“We hope discussions on trafficking would not disproportionately focus on sex work”
The Women’s Liberation Group within the Edinburgh University Student Association is worried that there is going to be an event on human trafficking at the university. The group issued a statement.
Recently, it was brought to the Women’s Group attention that there is an event being organised within the university on Human Trafficking. The Women’s Group have a few concerns with the event.
Any conflation of human trafficking with sex work is incredibly harmful and damaging to both sides. We hope discussions on trafficking would not disproportionately focus on sex work, as from the statistics provided (an estimated 28 million are trafficked and 4.5 million are part of the sex trade) this would make up around 1/6 of trafficking. We would hope the conversation would address all forms of forced labour, including those such as domestic and manual labour.
But maybe that’s what the event is about – sex trafficking. Trafficking is not identical to forced labor, and there are different kinds of forced labor which can all be addressed separately. I don’t see it as particularly women-liberating to say don’t talk about sex trafficking, talk about all forced labor instead. A form of slavery that very disproportionately victimizes women ought to be a feminist concern, I should think. It’s odd to see feminists saying ALL forced labor matters.
However, we are concerned that the two speakers included in the event are from the same ideological wing and support an “end demand” model for prostitution through criminalisation. One of the speakers is from an organisation which equates child abuse and lap dancing as examples of violence against women. Their stance is: “All prostitution is exploitative of the person prostituted, regardless of the context, or whether that person is said to have consented to the prostitution.” This is directly at odds with EUSA policy to condemn anti sex work campaigns.
Because libertarian fun-feminism has eaten all their brains.
So I clicked through because I had to assume, for the sake of my sanity, that Ophelia Benson was deliberately misquoting a Women’s Liberation Group (well, didn’t really think that). Because this … drivel was just unbelievable:
I would have gone on, but three times seemed sufficient. Both sides is doing some heavy duty here, since it’s completely unclear what the fucking sides are. Obviously, the people trafficked aren’t a side, and the harm they suffer isn’t “harmful and damaging”. I mean, they’re not a side.
Yes, but they have a zero tolerance policy towards whorephobia*! Besides, it’s only 1/6 of trafficked humans!
This is a woman’s liberation group that has seriously lost the plot. Mission creep gone seriously awry.
* No really, they do. It’s in the release, though OB didn’t quote it.
A quick side note: the pedant in me is amazed that the author of that statement can say that “any conflation of human trafficking with sex work is incredibly harmful”, then immediately citing the number of people involved in … human-trafficked sex work.
Conflation: How Does It Work?
What infuriates me is how “disagreeing with us about the best way to improve the lives of women who do sex work” is labelled “whorephobia.”
(Of course EUSA WLG are far from alone in defining that word that way.)
Please ignore my previous posts. Lady Mondegreen did it in one sentence without the grammatical errors.
I find this a difficult subject. On the one hand if you don’t want to stigmatize sex workers it seems odd to concentrate on only that specific sixth of trafficked people that end up as sex worker. On the other hand most people seem to recognize that sex work is not an ordinary job. For instance in Belgium prostitution is legal but pimping is not. You can’t have prostitutes as employees. Also if you are on unemployment support here, you can be more or less forced to accept a job, because refusing a job offer can make you loose your support. But even if we would see prostitution as a normal job, I can’t imaging that the “positive” sex worker faction would think a woman could be forced to accept a job as a prostitute in such a system.
Very few women ‘consent’ to becoming prostitutes.
These women are not sex “workers” any more than Blacks in the Old South were cotton “workers”
Many, if not most, are de-facto slaves.
Someone should test Edinburgh’s drinking water…
John: Serfs, not slaves per se. They aren’t ‘owned’, they just have no other viable choice. That’s where the plausible deniability comes from.
Axxyaan: One of the best options I’ve seen thus far (not perfect, just ‘better than most’) is to legalize being a prostitute, but make the act of buying sex illegal (along with the usual laws against pimping and so forth). This puts the force of law in a dispute on the prostitute’s side, helping at least to correct the economic imbalance of power. If a john assaults a sex worker, she can turn to the cops and the cops will not arrest her for solicitation, but will (hopefully) arrest the john for both purchasing and the assault.
The reversal of meaning that’s happened to the word “stigmatizing” in this context is disturbing. I think it’s worth unpacking. I also think well-meaning people are accepting a perverse use of the term because it’s become de rigeur. Please reconsider.
“Stigmatizing sex workers” in a harmful way has always been understood to include things like:
-calling women whores and streetwalkers
-jeering at prostitutes
-treating them as unrapeable
-Trying to sweep them away like untidy garbage (you know, like how we do the homeless)
I think most of you would agree that this is a sensible, ordinary use of the term.
But look at how it’s being used here, by contrast (Axaan, I’m thinking of your comment but only as an example, I do not mean to call you out or cast aspersions on your character):
-Advocating for an end to the conditions that force women into prostitution
-Calling the sex trade what it clearly is: Exploitative, and almost always paid rape. (Notice the “almost always” before you comment, anyone, because I won’t be nice if you gloss over it for a chance to ‘correct’ me)
-Urging other liberals not to ignore the rape and exploitation of the vast majority of women in prostitution. Urging them not to sweep it under the rug because some more well to do Western women had a lark doing lap dances for money in a choosy-choice way
Does anyone still think that this is a reasonable way to frame “stigmatization” of prostitutes? Does anyone else notice that linguistic legerdemain, and how insidious it is?
I hope some people will contemplate this and change their minds.
[…] a comment by Josh Spokes on “We hope discussions on trafficking would not disproportionately focus on […]