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We have a perfectly good approach already; it's called the Nordic model. Arrest johns, not prostitutes. And there are thousands of former sex workers that will

We have a perfectly good approach already; it's called the Nordic model. Arrest johns, not prostitutes. And there are thousands of former sex workers that will give you an earful about what you think you know about prostitution and what prostitutes think.

Quarrelsome 10y ago
Every model has trade-offs, the trade-off of the Nordic model is that clients are less willing to disclose information which makes it more difficult for sex workers to weed out violent troublemakers. Implementing the Nordic model would in some cases undo some recent advances in identifying and blocking these ugly clients and result in some workers being violently abused or even possibly killed. Don't go thinking there is a silver bullet here, all solutions somewhat suck.
- empthought 10y ago
  > Implementing the Nordic model would in some cases undo some recent advances in identifying and blocking these ugly clients and result in some workers being violently abused or even possibly killed. Sorry to break the news to you: all clients are ugly clients, since they're all just fine with the idea that people's bodies are something to be bought and sold.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    So's all of capitalism - what is employment but the buying of somebody's body and mind? But I don't see people like you arguing towards the end of that, or the reduction of the circumstances which cause people to perform sex work - only reducing people's options within the framework we've already forced them to live in. I know people who have chosen sex work over a minimum wage job at McDonald's - apparently they think the sex work is less degrading, and it's much better paying. Also, I assume you don't actually mean bodies, as that would imply you're similarly against non-sexual modelling, acting, etc etc, where people employ people directly for their bodies, to varying degrees.
    - empthought 10y ago
      > So's all of capitalism - what is employment but the buying of somebody's body and mind? But I don't see people like you arguing towards the end of that This isn't germane to the issue, which is that purchasing sex is a reprehensible act. However, there is indeed a strong strain of anti-capitalist thought in radical feminism; it surprises me that you don't know this. > Also, I assume you don't actually mean bodies, as that would imply you're similarly against non-sexual modelling, acting, etc etc, where people employ people directly for their bodies, to varying degrees. I meant literally their bodies, not images of their bodies, or actions that their bodies perform. I meant direct access to their mouths, rectums, vaginas for the purpose of sexual gratification. I suppose if purchasing that kind of access had other purposes besides sexual gratification, "sex" wouldn't seem like such a special case.
      - vertex-four 10y ago
        > However, there is indeed a strong strain of anti-capitalist thought in radical feminism; it surprises me that you don't know this. I moderate a handful of self-titled "social justice warrior" chatrooms, which are full of everyone from libertarian socialists to anarcho-communists. I'm reasonably aware of various strands of feminism. I've been having a discussion on the morality of sex work for much of today. Sex work is immoral for the same reasons other work is immoral. It's not a special case, and shouldn't really be treated much differently. If you want to protect the sex worker from the necessity of performing their work, you should be similarly protecting the minimum wage retail clerk from the necessity of performing their work. Neither is worse than the other, and they have similar solutions.
        empthought 10y ago
        Again you are misrepresenting my position; it's not that "sex work" is somehow more immoral than other work, it's that the purchase of sex is immoral, shameful, and frankly, pathetic. It has nothing to do with capitalism vs. anarchism or anything else. Even under capitalism, purchasing e.g. food for your family that was somehow acquired under coercive circumstances is still less shameful than purchasing e.g. diamonds that were somehow acquired under coercive circumstances. What you're purchasing matters; it's not all the same.
  - Quarrelsome 10y ago
    I meant ugly as in abusive, violent or psychopathic.
    - empthought 10y ago
      Purchasing sex is inherently abusive.
      - Quarrelsome 10y ago
        Oh I see. So the safety of sex workers is of no importance to you? Must be comfy up on that high horse of yours.
Thimothy 10y ago
Ah, the Nordic model... The country in the middle bans prostitution and offloads it to the neighboring countries. I have yet to see any macro advantage on it, besides a little reduction and a lot of smug people feeling better about themselves. A while ago I spent quite some time researching the prostitution thing, trying to make up my mind about it. I remember the UN report on global trafficking[1] being specially enlightening. The conclusions I took from it: -Prohibition doesn't work. It just drives the prostitution underground, and as the pimps are already doing something illegal they don't mind going the extra mile, make it straightforward slavery and abuse the women so much than they are too terrified to escape. A small country (like Sweden) can offload the prostitution to nearby countries, but if all Europe were to do that the consequences would probably be really dire for a lot of women. -Full legality increases human trafficking. As there is a lot of legal prostitution going on, it's easier to get away with