Informative links topic

http://www.powerottawa.ca/ManagementResearch.pdf

http://feministire.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/sex-trafficking-in-sweden-according-to-the-swedish-police/

http://www.bestpracticespolicy.org/2014/01/28/using-human-rights-not-super-bowl-sex-trafficking-hype-to-understand-the-issues-in-new-jersey/

http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/stupor-bowl/

http://www2.law.columbia.edu/faculty_franke/FTW2009/Agustin%20Sex%20and%20the%20Limits%20of%20Enlightenment.pdf

Poor LE, and they are the ones stuck being held accountable that they can't find these hundreds of thousands of victims, and often have to drag victims kicking and screaming to the 'help' centre places.   

Approx one year ago Sweden toughened up its laws, because, one radfem politico says, there doesn't seem to be enough people going to jail for this, so they did make jail time one of the things judges could sentence someone to.   The ones who do get charged, however, tend to pay a fine and go on their way.  Depending of course on what their job is.  To the politician who owned 3 Thai massage parlours that helped clients with happy endings and the person arrested after a session in a hotel room with a sex worker, they also lose their jobs.   

for example 

http://www.thelocal.se/20130226/46422

Feb 26 2013   Police in Stockholm were surprised on Monday to find that a man they had arrested for buying sex from a prostitute was the duty prosecutor to whom they were obliged to report the crime.

 

And there is this highlighting the level of stigma that is now acceptable against sex workers, not their clients, they themselves. 

http://www.thelocal.se/20130912/50200

Quote:A pub in south central Sweden has been cleared of discrimination charges after bouncers denied entry to several women of Asian appearance in what owners claimed was an attempt to cut down on prostitution.

Another favourite (another story mentions a swedish politician was found to be owner of 3 different Thai mps)

http://www.thelocal.se/20120110/38422

http://www.thelocal.se/20130808/49526

Quote:Every fifth Thai massage parlour in Malmö, southern Sweden, accepts requests for sexual gratification at the end of a session, a Swedish newspaper reported on Thursday.

 

And of course

http://www.thelocal.se/20130527/48160

Quote:Despite Sweden's much-debated and soon 15-year-old law that bans buying sex, rather than selling it, the statute has not resulted in any convicted sex buyers spending time behind bars.

A vice article.   Keeping in mind that even vice.com can't help themselves from using an inappropriate and irrelevant pic of an outdoor sex worker, in an article that is competely and only about indoor sex workers.

http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/canadian-cops-launched-a-sting-operation-...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2555730/Police-Chinas-sin-city-D...

What illegalization of prostitution looks like.   

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/thinking-of-sex-work-a...

Writer Melissa Gira Grant's forthcoming book, Playing the Whore, is a short, focused effort to change the way we publicly talk and think about prostitution and sex work. Rather than focusing on the "sex" part—the risqué acts at which we can shiver in prurience or horror—Grant suggests we focus on "work." By doing so, she argues, sex workers become neither corrupters who need purging, nor victims who need rescuing, but workers who need the sorts of things all workers need—access to healthcare, a safe work environment, and protection from abuse and exploitation.

What is the greatest danger sex workers face? Or what is the most important thing sex workers need? Or are those the wrong questions?

They're impossible questions to answer because people's needs are diverse and people's experiences are diverse. So I think that's the first place to start. There is no one solution, there is no one project, there is no one political point of view that can possibly speak to every single person who has experience in the sex trade.

But starting with the first part, what is the biggest danger? I really think that having to live under systems of criminalization such as that in the United States, where almost everything having to do with selling or buying sex is criminal and often completely unregulated. It's incredibly difficult for people to protect their rights as human beings and workers, to ensure that their civil rights are respected, when you're working in an environment that says, "Well, this isn't actually a job, you kind of get what you deserve. And even more so, you might be a criminal."

Now the new tendency is to call you a victim of the sex industry. So, the problem is not that you've experienced victimization in the sex industry, the problem you have is "the sex industry," and the way we're going to resolve that problem is to remove you from it.

That is a one-prong approach, which is going to fail a lot of people because that's not what people are telling you their problem is when they say, "I experienced an abusive customer." Or, "I experienced a police officer impersonating a customer in order to get free sex from me, and then threatened to arrest me if I didn't do that." Or even when someone says, "I called in sick today at the strip club where I work and I got fined $200, so now I'm going to show up at work the next time owing them money. That feels coercive and exploitative, and also why am I being fined for being sick?" Who else gets fined for being sick?

 

 

http://rightswork.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Issue-Paper-4.pdfhttp://rightswork.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Issue-Paper-4.pdf

From 2012.  I always think it is interesting that the Swedish model has been studied, dissected, and debunked by many different scholars and researchers, and yet the media is rarely able to pick up these articles to use when copying out the press releases of the anti sex work factions in their stories.    

The Swedish Law To Criminalize Clients:  A Failed Social Experiment

The Swedish approach is not practical or reality-based. It envisions a time when all men who purchase sex are either in prison or are so afraid of being arrested that they no longer seek commercial sex, at least not in Sweden. Obviously, it is impossible to arrest, let alone imprison, all men who purchase sex. So, the law is an experiment in social engineering to change the behavior and thoughts of Swedish men. Prior to the law, men did not have to worry about being arrested. The hope was that the mere threat of arrest, plus social stigma, would be enough to change their behavior

The law focuses on increasing the social stigma against buyers, as well as sellers, of sex. Although it is constructed upon the theory that sex workers are passive ‘victims’, in practice, it is intended to increase stigma and discrimination against the sex workers who refuse or are unable to quit selling sex.

