Sex industry/Sex workers

So people who believe women can be bought for sex aren't sexist?? I would advocate robbing and murdering anyone so misogynistic. I can understand why women would 'choose' (free choices are practically impossible for a woman living in a capitalist patriarchy) prostitution.. It's good money for short hours.. It must be pretty much impossible to mentally detach themselves from their work, when this involves a fat sweaty Tory MP thrusting his 'manhood' inside them.

But the experinence of individual sex workers isn't really the main point. The concept that women are a commodity for consumption is one which is echoed thoughout society. Accepting prostitution legitimises this idea, which is the basis for sexual harrasment, rape etc. ("Rape's just a bit like being mugged" because sex with women is equatable with money) This attitude towards sex is also shown in the pathetic way that most people go about their sexual relationships (Buying a girl dinner should garuantee sex).

It's true that most prostitutes, porn 'stars' etc. have been raped at some point before 'choosing' their 'career'. Patriarchy manipulates women's sexuality through abuse (they associate sex with feeling abused, objectified etc. this is why some sex workers claim they enjoy their work) in order to provide a supply of women for men to fuck senseless.

Prostitution reinforce's men's idea that they are superior to women - using a prostitute is a way of asserting masculinity. They get off on the fact that they're paying her and thefore she is indebted to him and he has power over her.

Some sort of radical revolution in the way that all men and women think and behave is needed before we will be liberated from the tyranny that women suffer. Until then, men who use prostitutes should be vilified, and all prostitutes and sex workers should be protected as much as possible.

That was quite a good parody, Jess, especially this line

which is just so brilliantly arrogant in that it claims to know their "real" motivations- presumably because you have read more books than them.

Oh! Here we are again with the unfounded blanket labelling-

And out of interest, is this anything other than opinion?

dammit, i have to go to bed. i've got two and a half hours sleep before the magic bus to london to the stupid bookfair.

i hate life.

hiya jess, haven't met you before. i'll talk to you when i get back maybe.

and jack, fight your own fights ffs.

If it's a consensual act of exchange then how the fuck are they being 'bought'?

Good for you, dickwad

Is it?

Maybe, perhaps, despite your sensationally insightful ramblings on the deep psychology of a huge spectrum of people you've never met, you might be being overly simplistic here?

Hint: maybe they also get off on the, you know, sex..?

What if they don't want the kind of protection you're seeking to give them?

Jess-- Great posting!

Im on the move again. Must be away and soundcheck soon but i will try to take my time to do some replys as soon as posible.

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 (interviews with Nevada psychologists cited by Patricia Murphy, Making the Connections: women, work, and abuse, 1993, Paul M. Deutsch Press, Orlando, Florida; see also Rita Belton, "Prostitution as Traumatic Reenactment," 1992, International Society for Traumatic Stress Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA M.H. Silbert and A.M. Pines, 1982, "Victimization of street prostitutes," Victimology: An International Journal, 7: 122-133; C. Bagley and L Young, 1987, "Juvenile Prostitution and child sexual abuse: a controlled study," Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health, Vol 6: 5-26.

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There was some other statisctics that i got in contact with tough. I will go to the library as soon as i can and check them out so i can post them if anyone is intrested in reading them.

whilst my thinking on prostitution has altered a lot recently, and its certainly understandable that people would choose prostitution or other forms of sex work as a career at the moment cos the pay is so much better than most, i dont understand the lefts obsession with painting it as a solely economic issue and attempting to make it appear unrelated to the way people, mostly women i guess, are despised and abused sexually. there appears to be a lot of denial going on, in the name of sexual liberation.

although condemning all forms of sex work, and the workers within the industry can be moralistic and arrogant towards those who do choose it as an easier or even attractive option, one should not overlook that a lot of people selling sex are forced into it through circumstances of poverty and would not otherwise choose it, that many prostitutes in western europe have been literally forced into it through trafficking and are repeatedly victims of rape, not selling a service, and that for these people prostitution is not just another form of exploitative work under capitalism but also a violation of their liberty to choose free sexual association.

