Feminists wrote detailed analysis of how modern pornographic media reinforces and perpetuates the historical oppression of women. (Did you know forced impregnation is a porn category?) Then moids rebranded the critique as kinkshaming and somehow convinced everyone it’s an act of oppression!? And I truly believe it’s the biggest loss for feminism in the last decade.
“Prostitution, so the weary old cliché goes, is “the oldest profession.” Many feminists, decade after decade, have protested that pimping, not prostitution, is the “profession”; in prostitution, the management class is made up of pimps and madams, and the “girls” are lowly line workers, garnering none of the benefits we associate with “professional” status. Most do not earn high wages; most have no health benefits; as a group, prostitutes certainly do not enjoy the respect accorded to “professionals” such as engineers, doctors, lawyers.”
Christine Stark and Rebecca Whisnant. Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography. 2005.
“Indeed, the idea that most prostitutes are rolling in money is one of the most persistent myths about the industry. Johns want the newest, youngest girls.”
Rae Story. “Working in a New Zealand brothel was anything but ‘a job like any other.’” 2016.
“Historically, in striking contrast to most men’s, women’s sexual behavior* has often reflected their need or desire for things other than sex.”
-unknown atm
*This is very particular word choice, I understood it as sexuality the first time. The author is being very clear that women’s sexual behaviors/actions are not always aligned with sexuality—who we want to have sex with in a manner that is safe/enjoyable/healthy for us.
This is so embarrassing but I didn’t note the source. I literally have no idea. please let me know if you have a citation!
Libfems like to pretend there’s a hard line between consentual sex work and trafficking and they have nothing to do with each other. But the link between sex trafficking and the above board sex industry is that there will never be enough adult, consenting sex workers to facilitate the overwhelming demand for paid sex. For instance, I read somewhere that German women (who are relatively highly educated and have a lot of social protections in place) aren’t the majority of workers in the legal German brothels. Brothels in the red light district are constantly getting busted for smuggling in trafficked women from Eastern European countries and North Africa.
The simple fact is if your female population is safe, fed, educated etc. they don’t enter the sex industry that much.But the demand for their “work” is a never ending black hole- hence: trafficking and child sex slavery. Without trafficking the legal brothels find it hard to get “staff”.
I hate that focus has always been on the supply. If you want to combat tafficking look at the demand, not the supply. Who are all these men desperate to pay for sex and why do they feel comfortable doing that when they know the person they’re purchasing from is likely socially disadvantaged at best or at worst being forced? Who are all these pople who have a vested, profit interest in making sure vulnerable populations stay vulnberable and desperate?
people act like consent is the key to doing abhorrent shit during sex but the truth is the sex is the key to giving consent to abhorent shit. if you take away sex from the equation of “what if she CONSENTS to choking and hitting and verbal abuse”, it’s without a doubt terrible and abusive. clearly the consent isn’t what’s justifying this act, it’s the sex.
When people say “prostitutes have unions, they are looked after if they want to leave, they help prostitutes leave if they want to and prevent trafficking, there are people out there monitoring legal prostitution, because legal prostitution is the way to go”
Here’s a little about “prostitution unions” in Australia. If this is what occurs in a pretty privileged country, then what the fuck does it say about the rest of the world?
