when it became clear even among this most biased of prostitution populations the women didn't really want to be sex workers. Carol Leigh, aka Scarlot Harlot, said in a 2004 debate, "95% of my friends want out of prostitution."
You see, my thing is to stop looking at poverty-stricken, desperate women and asking them why they do desperate things for money they desperately need. My thing is focusing on men with disposable income who could freely choose not to sexually exploit drug addicted, sexually molested girls and asking them why they insist on their "right" to do so.
Your focus on prostituted women is not where the problem lies so you will not find the solution there either. You need to start talking about the men who choose to use prostitutes just because they want to and it gives them pleasure. Pro-prostitution advocates consider talking about the men who use prostitutes anathema, so they focus on the women as if changing women is going to change how violently and abusively men treat prostitutes, and all women really.
The male belief in their entitlement to sex is the problem, not prostituting women. A great thing about changing the prostitution debate to reject men's "right" to have sex any time, any way, as much as they want is that it goes right to the heart of rape culture and will benefit all women.
Men's widespread sexual violence against prostitutes is caused by the cultural acceptance of men's ownership and entitlement to access women's bodies. Men's sexual harassment of the women they work with also stems from a culture that accepts men's entitlement to access females sexually. Men who rape believe men have a right to use women's bodies to relieve themselves any time, any way, as much as they want. Anti-choicers believe men have a right to women's bodies by dint of the sexual use of her body by an impregnating man.
The problem, I mean The Problem, of sexism is that men feel they have a right to use all female bodies any time they want, any way they want. Feminists who cannot bring themselves to reject the patriarchal notion that men have a right to sexually access women's bodies are not going to be effective lessening any of these epidemic sexist ills if they keep looking at women as if it were women who had the problem that needs fixing.
The Swedish policy addressing prostitution as women experience it (harmful, humiliating, violent) instead of how men experience it (harmless, entertaining, pleasurable) is a revolutionary moment in the history of the women's movement. I hope more good-intentioned feminists can move away from the ideological place that accepts prostitution as inevitable because boys will be boys and men's "right" to sex from women will not be questioned.
Until more feminists start questioning men's entitlement over female bodies, significant advancements in women's right to be free from rape, sex harassment, and prostitution can't happen. Rejecting prostitution is consistent with the feminist belief that men do not have a right to sex from women, but too many feminist women still can't say this standing tall and without apologies for believing it...
Tearing down the "New Zealand decriminalization works" lie.
New Zealand is not protecting prostituted women and children. In April 2005, the naked body of sex worker Susan "Ritalin Sue" Sutherland was found in Christchurch. She was described as being in a disturbed state of mind the night she was killed after she was chased down the street by people to whom she owed money.
Tell me how decriminalization of prostitution helped Susan escape first from her addiction, second from her murderer(s). If men don't change their sexually exploitive, abusing ways, nothing changes. Decriminalization didn't keep Susan alive and it didn't help her beat her drug addiction.
I have a number of articles about prostitution in New Zealand I've collected.
Scoop Independent News reported on April 19, 2005 that, “A police survey undertaken in 2001 found just six brothels offering in-house services, whereas the most recent survey undertaken between November 2003 and April 2004 identified 93."
Is that what a successful prostitution law looks like?
Stuff reports the number of prostitutes rose 40% and that street prostitution jumped from up from 3% in 2001 to 11% in 2004. http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3252861a11,00.html
Scoop announced on September 27, 2005 that a Wellington brothel owner who sold a 14-year old, who was in the care of Child, Youth and Family Services, to 24 paying men was given a paltry sentence of 300 hours of community service.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0509/S00279.htm
Is that what a successful prostitution law looks like?
Here's a Prostitution Law Review Committee report
http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports ... index.html
There have been just five convictions under the Prostitution Reform Act since it was enacted in June 2003. Five convictions in two years and the Prostitution Law Reform Committee released a report indicating 20% of those involved in street soliciting are under-aged and street prostitution has escalated to nearly 4 times its numbers prior to decriminalization.
Is that what a successful prostitution law looks like?
It's proven fact that trafficking into Sweden is down enormously since 1999. A Stockholm organization found a 75% decrease in men seeking prostitutes in Sweden since implementation of the new law. It is also true that the Netherlands has twice the population of Sweden but 10 times the prostitution. Those facts alone should be considered successes, especially when the new law has been in place a scant six years. I believe the Swedish law is meeting its goals where legalization and decriminalization have failed to meet theirs and I feel it's a positive step towards the evolution of humanity as a whole. There can be no equality and democracy while the human bodies are considered buyable and sellable
cicely says, the most disadvantaged women appear to be still left hanging out to dry, and working in more dangerous circumstances than they were prior to 1999., but that has not been proven. I'll need to see exact numbers and quotes from sex workers before believing this has come to pass and so far all I've seen is unproven speculation. A report that says "probably circumstances have gotten more dangerous" is not something I can take seriously.
I would believe Petra's report if she didn't only use vague terms like "some" and "many". If she were honest she would lay her data out to be examined, maybe saying "Of 20 sex workers interviewed with methodology X, 10 wanted out of prostitution immediately, 8 wanted legalization and government assistance to stay sex workers, 2 did not want any government action, and here are some representative quotes from each viewpoint." That's what a quality piece of convincing research looks like, and that's not Petra's study.
cicely, it should come as no surprise I do indeed think your belief that men have a biological need to stick their penises in many more body holes than a prostitute-free world can accommodate is bogus. But I'm more concerned with the way you still can't seem to the look the extreme amounts of sexual violence men commit against prostitutes directly in the eye. You wax poetic about families, social cohesion, and the biological nature of human sexuality but you haven't addressed the incredible amount of violence men commit against prostituted women and I feel the generalities you've used in your last post serves to obfuscate men's abuse of women and men's responsibility to stopping that abuse.
You have to be able to explain why prostitutes are the most raped women in the world to see where people who reject prostitution as "work" are coming from when they deny that any person has a right to economically coerce others into sexual servitude...
My latest reply:
Your link to the source of the 3-11% jump in street prostitution is broken. I don’t know what that figure means.
You can read the original data at the Prostitution Law Committee Report linked. There’s a handy chart that shows in 2001 street prostitution was 3% of New Zealand prostitution and in 2003 the number jumped to 11% of prostitutes on the street. This, combined with a 40% increase in the numbers of prostituted women overall and the massive increase in brothels, make New Zealand the latest country to experience these well-recognized trends in countries where the government profits from selling women’s bodies.
After the Netherlands legalized the sex industry it was estimated to have grown overall by 25%, trafficking to the Netherlands increased to meet increased men’s demands, child prostitution increased, and street prostitution remained as dangerous and organized-crime controlled as ever.
Alon, from untrue and meanspirited comments like “New Zealand’s decriminalization policies is probably the world’s most successful, so anti-prostitution advocates won’t do any research about it” to comments accusing me of wanting prostitutes “thrown on the street so that you can feel better about it” to slamming the Swedish model with inanities like “So far there’s a clear reduction in the reported number of prostitutes and of abuse cases, but there’s also an increase in the unreported number,” when it’s oxymoronic to definitively report on unreported cases, I don’t care to do further keep-up on correcting your many mistakes beyond this post.