also someone criticised the references to thai child prostitution- fine, if youre not interested in looking at the global picture cos it doesnt suit your argument. fact is child prostitution and sexual slavery is widespread globally, if you dont want to recognise that then youre very irresponsible. i bet it doesnt seem a marginal example to a thai child prostitute.

focusing on unionisation, safety and health for sex workers may be very important, however equally important is the fight against the ideological dismissal of rape and sexual abuse as trivialities. they arent opposing aims, and to ignore the latter is to perpetuate the miserable historical positions of females, children and vunerable males.

Now thats worth quoting!

75% of prostitutes are addicted to smack, 100% of pimps should be shot on sight

I'm sure there are one or two exceptions because life is like that, but lets be honest its safe to say 99.9% of men who pay for sex are assholes.

john

Where sexwork is discussed (as on earlier posts on this thread) i can't see where anyone has said it is not explotative work or that references to thai child prostitution aren't about shitty reality, but only that it is dangerous to use the worse of stories to explain the reality of the whole.

prostitution is not only about money. which is why the cultural/political/ economic reality should be considered before we start using examples of a kid getting forced into prostitution and raped in thailand to explain prostitution in liverpool. the context IS important.

i worked with women who sold sex in manchester for a while. the majority of the women i met were well capable of voicing their opinions and did see their work as a choice. some of these women had bad experiences but as far as i am aware the majority were not all victims of child sexual abuse and rape. and would be kinda pissed off that that was what people think. there is power in feeling you use what men want and will pay well for, rather than some shitty job in macdonalds, to bring up your kids. unpopular as this will be if i say it, from talking to women sexworkers, i did think that part of prostitution was actually about taking back power from men.

the reality was that in manchester its a) drugs and b) economic choice (which also relates to drugs but also to other things)

so if we're gonna go shoot pimps and punters, then we need to shoot drugdealers also (and possibly all the people involved in the structures and perpetuation of poverty - although maybe that would be going a little too far cause ultimately it would involve er... more people than you can imagine) But when we get bored with shooting people we need to listen to sexworkers, not judge their experiences by our own value structures or try to push them into our politics

i can read academic reports untill i'm blue in the face (quite like them actually) but reality is not enrager. prostitution is about power within patriarchal societies. it is complex. feminism itself has to stop ghettoising itself in terms of ideas and recognise the real experiences and contexts and then we can stop making kneejerk responses which are largely laughed at by women outside our political circles... or do we want "feminism" that ignores the viewpoint of women who are experiencing the things we talk about politically? do we consider their views less informed than our own? do we ignore contradictions?

fuck Dworkin (shit, sorry. just being me.)

A common enough example: Thailand

In Thailand. Geography has defined land use, and culture, for the hill tribes of the mountainous north. Historically, those without good land were forced to view their children as commodities in bad times, such as when a harvest failed. The custom was to sell a girl, never a boy. Since 1977, government policies have created an unprecedented lag in the economy of the mountainous north relative to the industrialization of the rest of the country. The price of consumer goods is met by an old source, where “one girl equals one television.”

Recent research shows village girls’ naïve attitudes about what prostitution entails. A girl is lured into prostitution without really knowing what it is, because it is removed from village life. The girl thinks she is helping her family’s living conditions when a brothel’s agent draws up a contract with her parents, and that by example of the slightly older, young woman visiting her home, she also will be wearing nice clothes and have money. "The results of this thing called prostitution are good, she thinks".

The reality of the debt burden induced by her pimp is too overwhelming to ever repay, because the original rules of the contract are bent. Enter money again coupled with lack of regulation of his part of it by the pimp, this regulation being within his power, on how much he controls as a percentage of the girl’s earnings, as long as the brothel gets its share.