“They are supposed to be a support group for prostitutes, so yes, they will provide condoms and things like that. And they get government funding for that in Australia. Although there are lots of corrupt unions, I never heard of a union that works to reduce the safety of the workers, but the Scarlet Alliance is opposed to mandatory STD tests for the prostituted and johns…I think all the johns should be registered, have mandatory tests for STDs. I think they should wear labels and be listed in back-pages of newspapers, with their names in full! The Scarlet alliance opposes these restrictions, they oppose mandatory testing. And if you want to leave prostitution, they turn on you and you become the enemy. If you go to the Scarlet Alliance and tell them « I don’t want to be a prostitute anymore, help me get out », they will villify you, and they will make your life hell—like they have done to me. At least, they are trying to do that to me.You might think it’s a sweeping statement to say : « they are all pimps », but the reality is that the majority of them are in management positions. They say things like « I’m a current sex worker », and people don’t want to call them out on that because it sounds rude to ask if it is true. These so-called « sex worker unions » globally call themselves things like « Current sex workers » and project managers for « migrant sex workers ». Is there anything more revolting than that? They are in management and « work » with trafficked women is what that means. They don’t help them get out of the sex-trade because they deny sex trafficking exists in general.They have been given a voice on the round table of the National Anti-Traficking Plan of Australia—where they say that sex traficking does not exist! And they call any person traficked for sex a « sex worker » or a « migrant ». We have a huge refugee crisis here, people need admission and housing and we have a hostile government who is not willing to admit vulnerable people in the country. But the Scarlet Alliance uses this opportunity to get more people inside. Of course most of us want to help the refugees, but when the Scarlet Alliance say they want to help the refugees, they just want to get more women in Australia —and then they are going : « great, we can look like we are Left wing and humanitarian » . They oppose penalties for anyone knowingly buying or selling a trafficked human being. I mean really people, get a clue!We just had a prostituted woman who was released after being locked in a cupboard for months, she could barely breathe, she was in Victoria where prostitution is legal. And when a lot of women come here, they think they come on students’ visa, but when they arrive, they are put in decriminalized brothels in New South Wales. They think they come here to learn English, but these desperate women are deceived and brought here to join the ranks of « migrant sex workers ». These Scarlet Alliance people are so awful and vile, there are no words to convey how awful they are. The government give them money, it’s supposed to be for condoms, and for sexual health check ups for us, and things like that, but in reality, they don’t give anybody who wants to leave that. All they do is take the money to spread the idea that trafficked people are « migrant sex workers ». If you were in a country illegally, and know that your family back home will be murdered as well, what would you do? Stay and keep your mouth shut. The Scarlet Alliance take this money from the government and donations, but if you want to leave prostitution, they will turn on people like me.”
ruben garcia, a sex trafficker behind girlsdop*rn, was finally sentenced to 20 years in prison. additionally, instagram removed p*rnhub’s account - which will lead to less publicity and profits.
exactly! “what is the commodity created by [a worker’s] labor-power?”
See how Starbucks does not sell baristas. The barista is not the commodity consumers are buying. Baristas use their labor-power to produce a commodity that consumers then purchase. Now for the sex industry: What is the commodity most johns and punters are buying? What is the commodity most strip clubs and pornographers are advertising? —>Sexual access to a female body via a monetary transaction. And THAT begs ops’ question: an owned, or commodified, human body is a what?
Sex positive feminism is a bit like communism: to a certain type of person — one who has never had to live at the sharp end — it will liberate us all. It just hasn’t been done properly yet.
Come the true sexual revolution, there will be no violence, no exploitation, no coercion masquerading as choice. If, as Eva Wiseman recently wrote in the Guardian, we are currently facing an anti-sex backlash, it’s only because “we were never truly liberated”, not least because “the sex-negative feminism of the 1970s and 80s never really went away”.
Damn those sex-hating prudes of yore! You’d have thought, given that the year is 2022 and we’ve had three decades of third-wave liberal feminist enlightenment, we’d have successfully destroyed the evil legacy of feminism past.
After all, there’s no doubt who won the Sex Wars, and it wasn’t Andrea Dworkin. Never has good ol’ agency-enhancing, stigma-destroying porn been more available. That’s good, right?
Yet self-styled “sex positive” feminists still behave like lost soldiers, unable to accept the war is over, even one in which they are the victors. They’re feminism’s Brexiteers, who won but can’t get over it, unable to admit that every challenge they now face is a practical consequence of their own politics.
But what else can a sex positive feminist do? As Louise Perry argues in her provocatively titled new book,The Case against the Sexual Revolution, “they have made the error of buying into an ideology that always best served the likes of Hugh Hefner and Harvey Weinstein, his true heir”:
And from this they derive the false belief that women are still suffering only because the sexual liberation project of the 1960s is unfinished, rather than because it was always inherently flawed. Thus they prescribe more and more freedom and are continually surprised when their prescription doesn’t cure the disease.
