The recent admission, in the form of a study that established that the supposed link between sex trafficking and sporting events is unfounded (a study which the sexual trade union themselves commissioned), will have little or no influence on the war on prostitution itself. There is no question of some of the lying feminists who made such outrageous and completely baseless claims being prosecuted. Feminists might be a little more restrained in future, but sex trafficking lies will still be at the forefront of their campaigns to criminalize the paying for sex.
Last week, the Israeli parliament passed a draft law which will criminalize men who visit prostitutes, allowing for penalties of up to 6 months in jail for repeat offenders.
http://972mag.com/knesset-passes-draft-law-to-criminalize-paying-for-se/36182/
Meanwhile, leading members of the sexual trade union have been having their voices prominently heard in the editorial section of the New York Times :
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/to-end-prostitution-start-with-the-demand-side.html
For too long, prostitution laws have been enforced in a gender-discriminatory manner. Those being sold and arrested are overwhelmingly women and girls. Those who buy the prostituted, or sell them, are overwhelmingly male, and face far fewer, if any, legal consequences for their actions.
If we are to stand a chance at ending sex trafficking, we must deepen our understanding of the end point of sex trafficking, which is prostitution. Those of us who reject the notion that prostitution is sex work (when did human sexuality become work anyway?) and see it as an end result of some of the worst social conditions possible (sexual abuse in childhood, poverty, gender inequality, racism) must fashion remedies that address those conditions.
Rather than make social injustice more tolerable, we must work to end it — in our lifetime and forever.
NORMA RAMOS
Executive Director, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
New York, Feb. 14, 2012
Isn’t it a co-incidence that all of the ugly feminists who are so opposed to sex trafficking, and who are fervently demanding laws around the world that end sex trafficking, also happen to be virulently opposed to the morality of prostitution in itself? It couldn’t be, could it, given the now well documented and even self-admitted fact that these feminists repeatedly lie and exaggerate claims over sex trafficking, that sex trafficking itself is just a tool to end prostitution itself – a trade which just so happens to weaken the sexual power of those aging feminists and their massive female support base?
And here’s an almost identical letter published under the above one, this time by a Pamela Shifman :
That other crimes recede but prostitution persists is no surprise to those who work on sex trafficking.
Focusing on demand is the right approach and needs to be tried for more than two days, as it was in New York City recently, before judging its efficacy.
And this must be accompanied by an explicit policy that treats those who sell as sex as victims of crime and not criminals
Those of us who have met with women and children in prostitution — from India to New York City — know that these women and children are far from criminals. They are often the most marginalized, vulnerable people in our society. They are in prostitution not because of choice, but because of lack of choice.
The reason countries like Sweden have successfully reduced prostitution is that they have recognized that those who buy sex should be held accountable, and those who sell sex should be treated as victims of violence and given the services (education, mental and physical health services, drug and alcohol treatment, and job training) that any victims need and deserve.
PAMELA SHIFMAN
Director, Initiatives for Girls and Women, NoVo Foundation
New York, Feb. 14, 2012
This forced victimisation of prostitutes is a feminist stock in trade and is so contrary to the findings of recent studies that there is surely sufficient grounds for prosecuting these sexual trade union criminals. But instead, they are still in a position to influence legislation and harm both sex workers and the men who pay for sex – not just in the USA, but globally, as any lobby group claiming to speak for women or children has almost omnipotent power at the utterly corrupt United Nations.
The forced victimisation by feminists of ‘whores’ – women who offer sex so cheaply that the price of the average woman is brought down – is not only nothing new, it has been going on for centuries. For an example of this, take a look at the following ‘letter from a prostitute that didn’t want saving‘, written in 1858 and re-printed in full at the excellent blog of the sex trafficking myth buster Laura Agustin (short excerpts re-printed below) :
Like ‘One more unfortunate’ there are other intruders among us—a few, very few, ‘victims of seduction’. But seduction is not the root of the evil—scarcely a fibre of the root. A rigorous law should be passed and rigorously carried out to punish seduction, but it will not perceptibly thin the ranks of prostitution. Seduction is the common story of numbers of well brought up, who never were seduced, and who are voluntary and inexcusable profligates. Vanity and idleness send us a large body of recruits. Servant girls, who wish to ape their mistress’ finery, and whose wages won’t permit them to do so honestly—these set up seduction as their excuse. Married women, who have no respect for their husbands, and are not content with their lawful earnings, these are the worst among us, and it is a pity they cannot be picked out and punished. They have no principle of any kind and are a disgrace to us. If I were a married woman I would be true to my husband. I speak for my class, the regular standing army of the force.
It’s also interesting to note that a common complaint of English prostitutes of the mid 19th century was the growing number of foreign women in their ranks – who, no doubt, were ‘undercutting’ the native sex workers :
‘One more unfortunate’ proposes a ‘skimming’ progress. But what of the great bubbling cauldron? Remove from the streets a score or two of ‘foreign women’, and ‘double as many English’, and you diminish the competition of those that remain; the quiet, clever, cunning cajolers described by ‘One more unfortunate’. You hide a prurient pimple of the ‘great sin’ with a patch of that plaster known as the ‘observance of propriety’, and nothing more. You ‘miss’ the evil, but it is existent still. After all it is something to save the eye from offence, so remove them; and not only a score or two, but something like two hundred foreign women, whose open and disgusting indecencies and practices have contributed more than anything else to bring on our heads the present storm of indignation. It is rare that English women, even prostitutes, give cause of gross public offence. Cannot they be packed off to their own countries with their base, filthy and filthy- living men, whom they maintain, and clothe, and feed, to superintend their fortunes, and who are a still greater disgrace to London than these women are?
Sadly, this is nothing new either. Sex workers in South Korea recently began organising themselves into a union in the face of increasing lobbying from western NOGs to criminalize prostitution (or the paying for sex) in that country too. But the sex worker’s union also quickly found the time to complain about foreign sex workers, and has actively started to lobby the South Korean government to crack down on foreign sex workers from the likes of Vietnam, who offer punters cheaper (and no doubt more exotic) services than the natives.
Whether they are prostitutes, or middle-aged women lobbying to put an end to prostitution, women are much the same – always fighting to preserve their highest possible asking price in the sexual market.
