“I pay for sex because I can. Because taking a woman out to dinner costs me money, so why not? Because it is my need and she gets to feed her kids.” Sex buyer, Amsterdam.
Prostitution and surrogacy are (sometimes) consensual. The idea of consent relates to the "human rights of the women that wish to sell sex."
Consent is such a misleading and opaque word.
Women consent to things all the time, including sex, with no desire or enthusiasm.
The world of Psychotherapy/Psychology never looks at the psychological consequences of consensual but unwanted sex. The wider world also never looks at the physical consequences of prostitution (or surrogacy).
People consent to many things (like say unpaid overtime) all the time, and many on the left can still see that the value of consent is diminished if it is forced by external pressures, like the need for money, but for some reason all that analysis goes out the window if the topic is prostitution or pornography...
Women consent to things all the time, including sex, with no desire or enthusiasm. They agree to it, they consent to it - but don't actually want to do it.
I think the best solution would be to create sex robots for those men who cannot get fulfilled otherwise. It is obvious these men do not treat women as human beings deserving of respect and care in these interactions - why do they deserve anything but an object?
Of course the men who get off on sexual sadism, would not be fulfilled. For them incarceration is probably the best option for society.
What I find both interesting and disturbing is this natural pairing of the entitlement of the punter to express aggression and disrespect toward a sex worker. Do they have the same attitude toward EVERY monetary transaction involving a service provider. Would they insist that they have the right to call their Doctor or Lawyer or Nurse a b-ch or an A-hole because they are paying for their services? I would say their psychopathy would be acknowledged instantly if they behaved in such a way. The fact that they feel entitled to be an A-hole shows they feel sex-workers are not deserving of respect due to the hunter's mysogyny or penchant for sadism.
In no other field of work, besides sex work, are women or men expected to take physical, emotional, or mental abuse as de regeur requirements of their job. I think that this reality is enough to make it clear WHO the majority of the clientele of sex work are. That any society would scramble to legally accommodate and normalize sexual sadism - is truly disturbing.
My observation is these young bucks think they "made her day" when actually they are simply anonymous angry, naked males. I've understood that the mayor of Amsterdam has actually requested these British sex tourists not to come there, because they make such a mess when they're not naked.
I worked with Intellectually (and sometimes also physically) disabled people (Australia). Some of my colleagues were expected to clean clients after they'd had a wank. We all had to clean up every other 'spillage' from human bodies, but cleaning up semen was something none of us were prepared to do. When you consider that most carers are women, and many of them older women, it's really not something you'd want your mother doing.
There was one guy who would ejaculated several times a day. Imagine.
I suspect the majority of people don’t lie awake at night worrying about the harms of the sex trade. But your amazing article shows why they really should.
One potential solution could be to treat the ability to buy sex the same way as the ability to buy guns. In NZ where I live, gun owners are subjected to stringent testing before being allowed to own guns. They have to pass an exam, they undergo an hour-long interview (as does their spouse or partner) and are subject to a police check. If they pass muster they receive a licence to own firearms. Like gun purchasers, sex purchasers should be licensed and subject to similar prior (and ongoing) scrutiny. Of course such a programme would be very expensive to run but then so is the investigation of murder and violence against women.
Sex is a physical & skilled activity like carpentry or massage therapy or chiropractic which are unexceptional (in the developed world). There’s absolutely no reason to prohibit paying for “sex”, _in theory_.
But the world exists in practice, not theory, and there are issues and the devil is in the details.
> Unless the human rights approach of criminalising the punters is adopted
Here is a fundamental problem. Both sides of an argument claiming their position expresses a “human right”. Although it’s remotely possible both are correct, it seems to me unlikely and even if true, not useful. But the problem of persuasion is that both sides can make their claim as a human rights claim and both sides are immersed in rights discourse. It actually illustrates the futility of rights discourse as a way forward. Rights discourse itself needs to be very critically challenged. Not abolished, necessarily, but very heavily pared down to an indisputable core. At the moment it is a blank check that can be used to underwrite the most noxious propositions.
Similarly, with consent. This is an intellectual battle against liberalism in general and liberal feminism in particular. I think the only way to prevail is to radically challenge the liberal concepts of consent and of rights. While the former can be achieved by deploying Marxist ideas openly, repudiating the liberal word games, it will be much more difficult for radical feminism to critically re-examine the idea of rights. The work you cite from Willets is encouraging. As is the general tenor of Feminist Currents.