the trafficking. In Europe usually takes the shape of organized crime importing awful lot of women from western Europe to Holland and Germany. Long term, it's thought to increase the well being of prostitutes, both imported and local, but we still have to grok how to do it without make it without the traffic. -Not legal nor illegal. This is the situation in most countries, and the implementations vary wildly. In some countries the police does not intervene at all and it's a cesspool of mafias fighting for control, others make it a tourist attraction, while others haven't made it legal but don't prosecute the prostitutes. Curiously enough, this last approach is the one that gets the best results at stopping exploitative human trafficking as long as pimping is really prosecuted, don't remember anyone really explaining why. My guess is that in this situation large scale trafficking operations stand out much more, but who knows. TL;DR; It's hard. Swedes are a tiny bit hypocrites in this one. [1] http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-report-on-trafficking-in-persons.html http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-repor...
- empthought 10y ago
  > if all Europe were to do that the consequences would probably be really dire for a lot of women Yes, because people who purchase sex are a scourge to women everywhere.
- feklar 10y ago
  Indeed just having one region legalize skyrockets trafficking. Prices also go down, so prostitution becomes less attractive to locals as a way to make money which means foreigners in poor countries have to be imported, which leads to trafficking rings. Vice claims of the 500k prostitutes in Germany two-third's are foreign http://www.vice.com/read/a-visit-to-one-of-germanys-all-you-can-fuck-brothels-432 http://www.vice.com/read/a-visit-to-one-of-germanys-all-you-... It's extremely difficult to stop gangsters from trafficking because they operate in the trafficked persons home country as well, so if you run to the police in Germany or Canada they can seek retribution on your family members back home in Ukraine, Vietnam ect. Thus the not legal nor illegal does a good balance of preventing super brothels opening up full of imported sex workers while at the same time being able to arrest pimps without relying on the testimony of the sex workers.
barry-cotter 10y ago
That's the Nordic model where the police tell a landlord that if they don't evict their whore tenants they're profiting from prostitution, which is a crime, right?
makomk 10y ago
Ah, the Nordic model... That's the one where they criminalized landlords who knowingly rented to sex workers, then used that law to kick sex workers out of their homes for reporting their rapes to the police, right? The best part is that when Amnesty International took a stance against this, the sleazy slimeballs in the anti-trafficking movement accused them of making it up because those countries didn't criminalize sex workers (which technically they didn't - just everyone around them).
- empthought 10y ago
  > the sleazy slimeballs in the anti-trafficking movement Defending pimps and johns while calling anti-prostitution activists "sleazy slimeballs." I love it.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    Am I correct in interpreting that as you suggesting that anti-prostitution activists did not, in fact, claim that Amnesty International were making things up when they pointed out the negative outcomes of "the Nordic model" for sex workers, the people you're claiming it was supposed to protect?
    - empthought 10y ago
      Amnesty International relied on a flawed and now-retracted study that initially said violence against women had increased in Norway since banning the purchasing of sex, when in reality it had not. That is basically making things up.
vertex-four 10y ago
I know several sex workers personally, and regularly sit on the sidelines of their discussions when they talk about their work in sex-positive spaces. I can assure you that all of them would prefer that it were a lot easier to perform their job without fear of the police, or of losing their home, or of the stigma from friends and family. They also have a tendency to wish that people who didn't want to be in their line of work didn't have to be in their line of work. So why not actually try to solve that problem - reach out to individuals, listen to them, and help them achieve their goals - instead of trying to tell people what they want and don't want? The only reason I can think of is that that doesn't allow you to force your morality on people.
- empthought 10y ago
  > So why not actually try to solve that problem - reach out to individuals, listen to them, and help them achieve their goals I do. I reach out to would-be purchasers of sex and those who would defend them, and point out the dire consequences of their approach. Economic transfer doesn't suddenly make rape something one should aspire to or tolerate.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    I was talking about sex workers. The ones you're not listening to. Edit: Specifically, if the goal is to help sex workers who want help, the solution is... to help sex workers who want help. It's to perform research into the barriers to seeking help, and try to remove those barriers. It's not to prevent consensual trade between a person who has few issues with their job, and someone seeking their services. If, on the other hand, the goal is to eradicate sex work against the wishes of those sex workers for reasons of morality, punishing people who participate in it is a wonderful idea.
    - empthought 10y ago
      The goal is to eradicate sex work for reasons of "morality," exactly how the slavery abolition movement had no other reasons besides "morality."

