MarxUltor posted:

MarianneSadd posted:

MarxUltor posted:

essentially include an element where a bunch of dudes are discussing what is or isnt ok for women to do with their bodies

Nowhere did I include this as part of discussion, and I certainly don't see why this has to be the case.

How can this not be the case?

We can all see and agree that the current social dynamic of the sex industry is horrific but how could one call for prostitution to be an illegal act without at the same time imposing a limit on the rights of the prostitute to perform that action? Or take a position that sex work should be legalized without granting permission to the prostitute to use her own body as she has chosen? It's a minefield discussion (which doesn't mean it shouldn't be had) but one which, as Urbandale seemed to be implying, may be too overshadowed by the societal conditions which make the exploitation of women and other vulnerable groups far too easy, fun, and profitable.

We can all see and agree that the current social dynamic of the diamond industry is horrific but how could one call for diamond mining to be an illegal act without at the same time imposing a limit on the rights of the diamond miner to perform that action? Or take a position that diamond mining should be legalized without granting permission to the miner to use her own body as she has chosen? It's a minefield discussion (which doesn't mean it shouldn't be had) but one which, as Urbandale seemed to be implying, may be too overshadowed by the societal conditions which make the exploitation of women and other vulnerable groups far too easy, fun, and profitable.

littlegreenpills posted:

the two most populous countries in the world literally have laws on their books banning all pornography, which we shd really hear more about. i dont know how well enforced they are or if they're set up to punish the right people but it clearly refutes stuff

yeah it refutes that porn is anything more than rape-based opium
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/24/china-has-a-japanese-porn-addiction-and-that-s-a-good-thing.html

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2956359/technology-law-regulation/857-porn-sites-censored-india-pornban-itbwcw.html

The lawyer's justification boils down to, "Won't somebody think of the women and children." Yes, something must be done about India's so-called "rape culture." And this is, indeed, Something. Sigh.

tears posted:

in short, criminalising buying sex penalizes some the most oppressed people inthe world

You want to cite this?

Increased violence and discrimination

Police surveillance patrols aimed at locating clients drive sex workers on the street into less public areas where they are more vulnerable to violence.

Since client criminalisation, sex workers on the streets in Sweden have reported greater competition, declining prices and harsher conditions.

Fewer clients on the street can force sex workers to accept aggressive or drunken clients. Violence against sex workers has increased following anti-client measures.

Since exposing oneself as a sex worker to police often leads to harassment, sex workers seldom report incidents of violence or coercion.

Norwegian police report that the Swedish model has made it harder to gather evidence – from sex workers and clients – against people who have coerced or exploited sex workers.

Sex workers in Sweden who took part in a government sponsored study reported a significant increase in stigma and discrimination after the passing of anti-client measures.

Response from English Collective of Prostitutes to the Criminalisation of the Purchase of Sex (Scotland) Bill (2)
http://www.prostitutescollective.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Scotland-consultation-response1.pdf

Criminalising clients will not stop prostitution, nor will it stop the criminalisation of women who work as prostitutes. But it will make more dangerous and stigmatising for sex workers
.
A ll the evidence shows that to criminalise clients pushes prostitution more underground, thus making it harder for sex workers to get protection from rape and other violence
.
Since clients in Scotland were criminalised in October 2007, the number of assaults on sex workers has soared. Attacks reported to one project almost doubled from 66 in 2006 to 126 in 2007, including eight reported rapes and 55 violent assaults

To ignore this evidence shows a total disregard for the lives of women in the sex industry

and a liberal think-piece with a boggling statistic that the government fucks couldnt give a shit about
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/new-laws-are-likely-to-make-sex-workers-lives-much-more-dangerous-in-the-future-31093353.html

In fact, it seems that sex workers consider any criminalisation of men to be a bad thing, a kind of do-gooder legislation that might end up making their lives a lot harder. A survey by Northern Ireland's Department of Justice showed that 98pc of sex workers were against the new laws criminalising men, as it means more women will be forced to work in deserted areas away from a police presence (where clients would feel safe from arrest) or would need to turn to pimps for protection, etc.

and another liberal piece where - oh wow - they actually went and talked to some sexworkers, rather than just singing and parotting dumbo praise of the "swedish model"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-prostitutes-warn-that-criminalising-clients-would-reduce-safety-a6877816.html

But the idea has drawn an angry response from Britain’s sex workers, who say they fear it could put them in danger.

Around 96 per cent of those who took part in the survey by National Ugly Mugs, a project that seeks to end violence against sex workers, said people should not be criminalised for buying sex from a consenting adult and 82 per cent said they would feel less safe if the law were introduced.