The girl is coerced, through beatings and rape at first as punishment for trying to run away, into having sex with 10 to 18 men per night, and later her expectation of the same is reinforced. The girl earns an equivalent of U.S. $15 per customer, or Thai 400 baht. The emotional cost to the girl is so devastating that over time and repeated exposure she becomes resigned to her fate, reduced to surviving

Greed for profit in the illegal prostitution trade results in the youngest looking and most pretty girls, demanding a higher price. For those who cannot get a higher price for sex, their debt increases at a more precipitous rate. Even at a rate of 400 baht, a prostitute must have sex with 300 men per month for her room, which costs 30,000 baht, and for her food and drink, for medicine fees including HIV-testing, and for fines incurred if a customer is displeased. She is required to send 10,000 baht per month home to her parents, keeping this part of the original contract, and visit with family on holidays, both of which serve to keep her locked into prostitution, and a personal debt.

With the increase in new relative wealth in Thailand over a shorter period of time than anything ever experienced in the Western world, and an ingrained cultural more in the dominant society there after the Thai kingdom connoting status among sexually prolific males and the sex tourism indusrty, the demand for girls is always there and has increased in recent years.

But this contrasts strongly with the position of prositutes in the west, obvisouly those who have been sex traffic'd are in the same position of debt bondage(this is a growing problem) and unionisation isn't even an option let a lone a solution. BUT organising prostitutes so THEIR voicies can be heard and their demands can begin to met, dosen't seem to a bad idea to me.

Whilst it's true that a large percentage of prostittutes have alcohol and drug dependacy problems, have suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse this doesn't mean that they are victims of prostitution but of social class and gendered power relations. I am not disputing their lives including their work as prostitutes has been pretty shit. By concentrating on the most powerless and poor prostitutes, we fail to see why those who are escorts/'high class are not affected by these problems to anything like the same degree.

I think a good model for work is this field, would something like

http://www.swop.org.au combined with IWW industrial union style organising. There's something for the Wobs.

And for those of you who still don't believe it can be a job or prositutes can only be powerless victims. Visit http://www.iswface.org

Well i seem to have been going on for ages, so i think i will call it a night.

Oh and by the way

The 2nd

INTERNATIONAL DAY TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST SEX WORKERS

DEC 17 2004

for more details see swop address above

i agree.

Im absolutly possitive for organising prostitutes and i totaly agree with you that unions isnt the solution.

I also agree with you that the most extreme situations for prostitutes are not only in countries like Thailand. I belive in the claim that Anthonio Negris does in The Empire that the third world is not only a place but i spread out all over the world, I.e there is rich parts of Eritrea and there is poor parts of for example London. Sometimes the border between the rich and the poor world could be as small as the person sleeping in the staircase and the person living in a big comfortable home friends-style on the next floor.

The anarco-syndicalistic union SAC in Sweden has mostly been critical to the idea of unions for prostitutes which has been debated for many years now and as far as i know they havent let anyone write themself into the union as prostitute yet. Im not writing this as an argument just some material that might be intresting for the debate.

Sounds like a good time to demonstrate against all forms of prostitution(to demonstrate against the Johns not the sexual slaves that is). I dont realy belive that there is any such thing as prostitution without violence since all Johns pay to rape and is therefore practising sexual violence.

I dont agree. Check out Bakgator/Backstreets. In Oslo at least there is realy no such thing as escort/high class prostitutes since most of the people who are escorts also do street-prostitution.

To quote myself:

I think that the whole idea of listening to the storys of active prostitutes to decide what to do is realy sympathetic but to ignore the huge amount of material(to a wide degree based on interviews with prostitutes and ex-prostitutes)that shows the self-denial that loads of prostitutes put themslef into to cope with life, feel a false empoverment and by doing that not feel like a victim* is naive

We need to break free from the use of the word victim in the newspeak of the opressors not only when it comes to prostitutes but also all other forms of abuse and opression.