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/with-no-career-p...

Interesting, in the comments, there are a few who don't believe the story is true, and others who may believe the story is true, but a sex worker would be incapable of actually writing it.  Even tho the story is actually about a university graduate who dabbled in being a sex worker, the thing that sticks in their minds is that sex workers can't write articles that would get published in a news paper lol   

Even the guy who refers to Dr. Magnanti, former escort who also wrote Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

Naomi Sayers: Indigenous peoples: Sex Work, Human Trafficking, & Colonialism

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/mercedes-allen/2014/03/across-left-divid...

The language that assumes that one is a traded product during commercial sex is understandably enraging.  It would be natural to be infuriated about sex work if that were really the case.  And this is often the way that abolitionists frame the discussion: as though prostitution sells people.  In reality, sex workers sell an experience, from which a they ultimately walk away, with their capacity to direct their own lives intact and their ownership still in their own hands (as much as is possible for any of us, at least).

It is through this framing that the personhood of sex workers is erased, and replaced with a kind of infantilized victimhood in which sex workers are simply helpless and in need of rescue... even from themselves, perhaps.  It is by portraying the worker as the commodity that is for sale, rather than the service they provide, that people can then argue that a worker's consent is not actually valid consent.  Individual will has ceased to matter.

 

http://rankandfile.ca/?p=2063

Some of the public discussion of the role of sex workers in the economy has likened sex workers to small business owners or entrepreneurs; they offer a service often as independent contractors. For many sex workers, this is the case: they negotiate directly with their clients on services and payments, they deal with the management of the finances of their work, they hire and fire driving, security, or other staff. Other sex workers don’t own anything and are employees with employers. These workers may be misclassified as independent contractors in their workplaces, but labour and feminist activists should not be fooled by this common attempt to limit workers’ rights by calling them something they are not like taxi drivers and couriers.

 

http://www.straight.com/news/615581/open-letter-300-researchers-call-decriminalization-sex-work-canada?comment_mode=1#add-new-comment

Re: Evidence-Based Call for Decriminalization of Sex Work in Canada and Opposition to Criminalizing the Purchasing of Sex 

We, the undersigned, are profoundly concerned that the Government of Canada is considering the introduction of new legislation to criminalize the purchasing of sex. The proposed legislation is not scientifically grounded and evidence strongly suggests that it would recreate the same social and health-related harms of current criminalization. We join other sex worker, research, and legal experts across the country and urge the Government of Canada to follow the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision and support decriminalization of sex work as a critical evidence-based approach to ensuring the safety, health, and human rights of sex workers.

A large body of scientific evidence from Canada,[1] Sweden and Norway (where clients and third parties are criminalized), and globally[2] clearly demonstrates that criminal laws targeting the sex industry have overwhelmingly negative social, health, and human rights consequences to sex workers, including increased violence and abuse, stigma, HIV and inability to access critical social, health and legal protections. These harms disproportionately impact marginalized sex workers including female, Indigenous and street-involved sex workers, who face the highest rates of violence and murder in our country. In contrast, in New Zealand, since the passage of a law to decriminalize sex work in 2003, research and the government’s own evaluation have documented marked improvements in sex workers’ safety, health, and human rights.[3]

Therefore, we call on the Government of Canada to join with global leaders, community, researchers and legal experts in rejecting criminalization regimes, including those that criminalize the purchase of sexual services, and instead support the decriminalization of sex work in Canada as scientifically-grounded and necessary to ensuring the safety, health, and human rights of sex workers. Below, we briefly outline our key concerns.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2014/03/ah-shouldnt-canadas-new-sex-work-legislation-include-workers-#comment-1433550

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2014/04/patriarchal-values-dominate-sex-work-debate#comment-1433888

.........

I've written previously on the many striking parallels between anti-abortionists and radical feminists. Both cast women as victims and use dehumanizing language to describe sex workers and women who have abortions. Both are paternalistic and don't recognize women's agency. Both demonize third parties as exploiters or profiteers and want to criminalize them -- "pimps" and brothel owners for radical feminists, and abortion providers for anti-abortionists.

Both exploit the sad stories of the minority of women who feel damaged by sex work or abortion, and both ignore the majority who choose sex work or have abortions without regret. Both rely on ideology and emotional appeals, as well as their own B.A.D. science (biased, agenda-driven) full of distorted statistics and fabricated "facts." For example, both falsely claim that abortion and sex work are inherently dangerous and bad for women. And both share the delusion that prostitution and abortion can be abolished via criminal laws, despite overwhelming and conclusive evidence that women cannot be stopped from selling sex or having abortions, and that criminalization of either puts women in danger.

 

...........................................................

If you posit instead that sex (and sex work) is a means of power that women have over men, and a positive expression of their sexuality and autonomy, then the perspective changes dramatically. I've often wondered -- since feminist prohibitionists blame the patriarchy for prostitution, would it end if we managed to achieve an egalitarian world? My answer is no, since there will always be people who cannot obtain sex, and sex workers would likely enjoy influence and prestige in an egalitarian society. Our modern society's negative attitudes towards promiscuous women are a legacy of patriarchy and the male need to guarantee paternity of children by controlling women's sexual behaviour.

Nickie Roberts said in the foreword to her book Whores in History:

"I am wholeheartedly on the side of the unrepentant whore, the most maligned woman in history…in [this book she] speaks up to denounce and challenge her oppressors, and thereby overcome the centuries of lies, denial and stereotyping that have been her lot. Only when she is listened to by the rest of our society will women finally and irrevocably be able to end our division into Good Girls and Bad Girls."