Quarrelsome 10y ago

Every model has trade-offs, the trade-off of the Nordic model is that clients are less willing to disclose information which makes it more difficult for sex workers to weed out violent troublemakers. Implementing the Nordic model would in some cases undo some recent advances in identifying and blocking these ugly clients and result in some workers being violently abused or even possibly killed. Don't go thinking there is a silver bullet here, all solutions somewhat suck.

empthought 10y ago
> Implementing the Nordic model would in some cases undo some recent advances in identifying and blocking these ugly clients and result in some workers being violently abused or even possibly killed. Sorry to break the news to you: all clients are ugly clients, since they're all just fine with the idea that people's bodies are something to be bought and sold.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  So's all of capitalism - what is employment but the buying of somebody's body and mind? But I don't see people like you arguing towards the end of that, or the reduction of the circumstances which cause people to perform sex work - only reducing people's options within the framework we've already forced them to live in. I know people who have chosen sex work over a minimum wage job at McDonald's - apparently they think the sex work is less degrading, and it's much better paying. Also, I assume you don't actually mean bodies, as that would imply you're similarly against non-sexual modelling, acting, etc etc, where people employ people directly for their bodies, to varying degrees.
  - empthought 10y ago
    > So's all of capitalism - what is employment but the buying of somebody's body and mind? But I don't see people like you arguing towards the end of that This isn't germane to the issue, which is that purchasing sex is a reprehensible act. However, there is indeed a strong strain of anti-capitalist thought in radical feminism; it surprises me that you don't know this. > Also, I assume you don't actually mean bodies, as that would imply you're similarly against non-sexual modelling, acting, etc etc, where people employ people directly for their bodies, to varying degrees. I meant literally their bodies, not images of their bodies, or actions that their bodies perform. I meant direct access to their mouths, rectums, vaginas for the purpose of sexual gratification. I suppose if purchasing that kind of access had other purposes besides sexual gratification, "sex" wouldn't seem like such a special case.
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      > However, there is indeed a strong strain of anti-capitalist thought in radical feminism; it surprises me that you don't know this. I moderate a handful of self-titled "social justice warrior" chatrooms, which are full of everyone from libertarian socialists to anarcho-communists. I'm reasonably aware of various strands of feminism. I've been having a discussion on the morality of sex work for much of today. Sex work is immoral for the same reasons other work is immoral. It's not a special case, and shouldn't really be treated much differently. If you want to protect the sex worker from the necessity of performing their work, you should be similarly protecting the minimum wage retail clerk from the necessity of performing their work. Neither is worse than the other, and they have similar solutions.
      - empthought 10y ago
        Again you are misrepresenting my position; it's not that "sex work" is somehow more immoral than other work, it's that the purchase of sex is immoral, shameful, and frankly, pathetic. It has nothing to do with capitalism vs. anarchism or anything else. Even under capitalism, purchasing e.g. food for your family that was somehow acquired under coercive circumstances is still less shameful than purchasing e.g. diamonds that were somehow acquired under coercive circumstances. What you're purchasing matters; it's not all the same.
- Quarrelsome 10y ago
  I meant ugly as in abusive, violent or psychopathic.
  - empthought 10y ago
    Purchasing sex is inherently abusive.
    - Quarrelsome 10y ago
      Oh I see. So the safety of sex workers is of no importance to you? Must be comfy up on that high horse of yours.

Thimothy 10y ago

Ah, the Nordic model... The country in the middle bans prostitution and offloads it to the neighboring countries. I have yet to see any macro advantage on it, besides a little reduction and a lot of smug people feeling better about themselves. A while ago I spent quite some time researching the prostitution thing, trying to make up my mind about it. I remember the UN report on global trafficking[1] being specially enlightening. The conclusions I took from it: -Prohibition doesn't work. It just drives the prostitution underground, and as the pimps are already doing something illegal they don't mind going the extra mile, make it straightforward slavery and abuse the women so much than they are too terrified to escape. A small country (like Sweden) can offload the prostitution to nearby countries, but if all Europe were to do that the consequences would probably be really dire for a lot of women. -Full legality increases human trafficking. As there is a lot of legal prostitution going on, it's easier to get away with the trafficking. In Europe usually takes the shape of organized crime importing awful lot of women from western Europe to Holland and Germany. Long term, it's thought to increase the well being of prostitutes, both imported and local, but we still have to grok how to do it without make it without the traffic. -Not legal nor illegal. This is the situation in most countries, and the implementations vary wildly. In some countries the police does not intervene at all and it's a cesspool of mafias fighting for control, others make it a tourist attraction, while others haven't made it legal but don't prosecute the prostitutes. Curiously enough, this last approach is the one that gets the best results at stopping exploitative human trafficking as long as pimping is really prosecuted, don't remember anyone really explaining why. My guess is that in this situation large scale trafficking operations stand out much more, but who knows. TL;DR; It's hard. Swedes are a tiny bit hypocrites in this one. [1] http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-report-on-trafficking-in-persons.html http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-repor...

