priceofliberty:
komentajaleksa:
You can’t be serious citing the NSWP for evidence that the Nordic model is a failure. The NSWP is a known pimp organisation whose vice president, Alejandra Gil, was convicted of human trafficking in March 2015. From the article, published in October 2015:
NSWP is no fringe group. In 2009 it was appointed Co-Chair of the UNAIDS ‘Advisory Group on HIV and Sex Work’. UNAIDS is the international body responsible for leading global efforts to reverse the spread of HIV, and the advisory group was established to “review and participate in the development of UNAIDS policy, programme or advocacy documents, or statements.” Alejandra Gil is also personally acknowledged in a 2012 World Health Organisation (WHO) report about the sex trade as one of the “experts” who dedicated her “time and expertise” to developing its recommendations. NSWP’s logo is on the front cover, alongside the logos of WHO, UNAIDS and the United Nations Population Fund.
Amnesty International also reference NSWP and the Advisory Group it co-chaired in its draft policy calling for brothel keeping to be decriminalised – a proposal that has been condemned by prostitution survivors and equality groups around the world, including SPACE International, Women’s Aid and the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. Amnesty’s policy, due to be finalised this month, cites “human rights organisations” that endorse their proposal: “Most significantly,” they write, “a large number of sex worker organisations and networks, including the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, support the decriminalisation of sex work”.
How could this happen? How could a pimp wind up second in command at a global organisation that officially advised UN agencies on prostitution policy and that is referenced in Amnesty International’s draft policy? And did the “Madam of Sullivan” divorce her interests as a pimp when she was putting demands to governments and global institutions on behalf of NSWP?
She didn’t have to. NSWP campaign for “third parties” in prostitution to be decriminalised. This, they state, includes “managers, brothel keepers… and anyone else who is seen as facilitating sex work”[i]. The organisation also insists that “Sex workers can be employees, employers, or participate in a range of other work related relationships.”[ii] According to NSWP policy, as a pimp Alejandra Gil was a “sex worker” who’s precise role was a “manager” in the trade. The organisation lobbies for pimping and brothel keeping to be legally recognised as legitimate work. To fulfil her role as Vice President of NSWP, Gil didn’t have to mask her vested interests as a pimp, she had a mandate to pursue them.
Pimps and traffickers commonly position themselves as “sex workers” and leaders of “sex worker” activist groups. I hope you’re bright enough to notice there is a conflict of interest in a union where brothel owners, aka pimps, purport to speak for the rights of prostituted women! Of course pimps are going to oppose legislation that criminalises pimping, trafficking, and purchasing sex. Ending all that would mean ending their profits.
Douglas Fox is another pimp who calls himself a “sex worker.” A couple years ago he helped influence the decision by Amnesty International to promote full decriminalisation of the sex industry. Amnesty tried to deny this, but this is what they wrote in their draft policy: “Sexual desire and activity are a fundamental human need. To criminalize
those who are unable or unwilling to fulfill that need through more
traditionally recognized means and thus purchase sex, may amount to a
violation of the right to privacy and undermine the rights to free
expression and health.” The belief that sex is a human right and women denying men access to their bodies “violates” men’s rights, is pro-rape and anti-woman. This is something that could only have come from people invested in upholding the sex industry. Here is an article that exposes the details of Fox’s involvement with Amnesty International.
Now guess whom Amnesty International gets funding from. The answer can be found in this article by Meghan Murphy, who uncovered the dishonest journalism of Emily Bazelon. Bazelon’s article for the New York Times supported full decriminalisation of the sex industry:
Bazelon’s claim that she’d known nothing of this topic or debate [about the legalisation of prostitution] prior
to beginning work on this piece seems even stranger as I discovered her
connections to George Soros, a billionaire whose Open Society
Foundations (OSF) not only is a major donor to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and UNAIDS, but a number of sex work lobby groups across the world. Soros and OSF funded the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), which was revealed to be a front for a pimping operation last year, as their vice president, Gil Alejandra, who served as co-chair of the UNAIDS Advisory Group on HIV and Sex Work & Global Working Group on HIV and Sex Work Policy, was
arrested for sex trafficking. (Bazelon spoke to the president of NSWP
for her piece, but didn’t mention the trafficking conviction, though she
had been made her aware of it by another interviewee, Rachel Moran.)