Isn't this a question of power? How much power to the women involved actually have, given that they need to eat, have a roof over their heads and clothes to wear? Maybe a small minority would choose to earn money this way, but they do seem to be small minority.
If so, then prostitution is not a human rights choice for most of the women. So its an employment question, especially in the countries from which women are trafficked. In other words are we able to produce fairly full urban employment, and at decent standards of living. Isn't this Julie, what you should be pursuing, and asking what education or training might be offered to these women, to enable them to find work? Care work is poorly paid, but might some of the women prefer this to violence that seems to almost always go with their present employment?
I'd be very interested in your response to this Julie. Ian
The big problem with looking at the effects when determining if something is ethical is that often outside factors are an issue.
For example, look at agriculture. In the 17th-18th century, in America, most agricultural jobs were done by slaves. And, of course, the work conditions were appalling. It was terrible, people were beaten, they were forced to do things they didn't agree to, and had basically no legal recourse.
Would it have been fair to say that farming, as a whole, is inherently unethical because of the chattel slavery that occurred?
What about farming today? A large portion of farmers use illegal immigrants as what essentially amounts to slaves. Passports are taken, they are physically (and sometimes sexually) abused, and are paid a pittance. Do these terrible events mean that farming as an industry needs to be abolished, or that the human trafficking surrounding farming needs to be abolished?
I argue that it is the human trafficking, and other abuses, that make those jobs unethical, not the farming as a whole. And, I think that should be applied to sex work. Yes, historically sex work has been terribly abusive to the women working. But, the same is true of farming. For most of human history, farmers have been some type of slave. From chattel slavery of the African slave trade to serfs toiling for their feudal lord, most farmers have not been free in any way.
I would argue that you were only able to write this comment because either... you're a man, with little understanding of the female experience, or a disassociated woman who thinks there are 'two types of women... women who 'sell' their bodies and women who don't. Either way, you belong in the category of the 'sex work is work' camp and have no understanding of where Julie Bindel is coming from, let alone most women.
I would imagine that AweDude is a heterosexual man. In that case how would he feel if gay men used him for their sexual pleasure and were disinterested in his very negative feelings?
Yes, obviously you can separate any group of nouns into those which have a certain quality and those who don't. What are you event trying to say with that? I can separate dogs into those who chase balls and those who don't. I can separate cars into those which have heated seats and those which don't.
That tangent aside, do you have an actual point against my argument?
You're much too abstract; people aren't nouns. But what about efforts for each woman who works in this way to be offered training in some other area of work. In this way, many might leave this kind of work behind them.
What? A noun is literally a *person*, place or thing. That's... part of the very definition!
And yes, a person in sex work might take the opportunity to get an education to start working a better career. But, the same is true of nearly any manual labour, from farming to warehouse workers to fry cooks to delivery drivers.
Just because noun can stand for a person, does not mean that a person is a noun. There is an assymmetry here, not a symmetrisation. Matte Blanco might help your understanding of this difference.
I would think women who earn their bread this way must split off their feelings from their experiences of intimacy. A dreadful way to damage oneself. I notice Mr AweDude did not respond to how he'd feel if gay guys enjoyed themselves on him.
1. That would be true, if the farmer was a free person. As I said, the majority of farmers in human history was some manner of slave, and slavery is inherently abusive. Having sex is not, if done properly, traumatic. Being a sex slave or being trafficked, however, is inherently traumatic.
2. "Illegal worker" can mean many things. Generally, what happens is that a person will go to America for "vacation", but actually intend to work. When someone comes into a country, they usually do so on the condition that they do not work any jobs. Thus, they would still have their passport, and would need said passport to return to their home country.
Also I said that most farmers in human history were some form of slavery. One, there is more to history than just the USA. (And, I can't believe I need to say this, but Canada is not part of USA) Most ancient societies had slavery of some kind, even if it was not exactly like the chattel slavery of the African slave trade. Even Europe in the medieval ages had slavery, in the form of serfs working for their feudal lord.
nothing that can be compared to prostitution, which is sexual slavery, the worst slavery there is, without male demand thousands of women and girls and children should not be trafficked for sex, it is an abuse, you cannot separate "voluntary" prostitution from sexual slavery, because women who want to sell themselves voluntarily, therefore women (without economic coercion, or drug addiction or previous traumas) are very few compared to male demand, and it will always be male demand that creates sexual exploitation, let's say (thought experiment). There are 100 women who "want to sell themselves" voluntarily and there are 1000 male clients a day who want to use these services, these 100 women find themselves prostituting themselves for about 10 clients a day almost every day and this would become exploitation, if these girls want to put limits on the number of clients and the things they are willing to do, these clients will move to forced women who because of exploitation with a pimp behind them are forced to serve more than 10 clients a day and do sexually violent and degrading things that the "voluntary" prostitutes will never accept and this is where exploitation begins.
