another false statistic

"90 percent of Irish women in prostitution want to exit trade but lack resources."

"Report finds 90% of sex workers want to leave trade but resources are not there to help them."

I came across this statistic on the Feminist Current site. On this page is a link to an article in The Irish Examiner. The article is about a review done of the effects of the Nordic model in Ireland by Dr Geoffrey Shannon 'The Implementation of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017, Part IV – An Interim Review'. In the report it states "According to Ruhama approximately 90% of women want to exit at some point but have a perception that there are not any viable alternatives for them". Dr Shannon just blindly believed Ruhama without bothering to check. This is the complete paragraph:-

"Civic society organisations are critical of the insufficient resources provided by the Irish State for comprehensive exit supports for women affected by prostitution and sex trafficking. According to Ruhama approximately 90% of women want to exit at some point but have a perception that there are not any viable alternatives for them."

The point of this paragraph is to say the Nordic model in Ireland isn't working, sex workers aren't getting help to exit. He thinks that 90% of women - he doesn't say Irish women - want to exit. That is not correct, but his point is that a lot of women are in dire straits. Why aren't the Radical Feminists reporting on this, instead of the false statistic, which they have made more false by saying that it applies to Irish women?

You can't try to take away the customers of sex workers while still arresting them for working together and not giving them help to exit. It has always been said by proponents of the Nordic model that help to exit is a vital aspect of it, it won't work without it.

This is what Ruhama have published on this page.

"The only ones who meaningfully benefit are those organizing, pimping, procuring, trafficking and buying prostitutes. There is always someone who wants to profit of the bodies of those in prostitution and it is a rare event to have anyone truly "independent" in the Irish sex trade. International studies consistently show that 90% of those prostituted want to exit. It is this 90% who should be attended to through recognition by society and the state that prostitution is not a harm free enterprise but one that is inherently dangerous and connected to organized crime. Trafficking for sexual exploitation is intrinsically linked to organized prostitution – they cannot be separated as one will not exist without the other."

The 90% statistic comes from the research done by Melissa Farley 'Prostitution and Trafficking in 9 Countries'. None of these 9 countries was Ireland. So the statistic that begins with '90 percent of Irish women' does not refer to Irish women at all. The report by Dr Shannon did not find that 90 percent of Irish sex workers want to exit. Dr Shannon copied a false statistic from Ruhama (not 'found' as in independent research). It doesn't apply to Ireland.

Melissa Farley is known for working with drug addicted street prostitutes and then pretending that it applies to all sex workers. When Ruhama say that 'international studies consistently show' this statistic, they are referring to this one study by Melissa Farley.

If you look at the Farley study, you can see a table which gives the results of questions put to sex workers.

699 as a proportion of 854 is not 89%. It is 82%. I don't know what's going on here. Later in the study she writes that 89% of 785 sex workers want to exit. I have no idea where the 785 figure comes from, the total number of women in the study is 854. The 785 figure isn't mentioned anywhere else in the study.

The countries chosen are an odd mixture of affluent and poor countries. In the three affluent countries (USA, Canada, Germany) between 70% and 95% of the sex workers used drugs: "Canada, USA, and Germany reported the highest rates of drug use (70% to 95%)". I don't believe that this can be true, that the proportion of sex workers who take drugs in North America and Europe is as high as this. Farley obviously has made no attempt to find a representative sample of sex workers. In the six poor countries less than half were drug takers.

"The German women were from a drop-in shelter for drug addicted women, from a program which offered vocational rehabilitation for those prostituted, and were also referred by peers, and by advertisement in a local newspaper." Not surprising they didn't get a representative sample.

Sex workers who take drugs lead very traumatic lives, as do sex workers in poor countries without social security where levels of criminality tend to be higher. This tells us nothing about the majority of sex workers in Britain and Ireland. When making laws in Britain we should consider the welfare of the majority of sex workers in Britain.

They are not drug addicts, aren't forced into it by pimps or traffickers, and don't want to exit. I'm sure the majority don't intend to do it for the whole of the rest of their lives, but that will be true of waitresses too. 

30% of the funding for one of her studies came from the US Department of State. Is this the same State Department that caused so many problems for Cambodian women that I wrote about in my previous post?