The man who appears to be the biggest financial backer of the pro-legalization lobby in the world, whose organization is overtly pro-legalization
and funded reports Amnesty International relied on in order to support
their position also has longstanding ties to Bazelon and her family.
Bazelon herself was a Soros Media Fellow in 2004 and
her grandfather’s foundation, the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for
Mental Health Law (Emily’s sister and mother both serve on the Center’s
board), receives over a $1 million in funding from OSF.
Ah, what tangled webs they weave. Amnesty International, UNAIDS, and Human Rights Watch, all of which have adopted pro-legalisation stances toward the sex industry, receive funding from the same pimp-friendly, billionaire-owned organisation that donates money to the pimp-led NSWP.
The anon is right, you do need to do more research, because this is what you’re supporting.
There are heaps of evidence that legalisation drives up human trafficking. The experiment legalising prostitution in Germany was a huge failure that resulted in dropped prices (due to demand), worsened conditions for prostituted women, and an influx of trafficked women from Eastern Europe. A 2012 study on the impact of legalised prostitution on 116 countries found that countries with legalised prostitution have higher rates of human trafficking. A summary of the study states:
– Countries
with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human
trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The
scale effect of legalizing prostitution, i.e. expansion of the market,
outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored
over illegal workers. On average, countries with legalized prostitution
report a greater incidence of human trafficking inflows.
– The
effect of legal prostitution on human trafficking inflows is stronger in
high-income countries than middle-income countries. Because trafficking
for the purpose of sexual exploitation requires that clients in a
potential destination country have sufficient purchasing power, domestic
supply acts as a constraint.
– Criminalization of prostitution in
Sweden resulted in the shrinking of the prostitution market and the
decline of human trafficking inflows. Cross-country comparisons of
Sweden with Denmark (where prostitution is decriminalized) and Germany
(expanded legalization of prostitution) are consistent with the
quantitative analysis, showing that trafficking inflows decreased with
criminalization and increased with legalization.
– The type of
legalization of prostitution does not matter — it only matters whether
prostitution is legal or not. Whether third-party involvement (persons
who facilitate the prostitution businesses, i.e, “pimps”) is allowed or
not does not have an effect on human trafficking inflows into a country.
Legalization of prostitution itself is more important in explaining
human trafficking than the type of legalization.
The Nordic model does work. It comes as no surprise that people with a financial stake in maintaining the sex industry want to obscure the evidence or lie and say there is no evidence. But there is evidence, and the studies show the Nordic model is effective in reducing violence against prostituted women, reducing human trafficking, and reducing the number of men who buy sex. Reported rapes went down by half in Norway.
It is important that you bring up Alejandra Gil because her ‘example’ serves to hammer in my overarching point that State (public) regulation (and criminalization) of sex work only serves the interests of the black market and evidences corruption. No corruption could be more evident than the vice president of a public works organization who works directly with international organizations like the UN being convicted of abuse. Gil was able to serve as a pimp precisely because her position of authority shrouded her illicit activities from public view. She came to be known as the
“Madam of Sullivan” precisely because she was in a position to protect her blatantly immoral and unjust activities from the public eye.
Fortunately, the study I cited above was supported and written by scholars with the Washington College of Law, not NSWP which merely hosted the link I provided. The scholars were not funded by NSWP, nor were they funded by George Soros (a known international schemer whose vested interests and donations you are right to investigate [I lambaste Soros near-daily]).
I thank you for citing Sina’s story of abuse, because it evidences yet another instance of the type of ‘sex work’ that simply does not constitute a lawful, equitable, and justified interaction. No one, least of all myself, is contending that the abuse she faced should be legalized. No one. What is being contended here is that adult men and women have the right to engage in whatever relationship they consent to upon whatever terms they set out so long as they are not harming one another. My contention, the contention of any sex work advocate, is that the State has no authority to regulate mutually-beneficial relationships built upon a foundation of consent.