That comparison doesn't make sense. Let's say there are 100 people who are the best masseuses in the world, and there are 1000 clients a day that was a massage. Does that automatically mean that each masseuse would be forced to service 10 clients a day?
In such a case, economic demand would force some of the clients out. Assuming that a masseuse can only service 4 clients a day, the price would rise until there are a 4:1 client:masseuse ratio, as some clients would be priced out.
One area where your thought experiment is actually and literally happening is farming. I believe I've said this before (and I can't believe how many times I need to repeat myself) but there are many farmers today who force illegal immigrants to work in slave-like conditions due to a lack of farm workers willing to work at low wages. It is a thing that is currently happening. There are even cartel run avocado farms in places like Mexico, because avocados are often a much better product to sell than drugs. Doesn't make them any kinder to the avocado farmers, though.
Does the very real and current existence of slavery on farms mean that agriculture as an industry needs to be banned?
agriculture is not a form of slavery, but due to demand (avocado or other products) it can become one, prostitution is intrinsically slave-making, you cannot compare picking avocados etc... to having sex with strangers, prostitution was born with the sole purpose of sexually enslaving women for male pleasure, before the prostitute was born the pimp who prostitutes her, then you are talking about masseuses (I assume you did not mean in a sexual sense), which is a different context, the clients of prostitutes if there are few prostitutes to sell themselves "voluntarily", will not abandon the request but will still go looking for prostitutes at this point a malicious person (in addition to the client who moves the market) that the pimp decides is profitable because there is a demand that is not appeased by the low number of prostitutes willing to sell themselves compared to the clients and therefore decides to traffic girls for the demand and this can be seen everywhere
Thank you Julie Bindel for this extract, and for your incredible, tireless work. You are magnificent.
Prostitution and surrogacy are (sometimes) consensual. The idea of consent relates to the "human rights of the women that wish to sell sex."
Consent is such a misleading and opaque word.
Women consent to things all the time, including sex, with no desire or enthusiasm.
The world of Psychotherapy/Psychology never looks at the psychological consequences of consensual but unwanted sex. The wider world also never looks at the physical consequences of prostitution (or surrogacy).
People consent to many things (like say unpaid overtime) all the time, and many on the left can still see that the value of consent is diminished if it is forced by external pressures, like the need for money, but for some reason all that analysis goes out the window if the topic is prostitution or pornography...
"Consensual but unwanted" ? If it's not wanted, it's not consensual.
Women consent to things all the time, including sex, with no desire or enthusiasm. They agree to it, they consent to it - but don't actually want to do it.
That's coercition, not consent.
They don't consent, they are coerced to.
You talk like a punter or a pimp.
I think the best solution would be to create sex robots for those men who cannot get fulfilled otherwise. It is obvious these men do not treat women as human beings deserving of respect and care in these interactions - why do they deserve anything but an object?
Of course the men who get off on sexual sadism, would not be fulfilled. For them incarceration is probably the best option for society.
What I find both interesting and disturbing is this natural pairing of the entitlement of the punter to express aggression and disrespect toward a sex worker. Do they have the same attitude toward EVERY monetary transaction involving a service provider. Would they insist that they have the right to call their Doctor or Lawyer or Nurse a b-ch or an A-hole because they are paying for their services? I would say their psychopathy would be acknowledged instantly if they behaved in such a way. The fact that they feel entitled to be an A-hole shows they feel sex-workers are not deserving of respect due to the hunter's mysogyny or penchant for sadism.
In no other field of work, besides sex work, are women or men expected to take physical, emotional, or mental abuse as de regeur requirements of their job. I think that this reality is enough to make it clear WHO the majority of the clientele of sex work are. That any society would scramble to legally accommodate and normalize sexual sadism - is truly disturbing.
Exactly.
My observation is these young bucks think they "made her day" when actually they are simply anonymous angry, naked males. I've understood that the mayor of Amsterdam has actually requested these British sex tourists not to come there, because they make such a mess when they're not naked.
I worked with Intellectually (and sometimes also physically) disabled people (Australia). Some of my colleagues were expected to clean clients after they'd had a wank. We all had to clean up every other 'spillage' from human bodies, but cleaning up semen was something none of us were prepared to do. When you consider that most carers are women, and many of them older women, it's really not something you'd want your mother doing.