To be a victim is not to be guilty. To be a victim means to be innocent. It is the abuser who should be blamed not the victim of the abuse. From a Focaultian view the victims has some part of the uppkeping of the opression of themself but compared to the the active opression of the opressor the quilt on the victims participation in her/his own opression is so slim(in some cases it dosent even exist since there are no real choises for the opressed) that it isnt worth to be mentioned.

*= Beacuse our culture usualy blames the victims and not the opressors.

Well, there you goagain. Clients of prostitute's are not paying to "rape", as they enter into a semi-consensual sexual contract. This is not to deny there is a tremendous amount of sexual violence and abuse towards prostitutes, but you cannot make stupid comments like "prostitution is rape" and expect it to pass unacknowledged. These simplistic soundbites do not add to the debate, they obscure divisions and arrogantly seek to speak for other people instead of empowering them to speak for themselves.

Also, the statistics you gave on the other page came from obviously biased sources and "anecdotal" evidence from clinicians. Again, not todeny that there is some truth in it, but those citations were quite weak.

I'm rarely one for sweeping labels and to put prostitution totally down as some power thing is a bit simplistic. Yes, I am sure that there is a power thing with some men who use prostitutes but I am sure there are one or two other reasons as well. One of the reasons that prostitution exists, and probably always will exist, is men's natural urges. We try to pretend that we are somehow detached from all other species on this planet but there is one thing that all males are driven by and that is the urge to reproduce. Obviously though we have managed to control the process so that babies are not always produced so that people can enjoy the initial process of reproduction without the consequences. The urge to reproduce has become the urge to have sex and while some men control these urges, others find it difficult to do so. They may be in a relationship, they may not be, but if some men want more sex they will go and find it, whether it involves an affair, a one night stand or paying a prostitute. As I said at the start, I am sure that for some men there is a pychological power thing to it and I am sure there are other reasons such as the thrill of illegality, but I am also sure that for many men it is merely a case of following their natural urges. In many cases there will be no great psychological theory to add to it... it is a fuck and that is all.

What we call prostitution is most valid for how we look at it.

That is one of the reasons that i dont talk about sexwork or sexworkers.

If we say that a John is buying sex then we count that practise into work(for the prostitute) and sex(for the john).

when i choose to not call it sex or work but instead rape and slavery i put the action into its right verbal context. For me to call the sexual abuse of prostitutes for sex would be as correct as calling a dog a tree.

I understand that it sounds strange when i talk against what some prostitutes claim to be their reality but that is as i said obove also based on statements by lots of prostitutes and ex-prostitutes all over the world who has told people about their self denial to cope with life.

You can not always make sure if a person is a slave by asking her/him.

In the days of slavery in America many slaves didnt look at themself as slaves. Noam Chomsky said so himself just recently on Freek radio Santa Cruz.

I will go to the library and get the statistic and the sources that i was originaly basing my statement about the connection between sexual abuse in the childhood and prostitution as soon as i have the time.

Those statistics i published was just the first ones i could find on the internet for now.

Wendal you have offended me more than anyone on enrager has for ages (even Revol).

So now you think I should consider that my friends who have used prostitutes in the past are rapists?? That is just fucking ridiculous!! In my experience two of my close mates who have paid for sex were not nasty people and did not do it for some sick patriarchal power game. They were actually shy individuals who had sexual desires like everyone else but were not confident with girls at the time and found it difficult to start relationships. (For the sake of balance and to blow the stereotype you might have imagined me to be I also have a friend who did very briefly work as a prostitute). Yes I do take it personally when you advocate the murdering of some of my closest mates simply bacause they paid a woman some money in order to engage in intercourse with her for a few minutes. My sincere apologies if you've been victim of something disgusting and nasty but I think most women who've been raped would be repulsed by you suggesting that their horrific psychological experience is what a prostitute goes through several times during a shift.

Also, what about women who sleep with men and use this as a means to advance in employment, percieved social status, gain money in a less direct way or gain emotional ties. There are many women who exchange something for sex. It just might not be money. If a woman is exchanging something for sex i.e using her sexual appeal as a means to an end is this not similar to prostitution in some ways??