The article you cited focused on Sina’s story which is not an example of this type of exchange:
DER SPIEGEL suggests that the case of
16-year old Sina, forced to work in a flat-rate brothel, is a typical
example illustrating the failure of the German prostitution law, since
the law would not protect her. However, employing a person less than 18
years of age at a brothel is a criminal offence under German law. Thus,
Sina’s situation is not one that the prostitution law aims to address,
and therefore, the law does not fail her in this regard. The failure of
the legal system towards her situation and towards other victims of
exploitation must lie somewhere else.
Contrary to DER SPIEGEL, the number of
convictions for “pimping” did neither decrease nor increase in
statistically significant ways with the new law. DER SPIEGEL claims 32
identified “pimps” were convicted in 2011, as opposed to 151 in 2000. An
official government reply to a parliamentary enquiry from 1997,
however, shows that low convictions for “pimping” were actually a
trend: in 1994, there were only 39 convictions for “pimping”. Numbers
from the federal statistics bureau suggest similar developments.
According to official statistics,
the number of officially identified victims of human trafficking
decreased significantly in the past fifteen to twenty years. The same
government reply from 1997 mentioned 1,196 victims of human trafficking
in 1995 and 1,473 victims in 1996, while the statistics of the past four
years on record show steady figures of an annual 610 to 710 victims of
human trafficking for sexual exploitation, i.e. 640 victims in 2011.
Human trafficking for labor exploitation
is also a criminal offence, which so far has failed, however, to attract
much interest by the German public. Recent research has shown that,
until recently, even counseling centers for victims of human trafficking
were mostly unaware of the possibility of labor trafficking and
unprepared to provide adequate support. The general lack of interest
towards labor trafficking is reflected in the low number of identified
victims: only 32 individuals in 2011.
With regards to the ‘Nordic Model’, I highly suggest that you read the article I cited rather than dismissing it out-of-hand due to the nature of the organization hosting the online content (again, published not by the NWSP, but by the Washington School of Law). A brief summary follows:
No evidence the law reduced the number of sex buyers
Although fear of arrest and public exposure are certainly strong deterrents, they are not a guarantee of changed behavior. In fact, government research, reveals the ineffectiveness of the law on sex buyers: “most men state that the ban has not changed anything for them” and “for many men the ban is of no concern at all, since they mostly buy sex abroad.” (Dodillet and Östergren 2011, 14-15). Even the government admits that it is “more common to buy sex abroad than in Sweden”(Skarhed 2010, 32).
No evidence the law reduced the number of sex workers
The government does not know whether there is any change in the overall number of sex workers. In 2007 – eight years after the law was implemented – it conceded that “[w]e cannot give any unambiguous answer to [the question of whether prostitution has increased or decreased]. At most, we can discern that street prostitution is slowly returning, after swiftly disappearing in the wake of the law” (Swedish National Board 2007, 63). It concluded that “[n]o causal connections can be proven between legislation and changes in prostitution” (Swedish National Board 2007, 46).
Nonetheless, the government now asserts its unsupported belief that “it is reasonable to assume that prostitution would also have increased in Sweden if we had not had a ban on the purchase of sexual services. Therefore, criminalization has helped to combat prostitution” (Skarhed 2010, 8-9, emphasis added).
Even stopping the arrest of sex workers would be a positive step (though hardly enough). Stings in the United States still target sex workers on a regular basis, and even children as young as 13 are arrested, incarcerated, and often subject to even more abuse over their lifetimes. This is State abuse, not abuse by private individuals.
What is being advocated for here, if it has not be clear, is the protection of sex workers, particularly women, under the law for what they do. I have not advocated for (nor do I support) the capitalization of rape, trafficked victims, or for the pimping of minors.
Dude, you ARE advocating for the capitalisation of rape, human trafficking, and pimping; that is exactly what you are doing. Stop pretending you care about women. You are fooling no one.
>“Gil was able to serve as a pimp precisely because her position of authority shrouded her illicit activities from public view. She came to be known as the “Madam of Sullivan” precisely because she was in a position to protect her blatantly immoral and unjust activities from the public eye.”