This argument has particular resonance for me; it’s what I used to believe, too.
Like most Generation X women, I was born too late to play any part in the “sex negative feminism” derided by Eva Wiseman. A young liberal feminist of the nineties, I was exactly the type of woman about whom Ariel Levy complained when she wrote 2005’sFemale Chauvinist Pigs, her trenchant critique of third-wave “raunch” feminism.
I refused to read Levy’s book when it first came out, certain it indulged in precisely the kind of puritanical slut-shaming which fuelled the sexual double standard which my generation of women were slowly dismantling, one blow job at a time. If women were still being treated like objects, it couldn’t possibly be because the so-called “sex-negative feminism of the 1970s and 80s” had been onto something.
On the contrary, I felt it far more likely that these older feminists’ view of women — a sexless, virtuous caricature — was to blame. They were the ones persuading men that women were incapable of being sexual subjects in their own right.
Like many early third-wavers, I largely invented what second-wave feminists believed, making liberal use of stereotypes. As Astrid Henry noted in 2004’sNot My Mother’s Sister, “reading some self-described third-wave texts […] one wouldn’t know that feminists in the 1970s and 80s even considered some of the issues that the third wave now champions as its own: masturbation, non-monogamy, bisexuality, pornography, sex work and, of course, orgasms”.
A feminism that makes of older women a prudish, pearl-clutching enemy, creates an illusion of control in the midst of chaos. It’s easier to kick back at Mummy than to challenge the men around you, easier to denigrate the past than to question the present, easier to say yes — and to work at reframing any personal misgivings as caused by “stigma” — than to face the social consequences of saying no.
It is painful to view your female body as a site of vulnerability, so why not treat it as the offering with which to bargain for its own liberation? And if liberation is not forthcoming? If the promised rewards — no more rape, free abortion, the end of shame — are nowhere to be seen?
Well, then, you always have more to offer. Maybe unlimited blow jobs and the end of pubic hair weren’t enough. What about anal? How about choking? Perhaps there’s another female orifice we just haven’t found yet.
No one can say my generation of women did not put the hours in. If the cure to the sexual oppression of women had been more sex and more porn, magically eradicating “stigma” and “shaming” one shag at a time, we’d all have been sorted long before Geri left the Spice Girls. Instead we’re watching the women who came after us face a sexual landscape even more violent and misogynistic than anything we had to endure.
his is why books such as Perry’s matter, and also why I fear there are many who may respond to it in the same way I responded to Levy’s. It is hard to abandon the security of a well-maintained lie, even one that ultimately hurts you. While I have misgivings about some of Perry’s practical suggestions, many of her arguments — that consent is an inadequate measure of what is and is not abuse, that the valuing of sexual freedom over mutual dependency benefits the most privileged at the expense of the least, that physical strength differences between men and women matter enormously — seem to me hugely important, yet completely absent from so much of the feminism I have known.
As Perry documents harm after harm inflicted on female bodies and minds in the name of “choice”, “freedom” and “empowerment”, it becomes more and more amazing to think that there are some who will call her bigoted or unsympathetic to the most marginalised, simply for telling the truth. That the sexual revolution has failed women ought to be uncontroversial, yet to say this is to risk accusations of prejudice, far-right leanings, anti-feminism, frigidity, puritanism and a host of other sins. Most women who are willing to do this are older than Perry herself.
The sexual liberalism of Generation X women is well-documented. To suggest that we were never ourselves cheerleaders for self-objectification requires a rewriting of history. Convenient though it would be to conflate us with 1970s anti-porn feminists, or 1950s housewives, these are different cohorts of women, each misrepresented in their own way. The truth is that today’s Helen Lovejoys are yesterday’s female chauvinist pigs.