Some people blindly believe what Farley says. Farley says "we calculated the average length of time in prostitution to be 9 years across countries". That sounds about right to me. If you feed that figure into the statistics in the report ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ by Ulla Bjørndahl it is certain that violence against sex workers increased substantially in all categories in Norway since the Nordic model was introduced there.

prostitution in developing nations

I know about prostitution in Britain through experience and research. I know about it in Ireland too through research. I don't know much about prostitution in developing nations. I always assumed that there must be coercion of some sort going on there because you see that in other types of work such as factory work.

I have read two books recently, one about Vietnam and the other partly about Cambodia. The first says that during the Vietnam war sex workers earned much more than other workers. In 1975 when South Vietnam was about to collapse hundreds of Vietnamese sex workers bribed their way onto evacuation flights out of the country. They were the ones who had the money and especially the dollars. It wasn't hundreds of pimps, it was hundreds of sex workers.

The second book says that about 10 years ago the American State Department was 'pressuring the Cambodian government to take a stand against sex work or else lose aid from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)'.

"What happened once the sex workers rounded up in brothel raids were unloaded from the trucks and moved to the so-called rehabilitation centres? They were illegally detained for months at a time without charges, as were others who worked in public parks and had been chased, beaten, and dragged into vans by police. The Cambodian human rights organization LICADHO captured chilling photographs of sex workers caught in sweeps locked together in a cage - thirty or forty people in one cell. Sex workers who had been detained reported being beaten and sexually assaulted by guards in interviews with LICADHO, Women's Network for Unity, and Human Rights Watch. Some living with HIV, who had been illegally held in facilities described by the local NGOs that ran them as "shelters," were denied access to antiretroviral medication. In one facility sex workers were "only able to leave their rooms to bathe twice a day in dirty pond water," Human Rights Watch reported, "or, accompanied by a guard, to go to the toilet.""

The American State Department then upgraded Cambodia's compliance ranking. In Brazil it was a different story: "The groups had been strong-armed by the US into signing loyalty oaths declaring their opposition to prostitution in order to keep their AIDS funds. Rather than sell out sex workers, the entire country of Brazil refused to sign the pledge and gave up $40 million."

The book says about Cambodian women that 'many have also worked in garment factories, and left the factories due to low wages to move into sex work'. So, again, we see that sex workers earn more than other workers. And yet the people who want to 'rescue' sex workers say they want to teach them how to operate sewing machines. Women don't do sex work to avoid starving, they do factory work to avoid starving and when they are fed up scrimping they turn to sex work. As we saw with the biography of the Duke of Westminster, the choice is to stay in your home town and be unemployed, move to a city and work for little money, or become a sex worker and have a better lifestyle.

Who are these influential Americans who are harming women in developing countries? It can only be the Evangelicals and their Radical Feminist supporters. I'm sure they, and especially the Radical Feminists, would say that they never wanted women to be locked up. They would say they support the Nordic model where prostitutes are decriminalized. But in every Nordic model country women who work together are arrested and sex workers get evicted from their homes. When Amnesty International exposed this abuse and hypocrisy they were demonized. It was said that Amnesty International works in the interests of pimps and traffickers, whereas (as I wrote in my last post) they are expressing the views of many (non-Radical) feminists.

Sex workers know what they need to escape from and how to do it. They don't need Evangelicals and Radical Feminists trying to stop fornication/objectification. There is coercion but not so much from pimps and traffickers, more from the police, the State, and neocolonialist America. It's not as if the people of Cambodia haven't suffered enough from the Americans*. It's only going to increase pimping and trafficking.

The first book is Vietnam by Max Hastings. The second book is Playing the Whore by Melissa Gira Grant. If there are any Vietnamese former sex workers who left in 1975 reading this I would like to hear from them. I'm sure they have an interesting story to tell.

This is an interesting article about Cambodia. There is a book called Sex, Love and Money in Cambodia by Heidi Hoefinger. Everything You Think You Know About Cambodian Sex Workers Is Wrong

https://www.hrw.org/report/2010/07/19/streets/arbitrary-detention-and-other-abuses-against-sex-workers-cambodia

According to this site: "Empower Foundation, the sex worker organisation in Thailand, was represented by Liz Hilton who reported that wages in other industries that commonly employ women, such as agriculture, fisheries and factories, were so low that even the lowest paid sex workers were earning twice the minimum wage."

review of Burn It Down by Breanne Fahs

I came across a book by the American feminist writer Breanne Fahs. It is called 'Burn It Down!'. It is a collection of feminist writings on a number of subjects. The two chapters that were of interest to me were Chapter 51 entitled 'Feminist Manifesto to Support the Rights of Sex Workers' by an organization called Feminists for Sex Workers and Chapter 30 which is the words of Andrea Dworkin.