You said the Swedish model has failed and were given specifics about how it has reduced trafficking, reduced men’s demand and reduced street prostitution. Rumblings of increased underground activity may or may not be true and time will tell for sure, but trafficking, demand and street prostitution are down and those were the goals set forth by the Swedish law.
You said New Zealand decriminalizing brothel prostitution to try and reduce street prostitution is the most successful model and were shown New Zealand reports that there are 40% more prostitutes than before decriminalization, street prostitution has quadrupled, there have been only five child “prostitot” convictions in three years and pimps caught sexually selling children are given community service hours for facilitating systematized child rape. New Zealand has gone backwards in its stated goal to reduce street prostitution because decriminalization actually increased street prostitution fourfold.
You seem to think an adequate reply is the dismissive “Decriminalization won’t fix my socks, either” and “That sort of non-enforcement is the norm in every Western country,” but then how can you conclude that New Zealand’s decriminalization is working better than what is done in other countries?
"Thailand, where NGOs provided condoms and educated people about how to avoid STDs, resulting in an immense drop in AIDS infection rates among prostitutes"
What about the immense drop in men raping prostitutes, or the immense drop in men murdering prostitutes, or the average age of a girl’s subsumption into prostitution rising above the early teen years? What about men’s violence, a subject you and cicely assiduously avoid despite my best attempts to address that male violence? What if prostituted women’s lives mattered more than Western men’s fears of catching AIDS from a cheap, teenaged Thai whore while on vacation, and by saying that we mean no man has a right to sex on demand, with or without condoms?
Alon, you’ve been aggressively rude, don’t have facts to back up what you’ve said, and the weird logic you use to justify men’s “right” to selfishly, sexually use female bodies whenever and however they want defies reason.
Cicely said: “We are not going to change much at all in 6 or 3 years anywhere” and you couldn’t be more wrong because a lot has changed in the past 3 years in New Zealand and the past 6 years in Sweden. New Zealand’s 40% increase in prostitutes, explosion of brothels, and quadrupling of street prostitution are big changes for the worse. Sweden’s decriminalization of prostitutes but not pimps and johns, reduction in men seeking prostitutes in Stockholm by 75%, reduction in trafficking to the country, and increase in services available to help women transition out of prostitution are major changes of the past few years.
There is a huge difference between being economically and circumstantially free (say, drug addiction free) to choose sex work, and not being free to choose. That’s where our efforts should be being directed in my opinion.
I consider this rather offensive. Prostitutes are clear about where they want your efforts to be directed when they say they want help getting out of prostitution. They are saying they need drug addiction treatment, safe housing, job training, and childcare to meet their goals of escaping a life of prostitution and you’ve twisted that to say, “What they really want is the freedom to choose sex working as a career.” What gives you the right to rewrite their clear requests for help getting out of prostitution into them wanting to be “free to choose” prostitution? That’s not what they’re saying, and you need to listen to what they’re saying when they overwhelmingly say they want out.
Suggesting that we should wait until there’s a sexism-free world before we can determine if prostitution is sexist, humiliating, violent, health-wrecking, and soul-detroying is a slap in the face to prostitutes living now and an abandonment of responsibility to prostitutes living now who need help getting out from under the crushing weight of men’s demands for prostitution now...
My latest; I've gotta say I'm very pleased with how the ending turned out:
What about men’s violence, a subject you and cicely assiduously avoid despite my best attempts to address that male violence?
Here’s another good one, “Why are legal brothels built with ‘panic buttons’ in them?” I believe if we have to build brothels with the routine expectation that many women are going to get violently attacked by many tricks then we shouldn’t be building them at all. A Dutch brothel owner complained about the regulation that there be pillows on the beds because, “You don’t want pillows in there, it’s a murder weapon.”
Like Einstein said about not being able to simultaneously prevent war and prepare for war, you cannot affirm men demanding and coercing sex from women anytime they want as acceptable at the same time you’re trying to get through to men that they do not have any right to demand or coerce sex from any woman, ever.
Einstein also said, “The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men.”
To women who want to legitimize men’s right to economically coerce poverty-stricken girls and women into sex they would otherwise not consent to I’ve got something to say. To anyone who says we should look at prostitution as an acceptable job for poor, brown, young females, to anyone who personally profits from the globalized pornstitution industries, to anyone who knows that prostitutes are brutalized by men more than any other group of women and still encourages vulnerable women to put their bodies in control of dangerous men who show no willingness to respect their basic human rights, I have some things to say.
Mostly it boils down to, “Stop pushing women to pain-filled lives highly likely to culminate in early and violent deaths because you can’t muster up the courage to tell men they have no right to masturbate with a woman’s body and their abuse will no longer be tolerated.”
Women who are prostitutes have my sympathy and my extended hand for the help they want. Anyone who pushes to have men’s right to demand sex from women at all times even more accepted and formalized in culture than it is gets my extended middle finger...
This may be my last post there, as I'm getting tired of repeating myself and I think I've done as much good for looker-ons as I can.
**
prostitutes are the most ‘available’, the easiest targets for male violence, (and all the more so the more hidden their workplaces)
That's not true. Kids are always the easiest (smallest, least able to defend themselves emotionally or physically) targets of male violence, which is why the average age of entry into prostitution is 13. How many women have pimps with a moneyed interest in "protecting" them from other men's violence like an estimated 80% to 90% of prostitutes do? Why are there burly bouncers in strip clubs but not the average beer-swilling establishment? Strip clubs are legal and very open, but that hasn't lessened the amount of violence men commit against strippers.
I know you read my question about why legal, open, regulated brothels have "panic buttons", so it isn't true that if prostitution is made more open then men will be less violent towards prostituted women.
I don’t see how criminalising prostitution is going to eradicate male on female violence in general.
I thought we were talking about male violence against prostitutes not male violence in general, but the amazing gender equity successes Sweden has had in other areas of its culture would certainly seem to tie into their rejection of men's coercive control of prostituted women or any other woman. To too many men all women are whores, just some more than others.
Sex isn’t violence. Violence is violence.
I keep saying that to pimps and tricks but the boogers don't seem to understand. How are you going to make prostitute-using men and pimps believe this when they show no inclinations of changing their fusion of sex and violence into sexual violence? I'm pretty sure these guys already know rape and battery are wrong and illegal, so adding to existing laws "...and that goes for sex workers, too" isn't effective at reducing men's violence, as every country that has legalized prostitution or decriminalized men soliciting has discovered.
Or do you think that the fact that prostitution exists is the root cause of all violence against women?
Men and their sense of superiority and entitlement are the root cause of violence against women and violence against prostituted women. You leave out men as the agents of the actions when you speak of "prostitution exists" as if there weren't actually people, men, who make it exist. I know some people say that about God, that he always has been and always will exist, but prostitution exists because men want it, not by some eternal mandate...
I saw this at Women's Enews and wanted to stash it here somewhere, and this is as good a place as any. In Australia, the provinces that have legalized prostitution also have the highest rates of men's domestic violence against women. What a coincidence, huh?