There is a pretence that the ageing, “sex negative” prude is a cohort-specific phenomenon, a creature who will die out once the next batch of women, born on the right side of history, come to take her place. This is nonsense. “Sex negativity” — more accurately put as a clear-eyed awareness of the realities of male sexual entitlement — tends to be a lifecycle phenomenon. This is why the “frigid older woman” is such a longstanding stereotype, coming into being, as Sheila Jeffreys documents inThe Spinster and her Enemies, long before the start of feminism’s second wave.
By the time we reach middle age, we have lived through enough false dawns to know a remarketing of “just let the men do whatever they want” when we see it. Ageing has meant leaving the eye of the storm, then watching our own daughters enter it, transforming our own perspective on how much choice we ever had. We tried this solution already; we know it doesn’t work.
I can predict what the “sex positive” response to me telling the truth about Generation X’s sordid past might be: we just didn’t do things properly. We didn’t shag hard enough, or imaginatively enough, or in a sufficiently binary-breaking manner. We must have been retaining some residual prudery, even when insisting, Cool Girl-style, “go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind”. We still retained some ludicrously outdated beliefs, such as kink might be “unfit for children”.
It cannot possibly be that the more boundaries we ceded, the more we were expected to cede, with the promised payback in respect and safety always kept just out of reach. The spiral will continue unless we start to think differently. Or until the next generation of women runs out of pieces of herself to give.
I had a dude tell me he stopped watching porn after taking acid because he could empathize so much he couldn’t do it anymore. He sounded ashamed saying it but he’s like i realized these are human beings. Honestly these things are designed in a way to kill empathy. That’s why feminists tell you porn makes men more misogynistic. They make men more likely to objectify us. Porn dehumanizes women but it’s smart. You’re able to ignore a lot before it’s too obvious. And even by that point, it’s such an addiction your brain will make you rationalize going back. Empathy AND discipline is what will make you stop.
Never did I think I would be explaining to my children’s teacher why I was concerned about a Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) organisation that promotes the use of butt plugs whilst simultaneously proclaiming that “virginity benefits no one” being brought into the classroom — but welcome to 2022.
The teaching of RSE became compulsory in secondary schools in England in September 2020. No doubt in part because of the understandable reluctance of teachers towards sliding another condom on a cucumber, many schools are opting to bring in external providers to deliver RSE.
These external providers, however, are subject to little regulation or scrutiny. According to Department for Education guidance, schools should be ensuring that external organisations deliver lessons which are evidence-based, age-appropriate and avoid reinforcing stereotypes or promoting political positions — in order to help pupils “be safe, happy and prepared for life beyond school”.
When I got the letter from my children’s school stating that RSE would be delivered by an external provider, I immediately looked them up on the internet. Scrolling down their Instagram page, I discovered that the organisation which would be running sessions with my 11-year-old daughter was promoting “world hand job day”.
Expanding my research across a range of RSE providers delivering sessions in schools, I came across content aimed at children and teenagers, including promotion of Bondage and Discipline + Sado Masochism (BDSM), explanations of what a swinger is, and celebrations of “sex toy day” which included a handy link to purchase a toy called an “anal training set” (a fancier name for butt plugs).
I discovered that there is a National Lingerie Day (who knew), where children are invited to celebrate the fact that “some people choose to wear lingerie for lots of different reasons” — the associated hashtags were #MensHealth and #MensSexualHealth. I assume this is advocating for kink practices or perhaps the fetish of Autogynephilia — where men are sexually aroused by the thought of themselves as female. For the parent who might be a bit concerned about the suitability of this messaging for their child, fear not, because our kids are reminded of their obligation to the planet and urged to “buy sustainable” when purchasing their lacy undies.
Let’s be clear, if any of the above practices float your boat, crack on, you’ll get no judgement from me. But why it might be necessary for children and young people to be educated through a tick-list of adult sexual practices, in order for them to be “safe, happy and prepared for life beyond school”, is far from clear.
Indeed, some of the “boundary pushing” appears downright dangerous. One Instagram post declared, “virginity benefits no one” and another stated, “Virginity is a Myth”. I vociferously beg to differ on that — virginity benefits children a great deal.
