Prostitution: why Swedes believe they got it right (targeting the men who pay for sex)

[polly7]

117. I'm glad I didn't wait up too long.

I've never seen yet anyone answer that question. I believe in 100% choice of any woman to do with her own body, mind and soul as she sees fit. I also believe there are many, many women for whom working in the sex industry has provided them the opportunity to create the lives they want. I think the 'sex' IS a problem for many who criticize it, and while they try their hardest to demonize the buyers of sex as the crux of the problem, it really is about revulsion for what the woman chooses to do.

If it were, for them, really about the very real and global problems of trafficking and exploitation for which there are already laws are in place, those so opposed to it would dwell more on the conditions that allow those things and work to actually help those women. But, not a peep, really on doing a single thing to improve their lot ...

I saw this, this morning and thought it was interesting:

If tackling human trafficking is a priority, arresting the alleged victims, taking their money and handing them over to the UKBA seems like an odd way to go about it. Elsewhere, the public shaming of sex workers has a more explicitly political agenda. In Greece in the spring of 2012, the right-wing press ran stories blaming sex workers for the spread of HIV. The infection rate had indeed risen by 60 per cent in just one year – but not because of prostitution. Rather, the surge in infection was a direct result of swingeing cuts to the health budget, including the removal of needle exchange programmes.

We have been here many times before. It was Emma Goldman who first noticed, in 1910, that: “Whenever the public mind is to be diverted from a great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency.” The idea that the dangers and indignities of certain kinds of work can be separated from the economic circumstances of that work is a seductive one but, as Goldman reminds us, “What is really the cause of the trade in women? Not merely white women, but yellow and black women, as well. Exploitation, of course; the merciless Moloch of capitalism that fattens on underpaid labour, thus driving thousands of women and girls into prostitution.”

Most of the public conversation about the rise in sex work in Europe, particularly among poor and migrant women, assumes that it’s a consequence of immoral laws, immoral women, or both. The notion that five years of austerity, rising unemployment and wage repression across the continent might have something to do with it rarely comes up.

Separating prostitution from all other work and driving it underground does not just harm sex workers. It also allows people to imagine that just because they might be serving chips or wiping bottoms rather than having sex for a living, they are somehow preserving their dignity – they may be exhausted, alienated and miserable, but at least they’re not selling sex. Women who work as prostitutes do sometimes face abuse on the job – and so do women who choose to work as night cleaners, contracted carers and waitresses. The truly appalling choice facing millions of women and migrant workers across Europe right now is between low-waged, back-breaking work, when work is available, and destitution.

http://www.zcommunications.org/the-soho-raids-show-us-the-real-problem-with-sex-work-isn-t-the-sex-it-s-low-waged-work-itself-by-laurie-penny.html

Legalize it, provide health-care, and protection and escape for those entrapped in it illegally. Iow, put your money where your mouths are, and do something about the actual conditions that harm those who do NOT have a choice.