Somewhere right now a pro-sex industry feminist is typing into her sassy, sexy blog, "I know! We'll affirm men's rights to use pornography and hookers however much they want and that will lead men to treat all women with more respect and with less acts of controlling violence!" and you better believe she means it seriously.
"New Zealand's top family court judge said the country is suffering a serious social breakdown shown by a high rate of domestic violence, The Age, an Australian newspaper, reported March 28.
Half of that nation's murders happened within families last year and 11,000 incidents of domestic violence-- one every eight minutes --occurred over a recent two-month period, the judge said.
In the United States, the rate of spousal homicide as a percentage of total homicides is between 11 and 12 percent, 40 percent lower than New Zealand's rate."
...This debate with Sweden's Gunilla Ekberg is helpful.
http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=2035
See also:
Sweden's Prostitution Solution: Why Hasn't Anyone Tried This Before?
Bloomberg Columnist Likes Sweden's Approach to Prostitution
MSNBC Investigates Human Trafficking and Prostitution in the US; Valley Advocate Advertises "Foreign Fantasies" Where "Everything Goes"
While MSNBC is busy investigating the sex industry, the Valley Advocate is busy making money from it. The Massage/Escort ads in the 1/10/08 edition below include an advertisement of "FOREIGN FANTASIES" where "Everything Goes"...
Escort Prostitution: A Response to Tom Vannah, Editor of the Valley Advocate
Mr. Vannah concedes that "there is some percentage of people who are not willing participants in the sex industry", but believes that if the Advocate refuses to accept Massage/Escort ads, this will unacceptably crimp "artistic freedom". He mentions Mapplethorpe pictures as an example. How dropping ads for commercial sex enterprises will compel the Advocate to turn away Mapplethorpe pictures is not clear to us.
Prostitution: Factsheet on Human Rights Violations
Estimates of the prevalence of incest among prostitutes range from 65% to 90%. The Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Portland, Oregon Annual Report in 1991 stated that: 85% of prostitute/clients reported history of sexual abuse in childhood; 70% reported incest. The higher percentages (80%-90%) of reports of incest and childhood sexual assaults of prostitutes come from anecdotal reports and from clinicians working with prostitutes...
Pimps target girls or women who seem naive, lonely, homeless, and rebellious. At first, the attention and feigned affection from the pimp convinces her to "be his woman." Pimps ultimately keep prostituted women in virtual captivity by verbal abuse - making a woman feel that she is utterly worthless: a toilet, a piece of trash; and by physical coercion - beatings and the threat of torture. 80% to 95% of all prostitution is pimp-controlled...
78% of 55 women who sought help from the Council for Prostitution Alternatives in 1991 reported being raped an average of 16 times a year by pimps, and were raped 33 times a year by johns...
A Canadian Report on Prostitution and Pornography concluded that girls and women in prostitution have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the national average...
In one study, 75% of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide. Prostituted women comprised 15% of all completed suicides reported by hospitals...
67% of 475 people in prostitution from South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, USA, and Zambia met diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 92% stated that they wanted to leave prostitution, and said that what they needed was: a home or safe place (73%); job training (70%); and health care (59%)...
In 1993, 42% of women arrested in Seattle on prostitution-related charges were convicted...
In 1993, 8% of men arrested in Seattle on prostitution-related charges were convicted.
Prostitution looks chic, but truth is ugly (Chicago Tribune, 4/27/08)
A comprehensive 2004 mortality study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and conducted by the American Journal of Epidemiology, shows that workplace homicide rates for women working in prostitution are 51 times that of the next most dangerous occupation for women (which is working in a liquor store). The average age of death of the women studied was 34.
Puncturing Alan Dershowitz's Delusions about Prostitution
[University of Chicago study:] According to our estimates, a woman working as a prostitute would expect an annual average of a dozen incidents of violence and 300 instances of unprotected sex...
The Village Voice Earns $80,000/Month from Prostitution, Sex Trafficking and other Adult Ads (explicit language)
[Manny, a former pimp,] says it's not difficult for a pimp to recruit his harem.
"You don't have to tie a girl up -- you just keep her high."
...Betty looks Vanessa over and observes that the more decrepit a hooker looks, the more they get picked up. Johns see vulnerability; they see a weakness, they see a five-dollar blow job...
New York Times: "The Girls Next Door"; Worldwide Sex Trafficking; Role of Porn
Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves says: ''The physical path of a person being trafficked includes stages of degradation of a person's mental state. A victim gets deprived of food, gets hungry, a little dizzy and sleep-deprived. She begins to break down; she can't think for herself. Then take away her travel documents, and you've made her stateless. Then layer on physical violence, and she begins to follow orders. Then add a foreign culture and language, and she's trapped...''
''There's a vast misunderstanding of what coercion is, of how little it takes to make someone a slave,'' Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission said. ''The destruction of dignity and sense of self, these girls' sense of resignation...''
S.M. Berg: "Hey, progressives! Cathouse got your tongue?"
News Roundup: Age of Entry into Prostitution Declining
Penn & Teller Think Nevada's Brothels are A-OK
...Farley shows that life inside Nevada's legal "pussy penitentiaries" is far from safe, glamorous, or remunerative. The prostitutes are often locked in. Many were sexually abused as children. Fines, tips and the owner's share typically cut into half the workers' earnings or more. "More than 80% of those interviewed told Farley they wanted to leave prostitution."
Bob Herbert, New York Times Op-Ed Column, "Politics and Misogyny" (1/15/08)
Prostitution is legal in much of Nevada and heavily promoted even where it’s not. In Las Vegas, where prostitution is illegal but flourishes nevertheless, Mayor Oscar Goodman has said that creating a series of legal, “magnificent” brothels would be a great development tool for his city...
A grotesque exercise in the dehumanization of women is carried out routinely at Sheri’s Ranch, a legal brothel about an hour’s ride outside of Vegas. There the women have to respond like Pavlov’s dog to an electronic bell that might ring at any hour of the day or night. At the sound of the bell, the prostitutes have five minutes to get to an assembly area where they line up, virtually naked, and submit to a humiliating inspection by any prospective customer who has happened to drop by.
Prostitution Research & Education: How Prostitution Works
Real sexual relationships are not hard to find. There are plenty of adults of both sexes who are willing to have sex if someone treats them well, and asks. But there lies the problem. Some people do not want an equal, sharing relationship. They do not want to be nice. They do not want to ask. They like the power involved in buying a human being who can be made to do almost anything...
Why Do Johns Buy Sex?
“Money displaces the emotions. It frees you from that bond, that responsibility,” explains Sam. “The distance you get from exchanging cash for sex means that afterwards you don’t contemplate the impact on the prostitute.”
How to Deter Johns from Buying Sex
One punter said: "You can buy a lot of things but you can't buy your reputation - losing your reputation is the biggest deterrent."
...Men often used prostitutes in their lunch hour, some using company cars, and the interviewees said getting their car impounded and their company finding out would stop them...
...almost a quarter thought that once they had paid for sex, they had free rein...