This is safeguarding in the simplest of forms. The age of consent is set at 16 years old for good reason. Undermining this basic premise reduces the boundaries of children, which makes it easier for child sex offenders to take advantage of them. Unfortunately, there will be children in every school who are being sexually abused. These messages risk normalising the abuse they are experiencing and the narrative of the sexual predator abusing them.
Clearly this is not the intention of RSE providers. I presume what they are trying to get at is a critique of the patriarchal construct of virginity and the ways in which women’s hymens continue to be policed — literally as well as metaphorically depending on where you are in the world — as evidence of their “purity”. “Virginity benefits no one” show the dangers of reducing these complex, adult conversations to four-word Instagram posts. Children are highly likely to take these messages very literally (“I need to have sex as soon as possible”, “If an adult makes me have sex, it’s OK”) because, well, they are children.
Basic facts and nuanced conversations reduced to simplistic hashtags is evident in how such RSE providers discuss sex, gender and gender identity. The result is a confusing mess. Females are erased from their own bodies through persistent references to “people with vulvas” and “people with periods”. In one cute meme, two penises chat to each other. Funky penis one says, “Hey, mate, looking good” and happy penis two replies, “Thanks, gal, you too”. The take-away from this is, according to the tagline, “your genitals do not define your gender”. They do, however, define your sex, and children need to know this.
RSE providers justify this sexually explicit language, discussion of adult sexual preferences and blurring of boundaries as necessary to convey a “Sex Positive” message. An RSE provider described sex positivity to me as about “choice, explicit consent, communication, freedom [and] body autonomy”.
Sounds good, right? Except in a world in which children and young people (and let’s face it, especially girls) are sexually harassed in the street walking to school, under pressure to conform to impossible beauty standards and forced to “prove” they are not “frigid” or a “slut”. The idea that they are free agents wandering around the pick-n-mix of sexual practices which they might or might not fancy trying out later in life is ludicrous. As one feminist academic who works on violence against women and the media put it to me, “through the ‘Sex Positive’ lens, everything is about ‘consent’, saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and other similarly simplistic ideas which make everything about the individual”.
The “Sex Positive” message also relies on mischaracterising what an alternative sex education might look like. Not convinced by “Sex Positivity”? Its supporters will tell you that you are “Sex Negative”, advocating for abstinence, creepy ceremonies in which daughters pledge their virginity to their fathers, and metaphorical conversations about the birds and the bees which are almost as confusing as the talking penises.
This is not true. Between stigmatising sex and promoting BDSM to teenagers, there is a balance to be struck. Getting RSE right is of vital importance for children and young people. Children need to be taught about their bodies and how they work. The stigma and shame which is still associated with girls on their periods needs to be broken down. The mechanics of reproduction need to be clearly explained so that a teenage girl knows that the risk of pregnancy depends on the sex, not the gender identity, of her partner. As children and teenagers are increasingly exposed to violent, degrading pornography, the ways in which this promotes misogynistic and racist stereotypes about women alongside unrealistic — and often painful and dangerous — ideas about what sex is, needs to be discussed in an age-appropriate way.
My advice to parents is that it’s always worth digging a little deeper into RSE sessions. Culture Reframed is an excellent resource for parents, Transgender Trendand Sex Matters have guidance for schools, and Safe Schools Alliance have some examples of concerns about some RSE organisations operating in the UK.
I suspect many will philosophise on the need to expand children’s learning on these topics, but for me one thing is certain: I will never agree that butt plugs and BDSM are a necessary topic for my child’s learning journey to healthy relationships.
onlyfans has really rotted men’s minds into believing its ok to ask any woman for nudes as long as you offer financial compensation in return. the world is not your brothel
“where prostitution is legal, sexual harassment is seen as a job offer”
i kno i’ve said i was expecting the term to enter into politics. but even this is more cursed than I could have guessed. time to die
very cool and not at all going to fuck up huge swaths of the internet in order to try to get rid of sex work visibility
This is one of those times where government regulation is actually a good thing, and protects people.