There was one guy who would ejaculated several times a day. Imagine.
A fantastic, but grim, read. Thankyou Julie ❤️
It was mostly great, and a huge learning curve 😊
I suspect the majority of people don’t lie awake at night worrying about the harms of the sex trade. But your amazing article shows why they really should.
One potential solution could be to treat the ability to buy sex the same way as the ability to buy guns. In NZ where I live, gun owners are subjected to stringent testing before being allowed to own guns. They have to pass an exam, they undergo an hour-long interview (as does their spouse or partner) and are subject to a police check. If they pass muster they receive a licence to own firearms. Like gun purchasers, sex purchasers should be licensed and subject to similar prior (and ongoing) scrutiny. Of course such a programme would be very expensive to run but then so is the investigation of murder and violence against women.
“Is paying for sex a crime?”
In many nations, yes.
“Should it be?”
In theory, no.
Sex is a physical & skilled activity like carpentry or massage therapy or chiropractic which are unexceptional (in the developed world). There’s absolutely no reason to prohibit paying for “sex”, _in theory_.
But the world exists in practice, not theory, and there are issues and the devil is in the details.
> Unless the human rights approach of criminalising the punters is adopted
Here is a fundamental problem. Both sides of an argument claiming their position expresses a “human right”. Although it’s remotely possible both are correct, it seems to me unlikely and even if true, not useful. But the problem of persuasion is that both sides can make their claim as a human rights claim and both sides are immersed in rights discourse. It actually illustrates the futility of rights discourse as a way forward. Rights discourse itself needs to be very critically challenged. Not abolished, necessarily, but very heavily pared down to an indisputable core. At the moment it is a blank check that can be used to underwrite the most noxious propositions.
Similarly, with consent. This is an intellectual battle against liberalism in general and liberal feminism in particular. I think the only way to prevail is to radically challenge the liberal concepts of consent and of rights. While the former can be achieved by deploying Marxist ideas openly, repudiating the liberal word games, it will be much more difficult for radical feminism to critically re-examine the idea of rights. The work you cite from Willets is encouraging. As is the general tenor of Feminist Currents.
What do you think motivates Mariska (?) to stalk and oppose you?
Point 5 is duplicated. Is point 3 meant to be a continuation of point 2?
Isn't this a question of power? How much power to the women involved actually have, given that they need to eat, have a roof over their heads and clothes to wear? Maybe a small minority would choose to earn money this way, but they do seem to be small minority.
If so, then prostitution is not a human rights choice for most of the women. So its an employment question, especially in the countries from which women are trafficked. In other words are we able to produce fairly full urban employment, and at decent standards of living. Isn't this Julie, what you should be pursuing, and asking what education or training might be offered to these women, to enable them to find work? Care work is poorly paid, but might some of the women prefer this to violence that seems to almost always go with their present employment?
I'd be very interested in your response to this Julie. Ian
The big problem with looking at the effects when determining if something is ethical is that often outside factors are an issue.
For example, look at agriculture. In the 17th-18th century, in America, most agricultural jobs were done by slaves. And, of course, the work conditions were appalling. It was terrible, people were beaten, they were forced to do things they didn't agree to, and had basically no legal recourse.
Would it have been fair to say that farming, as a whole, is inherently unethical because of the chattel slavery that occurred?
What about farming today? A large portion of farmers use illegal immigrants as what essentially amounts to slaves. Passports are taken, they are physically (and sometimes sexually) abused, and are paid a pittance. Do these terrible events mean that farming as an industry needs to be abolished, or that the human trafficking surrounding farming needs to be abolished?
I argue that it is the human trafficking, and other abuses, that make those jobs unethical, not the farming as a whole. And, I think that should be applied to sex work. Yes, historically sex work has been terribly abusive to the women working. But, the same is true of farming. For most of human history, farmers have been some type of slave. From chattel slavery of the African slave trade to serfs toiling for their feudal lord, most farmers have not been free in any way.
I would argue that you were only able to write this comment because either... you're a man, with little understanding of the female experience, or a disassociated woman who thinks there are 'two types of women... women who 'sell' their bodies and women who don't. Either way, you belong in the category of the 'sex work is work' camp and have no understanding of where Julie Bindel is coming from, let alone most women.
I would imagine that AweDude is a heterosexual man. In that case how would he feel if gay men used him for their sexual pleasure and were disinterested in his very negative feelings?