Anyone with half a brain and an internet connection could clearly see that the NSWP supports the legalisation of managing brothels and “facilitating sex work” aka pimping and trafficking; it’s written right there on their fucking website. Neither Gil nor any of her pimp friends had to do much “hiding from the public eye” ; they were literally openly campaigning to make pimping and trafficking legal. Like yeah, posing as a “sex worker” organisation makes it confusing to people who don’t know anything about the sex industry or how pimps and traffickers operate, but Amnesty, UNAIDS, and every other joke of a human rights organisation that gave these pimps and traffickers a platform to promote their pro-rape, pro-exploitation, and pro-pimping agenda at the expense of actual prostituted women knew exactly what they were doing.
>“What is being contended here is that adult
men and women have the right to engage in whatever relationship they
consent to upon whatever terms they set out so long as they are not
harming one another. My contention, the contention of any sex work
advocate, is that the State has no authority to regulate
mutually-beneficial relationships built upon a foundation of consent.”
You are full of shit and you sound like every other dude trying to convince himself that buying “sex” is a human right. If two people are equally interested in having sex with each other, there is no reason for one of them to pay the other. Paying a woman to have sex with you, when she wouldn’t want to touch you if you weren’t paying her, is coercion, and coerced sex is rape. There is nothing “mutually beneficial” about this transaction, because you, the one with the money, have the power. You can choose to not pay to rape her. She can’t choose to say no because she needs the money.
And before you make the idiotic argument that all work is coerced under capitalism and prostitution is no different, consider whether you’d rather work at McDonald’s flipping burgers and washing tables, or work at a brothel where multiple men shove their dicks in your mouth and ass 30 times a day. One of these scenarios is boring but non-traumatising manual labour; the other is rape.
The vast majority of women in the sex industry want to leave but have no other options for survival and/or are prevented from leaving by pimps. And so many of them were coerced, pressured, and forced into it when they were under 18, if not by pimps then by financial desperation. (source 1, source 2, source 3) So where’s the dividing line between “real sex work” and trafficking and rape? If these women and girls’ experiences, which account for 90% of those in the global sex industry, don’t count as the “lawful, equitable, and justified” “sex work” that you support then whose rights are you really concerned about here? Because it sure as hell isn’t women’s.
>“I thank you for citing Sina’s story of abuse, because it evidences yet another instance of the type of ‘sex work’ that simply does not constitute a lawful, equitable, and justified interaction.”
How convenient that sex industry advocates can just say everyone in the sex industry who’s a victim of trafficking, rape, and abuse doesn’t count because it’s not “real sex work” and therefore has nothing to do with what they support. Prostituted women suffer the highest rates of rape, assault, and murder. Does advocacy only matter for the ones who say they chose to be prostitutes? Men have never cared whether the person they’re paying to fuck is there by “choice” or not; men don’t care if they’re raping an underage girl, a trafficking victim, or a poor woman who has no other alternatives to buy food and pay rent.
This differentiation between “legitimate” “sex work” and forced prostitution is meaningless. The prostitution industry CANNOT exist and flourish without trafficking. Organised criminals traffic human beings for sexual exploitation because there are never enough women who “choose” to enter the sex industry. Traffickers wouldn’t bother going across the world to Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe to kidnap impoverished women or trick them with promises of well-paying jobs in rich Western countries if there were no profit to be made in it. It would actually be a big waste of time, if they could just as easily find women in their own countries who were willing to go “work” in brothels, strip clubs, porn, etc. And it wouldn’t be very lucrative if it were really as rare as sex industry advocates try to pretend it is, because the sex industry is in constant demand for more and younger female bodies. Women who’ve been in prostitution for even just a few years develop health problems; many of them will catch STDs and other sicknesses, have drug addictions, and the repeated violence and abuse from pimps and rapists wears them down. It all takes its toll on the body, and many prostituted women die young. So to understand it from the traffickers’ perspective, in economic terms, the need to replenish the supply of women to make up for the losses is never-ending. Yet sex industry proponents act like human trafficking “almost never happens” and claim that sex industry abolitionists “exaggerate” the number of victims, when in reality the evidence that it’s a huge and global problem is overwhelming.
It’s not a coincidence that the majority of prostituted women in the USA, the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, etc. are Indigenous women and/or women from foreign countries. The combined factors of colonialism, male supremacy, poverty, and inter-generational trauma make Indigenous women particularly vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation.