[Said one punter,] "You need to know how to manipulate and control [prostituted women], which is easy with street prostitutes, you just dangle drink and drugs in front of them."
...some 89% would stop using prostitutes if "named and shamed" on the sex offenders' register.
Dorchen Leidholdt, "Demand and the Debate"
...the Dutch and German experience—along with those of other jurisdictions that have legalized prostitution—have demonstrated just what happens when prostitution is legitimized and protected by law: the number of sex businesses grows, as does the demand for prostitution. Legalized prostitution brings sex tourists and heightens the demand among local men. Local women constitute an inadequate supply so foreign girls and women are trafficked in to meet the demand. The trafficked women are cheaper, younger, more exciting to customers, and easier to control. More trafficked women means more local demand and more sex tourism. The end result looks a lot like Amsterdam...
As Norma Hotaling has demonstrated in her work to educate and deter buyers and as the Swedish government has shown in arresting buyers, while demand is essential to sex industry success it also represents the weak link in the sex industry chain. Unlike prostituted women and girls, prostitution customers do have choices to make. And when they see that choosing to buy women devastates lives and threatens their own freedom and social standing, they make different choices...
Because the 20 unanimous women Petra Ostergren spoke with is commonly brought up to deny thousands of research studies done over decades in countries around the world, it would be good to familiarlize yourself with her non-study that is treated like a serious piece of research by pro-pornstitutioners.
http://www.petraostergren.com
There is a study pro-prostitutioners foolishly cite sometimes to try and prove the Swedish model doesn't work, but if they weren't so foolish they would realize that the paper, slanted as it is, actually concedes that the Swedish model is working better than the Dutch model.
I might run through this one in detail another time, but in short pro-legalization folk who put this together did not speak with one single working prostitute in Sweden. Pages 10 and 11 contain a lot of myth-debunking info about Sweden's success. Page 24 says, "The Netherlands has around twice as many inhabitants as Sweden. The scale of prostitution is about ten times of Sweden."
Purchasing Sexual Services in Sweden and the Netherlands: Legal Regulation and Experiences
http://www.dep.no/jd/english/012101-990578/dok-bn.html
I may touch up the following at a later date, and please let me know if you think somthing is weak and needs strengthening with either more proof or more explanation.
http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/?p=166
Did anyone else notice how Burrow's supportive comments on Sweden cited specific studies with specific numbers in comparison to other countries and Cicely's rebuttal contained not one concrete fact, only conjecture and hypothesis? I noticed.
"this law has been criticized by Swedish sex workers"
Which sex workers? Don't say the 20 women Petra claims to have spoken with who all unanimously agree with her that whoring is just a job and should be fully legalized. Any study where the population of 20 is unanimous should be suspect, especially when no other study done with prostitutes internationally has ever been unanimous.
the new legislation makes it harder to assess clients since “the clients are more stressed and scared, and negotiation outdoors must be done in a more rapid manner
Do rapists emit a rape-pheromone that only prostitutes can smell, and only if given enough time to adequately sniff? How did Swedish prostitutes tell the murderous clients from the non-murderous clients before 1999? Did prostitutes before the 1999 law hand out forms to prospective tricks with such questions as "Are you going to rob, rape, choke, cigarette-burn, or otherwise hurt me? Circle one: Y / N"?
there is now a greater percentage of ‘perverted’ customers and the ‘nice and kind’ customers have disappeared.
So when Swedish men rape prostitutes, the solution is not to hold those men accountable but to point the finger at feminists and blame them for changing the law that made men "have to" ask hookers for more perverted (dangerous, painful, permanent) kinds of sex acts? That makes no sense, and neither does suggesting that when the 1999 law changed suddenly a bunch of sadistic Swedish men decided to start using prostitutes.
I'm pretty sure those men were around long before 1999 because it is these men's violent and sadistic treatment of prostitutes that brought about the need for legal changes challenging men's "right" to have sex anytime and any way they wanted. If men who used prostitutes were nonviolent gentleman there would be no need for the law.
Sex workers are now more apprehensive about seeking help from the police when they have problems with an abusive customer.
Again, I ask for quotes from sex workers, because the Swedish reports say that not only are prostitutes turning abusive men in more, but those violent men usually have criminal records beyond assaulting prostitutes so they often are brought up on those charges as well, resulting in more criminals behind bars where they belong.
prices on the streets are lower since there are fewer customers and more competition. “This means that women in more desperate need of money will engage in unsafe sex and sexual activity they usually would not perform.
Doesn't this actually mean Swedish men who use prostitutes have been shown to willingly take advantage of vulnerable women to economically coerce them into painful, degrading sex acts? Again, the notion that these Swedish men weren't asking for double-anals, vagina-tearing dry sex, “prosti-tots”, etc before 1999 is absurd.
National Police Board has observed that it is harder to prosecute sex profiteers because sex-purchasers won’t testify.
Of course tricks won't testify, and they didn't regularly before either. Quotes from tricks show that they are often afraid of violence or robbery from pimps just like prostitutes. One man who responded to a researcher's newspaper ad said, "I've never tried to rescue a girl. You can get killed doing that." You can get killed testifying against the organized criminals that lord over prostitution internationally.
Sex workers can be made to testify and have “neither the rights of the accused or the victim."
Not true, cicely. Under Swedish Criminal Procedure Law (Chapter 36, 6 Rattegangsbalken) a prostitute can refuse to give evidence that can reveal that she has undertaken a "disreputable" act. It pretty much guarantees the prosecution will have a hard time getting a conviction, but a prostitute is not forced to give evidence under Swedish law.
Driving prostitution underground, whether through moral condemnation or criminalizing purchasers, only exacerbates the most dangerous aspects of prostitution.
Actually, even groups working towards prostitution legalization have had to admit there is no evidence of an increase in underground prostitution since 1999. The best they can say is that there's not enough information, but nothing has shown numbers of underground, trafficking, or other organized criminal prostitution rising and it is clear that trafficking into Sweden has decreased dramatically.
In the real world, the demands of sex workers -- better working conditions and complete de-criminalization
In the real world, 90% of prostitutes say they want out of prostitution immediately. One 5-country study of 475 prostitutes found 92% said they wanted out, and a 9-country study of 854 prostitutes found 89% wanted out immediately.
Please show where you picked up the belief that what most prostitutes demand is help staying in prostitution and complete decriminalization so they can stay prostitutes. You are demonstrably wrong about that, Cicely.
Here is what 475 prostitutes from 5 countries said:
United States: 56% don't want it legal, 88% want out now.
South Africa: 62% don't want it legal, 89% want out now
Thailand: 72% don't want it legal, 94% want out now
Turkey: 96% don't want it legal, 90% want out now
Zambia: 92% don't want it legal, 99% want out now
From http://www.prostitutionresearch.com
I would very much like to see whatever proof you may have to support your claim that what "sex workers" are really demanding is decriminalization and better whoring conditions.
Neutral observers in Sweden have conceded that it’s impossible to measure accurately the incidence of prostitution since the legislation took effect as methods of soliciting have moved dramatically to the internet and mobile phones.