Pretty sure he'd experience instant empathy
Yes, obviously you can separate any group of nouns into those which have a certain quality and those who don't. What are you event trying to say with that? I can separate dogs into those who chase balls and those who don't. I can separate cars into those which have heated seats and those which don't.
That tangent aside, do you have an actual point against my argument?
You're much too abstract; people aren't nouns. But what about efforts for each woman who works in this way to be offered training in some other area of work. In this way, many might leave this kind of work behind them.
Ian
>people aren't nouns.
What? A noun is literally a *person*, place or thing. That's... part of the very definition!
And yes, a person in sex work might take the opportunity to get an education to start working a better career. But, the same is true of nearly any manual labour, from farming to warehouse workers to fry cooks to delivery drivers.
Just because noun can stand for a person, does not mean that a person is a noun. There is an assymmetry here, not a symmetrisation. Matte Blanco might help your understanding of this difference.
Do you mean literally, as in a physical person is not literally a word?
Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom
You seem to be having some trouble, here try this link: https://gprivate.com/6gzkq
I would think women who earn their bread this way must split off their feelings from their experiences of intimacy. A dreadful way to damage oneself. I notice Mr AweDude did not respond to how he'd feel if gay guys enjoyed themselves on him.
1. That would be true, if the farmer was a free person. As I said, the majority of farmers in human history was some manner of slave, and slavery is inherently abusive. Having sex is not, if done properly, traumatic. Being a sex slave or being trafficked, however, is inherently traumatic.
2. "Illegal worker" can mean many things. Generally, what happens is that a person will go to America for "vacation", but actually intend to work. When someone comes into a country, they usually do so on the condition that they do not work any jobs. Thus, they would still have their passport, and would need said passport to return to their home country.
Also I said that most farmers in human history were some form of slavery. One, there is more to history than just the USA. (And, I can't believe I need to say this, but Canada is not part of USA) Most ancient societies had slavery of some kind, even if it was not exactly like the chattel slavery of the African slave trade. Even Europe in the medieval ages had slavery, in the form of serfs working for their feudal lord.
nothing that can be compared to prostitution, which is sexual slavery, the worst slavery there is, without male demand thousands of women and girls and children should not be trafficked for sex, it is an abuse, you cannot separate "voluntary" prostitution from sexual slavery, because women who want to sell themselves voluntarily, therefore women (without economic coercion, or drug addiction or previous traumas) are very few compared to male demand, and it will always be male demand that creates sexual exploitation, let's say (thought experiment). There are 100 women who "want to sell themselves" voluntarily and there are 1000 male clients a day who want to use these services, these 100 women find themselves prostituting themselves for about 10 clients a day almost every day and this would become exploitation, if these girls want to put limits on the number of clients and the things they are willing to do, these clients will move to forced women who because of exploitation with a pimp behind them are forced to serve more than 10 clients a day and do sexually violent and degrading things that the "voluntary" prostitutes will never accept and this is where exploitation begins.
That comparison doesn't make sense. Let's say there are 100 people who are the best masseuses in the world, and there are 1000 clients a day that was a massage. Does that automatically mean that each masseuse would be forced to service 10 clients a day?
In such a case, economic demand would force some of the clients out. Assuming that a masseuse can only service 4 clients a day, the price would rise until there are a 4:1 client:masseuse ratio, as some clients would be priced out.
One area where your thought experiment is actually and literally happening is farming. I believe I've said this before (and I can't believe how many times I need to repeat myself) but there are many farmers today who force illegal immigrants to work in slave-like conditions due to a lack of farm workers willing to work at low wages. It is a thing that is currently happening. There are even cartel run avocado farms in places like Mexico, because avocados are often a much better product to sell than drugs. Doesn't make them any kinder to the avocado farmers, though.
Does the very real and current existence of slavery on farms mean that agriculture as an industry needs to be banned?
agriculture is not a form of slavery, but due to demand (avocado or other products) it can become one, prostitution is intrinsically slave-making, you cannot compare picking avocados etc... to having sex with strangers, prostitution was born with the sole purpose of sexually enslaving women for male pleasure, before the prostitute was born the pimp who prostitutes her, then you are talking about masseuses (I assume you did not mean in a sexual sense), which is a different context, the clients of prostitutes if there are few prostitutes to sell themselves "voluntarily", will not abandon the request but will still go looking for prostitutes at this point a malicious person (in addition to the client who moves the market) that the pimp decides is profitable because there is a demand that is not appeased by the low number of prostitutes willing to sell themselves compared to the clients and therefore decides to traffic girls for the demand and this can be seen everywhere