I heard the feminist Julie Bindel recently on the radio talking about prostitution. I thought it would be interesting to read her new book and was delighted to find that no one seems to have a copy. I could get one off Amazon of course but I'm not going to pay for it. I've asked in libraries and been told I can request it, which I don't want to do. It's not in bookshops. There is a feminist/socialist bookshop in Bold Street in Liverpool and they had a copy but it wasn't on the shelf and they had to look for it.
So even though she's had free publicity for her book from Woman's Hour and free publicity from The Guardian it doesn't look as if many people are going to read it. I could get the gist of what she's saying from the radio programme and the newspaper article. I was pleased to see that she's no longer claiming that when she went to Nevada they found learning disabled women who were being double pimped.
She had claimed that on an earlier appearance on Woman's Hour, although that hadn't been in her report. The report said that one learning disabled woman had been found, which is one too many obviously, but hardly any indication of what will happen here if we legalize brothels.
In her Guardian article she makes no claim that there is less prostitution in Sweden now because of the law criminalizing men for paying for sex. She writes that prostitution is 'a consequence of women’s inequality' and that 'it should be possible to eradicate it'. Yet Sweden is held up as the best example of an equal society, and after 18 years of the law they haven't eradicated it.
While looking for her book I came across a similar book by Kat Banyard called Pimp Nation. I read Chapter 5 in the bookshop and was annoyed that she is repeating a false statistic that I've seen before. Around the year 2000 prostitution was legalized in the Netherlands, but in Sweden they began to prosecute men for paying for sex. Banyard writes that 127 prostitutes were killed in the Netherlands during that time but only one in Sweden.
I heard Rachel Moran state this on Woman's Hour, and it's false. The 127 prostitutes were killed over a 30 year period, not 15 years, and most of them were killed before prostitution was legalized not after. So it looks as if fewer women are being killed in the Netherlands now than before legalization. Not more, which is what they are trying to pretend.
What's more, no prostitutes were killed in Sweden in the 9 years before the new law prosecuting punters. Banyard tries to dismiss the one killing since 2000 as 'domestic'. It wasn't domestic, the authorities handed over Petite Jasmine's kids to a violent ex-partner because she was a prostitute, who then killed her. This is what the authorities in Sweden do. They take away their children. They also deport them or get them evicted.
Banyard doesn't mention this in her book of course. She's happy to point out that in New Zealand prostitution might not be called fully decriminalized because prostitutes aren't allowed to solicit near schools, but she doesn't mention the extra-judicial punishments of prostitutes in Sweden. She doesn't mention that two women who choose to work together for safety can be arrested in Sweden, as also happens in Britain.
Prostitutes can be treated like pimps, as can their landlords if they don't cooperate with the police to evict them. I would like to know if it is men or women who are prosecuted, and if it is women whether they are younger or older. My guess is that it is women in their 20s and 30s who get prosecuted, not so much men or older women.
There are police in Sweden (and Norway) whose job it is to identify prostitutes, find out who their landlords are, contact them, and get the women evicted. Or deport them, or take their children away. Then they tell the world that they treat prostitutes as victims. Victims, yes, but of the police. 'Violence against women', yes, but it is this Nordic model which is violence against women, not prostitution.
Woman's Hour has got a lot to answer for. They let Julie Bindel pretend that she'd found learning disabled women (in the plural) being double pimped in Nevada. They let Rachel Moran state the false 127 statistic. Then Bindel again plugging her new book.
I used to like Jenni Murray on Woman's Hour until she started having a go at the transsexual woman guest whose only crime was to contradict Murray by saying she didn't think it was too much of an imposition for a top hotel to require their female employees to shave their legs when in skirts with bare legs. Jenni later came out with a statement stating that trans women aren't really women, that they can't understand what it's like to be a woman. I think that it's Jenny who is the one who is out of touch with how most women feel.
Kat Banyard got the false statistic from Jim Wells, who was a politician in Northern Ireland (before he started making homophobic comments). He's a Protestant Christian so he together with Catholics in the south of Ireland have campaigned to ban sex work. Radical feminists like Kat Banyard ally themselves with social conservatives like Jim Wells, she quotes him in her book.