That would go against what you said earlier about an increase in underground prostitution. It has been guessed at but not proven, and recorded phone conversations with pimps and traffickers have shown the new law effectively deters them.
there is a new crime in Sweden. Women posing as sex workers rob their ‘clients’, who are unlikely to report the theft to authorities for fear of being prosecuted
I think that's woman hating, unproven bullshit that feeds off men's loathing of women as gold-digging, conniving greedy bitches. What you're saying is that there's a new crime that no one has reported yet, but you're certain it's there anyway because women are lying bitches like that.
Sure, it's theoretically possible Swedish women might pretend to be prostitutes (who don't fear men's insane amount of violence towards whores for some strange reason) to begin robbing men, but for a long time now Swedish women could threaten to "cry rape" in order to steal from or blackmail any man, trick or not. That hasn't been happening, so saying that to give prostitutes the power to turn the men who abuse them has lead to malicious, lying Swedish women "crying rape" for an easy payday, oh but the men are too afraid to report it so there's zero proof, is misogynist bullshit...
I'm home now and I thought it would be good to look up the statistics from the other 4 countries that I left out of the first post.
Canada: 68% don't want it legal, 95% want out now
Colombia: 80% don't want it legal, 97% want out now
Mexico: 49% don't want it legal, 68% want out now
Germany: 65% don't want it legal, 85% want out now
Particularly interesting about Germany's numbers is that brothel prostitution is already legal in Germany but 59% of the prostitutes interviewed did not think legalization made them safer from rape and physical assault.
Prostitution is also legal in Columbia, and the age that children are legally allowed to become prostitutes is 14. Prostitution is legal in Costa Rica and the acceptable age of entry into prostitution is 15. Unsurprisingly, both countries have enormous problems with child prostitution and are hotspot destinations for child sexual predators from around the world.
Across the 9 countries, 47% were upset by attempts to make them do what others had seen in pornography and 49% reported pornography was made of them as they were prostituted...
The debate at Reclusive Leftist continues. As a reminder, everything I write can be used by any of y'all any time you like.
Here's how cicely responded:
Firstly, I did write earlier in this thread, or in another thread here on prostitution, that I accept that the vast majority of girls and women working as prostitutes want not to be. I wouldn’t contradict 90% plus, overall. It probably follows that these women would not want prostitution legalised. On the other hand, from your own statistics, a considerable percentage of sex workers surveyed would. 44% in the US, 38% in South Africa, 28% in Thailand, 4% in Turkey and 8% in Zambia. At least these women havn’t said they would not want prostitution legalised, since it would have been noted if they had.
Clearly there are differences between countries, which will have origins in those particular cultures, but don’t you agree that 44% in the US is a pretty significant minority? So, the next question, set against that statistic, is, why do 88% still want to get out in the US? Is it for some because of the unsafe conditions they are forced to work in, while prostitution is criminalised? What do you think explains this discrepancy?
My thing is, we do have to have these discussions directly with those women doing sex work, and who do want to continue but with legal protections and safe conditions. (and I can reference a few sex worker organisations which have websites if you’d like me to…) I can’t find any justification for ignoring them since they will demonstrably continue to be motivated to put themselves at risk even without these basic civil rights. What motivates them? Are they entitled to define for themselves what doing sex work means in their own lives? Conservatives say ‘no’ for moral reasons, many feminists say ‘no’ for political reasons, I say ‘yes’ for largely humanitarian and civil rights reasons. I believe that only de-criminalisation has the potential to fully protect sex workers, whatever the underlying reasons for their participation in the sex industry may be. And I don’t pretend to always know what they may be.
This is all I have time to write for now. I will return…
Here's my response
"My thing is, we do have to have these discussions directly with those women doing sex work...since they will demonstrably continue to be motivated to put themselves at risk"
Well first, thousands of prostitutes (male, women, transgendered) have already been spoken with and I have shown you where you can find what they have to say about it. Wendy McElroy started a study of women volunteering at sex worker rights organizations and she abandoned it when it became clear even among this most biased of prostitution populations the women didn't really want to be sex workers. Carol Leigh, aka Scarlot Harlot, said in a 2004 debate, "95% of my friends want out of prostitution."
You see, my thing is to stop looking at poverty-stricken, desperate women and asking them why they do desperate things for money they desperately need. My thing is focusing on men with disposable income who could freely choose not to sexually exploit drug addicted, sexually molested girls and asking them why they insist on their "right" to do so.
Your focus on prostituted women is not where the problem lies so you will not find the solution there either. You need to start talking about the men who choose to use prostitutes just because they want to and it gives them pleasure. Pro-prostitution advocates consider talking about the men who use prostitutes anathema, so they focus on the women as if changing women is going to change how violently and abusively men treat prostitutes, and all women really.
The male belief in their entitlement to sex is the problem, not prostituting women. A great thing about changing the prostitution debate to reject men's "right" to have sex any time, any way, as much as they want is that it goes right to the heart of rape culture and will benefit all women.
Men's widespread sexual violence against prostitutes is caused by the cultural acceptance of men's ownership and entitlement to access women's bodies. Men's sexual harassment of the women they work with also stems from a culture that accepts men's entitlement to access females sexually. Men who rape believe men have a right to use women's bodies to relieve themselves any time, any way, as much as they want. Anti-choicers believe men have a right to women's bodies by dint of the sexual use of her body by an impregnating man.
The problem, I mean The Problem, of sexism is that men feel they have a right to use all female bodies any time they want, any way they want. Feminists who cannot bring themselves to reject the patriarchal notion that men have a right to sexually access women's bodies are not going to be effective lessening any of these epidemic sexist ills if they keep looking at women as if it were women who had the problem that needs fixing.
The Swedish policy addressing prostitution as women experience it (harmful, humiliating, violent) instead of how men experience it (harmless, entertaining, pleasurable) is a revolutionary moment in the history of the women's movement. I hope more good-intentioned feminists can move away from the ideological place that accepts prostitution as inevitable because boys will be boys and men's "right" to sex from women will not be questioned.
Until more feminists start questioning men's entitlement over female bodies, significant advancements in women's right to be free from rape, sex harassment, and prostitution can't happen. Rejecting prostitution is consistent with the feminist belief that men do not have a right to sex from women, but too many feminist women still can't say this standing tall and without apologies for believing it...
Tearing down the "New Zealand decriminalization works" lie.
New Zealand is not protecting prostituted women and children. In April 2005, the naked body of sex worker Susan "Ritalin Sue" Sutherland was found in Christchurch. She was described as being in a disturbed state of mind the night she was killed after she was chased down the street by people to whom she owed money.
Tell me how decriminalization of prostitution helped Susan escape first from her addiction, second from her murderer(s). If men don't change their sexually exploitive, abusing ways, nothing changes. Decriminalization didn't keep Susan alive and it didn't help her beat her drug addiction.
I have a number of articles about prostitution in New Zealand I've collected.
Scoop Independent News reported on April 19, 2005 that, “A police survey undertaken in 2001 found just six brothels offering in-house services, whereas the most recent survey undertaken between November 2003 and April 2004 identified 93."
Is that what a successful prostitution law looks like?