You can get the impression that feminists believe that prostitution should be banned. That they believe in the Nordic or Swedish model where men are arrested for paying for sex. The truth though is that many if not most feminists don't believe that.

There are 11 points made in Chapter 51. Each is a paragraph with the first sentence in bold text. It's worth me replicating each of these sentences below.

1. We acknowledge sex workers as experts in their own lives and needs.
2. We respect sex workers' decision to engage in sex work.
3. We affirm sex workers' ability to claim consent.
4. We advocate for measures that provide real help and support to victims of trafficking, with full respect for the protection of their human and labour rights.
5. We fight to eliminate all forms of violence against sex workers.
6. We work every day to end misogyny in all spheres of life.
7. We respect migrants’ rights.
8. We respect LGBT rights.
9. We call for full decriminalisation of sex work.
10. We speak up against women's increasing precarisation in labour.
11. We demand the inclusion of sex workers in the feminist movement.

I agree with each of these points. When Amnesty International found out how women are being harmed in Nordic model countries they were accused of promoting the views of pimps. It is clear though that they are promoting the views of many feminists. I don't know who the Feminists for Sex Workers group are, but if Breanne Fahs agrees with them then this must be a mainstream opinion within feminism. What's more, this isn't a watered-down form of feminism - Fahs sees herself as a revolutionary.

They say it is wrong for people to say that women 'sell their bodies' or 'sell themselves'. And that a client buys a woman's body or a woman's consent. And the other false idea that a client can do what he wants to a woman; this has 'dangerous real life consequences for sex workers'.

They say that the Nordic or Swedish model and similar systems 'harm sex workers'. 'The Swedish model pushes them into poverty, reduces their power in negotiations with clients, criminalises them for working together for safety, evicts and deports them.'

Chapter 30 is an excerpt from Andrea Dworkin's influential 1987 book 'Intercourse'. Dworkin believes that when a man has sex with a woman he possesses her. She becomes like a slave. 'The normal fuck by a normal man is taken to be an act of invasion and ownership undertaken in a mode of predation: colonializing, forceful (manly) or nearly violent; the sexual act that by its nature makes her his.'

This confirms what I have learned from other sources that this type of feminist - the Radical Feminist - believes that any time a man and woman have sex it objectifies the woman. That is why they believe women should become lesbians. A lesbian - political lesbian - is a woman who doesn't have sex with men. She doesn't necessarily have sex with other women.

They oppose prostitution because it is one of the ways that men and women have sex. They're not going to tell you that though. They are going to pretend that they are doing it for the welfare of prostitutes. No wonder they hate Amnesty International and will do anything to stop them exposing the harm done to women by the Nordic model.

before lockdown

I've had a look at the guidelines and it doesn't say anything about having sex with prostitutes. Even so I have avoided it recently. Also I don't like standing in queues. I'm joking of course, all the brothels have closed. So it's not true what they say about prostitutes spreading disease.

I did have two pleasant experiences before lockdown though. I went to a Thai massage place in Liverpool. I asked for Kim and the girl said she's not here today. I had seen Kim three times last year and she was lovely. The girl suggested that I look at all four of them there and choose one. I hesitated but she insisted and went out the back. It seemed to amuse her.

This has not happened to me before. It must be that they weren't busy. Perhaps they were a bit bored.

Each of the three others came into the room, one at a time. One was called Jessica and I remember I saw a Jessica a long time ago but couldn't recognize the face. One was Nicky who I have seen a few times over the years. She hesitated in the doorway. She's a pretty girl and didn't need to be wearing so much makeup. I have called her Vicky in previous posts because I didn't want to reveal her name, but as long as I don't tell you the name of the place it should be ok.

The one I chose was Katie. She is older but nice to look at. She started the massage then asked if I wanted any extras. I hadn't taken a viagra because I wasn't really looking for a sexual experience. I told her I would give her some money if she played with my willy but don't try too hard because I probably won't get an erection and I'm not going to have an orgasm.