She thinks that if a man pays for sex with a woman then he can do anything he wants with her during that time, and that men like nothing better than asphyxiating prostitutes by forcing their erect penises down their throats. That's why she thinks sex work can't be a real job, because you can't be taught that. The reality is a sex worker will tell her clients what she will and will not accept: most that I've encountered don't allow kissing, fingering, oral sex without a condom or anal sex (or asphyxiation). She can even tell her client she doesn't want him to get on top of her if he's too big (that has happened to me twice, I'm tall and slightly overweight: I respected what they wanted).
This blog allies itself with sex workers, transexuals and gay men. Not that I think these three groups have anything in common except that they are under threat by people like Jim Wells. It allies itself with sex-positive feminists, as opposed to radical feminists like Bindel and Banyard.
I ally myself with sex workers like Laura Lee who after she was presented with the false 127 statistic at the Northern Ireland Assembly found out the truth about it. I ally myself with all the sex workers who are arrested just for trying to make themselves safe by working together, and the ones targeted by the punishment squads in Sweden and Norway. I ally myself with transsexuals and support their right to be who they really are. I ally myself with gay men and women and believe they can make parents who are just as good as heterosexual couples. Jim Wells - who doesn't believe that - can keep his opinions to himself. So can all the liars with their false statistics and their hidden agendas. I know what side I'm on.
I realize that many will doubt that sex workers are arrested and evicted in Sweden and Norway. The whole idea of the Nordic Model is that prostitutes aren't punished. Bindel said in her recent Woman's Hour appearance "They shouldn't be arrested - ever". I have collected all the evidence on my blog page The truth about the Swedish Model. Even more on my new page don't erase or edit out Petite Jasmine. You can also read my An Open Letter to Rachel Moran for more information about the 127 statistic. You may want to read my review of feminist Natasha Walter's book Living Dolls where I expose her false statistics.
UPDATE: After reading more about Petite Jasmine I can see that there are people who are trying to say that she didn't have her children taken away because she was a sex worker. There is no evidence that she was drinking and taking drugs, although she was accused of these things.
Jasmine wrote in a letter to a Swedish MP after her house had been stormed by social workers and her children forcibly taken into custody "I was subjected to an investigation which in a desperate way tried to find all those signs that they already from the start were convinced would be there, because I had been selling sex. Drug abuse, sexual abuse, emotional disturbance. They had a difficult time finding any of this, but it should certainly be known that they tried." So before she died, she herself had said that it was because she was a sex worker, and I believe her.
Someone asked why we don't mention the four women who have been killed in New Zealand since their change of law in 2002. We have no reason to believe that these four women (Mellory, Suzie, Anna, and Sky) would have not died if New Zealand had different laws. It isn't the policies of the New Zealand government that have resulted in the deaths of these four women, but it is the policies of the Swedish government that have resulted in the death of Petite Jasmine. That is why we protest at the policies of the Swedish government.
Sweden has not reduced prostitution. Neither can they claim that their policies have resulted in an end to the murder of sex workers. There were no murders in the nine years before the introduction of the new law. They want us to believe that the Swedish law has stopped women from being killed because prostitution is no longer tolerated there. They want us to believe that prostitutes are treated nicely there. All three of these are false: there has been no reduction in deaths, prostitution is just a common as before, and women are persecuted.
It wasn't just Petite Jasmine who was the victim. Her children witnessed their father stab and murder her, and stab and seriously injure a social worker. I want to leave you with more of what Petite Jasmine has written. I do this not to use emotion to promote my point of view, but to show what she was like and as a tribute to this brave woman. It is a translation from the Swedish so it might not be always grammatical.
"After one year and three months finally see her standing in front of me. The feeling when she runs into my arms and hug me, to get sniff her hair immediately becomes soaking wet of my tears, drag your finger along her small nose and chin, stroking her little hand and hold on her tiny body hard in my embrace and kiss her eleven thousand times in the forehead. To finally get to see her in the eye and say seventeen thousand times how missed and loved she is. And never want to let go again, but must. Created by my body when we two have been and we are part of each other forever. The love for my children is indescribable. (And justice system as said joint custody and half the time, where were you when everything was going on?)"