More than 200 sex workers took part in the survey, along with 52 organisations that offer frontline services to between 20 and 2,000 sex workers.

One sex worker said: “Criminalising the purchase of sex will make me less safe at work. Anything that makes my clients more apprehensive prohibits me from screening them thoroughly and therefore impacts my security. If my clients were criminalised, I wouldn’t stop selling sex. I would continue to do so in a more dangerous context and I would potentially feel compelled to take bookings I would previously have rejected in the interests of my safety.”

its almost like no one actually cares about the women and men who work as prostitutes...oh wait, they actually dont, the whole thing is oppression of sex workers masquerading as feminism or something

and finally heres "prostitutechart.jpg" from that last article- the independents image naming tells it like it is

Petrol posted:

swampman posted:

As I see it, prostitutes are driven by desperation to scab activity that undermines women's struggle.

I am generally queasy about arguments that pronounce moral judgement on sex workers themselves but god damn. Shut up

What are you talking about? I'm not morally judging any individual prostitute or assuming that they choose prostitution, far from it. Do you think I believe that prostitutes are like, making a calculated choice to literally break picket lines against prostitution? But, there's a reason they are included in the list of "lumpen" whenever someone is giving an example of lumpen. I am agreeing that they need to be given other support and need to be included in radical action.

Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1977, Moscow, Volume 19, pages 260-261 posted:

3. How the Bourgeoisie Combats Prostitution

Recently the fifth international congress for combating the white slave traffic was held in London.

Duchesses, countesses, bishops, parsons, rabbis, police officials and all sorts of bourgeois philanthropists displayed themselves at this congress. There was no end of ceremonial banquets and sumptuous official receptions. There was no end of solemn speeches on the harm and shame of prostitution.

But what were the means of struggle which the elegant bourgeois delegates demanded at the congress? The main two means were: religion and the police. These, they said, were the surest and safest means against prostitution. According to a report by the London correspondent of the Leipziger Volkszeitung, and English delegate boasted of the fact that he had introduced in Parliament a bill providing for corporal punishment for pandering. There he is, the modern “civilized” champion of the fight against prostitution!

A certain Canadian lady expressed her enthusiasm for the police and for the women police surveillance over “fallen” women; as for raising wages, however, she remarked that working women do not deserve better pay.

A German parson fulminated against modern materialism which, he said, was spreading among the people to an ever greater extent and contributing to the spread of free love.

When the Austrian delegate Gertner ventured to mention the social cause of prostitution, the want and misery of working class families, the exploitation of child labor, the unbearable housing conditions, etc., the speaker was silenced by hostile shouts!

On the other hand, instructive and solemn stories were told among the delegates concerning various high personages. For instance, that when the German empress is about to visit a lying-in hospital in Berlin the mothers of “illegitimate” children have rings put on their fingers, so as to spare the high personage the shocking sight of unwedded mothers!

From this one can judge what disgusting bourgeois hypocrisy reigns at these aristocratic-bourgeois congresses. The mountebanks of charity and the police protectors of mockery at want and misery foregather to “fight against prostitution,” which is maintained precisely by the aristocrats and the bourgeoisie…

the importance seems to be in recognising that, unfortunatly in the 1st world which contain a high proportion of petty-bourgiousie bribed with the stolen resources of the 3rd world away from militancy, some certain groups of people will be more likely to have a higher level of class conciousness or at least be more receptive to ML theory and should be targeted fror recrutiment and education over others (e.g. the unionised worker, those with job security etc), due to the extremity of class antagonisms that they experience (sex workers, homeless, unemployed, immigrants, refugees etc(but obvs not exlusivly)) without fretishising them as a "special revolutionary militant section" and engaging in identity politics or liberalism, instead recognising that these individualist groups are part of the most revolutionary cadre as a whole in a way that the large and cash sedated petty-bourgiousie isnt, because as marx says on the matter of prostitution:

Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 posted:

Prostitution is only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the labourer, and since it is a relationship in which falls not the prostitute alone, but also the one who prostitutes — and the latter’s abomination is still greater — the capitalist, etc., also comes under this head.

i.e. we're all prostitutes really, its just some of us keep the clothes on

lenin spoke against fracturing the workng struggle through overly focusing on prostitution through fetishising the fallen woman who needs to be "saved" (or any other group really):

Clara Zetkin - Lenin on the Women’s Question posted:

I have heard some peculiar things on this matter from Russian and German comrades. I must tell you. I was told that a talented woman communist in Hamburg is publishing a paper for prostitutes and that she wants to organise them for the revolutionary fight. Rosa acted and felt as a communist when in an article she championed the cause of the prostitutes who were imprisoned for any transgression of police regulations in carrying on their dreary trade. They are, unfortunately, doubly sacrificed by bourgeois society. First, by its accursed property system, and, secondly, by its accursed moral hypocrisy. That is obvious. Only he who is brutal or short-sighted can forget it. But still, that is not at all the same thing as considering prostitutes – how shall I put it? – to be a special revolutionary militant section, as organising them and publishing a factory paper for them. Aren’t there really any other working women in Germany to organise, for whom a paper can be issued, who must be drawn into your struggles? The other is only a diseased excrescence. It reminds me of the literary fashion of painting every prostitute as a sweet Madonna. The origin of that was healthy, too: social sympathy, rebellion against the virtuous hypocrisy of the respectable bourgeois. But the healthy part became corrupted and degenerate.

so yeah, start at the bootom with the most oppressed and work upwards from there i guess. waddya think anyone?

tears posted:

I dont know chickeon, there is this heavily pushed lie that the reason people working in prostitution in the uk are “all” eastern european (actually a whole range of non uk countries) is because they were all trafficked across here rather than the obvious which is generally foreign immigrants are poorer and more oppressed so are obviously more likely to have to turn to prostitution to live.

i don't know why you think these are mutually exclusive categories. migration across national borders requires existing infrastructure and capital investment that allows the flow of undocumented workers. women who turn to prostitution out of desperation are not likely to independently have the means to leave their homes, travel overseas and procure living arrangements without working papers or valid identification. rather, these women are actively recruited by groups that provide the infrastructure to allow this migration of labour but do so under predatory terms that impose financial bondage, indentured servitude and the threat of legal prosecution and deportation

your argument seems to ironically fall for the bourgeois "panic" surrounding trafficking, because you seem to understand it purely as the salacious kidnapping presented by hollywood productions like taken, as opposed to what is an integral foundation of the migration of sex work. if you see "victims of human trafficking" and "migrant sex workers" as distinct, discrete categories then the latter can only really imply women that simply decide to pack their bags and book a flight to the uk on their own resources and own initiative. it would be naive to assume this is the case in a majority of instances

which is why bourgeois hand wringing surrounding questions like sex trafficking actually diminishes the significance of the problem rather than exaggerating it. by purely delegating their concern to lurid tabloid ideas of kidnapped women, it calls its attention only to a minority of cases while ignoring the huge, institutionalised patterns of human traffic. human trafficking, as chickeon expressed, isn't itself a purely "manufactured" panic because the phenomenon it is based on is a a concrete and widespread one. the lip service bourgeois legal edifices give to this panic are largely an attempt to minimise its significance and win political points by directing attention exclusively to only the most egregious examples

tears posted:

e: this doesnt deny that trafficing of people exists and is a serious issue, but at least in the uk the vast majority of people brought into the country "illegally" is to work shitty jobs rather than to be sex slaves which the media and law enforcement obsesses over to the detement of everything else)

i don't really understand what significance this has. yes, sex trafficking accounts for a minority of the migration of labour. sex workers also account for a minority of labourers generally. nobody is arguing otherwise. sex trafficking and sex work however are distinct from labour in the general sense because they are uniquely oppressive and terroristic institutions, and as such demand particular consideration. that the bourgeois press or legal system does not do this effectively is an indictment of the bourgeois press and legal system, not the concept of human trafficking generally

tears posted:

e: this doesnt deny that trafficing of people exists and is a serious issue, but at least in the uk the vast majority of people brought into the country "illegally" is to work shitty jobs rather than to be sex slaves which the media and law enforcement obsesses over to the detement of everything else (cos we actually need imported slave labour to run the country and keep the bribed petty bourgiousie in the comfort to which they have become accustomed)

Same is true in the US and California.

Urbandale posted:

littlegreenpills posted:

sexbuying shd be criminalized but leaving it up to the fucking cops where, when and on whom to enforce that law is fugging stupid

Uh...

E: discretion is their job and cops are the only group that could enforce this

for the third time, sex worker militia

MarianneSadd posted:

xipe posted:

'Stopping human trafficking' is the excuse given by NATO to militarise the borders and recolonise north Africa so that's another reason to think about what you say

Human rights are problematic, sure, especially when weaponized by imperialism, but I still don't think torturing someone with electric shocks is ok. Zizek calls himself a communist, but I'm smart enough to know that he's trash - not communism.

I dunno I think the phrase human rights has been totally colonised by liberal imperialist governments and NGOs si when we use it we are injecting anti communism and pro war tropes undermining whatever we are trying to say.

Not that I know a better way of communicating of course