Stuff reports the number of prostitutes rose 40% and that street prostitution jumped from up from 3% in 2001 to 11% in 2004. http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3252861a11,00.html
Scoop announced on September 27, 2005 that a Wellington brothel owner who sold a 14-year old, who was in the care of Child, Youth and Family Services, to 24 paying men was given a paltry sentence of 300 hours of community service.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0509/S00279.htm
Is that what a successful prostitution law looks like?
Here's a Prostitution Law Review Committee report
http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports ... index.html
There have been just five convictions under the Prostitution Reform Act since it was enacted in June 2003. Five convictions in two years and the Prostitution Law Reform Committee released a report indicating 20% of those involved in street soliciting are under-aged and street prostitution has escalated to nearly 4 times its numbers prior to decriminalization.
Is that what a successful prostitution law looks like?
It's proven fact that trafficking into Sweden is down enormously since 1999. A Stockholm organization found a 75% decrease in men seeking prostitutes in Sweden since implementation of the new law. It is also true that the Netherlands has twice the population of Sweden but 10 times the prostitution. Those facts alone should be considered successes, especially when the new law has been in place a scant six years. I believe the Swedish law is meeting its goals where legalization and decriminalization have failed to meet theirs and I feel it's a positive step towards the evolution of humanity as a whole. There can be no equality and democracy while the human bodies are considered buyable and sellable
cicely says, the most disadvantaged women appear to be still left hanging out to dry, and working in more dangerous circumstances than they were prior to 1999., but that has not been proven. I'll need to see exact numbers and quotes from sex workers before believing this has come to pass and so far all I've seen is unproven speculation. A report that says "probably circumstances have gotten more dangerous" is not something I can take seriously.
I would believe Petra's report if she didn't only use vague terms like "some" and "many". If she were honest she would lay her data out to be examined, maybe saying "Of 20 sex workers interviewed with methodology X, 10 wanted out of prostitution immediately, 8 wanted legalization and government assistance to stay sex workers, 2 did not want any government action, and here are some representative quotes from each viewpoint." That's what a quality piece of convincing research looks like, and that's not Petra's study.
cicely, it should come as no surprise I do indeed think your belief that men have a biological need to stick their penises in many more body holes than a prostitute-free world can accommodate is bogus. But I'm more concerned with the way you still can't seem to the look the extreme amounts of sexual violence men commit against prostitutes directly in the eye. You wax poetic about families, social cohesion, and the biological nature of human sexuality but you haven't addressed the incredible amount of violence men commit against prostituted women and I feel the generalities you've used in your last post serves to obfuscate men's abuse of women and men's responsibility to stopping that abuse.
You have to be able to explain why prostitutes are the most raped women in the world to see where people who reject prostitution as "work" are coming from when they deny that any person has a right to economically coerce others into sexual servitude...
My latest reply:
Your link to the source of the 3-11% jump in street prostitution is broken. I don’t know what that figure means.
You can read the original data at the Prostitution Law Committee Report linked. There’s a handy chart that shows in 2001 street prostitution was 3% of New Zealand prostitution and in 2003 the number jumped to 11% of prostitutes on the street. This, combined with a 40% increase in the numbers of prostituted women overall and the massive increase in brothels, make New Zealand the latest country to experience these well-recognized trends in countries where the government profits from selling women’s bodies.
After the Netherlands legalized the sex industry it was estimated to have grown overall by 25%, trafficking to the Netherlands increased to meet increased men’s demands, child prostitution increased, and street prostitution remained as dangerous and organized-crime controlled as ever.
Alon, from untrue and meanspirited comments like “New Zealand’s decriminalization policies is probably the world’s most successful, so anti-prostitution advocates won’t do any research about it” to comments accusing me of wanting prostitutes “thrown on the street so that you can feel better about it” to slamming the Swedish model with inanities like “So far there’s a clear reduction in the reported number of prostitutes and of abuse cases, but there’s also an increase in the unreported number,” when it’s oxymoronic to definitively report on unreported cases, I don’t care to do further keep-up on correcting your many mistakes beyond this post.
You said the Swedish model has failed and were given specifics about how it has reduced trafficking, reduced men’s demand and reduced street prostitution. Rumblings of increased underground activity may or may not be true and time will tell for sure, but trafficking, demand and street prostitution are down and those were the goals set forth by the Swedish law.
You said New Zealand decriminalizing brothel prostitution to try and reduce street prostitution is the most successful model and were shown New Zealand reports that there are 40% more prostitutes than before decriminalization, street prostitution has quadrupled, there have been only five child “prostitot” convictions in three years and pimps caught sexually selling children are given community service hours for facilitating systematized child rape. New Zealand has gone backwards in its stated goal to reduce street prostitution because decriminalization actually increased street prostitution fourfold.
You seem to think an adequate reply is the dismissive “Decriminalization won’t fix my socks, either” and “That sort of non-enforcement is the norm in every Western country,” but then how can you conclude that New Zealand’s decriminalization is working better than what is done in other countries?
"Thailand, where NGOs provided condoms and educated people about how to avoid STDs, resulting in an immense drop in AIDS infection rates among prostitutes"
What about the immense drop in men raping prostitutes, or the immense drop in men murdering prostitutes, or the average age of a girl’s subsumption into prostitution rising above the early teen years? What about men’s violence, a subject you and cicely assiduously avoid despite my best attempts to address that male violence? What if prostituted women’s lives mattered more than Western men’s fears of catching AIDS from a cheap, teenaged Thai whore while on vacation, and by saying that we mean no man has a right to sex on demand, with or without condoms?
Alon, you’ve been aggressively rude, don’t have facts to back up what you’ve said, and the weird logic you use to justify men’s “right” to selfishly, sexually use female bodies whenever and however they want defies reason.
Cicely said: “We are not going to change much at all in 6 or 3 years anywhere” and you couldn’t be more wrong because a lot has changed in the past 3 years in New Zealand and the past 6 years in Sweden. New Zealand’s 40% increase in prostitutes, explosion of brothels, and quadrupling of street prostitution are big changes for the worse. Sweden’s decriminalization of prostitutes but not pimps and johns, reduction in men seeking prostitutes in Stockholm by 75%, reduction in trafficking to the country, and increase in services available to help women transition out of prostitution are major changes of the past few years.
There is a huge difference between being economically and circumstantially free (say, drug addiction free) to choose sex work, and not being free to choose. That’s where our efforts should be being directed in my opinion.
I consider this rather offensive. Prostitutes are clear about where they want your efforts to be directed when they say they want help getting out of prostitution. They are saying they need drug addiction treatment, safe housing, job training, and childcare to meet their goals of escaping a life of prostitution and you’ve twisted that to say, “What they really want is the freedom to choose sex working as a career.” What gives you the right to rewrite their clear requests for help getting out of prostitution into them wanting to be “free to choose” prostitution? That’s not what they’re saying, and you need to listen to what they’re saying when they overwhelmingly say they want out.