So even though she's had free publicity for her book from Woman's Hour and free publicity from The Guardian it doesn't look as if many people are going to read it. I could get the gist of what she's saying from the radio programme and the newspaper article. I was pleased to see that she's no longer claiming that when she went to Nevada they found learning disabled women who were being double pimped.
She had claimed that on an earlier appearance on Woman's Hour, although that hadn't been in her report. The report said that one learning disabled woman had been found, which is one too many obviously, but hardly any indication of what will happen here if we legalize brothels.
In her Guardian article she makes no claim that there is less prostitution in Sweden now because of the law criminalizing men for paying for sex. She writes that prostitution is 'a consequence of women’s inequality' and that 'it should be possible to eradicate it'. Yet Sweden is held up as the best example of an equal society, and after 18 years of the law they haven't eradicated it.
While looking for her book I came across a similar book by Kat Banyard called Pimp Nation. I read Chapter 5 in the bookshop and was annoyed that she is repeating a false statistic that I've seen before. Around the year 2000 prostitution was legalized in the Netherlands, but in Sweden they began to prosecute men for paying for sex. Banyard writes that 127 prostitutes were killed in the Netherlands during that time but only one in Sweden.
I heard Rachel Moran state this on Woman's Hour, and it's false. The 127 prostitutes were killed over a 30 year period, not 15 years, and most of them were killed before prostitution was legalized not after. So it looks as if fewer women are being killed in the Netherlands now than before legalization. Not more, which is what they are trying to pretend.
What's more, no prostitutes were killed in Sweden in the 9 years before the new law prosecuting punters. Banyard tries to dismiss the one killing since 2000 as 'domestic'. It wasn't domestic, the authorities handed over Petite Jasmine's kids to a violent ex-partner because she was a prostitute, who then killed her. This is what the authorities in Sweden do. They take away their children. They also deport them or get them evicted.
Banyard doesn't mention this in her book of course. She's happy to point out that in New Zealand prostitution might not be called fully decriminalized because prostitutes aren't allowed to solicit near schools, but she doesn't mention the extra-judicial punishments of prostitutes in Sweden. She doesn't mention that two women who choose to work together for safety can be arrested in Sweden, as also happens in Britain.
Prostitutes can be treated like pimps, as can their landlords if they don't cooperate with the police to evict them. I would like to know if it is men or women who are prosecuted, and if it is women whether they are younger or older. My guess is that it is women in their 20s and 30s who get prosecuted, not so much men or older women.
There are police in Sweden (and Norway) whose job it is to identify prostitutes, find out who their landlords are, contact them, and get the women evicted. Or deport them, or take their children away. Then they tell the world that they treat prostitutes as victims. Victims, yes, but of the police. 'Violence against women', yes, but it is this Nordic model which is violence against women, not prostitution.
Woman's Hour has got a lot to answer for. They let Julie Bindel pretend that she'd found learning disabled women (in the plural) being double pimped in Nevada. They let Rachel Moran state the false 127 statistic. Then Bindel again plugging her new book.
I used to like Jenni Murray on Woman's Hour until she started having a go at the transsexual woman guest whose only crime was to contradict Murray by saying she didn't think it was too much of an imposition for a top hotel to require their female employees to shave their legs when in skirts with bare legs. Jenni later came out with a statement stating that trans women aren't really women, that they can't understand what it's like to be a woman. I think that it's Jenny who is the one who is out of touch with how most women feel.
Kat Banyard got the false statistic from Jim Wells, who was a politician in Northern Ireland (before he started making homophobic comments). He's a Protestant Christian so he together with Catholics in the south of Ireland have campaigned to ban sex work. Radical feminists like Kat Banyard ally themselves with social conservatives like Jim Wells, she quotes him in her book.