Shut the fuck up catholic
Why is this an issue, if sex work is supposed to be real work? All real jobs require that you verify your identity with the employer.
^^^Exactly. If the sex-work-is-real-work-rabble actually gave a damn about those who are in the sex industry then they would be open to…
Government regulations, like ensuring that all sex workers are legal adults who are in the industry of their own volition and not the victims of human trafficking, pimping or grooming.
Public health oversight (including making condom-use mandatory, with affordable access to all contraceptives, abortions, and other medications & healthcare).
Labour union protections.
A radical restructuring of police departments’ vice unit that would now protect sex-workers from violent clients and investigate crimes– such as rape, battery and murder– committed against sex-workers, and ensure that all sex workers are legal adults who are in the industry of their own volition and not the victims of human-trafficking, pimping or grooming, and all participants pornographic media (and sexual “transactions") are legal adults who can freely–without fear of retaliation–withdraw consent, safely leave and have any of their videos or photos– even back when they consented– be deleted from all media platforms.
Legally prohibiting registered sex offenders and those with a history of domestic violence from attempting to patronize sex workers (ie: background checks prior “transactions").
And provide a social service department specifically devoted to helping sex-workers transition out of the sex industry.
And yet all the sex-work-is-real-work-rabble do is fly into histrionics, claiming that any sort of government interference and public health oversight of sex work is “slut-shaming”, “infringing upon freedom of speech” or “literally killing sex-workers"
And copyright protection - no one gets paid off those free videos. If all porn had to be sold, even for a penny, and people had to submit a credit card to see it, it would actually stop kids from accessing porn.
They don’t want this to happen because they know that a majority of videos would get taken down. They care more about getting off then they do about ensuring the safety of women and children so of course they don’t want protections put in place because they’re aware that the amount of content would plumit.
One of the best replies to sex work is work, is that free porn is wage theft and they contribute to it. A tiny fraction of men pay for the porn they watch, which often involves heightened vulnerability and risk of identity disclosure for the performers doing custom cam work and only fans. But if men had to pay one cent on their credit cards for every video they watched, they’d be outraged at the loss of privacy. Let the women lose their privacy, let the women lose their income and risk their possibility of future employment, but no - not the men!
This is why the Nordic model for criminalizing sex buyers works so well, men only act differently when it’s their social standing and criminal record at risk, they don’t cate about women.
Everything on that list would be a positive change. It ensures that everyone in the uploaded media consents to it being shared on the platform, will hopefully confirm the “performers” identites and ages which could protect underage girls and trafficking victims, and gives them the ability to withdraw consent and have the media removed in a timely manner.
If you’re against those protections, you’re fucking evil, actually.
Assume there are two identical twins, both AMAB. When they grow up, one of them comes out as a no-op (no operation/surgeries) trans woman. Why, exactly, would a lesbian be attracted to the trans woman and not the other brother?
Conversation, getting to know each other, personality traits.
as a lesbian i’m offended by the implication that we’re only attracted to a woman’s body, op.
you’re so fucking stupid lmao sexuality is reliant on a person’s sex. it’s not like “oh im only attracted to skinny bodies” or “oh im only attracted to boobs” it’s about what biological category you form sexual / romantic attraction to. quit deliberately misunderstanding what OP is saying just because you don’t believe homoSEXUALITY (not “gender-uality”) exists.
how is this any different from homophobes saying that homosexuals should date the opposite sex for their personality, shaming them for “not being open enough”? because ive seen that one countless times.
Isn’t it funny how… the entire pornography industry… very specifically denigrates, dehumanizes, and degrades almost exclusively one biological sex for audiences to get off to… without expecting audiences to “have conversations with” or “get to know” or “learn about the personality traits” of those in their videos…?
Like can you imagine if 50% of porn featured biological males and just in the title it said “these are women because they identify as women,” and expected the vast, encompassing masses of straight biological males in their audiences to be like “oh okay, I guess I’ll judge by their personality traits and the fact that this says they identify as females to fap to this”? Gosh, I wonder why this isn’t what’s actually happening? What could it possibly be that keeps the pornography industry degrading and humiliating very specifically only one biological women?
