The clear prejudice towards heterosexual men
This looks like a delayed April Fools joke but apparently isn’t. Neil Lyndon at the Telegraph is aggrieved that some people think prostitutes aren’t the guilty party when it comes to the sex trade.
This unusual approach to criminal responsibility – reversing legal tendencies that have developed for decades in the West to protect the customer – will be the obvious, logical outcome of France’s latest regulations governing prostitution.
Interesting point: he thinks the sex trade should be a matter of consumer protection rather than worker protection. So I guess if a punter finds a prostitute insufficiently hot when naked, he can file a consumer complaint?
What is obvious, however, is the clear prejudice towards heterosexual men which underpins the thinking of the legislators. In their minds, the woman offering sex for sale must be innocent because the man – purely by dint of being a man – is guilty.
That’s sexism, you see. Unfair to men! Men are the oppressed sex! Women should give away sex to all men who ask, for free, the whores!
Struggling for air under the suffocating ideological blanket of feminist generalisation which these authorities are casting over the subject, we might ask whether they think all prostitution involves “a known violence” against all women? Does all prostitution involve “exploitation and abuse”? Should all women be protected and all men prosecuted?
If you like a paradox, you will relish seeing these representatives of a movement that claims to liberate women and to celebrate their sexual freedoms refuse to countenance the possibility that a woman might freely and voluntarily enter into this transaction (despite the unanimity with which prostitutes and their representative bodies tell such figures to butt out and mind their own business).
Oh no, that’s not true – of course we know that some women “freely and voluntarily enter into this transaction” – we just say that they’re the privileged few and that laws shouldn’t be based on how the privileged few see the matter. And it’s far from true that prostitutes unanimously “tell such figures to butt out and mind their own business.” It would be convenient for pimps if that were true, but it’s not.
But then he goes on to use the nonce-word “hen-headed” as a pejorative, so I don’t think I’ll bother paying any more attention to him.
Because all heterosexual men engage prostitutes? Because heterosexual men, with their punishing urges, can’t help themselves exploiting people for sex and shouldn’t be held accountable? Help me out here, Neil. This clear prejudice you speak of isn’t at all clear to me.
It looks to me like he’s using the same sort of argument used for decriminalizing drug use, while the pushers remain criminals. That’s the trouble – once we get a hammer, we want to use it on everything, even if those things are not nails.
The problem is often recognizing who is really victimized. To do that, you have to recognize which party has power. In drug use, the pusher has the power. In prostitution, the john has the power. People can’t see that; the two situations look alike to them – one person selling something society doesn’t approve of, the other buying it. If we argue that drug users are not criminals, how can we argue that sex users are criminals? To me, it just comes down to who gains what, who loses what, and at the most extreme, which party is the most likely to get physical violence done to them. Sure, pushers get beat up, but usually by the people they work for, only occasionally the clients. Sure, johns sometimes get beat up, but the sex worker is the more frequently victimized, by both the pimps and the customers.
Power is always the key in an abusive relationship. Who is abusing who? Look for who has power in that situation (which may change with given circumstances).
As a heterosexual man I feel very discriminated against and put upon.
Actually, no I don’t. Sure standards of acceptability in some parts of society have changed over my lifetime. Some things that were not only ‘normal’ but ‘right’ are now generally regarded as unacceptable. And while some white heterosexual men may feel put upon and harshly dealt with, I’ve found it remarkably easy to let much of this supposed opprobrium slide off my back. Partly because my own views and behaviour have changed with age and discussion, partly because I was raised to see all people, even women (!), as equals anyway, but largely because there is still so much fucking privilege to being a white heterosexual male in our society that I have more than enough of a buffer anyway.
I have no time for these self pitying self centred dinosaurs. Sooner that kind go extinct the better.
It appears that MRA types and intersectional/”social justice” feminists are united in their opposition to the Nordic model. Isn’t that cute?
@ 4 The Great God Pan
Guilt by association as an ad hominem fallacy
Silentbob,
Fortunately, The Great God Plan was not assigning guilt by association – instead merely observing that these two subsets of people, who one would expect would have severely divergent or opposing views from one another, are united in their perspective in this matter. It is a fascinating phenomenon.
One can draw conclusions from this observation. Personally I don’t see guilt or badness here, but rather speculate that the MRA cuckoos have managed to get their eggs into the social justice nest. I can appreciate the strategic element of it…
There are precedents: https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-19682902.html
I’ve been trying to find an analogy for the libertarian-“feminist” position on prostitution. Best I can do is this: it’s like starting a campaign to end slavery, and finding yourself opposed by BDSM enthusiasts crying “but we like our whips and chains!”
Have people not realised that the small minority of prostitutes who’re doing it by choice _will still be able to do that_ whatever the state of the laws? You can advertise as an “escort”. Get paid for your time. That’s legal. Have sex. Also legal. Try not to call the police on your client! Can you do that? The trick is to not call the police if you don’t want to have your clients arrested.
The problem that needs solving is the situation – the vastly more common situation – where man A pays man B for the right to fuck woman C who’s under duress. If people are capable of grasping that rape is bad, they should be clear that this situation has to be prevented, and current laws and social models are not preventing it.
Silentbob – if a candidate is endorsed by the Puppy Haters Association, it is always useful to ask yourself why. Many people endorse someone because they do say something they agree with, but it might be a reason other than hating puppies. We do this with candidates all the time – Clinton is endorsed by the big banks, for instance. So and so is endorsed by the NRA. When a group endorses a person, it is usually because that person is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as someone who shares their mission.. It’s never a bad idea to ask yourself why that is. You can sometimes clear the air by finding out that the person doing the endorsing is simply mistaken, that they perceive someone who shares one idea with them (say, liking cats) will naturally share their other core ideas (say, hating puppies).
That isn’t guilt by association, that’s just good policy.
Assymetrical legality doesn’t seem logical at all. How can you accept a trade’s existence while criminalizing the act that makes it exist?
How can we extend protection against workplace abuse, trafficking etc.to ALL employment? Dueling anecdotes about Happy Feminist ‘Escorts’ and enslaved immigrants and abuse victims don’t change the core issue: that the sex ‘business’ is riddled with criminality, violence, and the influence of organized crime.
Do we even know who the ‘punters’ are? The transaction is unthinkable to me, and, travelling in the circles I do, I have no idea who among my acquaintances has ever been a ‘trick.’ What percentage of men ARE, or have been? How does that percentage vary across cultures and national borders? How does the ‘demand’ side of the sex-trade function?
Asymmetrical legality is there to counteract asymmetrical power.
When selling sex is illegal, prostitutes cannot come forward about violence and coercion, because the legal system will punish them.
When buying sex is legal, all complaints will be turned into he said/she said cases and there will be no convictions, because people will assume that a woman who sells her body will sell the right to choke her, slap her, etc, because she probably likes it rough and gets paid more, but then she got greedy…
For there to be any way to providing safety to sex workers, the Nordic model is the only way to address the fact that the deck is traditionally stacked against them.
Also, the Drunkard,t here are websites that give the punters’ own point of view on deals they’ve made. You’ll have to search for it because I wasn’t going to bookmark– one either becomes sick with disgust at the buyers who look at women as meat, or sick at the tragedy when a confused man who has actual empathy but not much idea how to handle a terrible situation gives an underage streetwalker the money to buy the medicine her sister needs and a ride home without seeking sex from her, because she’s just a scared kid and he isn’t a monster.