She thinks that if a man pays for sex with a woman then he can do anything he wants with her during that time, and that men like nothing better than asphyxiating prostitutes by forcing their erect penises down their throats. That's why she thinks sex work can't be a real job, because you can't be taught that. The reality is a sex worker will tell her clients what she will and will not accept: most that I've encountered don't allow kissing, fingering, oral sex without a condom or anal sex (or asphyxiation). She can even tell her client she doesn't want him to get on top of her if he's too big (that has happened to me twice, I'm tall and slightly overweight: I respected what they wanted).
This blog allies itself with sex workers, transexuals and gay men. Not that I think these three groups have anything in common except that they are under threat by people like Jim Wells. It allies itself with sex-positive feminists, as opposed to radical feminists like Bindel and Banyard.
I ally myself with sex workers like Laura Lee who after she was presented with the false 127 statistic at the Northern Ireland Assembly found out the truth about it. I ally myself with all the sex workers who are arrested just for trying to make themselves safe by working together, and the ones targeted by the punishment squads in Sweden and Norway. I ally myself with transsexuals and support their right to be who they really are. I ally myself with gay men and women and believe they can make parents who are just as good as heterosexual couples. Jim Wells - who doesn't believe that - can keep his opinions to himself. So can all the liars with their false statistics and their hidden agendas. I know what side I'm on.
I realize that many will doubt that sex workers are arrested and evicted in Sweden and Norway. The whole idea of the Nordic Model is that prostitutes aren't punished. Bindel said in her recent Woman's Hour appearance "They shouldn't be arrested - ever". I have collected all the evidence on my blog page The truth about the Swedish Model. Even more on my new page don't erase or edit out Petite Jasmine. You can also read my An Open Letter to Rachel Moran for more information about the 127 statistic. You may want to read my review of feminist Natasha Walter's book Living Dolls where I expose her false statistics.
UPDATE: After reading more about Petite Jasmine I can see that there are people who are trying to say that she didn't have her children taken away because she was a sex worker. There is no evidence that she was drinking and taking drugs, although she was accused of these things.
Jasmine wrote in a letter to a Swedish MP after her house had been stormed by social workers and her children forcibly taken into custody "I was subjected to an investigation which in a desperate way tried to find all those signs that they already from the start were convinced would be there, because I had been selling sex. Drug abuse, sexual abuse, emotional disturbance. They had a difficult time finding any of this, but it should certainly be known that they tried." So before she died, she herself had said that it was because she was a sex worker, and I believe her.
Someone asked why we don't mention the four women who have been killed in New Zealand since their change of law in 2002. We have no reason to believe that these four women (Mellory, Suzie, Anna, and Sky) would have not died if New Zealand had different laws. It isn't the policies of the New Zealand government that have resulted in the deaths of these four women, but it is the policies of the Swedish government that have resulted in the death of Petite Jasmine. That is why we protest at the policies of the Swedish government.
Sweden has not reduced prostitution. Neither can they claim that their policies have resulted in an end to the murder of sex workers. There were no murders in the nine years before the introduction of the new law. They want us to believe that the Swedish law has stopped women from being killed because prostitution is no longer tolerated there. They want us to believe that prostitutes are treated nicely there. All three of these are false: there has been no reduction in deaths, prostitution is just a common as before, and women are persecuted.
It wasn't just Petite Jasmine who was the victim. Her children witnessed their father stab and murder her, and stab and seriously injure a social worker. I want to leave you with more of what Petite Jasmine has written. I do this not to use emotion to promote my point of view, but to show what she was like and as a tribute to this brave woman. It is a translation from the Swedish so it might not be always grammatical.
"After one year and three months finally see her standing in front of me. The feeling when she runs into my arms and hug me, to get sniff her hair immediately becomes soaking wet of my tears, drag your finger along her small nose and chin, stroking her little hand and hold on her tiny body hard in my embrace and kiss her eleven thousand times in the forehead. To finally get to see her in the eye and say seventeen thousand times how missed and loved she is. And never want to let go again, but must. Created by my body when we two have been and we are part of each other forever. The love for my children is indescribable. (And justice system as said joint custody and half the time, where were you when everything was going on?)"
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