I am not saying all prostitution is OK. Yes, I realise many of them have had hard upbringings or are on drugs etc. But people will always want sex. If people always want sex then there will always be people who will exchange something for that sex. Do you not think these people should be protected and respected instead of being patronising and hysterically morally absolutist and shrieking at them...

"Can't you SEE the REAL reason you're doing that!! You were sexually abused and now you're allowing yourself to be raped again!! I know the REAL reasons why you do what you do!! You only THINK you know. You're deluding yourself!! Murder and rob that man and sort your life out!!"

Do you actually realise how much of a man hating nutter you are coming across as??

Wendal and Jess I really really want you to answer me one question.

What do you think of women who pay for sex with male prostitutes?

Do you regard them as having raped the men or what????

I may have skipped about six arguments here but re: organising prostitutes but surely that is no different to organising, say, till cashiers?? The end goal is the same - the abolition of that particular employment (at least in that context) via revolution?? In the short term, the goals are giving those workers a voice and some kinda representation (and maybe, if you're cynical and middle class, increasing their confidence and "class conciousness"). Nothing wrong with that absolutely if you ask me.

Yeah I would agree with that. I can't imagine any jobs continuing in their current form in an anarchist society. Prostitution or some sort of available sex would probably consider in some form tho as it is the oldest profession or whatever. Perhaps it would stop completely and there would just be big free orgies and stuff, that'd be a good solution.

A union is working with bettering the wage, working hour e.t.c for a labourer. I agree to all tactices that you mention above but i would not recomending organising for sexual slaves to get better wages instead i would prefer help with teraphy, protective housing if needed and finding a less traumatic way to get money.

If the same strategy would be used against slavery in USA then they would have kept the slaves at the plantage let them have a union and it could negotiate on how sharp the slaveowners whip should be. The absurd thing is that most would not protest that much against it. They would accept that "this is the way the world is" and as Chomsky mentioned on freek radio many slaves didnt look at themself as slaves at all. That had for them just as for the many prostitutes a lot to do with what seems like a hopeless situation where it would be less painfull to accept their situation and dont look at it as unfair than facing reality. If there seemed to be any sign of liberty or safety outside slavery(several slaves didnt want to leave the plantations) then more slaves would be able to face reality.

Huh?

I have not said anything about patriarchal power games, Maybie you can tell me more about what that is.

That make two of us.

Yes I do take it personally when you advocate the murdering of some of my closest mates simply bacause they paid a woman some money in order to engage in intercourse with her for a few minutes. My sincere apologies if you've been victim of something disgusting and nasty but

No. The prostitutes who goes through the full experience of rape every day usualy take her life or find some other way to flee. The most important knowledge for a prostitute is the technique to turn of theyre awarness until the John is finished with using them as a meatdoll. That practice is not without risks tough and many becomes assexual other can no longer enjoy sex with people of the same sex as the Johns and other become nauseous even if they have sex with someone they love. It can also have other effects since emotions isnt something that you can turn on and off lite a computer three times each day.

There we have that mentality again. Blaming the victim.

No that is not prostitution. The similarities are beacuse of the opression of females. If she is using her sexual apeal then it is manipulation.

And what does sex has to do with prostitution?

Whats wrong with exchaning pleasure for pleasure?

Are you talking about the prostitutes or the Johns? I have a basic belief and that is that unnecessary suffering is wrong and so is severe exploitation of vulnerably groups in the community. I also blaim the abuser and not the victim. Therefore i have never been shrieking at the prostitutes but at the Johns. So i am a moral absolutist beacuse i belive that rape and slavery is wrong?

Tell me more...this sound intresting

I think that we should have the discussion about difference between male and female prostitution in another forum to keep the debate focused. But ill try to give a short answer since you realy want to know.

The only material i have found outside the tabloids about maleprostitution is about male homo-prostitution. My friend who was a prostitute before he got locked up in the Asylum had as far as i know no female Johns.