Suggesting that we should wait until there’s a sexism-free world before we can determine if prostitution is sexist, humiliating, violent, health-wrecking, and soul-detroying is a slap in the face to prostitutes living now and an abandonment of responsibility to prostitutes living now who need help getting out from under the crushing weight of men’s demands for prostitution now...
My latest; I've gotta say I'm very pleased with how the ending turned out:
What about men’s violence, a subject you and cicely assiduously avoid despite my best attempts to address that male violence?
You’re still not even minimally acknowledging and addressing the men who do commit violent acts in huge numbers against prostitutes or the violence they’re committing. You’re written a lot of apology but I’d rather you skipped with the apology paragraph and move on to the “Why are prostitutes the most raped women in the world?” and “If laws against rape and asking pimps and tricks nicely not to rape haven’t worked so far, why believe pimp & trick decriminalization is going to stop men’s violence against prostitutes?”I don’t think I’ve been thorough enough in responding to your posts at all Sam, as I’ve left you with the impression that I want to avoid the issue of male violence. I absolutely and unequivocally do not. I wrote my previous post without reading your last one and I hope it helps assure you that this is the case. Unlike you though, I haven’t come to absolute conclusions about the best way to approach the issue of prostitution, or that prostitution per se is always violence against women.
Here’s another good one, “Why are legal brothels built with ‘panic buttons’ in them?” I believe if we have to build brothels with the routine expectation that many women are going to get violently attacked by many tricks then we shouldn’t be building them at all. A Dutch brothel owner complained about the regulation that there be pillows on the beds because, “You don’t want pillows in there, it’s a murder weapon.”
But you have. You do when you say, ”There are clearly requests from both sides - and from prostitutes, or sex workers, themselves,” which implies a near 50-50 split. To go with the numbers we have, 92% of prostitutes want help getting out of prostitution immediately, so to speak of “both sides” and “the other side” as you do really does dispute that the “vast majority” of prostitutes want out immediately.”I’ve never disputed that the vast majority of prostitutes in the world would rather not be, or that they should be able to access all the help they need to change their life circumstances.”
You still haven’t talked about men’s responsibility for stopping their exploitation and violence against prostitutes, you’re still focusing on prostitutes and trying to make it as if it’s their “choice” to get raped, cut, slashed, burned, punched and kicked by men regularly. There is no sensible feminist reason to ignore the 92% of prostitutes who do not consider it work but slavery in favor of the 8% minority, especially when doing so only affirms the rape culture that affirms men’s God-given right to wet their penises with women’s holes any way they desire, any time they want it.Some women, who are prostitutes themselves, believe so. Should they stand accused of betraying all women, even being ‘responsible’ for the pain of unwilling participants - or do they have a right to their own position…?
Like Einstein said about not being able to simultaneously prevent war and prepare for war, you cannot affirm men demanding and coercing sex from women anytime they want as acceptable at the same time you’re trying to get through to men that they do not have any right to demand or coerce sex from any woman, ever.
Einstein also said, “The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men.”
Not much, because prostituting women aren’t the problem, men who use prostitutes are the problem and I’ve got a lot to say to them.what do you say to the women who wish to continue to work as prostitutes?
To women who want to legitimize men’s right to economically coerce poverty-stricken girls and women into sex they would otherwise not consent to I’ve got something to say. To anyone who says we should look at prostitution as an acceptable job for poor, brown, young females, to anyone who personally profits from the globalized pornstitution industries, to anyone who knows that prostitutes are brutalized by men more than any other group of women and still encourages vulnerable women to put their bodies in control of dangerous men who show no willingness to respect their basic human rights, I have some things to say.
Mostly it boils down to, “Stop pushing women to pain-filled lives highly likely to culminate in early and violent deaths because you can’t muster up the courage to tell men they have no right to masturbate with a woman’s body and their abuse will no longer be tolerated.”
Women who are prostitutes have my sympathy and my extended hand for the help they want. Anyone who pushes to have men’s right to demand sex from women at all times even more accepted and formalized in culture than it is gets my extended middle finger...
This may be my last post there, as I'm getting tired of repeating myself and I think I've done as much good for looker-ons as I can.
**
prostitutes are the most ‘available’, the easiest targets for male violence, (and all the more so the more hidden their workplaces)
That's not true. Kids are always the easiest (smallest, least able to defend themselves emotionally or physically) targets of male violence, which is why the average age of entry into prostitution is 13. How many women have pimps with a moneyed interest in "protecting" them from other men's violence like an estimated 80% to 90% of prostitutes do? Why are there burly bouncers in strip clubs but not the average beer-swilling establishment? Strip clubs are legal and very open, but that hasn't lessened the amount of violence men commit against strippers.
I know you read my question about why legal, open, regulated brothels have "panic buttons", so it isn't true that if prostitution is made more open then men will be less violent towards prostituted women.
I don’t see how criminalising prostitution is going to eradicate male on female violence in general.
I thought we were talking about male violence against prostitutes not male violence in general, but the amazing gender equity successes Sweden has had in other areas of its culture would certainly seem to tie into their rejection of men's coercive control of prostituted women or any other woman. To too many men all women are whores, just some more than others.
Sex isn’t violence. Violence is violence.
I keep saying that to pimps and tricks but the boogers don't seem to understand. How are you going to make prostitute-using men and pimps believe this when they show no inclinations of changing their fusion of sex and violence into sexual violence? I'm pretty sure these guys already know rape and battery are wrong and illegal, so adding to existing laws "...and that goes for sex workers, too" isn't effective at reducing men's violence, as every country that has legalized prostitution or decriminalized men soliciting has discovered.
Or do you think that the fact that prostitution exists is the root cause of all violence against women?
Men and their sense of superiority and entitlement are the root cause of violence against women and violence against prostituted women. You leave out men as the agents of the actions when you speak of "prostitution exists" as if there weren't actually people, men, who make it exist. I know some people say that about God, that he always has been and always will exist, but prostitution exists because men want it, not by some eternal mandate...
I saw this at Women's Enews and wanted to stash it here somewhere, and this is as good a place as any. In Australia, the provinces that have legalized prostitution also have the highest rates of men's domestic violence against women. What a coincidence, huh?
Somewhere right now a pro-sex industry feminist is typing into her sassy, sexy blog, "I know! We'll affirm men's rights to use pornography and hookers however much they want and that will lead men to treat all women with more respect and with less acts of controlling violence!" and you better believe she means it seriously.
"New Zealand's top family court judge said the country is suffering a serious social breakdown shown by a high rate of domestic violence, The Age, an Australian newspaper, reported March 28.
Half of that nation's murders happened within families last year and 11,000 incidents of domestic violence-- one every eight minutes --occurred over a recent two-month period, the judge said.
In the United States, the rate of spousal homicide as a percentage of total homicides is between 11 and 12 percent, 40 percent lower than New Zealand's rate."
...This debate with Sweden's Gunilla Ekberg is helpful.
http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=2035
See also:
Sweden's Prostitution Solution: Why Hasn't Anyone Tried This Before?