>““for many men the ban is of no concern at all, since they mostly buy sex abroad.” (Dodillet and Östergren 2011, 14-15). Even the government admits that it is “more common to buy sex abroad than in Sweden”(Skarhed 2010, 32).“
Right. Few men buy “sex” in Sweden, because it’s illegal in Sweden. And those who do buy “sex” do it where it’s legal. So you think the solution is for Sweden to reverse the law, instead of for other countries to adopt the same law so that even fewer men in the world buy “sex”? I really hope you can see how nonsensical that is. Fact is, other countries have seen the evidence that the Nordic model is effective in Sweden and that’s why some have adopted it themselves, and others are considering it now.
>“The government does not know whether there is any change in the overall number of sex workers. In 2007 – eight years after the law was implemented – it conceded that “[w]e cannot give any unambiguous answer to [the question of whether prostitution has increased or decreased]. At most, we can discern that street prostitution is slowly returning, after swiftly disappearing in the wake of the law” (Swedish National Board 2007, 63).”
If these people aren’t lying when they say they don’t know whether the number of prostituted women has increased or decreased since the implementation of the law, and they can’t even make an estimate, how the fuck do they know that street prostitution is “slowly returning”? How could any sector of prostitution be increasing if there are far fewer men in the country buying sex? FFS.
Anyway, more evidence that the Nordic model works:
priceofliberty:
Abuse happens in every industry, yes. The abuse in the sex
industry—literal rape, violent assault, exposure to STDs/unwanted
pregnancy—is not remotely comparable to the abuse that happens in other
industries. And OK, if there is no consent then it’s not a legitimate
transaction & therefore rape. Correct. That is how the majority of
“transactions” in the sex trade are executed. Really, do some research
Evan. Prostitutes/porn actresses have little to no room to refuse
business without risking (2)
being fired or thrown out all together. I can’t
include links in an ask but if you read testimonies from exited women
you will hear the same story over and over. It’s not about “restricting
a person’s choice” to enter the sex trade, it’s about acknowledging
that this is a poisonous industry that harms 95% of the women involved.
It’s about prioritizing the exploited majority over the privileged
minority. (3)
Finally, the victims are already disempowered and
sex workers are already punished. When was the last time you read about
a former prostitute or porn actress receiving legal compensation for
abuse and exploitation? Liberalizing the sex trade increases trafficking
(again, look it up) and gives pimps and johns more legal room to hide.
This isn’t about “punishing” sex work. Research the Nordic model. There
are ways to give sex workers options and protection without endorsing
the trade. (final)
Talk about fighting monsters lest ye become one. You’re so eager to take away a person’s right to choose sex work that you’re missing the point that these women are harmed because they weren’t given a choice. What remedy or solution do you have to offer that doesn’t directly endanger women by telling them what is and is not permissible to do with their own body?
I’ve read numerous testimonies from women who have exited and you know what most of them have in common? They had no where to turn to. There was no social, cultural, or judicial institutions in place to seek restitution or a way out of a bad situation.
It’s not a “transaction” if it’s done through force, without consent – that’s rape. Rape isn’t covered under any definition of “sex work.” The solution isn’t to further stigmatize people who perform sex work; prohibition has not worked because it created a black market rife with abuse in the first place. What we need is a society that offers just restitution to women (and men) who are abused, not one where judges disdainfully dismiss sex work disputes because the “transaction” was “illegal.” Even the Nordic model is a failure:
Not surprisingly, the experiment has failed. In the 13 years since the
law was enacted, the Swedish government has been unable to prove that
the law has reduced the number of sex buyers or sellers or stopped
trafficking. All it has to show for its efforts are a (contested) public
support for the law and more danger for street-based sex workers.
Despite this failure, the government has chosen to ignore the evidence
and proclaim the law to be a success; it also continues to advocate that
other countries should adopt a similar law. (“The
Swedish Law to Criminalize Clients: A Failed Experiment in Social
Engineering”, Ann Jordan, Program on Human Trafficking and Forced
Labor, Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law)
The reason you haven’t heard about a former abused sex worker being compensated for their abuse is because the State says what they’re doing is illegal and the courts won’t recognize black market dealings.