The males in the tabloids was quite possitive but it is way to early to be sure if they are in denial or not. They had jobs on the side and the female Johns where all upperclass and bought them on the net.

I made a search on google on the word "women buying males" and got 40 hits. Out from that i guess that hetero-male prostitution is realy uncomon outside the third world. The definition of rape is unwished penetration and i dont think that the males in the hetero-prostitution go through that to the same degree.

There are some realy fucked up things in male-prostitution tough but since i have only seen material about male homo-prostitution that is all i can say anything about. I know that an english brown boy had many male johns who had chains and slaveclothes with them that they demanded that he had on him while they used him.

You're a moral absolutist because you believe prostitution is always equivalent to rape and slavery.

A more common definition would be something like "To force (another person) to submit to sex acts, especially sexual intercourse" which covers more than just penetration.

On the other hand, you seem to be a lot stricter about the definition of consent, which is admittedly tricky, and raises several questions: To what degree is payment equivalent to coercion? Is it possible to have consent if there's any coercion at all (I suspect for a lot of people sex often involves some, usually emotional, coercion)? Are prostitutes always motivated solely by the money, or can they sometimes pick and choose the clients to some extent?

The steetprostitutes can to some degree do that. In state-prostitution the prostitute have no right to deny a customer. As i have mentioned before the choise is still pretty limitied beacuse of the economical situation for working class women and the stigma that many prostitutes get that makes them sure that anyone can see that they are prostitutes which means that they without proper teraphy usualy wont be able to cope with a job for long.

Are you incinuating that prostitutes choose good looking John's like people choose a person for a one night stand?

People dont prostitute themself beacuse they enjoy sex and if someone does then that person will most likely be disapointed to use a mild term. The worst thing that could happen a prostitute is to get an orgasm with a John. It is a horrible and confusing experience.

a friend of mine who was a prostitute before whe was locked into a asylum gor raped in the ass by a John and was so scared that he got an orgasm. It was a realy traumatic experience. I have read testamonys from many other prostitutes that has had the same experiences. Prostitution has nothing to do with a big sex-drive or something like that.

The usual reason for a prostitute to deny a John(its the Johns who does the choosing) is if she not that the John is violent or dangerous. Some prostitutes dosent even has the possibility to do that.

To some extent, yeah (although I don't know if 'good looks' are the basis they choose on). Walk through any red light district and you'll notice the workers try and attract the attention of some passers-by more than others. Of course, whether choice implies consent is a different matter.

That sounds like a pretty big generalisation to me (like most of what you've said in this thread, actually). I expect it's usually true, but I'd be surprised if there weren't any exceptions.

That's really shit for your friend, but don't assume it's the same for everyone.

Again, no-one's denying that prostitutes are generally in a shitty situation, but you shouldn't assume it's the same for all of them. And surely organising in a union would be a big step in giving them some choice (among other improvements in working conditions). Should they be denied any improvement in their situation just because of your view that prostitution always equals rape and slavery?

I read today that the situation for traficed women and prostitutes with pimps are much the same(i.e slavery). They also said that 90% of the worlds prostitutes have Pimps. It was in the begining of the book so i have not reached on what grounds these statistics are made but the book took six years to make and seem to be based on a huge amount of gathered material.

The maisons d' abattage (literal translation house of slaughter) is another example of inside prostitution. It exists in both in poor countries and in richer countries like france. six or seven girls are used by 80 to 120 Johns each night(at holidays it might be up to 150). After one john is finished he has six minutes to take a shower until there is a buzz-signal and he most imidatly leave and the next john comes in. The prostitute dosent even have time to leave the bed.

She pimp will let her have some money if she does her quota of Johns from those money a withdrawal is done for room and food in such a way that she will always be in dept. This is the same tactice that they use in other forms of slavery all over the world and it is usefull to make the slave feel that it is not a slave but a worker with some debts. To be forced to work without wage is Slavery and milions of people do it today. Their situation is in no way different than the situation for the slaves at the plantages in the south.