Bloomberg Columnist Likes Sweden's Approach to Prostitution
MSNBC Investigates Human Trafficking and Prostitution in the US; Valley Advocate Advertises "Foreign Fantasies" Where "Everything Goes"
While MSNBC is busy investigating the sex industry, the Valley Advocate is busy making money from it. The Massage/Escort ads in the 1/10/08 edition below include an advertisement of "FOREIGN FANTASIES" where "Everything Goes"...
Escort Prostitution: A Response to Tom Vannah, Editor of the Valley Advocate
Mr. Vannah concedes that "there is some percentage of people who are not willing participants in the sex industry", but believes that if the Advocate refuses to accept Massage/Escort ads, this will unacceptably crimp "artistic freedom". He mentions Mapplethorpe pictures as an example. How dropping ads for commercial sex enterprises will compel the Advocate to turn away Mapplethorpe pictures is not clear to us.
Prostitution: Factsheet on Human Rights Violations
Estimates of the prevalence of incest among prostitutes range from 65% to 90%. The Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Portland, Oregon Annual Report in 1991 stated that: 85% of prostitute/clients reported history of sexual abuse in childhood; 70% reported incest. The higher percentages (80%-90%) of reports of incest and childhood sexual assaults of prostitutes come from anecdotal reports and from clinicians working with prostitutes...
Pimps target girls or women who seem naive, lonely, homeless, and rebellious. At first, the attention and feigned affection from the pimp convinces her to "be his woman." Pimps ultimately keep prostituted women in virtual captivity by verbal abuse - making a woman feel that she is utterly worthless: a toilet, a piece of trash; and by physical coercion - beatings and the threat of torture. 80% to 95% of all prostitution is pimp-controlled...
78% of 55 women who sought help from the Council for Prostitution Alternatives in 1991 reported being raped an average of 16 times a year by pimps, and were raped 33 times a year by johns...
A Canadian Report on Prostitution and Pornography concluded that girls and women in prostitution have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the national average...
In one study, 75% of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide. Prostituted women comprised 15% of all completed suicides reported by hospitals...
67% of 475 people in prostitution from South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, USA, and Zambia met diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 92% stated that they wanted to leave prostitution, and said that what they needed was: a home or safe place (73%); job training (70%); and health care (59%)...
In 1993, 42% of women arrested in Seattle on prostitution-related charges were convicted...
In 1993, 8% of men arrested in Seattle on prostitution-related charges were convicted.
Prostitution looks chic, but truth is ugly (Chicago Tribune, 4/27/08)
A comprehensive 2004 mortality study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and conducted by the American Journal of Epidemiology, shows that workplace homicide rates for women working in prostitution are 51 times that of the next most dangerous occupation for women (which is working in a liquor store). The average age of death of the women studied was 34.
Puncturing Alan Dershowitz's Delusions about Prostitution
[University of Chicago study:] According to our estimates, a woman working as a prostitute would expect an annual average of a dozen incidents of violence and 300 instances of unprotected sex...
The Village Voice Earns $80,000/Month from Prostitution, Sex Trafficking and other Adult Ads (explicit language)
[Manny, a former pimp,] says it's not difficult for a pimp to recruit his harem.
"You don't have to tie a girl up -- you just keep her high."
...Betty looks Vanessa over and observes that the more decrepit a hooker looks, the more they get picked up. Johns see vulnerability; they see a weakness, they see a five-dollar blow job...
New York Times: "The Girls Next Door"; Worldwide Sex Trafficking; Role of Porn
Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves says: ''The physical path of a person being trafficked includes stages of degradation of a person's mental state. A victim gets deprived of food, gets hungry, a little dizzy and sleep-deprived. She begins to break down; she can't think for herself. Then take away her travel documents, and you've made her stateless. Then layer on physical violence, and she begins to follow orders. Then add a foreign culture and language, and she's trapped...''
''There's a vast misunderstanding of what coercion is, of how little it takes to make someone a slave,'' Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission said. ''The destruction of dignity and sense of self, these girls' sense of resignation...''
S.M. Berg: "Hey, progressives! Cathouse got your tongue?"
News Roundup: Age of Entry into Prostitution Declining
Penn & Teller Think Nevada's Brothels are A-OK
...Farley shows that life inside Nevada's legal "pussy penitentiaries" is far from safe, glamorous, or remunerative. The prostitutes are often locked in. Many were sexually abused as children. Fines, tips and the owner's share typically cut into half the workers' earnings or more. "More than 80% of those interviewed told Farley they wanted to leave prostitution."
Bob Herbert, New York Times Op-Ed Column, "Politics and Misogyny" (1/15/08)
Prostitution is legal in much of Nevada and heavily promoted even where it’s not. In Las Vegas, where prostitution is illegal but flourishes nevertheless, Mayor Oscar Goodman has said that creating a series of legal, “magnificent” brothels would be a great development tool for his city...
A grotesque exercise in the dehumanization of women is carried out routinely at Sheri’s Ranch, a legal brothel about an hour’s ride outside of Vegas. There the women have to respond like Pavlov’s dog to an electronic bell that might ring at any hour of the day or night. At the sound of the bell, the prostitutes have five minutes to get to an assembly area where they line up, virtually naked, and submit to a humiliating inspection by any prospective customer who has happened to drop by.
Prostitution Research & Education: How Prostitution Works
Real sexual relationships are not hard to find. There are plenty of adults of both sexes who are willing to have sex if someone treats them well, and asks. But there lies the problem. Some people do not want an equal, sharing relationship. They do not want to be nice. They do not want to ask. They like the power involved in buying a human being who can be made to do almost anything...
Why Do Johns Buy Sex?
“Money displaces the emotions. It frees you from that bond, that responsibility,” explains Sam. “The distance you get from exchanging cash for sex means that afterwards you don’t contemplate the impact on the prostitute.”
How to Deter Johns from Buying Sex
One punter said: "You can buy a lot of things but you can't buy your reputation - losing your reputation is the biggest deterrent."
...Men often used prostitutes in their lunch hour, some using company cars, and the interviewees said getting their car impounded and their company finding out would stop them...
...almost a quarter thought that once they had paid for sex, they had free rein...
[Said one punter,] "You need to know how to manipulate and control [prostituted women], which is easy with street prostitutes, you just dangle drink and drugs in front of them."
...some 89% would stop using prostitutes if "named and shamed" on the sex offenders' register.
Dorchen Leidholdt, "Demand and the Debate"
...the Dutch and German experience—along with those of other jurisdictions that have legalized prostitution—have demonstrated just what happens when prostitution is legitimized and protected by law: the number of sex businesses grows, as does the demand for prostitution. Legalized prostitution brings sex tourists and heightens the demand among local men. Local women constitute an inadequate supply so foreign girls and women are trafficked in to meet the demand. The trafficked women are cheaper, younger, more exciting to customers, and easier to control. More trafficked women means more local demand and more sex tourism. The end result looks a lot like Amsterdam...
As Norma Hotaling has demonstrated in her work to educate and deter buyers and as the Swedish government has shown in arresting buyers, while demand is essential to sex industry success it also represents the weak link in the sex industry chain. Unlike prostituted women and girls, prostitution customers do have choices to make. And when they see that choosing to buy women devastates lives and threatens their own freedom and social standing, they make different choices...
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