If you want to throw numbers around, you better link your sources. Furthermore, I really don’t appreciate you masking your identity while using my first name. It’s a little disrespectful.
Crime statistics show that trafficking has decreased since the Nordic model was enacted in Sweden. Places like Victoria (Australia), where prostitution has been legalized since the 80s, adopted the model in order to “contain the rampant growth of the highly visible brothel and street prostitution trade, eliminate organized crime, to end child prostitution and sex trafficking, and eliminate harmful work practices.” Instead, what’s happened is that “Victoria has created a two-tiered system—a regulated and an unregulated prostitution industry.” There are minimal exit programs for women who want to leave the industry (perhaps a moot point for legalization advocates, as the whole idea of exiting services seems to exist in opposition of the “job like any other” mantra — because what other, just, you know, “jobs” require therapy and exiting services in order to quit? The military, perhaps?), illegal brothels are rampant and trafficking has increased.
These facts fly in the face of the argument that criminalizing buyers will drive the industry underground. It seems that, in fact, legalization encourages the “underground” (illegal) industry. It’s no coincidence that those who wish to operate illegally or as part of a “black market” flock to countries where prostitution is legal.
There is, in fact, zero evidence that shows that criminalizing johns has driven prostitution underground. Under the Nordic model, there’s also absolutely no reason why, if prostitution is “underground” the cops wouldn’t be able to find these industries: “If a sex buyer can find a prostituted woman in a hotel or apartment, the police can do it,” one of the detectives Smith interviews says, “Pimps have to advertise.” Because the police have the resources and a vested interest in charging the exploiters, they have reason (and the support) to look for them.
Sex industry advocates really want to “prove” that prostitution is harmless, that full decrim reduces human trafficking, and that no laws will stop men from buying prostituted women, so they focus on populations that are most likely to produce the results they want to see, and they distort and misinterpret data in a way that favours their own bias.
You can even see this in one of the links I put in my first response showing that violence against prostituted women decreased under the Nordic model. The group that collected the data found that severe forms of violence like assault and rape went down by 50% and only less severe forms of violence, like biting and hair pulling, went up but they reported that there was a 7% increase in violence against prostituted women. That was some cherry picking of statistics, but the stats and full analysis of that study are laid out neatly in that post.
The research in the links is also newer, from the last 2 or 3 years.
>“Stings in the United States still target sex workers on a regular basis, and even children as young as 13 are arrested,
incarcerated, and often subject to even more abuse over their
lifetimes. This is State abuse, not abuse by private individuals.”
I’m aware that the U.S. government fails at helping or protecting prostituted and/or trafficked women and children. Nobody in this conversation wants prostituted people to be criminalised. Though I’m not sure why you’re bringing this up; the USA doesn’t have the Nordic model.
If you’re going to ignore the tons of evidence that shows the Nordic model is effective and that in contrast decrim only increases human trafficking, and only look at one tiny bit of garbage posted on pimp websites, I can’t stop you, but it’s fucking ludicrous for you to pretend it’s because you care about prostituted women when it’s obvious you, like most men, are invested in keeping the sex industry around and you don’t want to feel guilty about watching porn or going to strip clubs or whatever it is you spend your pathetic life doing.
You don’t care about Sina and other girls like her, and your attitude is so telling of that. You, just like every other sex industry advocate, dismiss them as atypical cases and basically have the mindset of “sure, some women and girls are going to be trafficked, raped, and abused, but their suffering is an acceptable loss because the right of men to rape women and children is more important.” Like I can’t believe you can take yourself seriously when you’re sourcing pimps and traffickers to back up your argument, ignoring the bulk of research that contradicts your weak bullshit argument, and saying that men have the right to rape women (you’re saying it in a more obfuscated way, but you’re still saying it). You’d think that if someone realised their opinions are exactly the same as that of pimps it would make them think twice, maybe make them wonder why they’re defending a multi-billion dollar industry that spends huge amounts of money each year to cover up abuse and create a false image of themselves as harmless, “sex positive,” and progressive. You really are nothing but a misogynist rape apologist and you’re doing their work for them.
Celtyradfem 