Funny how clear the distinction suddenly becomes about what causes attraction when it comes to treating biological women like garbage.
(Ps, don’t be on to me about the tiny percentage of porn where males have had surgery and posed as women, as this is not representative of what the pornography industry does on the whole - either way, if it’s based on personality traits and getting to know each other then why would the surgery be necessary to begin with?)
At age 24, Meredith was hiking in a popular section of the Appalachian Trail when she was abducted and eventually murdered by a waste of oxygen not worth naming.
Her decapitated body was eventually found in a forest, and her head was recovered several weeks later many miles away.
The reason I’m sharing this story is because I want you all to know that in 2010, two years after she was killed, Hustler magazine put in an open records request, a legal tool meant to allow citizens access to government records, with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to receive copies of the photos of the crime scene and of her autopsy.
Put another way: a woman was tragically, violently, murdered by a man, and then other men tried to sell the photos of her naked, dismembered, dead body as porn.
How have the men behind this inhumane, vampiric, woman-hating industry managed to rehabilitate its image so successfully? This was 10 years ago, well within living memory of most millennials.
I can’t comprehend how someone could convince themselves there is anything but deep, violent, sexualised hatred women at the core of porn.
Like it’s even worse. They’re proud of it. They want to pretend publishing vore of actual woman is a civil rights issue.
This is fucking insidious and evil. Burn it all to the ground and stomp on the ashes.
Ireland adopted the Nordic model in 2017, making the purchase of sex illegal and criminalizing “brothels” (defined to include two or more sex workers sharing an apartment). Sex Workers Alliance Ireland conducted a survey in 2020 to monitor the effects of the law on sex workers. The findings were, unsurprisingly, that it made sex work more dangerous, screening clients more difficult, and so on.
In response to one question, “What have been the major impacts of the change in the law on your work?”, the answers:
83.33% said “I cannot live/work with another sex worker for fear of arrest for brothel keeping” 75% said “I worry that the police will arrest my clients” 70.83% said “I worry that the police might arrest me” 62.50% said “I am now more worried about violence and abuse” 54.17% said “It is now more difficult to screen clients” 33.33% said “It is now too difficult to keep regular clients that I trust” 29.17% said “I feel pressured into performing unsafe sexual practices” 20.83% said “I have had to drop my prices to get clients” 12.50% said “I don’t have time to negotiate with clients”
Only 8.33% (2 respondents) said “I am more likely to go to the Gardaí [police] if a crime has been committed against me”, and 0% selected the (humorously sarcastic) options “I now have too many clients to deal with” or “I feel more empowered.”
To explain why the law makes screening more difficult, SWAI write that it “may be because it is now the client who is breaking the law, not the worker, so clients are more reluctant to submit to screening processes as they are the ones taking criminal risks.”
In response to the question “Do you think sex work is now more dangerous or less dangerous since the law was introduced?”, 70.83% of responders gave the maximum option, “It is a lot more dangerous now.” On pg. 19-20 they review crimes against sex workers and find that all categories of crime have increased since the law was introduced, some quite drastically.
hey how many trafficked women did they include in this survey, op? how many women did they include who were able to escape the horrors of prostitution due to the nordic model? or did they interview white women with an “empowering side hustle” only
the sample size it literally 24 fucking people
calculation to back it up even though it says so in the file. this literally couldnt be less reliable
I Wonder who did that survey that they included “humurously sarcastic answers”. Is that a normal thing to do in non biased legitimates and serious studies ?
wooooooooow
owww my poor clients
Wasn’t this the “turn off the blue light” campaign that we as run by a sex trafficker
Also the Nordic model penalizes pimps and johns. If this version of it is criminalising two prostituted women living/working in the same house (where one is not the boss or pimp to the other), then it’s twisting the intent of the Nordic model to still penalise the women themselves instead of the men who own/rent/abuse them.