empthought 10y ago
> if all Europe were to do that the consequences would probably be really dire for a lot of women Yes, because people who purchase sex are a scourge to women everywhere.
feklar 10y ago
Indeed just having one region legalize skyrockets trafficking. Prices also go down, so prostitution becomes less attractive to locals as a way to make money which means foreigners in poor countries have to be imported, which leads to trafficking rings. Vice claims of the 500k prostitutes in Germany two-third's are foreign http://www.vice.com/read/a-visit-to-one-of-germanys-all-you-can-fuck-brothels-432 http://www.vice.com/read/a-visit-to-one-of-germanys-all-you-... It's extremely difficult to stop gangsters from trafficking because they operate in the trafficked persons home country as well, so if you run to the police in Germany or Canada they can seek retribution on your family members back home in Ukraine, Vietnam ect. Thus the not legal nor illegal does a good balance of preventing super brothels opening up full of imported sex workers while at the same time being able to arrest pimps without relying on the testimony of the sex workers.

barry-cotter 10y ago

That's the Nordic model where the police tell a landlord that if they don't evict their whore tenants they're profiting from prostitution, which is a crime, right?

makomk 10y ago

Ah, the Nordic model... That's the one where they criminalized landlords who knowingly rented to sex workers, then used that law to kick sex workers out of their homes for reporting their rapes to the police, right? The best part is that when Amnesty International took a stance against this, the sleazy slimeballs in the anti-trafficking movement accused them of making it up because those countries didn't criminalize sex workers (which technically they didn't - just everyone around them).

empthought 10y ago
> the sleazy slimeballs in the anti-trafficking movement Defending pimps and johns while calling anti-prostitution activists "sleazy slimeballs." I love it.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  Am I correct in interpreting that as you suggesting that anti-prostitution activists did not, in fact, claim that Amnesty International were making things up when they pointed out the negative outcomes of "the Nordic model" for sex workers, the people you're claiming it was supposed to protect?
  - empthought 10y ago
    Amnesty International relied on a flawed and now-retracted study that initially said violence against women had increased in Norway since banning the purchasing of sex, when in reality it had not. That is basically making things up.

vertex-four 10y ago

I know several sex workers personally, and regularly sit on the sidelines of their discussions when they talk about their work in sex-positive spaces. I can assure you that all of them would prefer that it were a lot easier to perform their job without fear of the police, or of losing their home, or of the stigma from friends and family. They also have a tendency to wish that people who didn't want to be in their line of work didn't have to be in their line of work. So why not actually try to solve that problem - reach out to individuals, listen to them, and help them achieve their goals - instead of trying to tell people what they want and don't want? The only reason I can think of is that that doesn't allow you to force your morality on people.

empthought 10y ago
> So why not actually try to solve that problem - reach out to individuals, listen to them, and help them achieve their goals I do. I reach out to would-be purchasers of sex and those who would defend them, and point out the dire consequences of their approach. Economic transfer doesn't suddenly make rape something one should aspire to or tolerate.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  I was talking about sex workers. The ones you're not listening to. Edit: Specifically, if the goal is to help sex workers who want help, the solution is... to help sex workers who want help. It's to perform research into the barriers to seeking help, and try to remove those barriers. It's not to prevent consensual trade between a person who has few issues with their job, and someone seeking their services. If, on the other hand, the goal is to eradicate sex work against the wishes of those sex workers for reasons of morality, punishing people who participate in it is a wonderful idea.
  - empthought 10y ago
    The goal is to eradicate sex work for reasons of "morality," exactly how the slavery abolition movement had no other reasons besides "morality."