We talked about what I had done with Kim. I said she had shown me her pussy. With the lights full on. She had let me touch it but not let me put my finger inside. I told her that I have seen Nicky but she doesn't like me. She doesn't like the way that I look at her even though I told her it's just because she's so pretty. Katie said maybe it's just that she's shy. I thought if you're shy you're unlikely to tell a man you don't like the way he looks at you.

I did get an erection but I didn't orgasm. I wouldn't have orgasmed even if I had taken a viagra. I can't come that way. Although I did have one orgasm with Kim last year, I wanked myself to orgasm when looking at her pussy.

The other experience I had was I went to the brothel in Ellemere Port (The Office). There were two women there, the 'maid' and the sex worker. The maid was a woman I hadn't seen before. She told me the name of the sex worker but I didn't recognize it. She wouldn't let me have a look at the sex worker before I gave her the money. She said I would have to give her £10, refundable if I decided to stay. They tend to do that there. They can have some ugly and old women working there. I said I'll just go elsewhere. I don't mind older women if they are attractive but I didn't want to take that chance.

I got on the train to Rock Ferry and went to the Thai place. Rock Ferry Thai Massage. The old woman said there are two girls there but one of them is in the room below. The one available for me was Annie who was older and not pretty but quite sexy. I asked Annie what did the old woman mean by the room below. She told me that for customers who paid for an hour they could go to this room where they have extra facilities. I can't remember if she said a bath or a jacuzzi.

If I paid £100 I could do that and it sounded nice. No doubt the man who was doing it had the prettier of the two women available. Maybe the pretty girl was in the bath with him. I will have to try it when things get back to normal. I had a good time with Annie. This place is not really about massage. I had penetrative sex with her and I orgasmed even though I was using one of her condoms not my own thinner ones.

review of Paid For by Rachel Moran part 4

The message of this book is that women are forced to become prostitutes because of poverty. Early in the book she says that she had the opportunity of living with a family but she declined the offer because she felt contaminated by prostitution. This was before the 1993 law which made life more difficult for prostitutes when she had to have penetrative sex (although she never had anal sex).

"These things felt too pure for me, or rather, I felt too dirty for them." Chapter 8 page 70

So even she had another option. She felt she couldn't take this other option because she felt contaminated. It sounds as if it was attitudes to sex in Ireland that were causing the problem. Attitudes to sex are changing in Ireland but the traditional culture is that the most acceptable women are those who don't have sex - the nuns. Priests and monks aren't supposed to have sex either. If you can't be a nun then you should be celibate before marriage then faithful after, so that you only have sex with one man ever.

"The prostitute knows that she lives in a society which, however saturated with sexual imagery, is still steeped in the veneration of virginity, and she has the wit to know that since she is placed on the opposite end of that spectrum she will not find herself venerated any time soon." Chapter 4 page 28

Lust is seen as lowering us to the level of the animals. Lust contaminates. Semen stains the soul. A prostitute who has had sex with hundreds of men has the lowest status. A wife shouldn't enjoy having sex with her husband. It's different for men, unless a man can become aroused then sex and conception won't be possible. So men can enjoy sex, but can't talk about it. Unless it's in the pub. Then it will be talked about in a vulgar way.

If you are raised to think that sex is animalistic then it's not surprising that when you have sex you behave in an animalistic way - or what you think is an animalistic way. Sex is associated with aggression and violence.

When I chose a bull to be my symbol for this blog it wasn't because I'm the sort of man who owns an aggressive breed of dog. A bull is not an aggressive animal, he uses his strength to defend himself and the herd. Christians think that to be reduced to the level of an animal is the worst thing. Others who have a secular or a pagan way of thinking don't believe that. We have drives that we share with animals, we seek out food and sex, and there is no need to suppress these drives. It's when we suppress these drives that aggression arises.

I've just said that secular people don't think this way, but some do. The philosopher Kant was secular but he invented the theory of objectification to find a secular reason why sex outside of marriage is wrong. A philosopher should be able to challenge the attitudes of the society he lives in and not try to find new ways to justify them.

My family were secular but had old-fashioned attitudes to sex. Very common at the time. I have tried to overcome the inhibitions I gained in childhood. It seems that one group of feminists persist with these old-fashioned attitudes. Roman Catholics, Evangelical Protestants and Radical Feminists use each others' false statistics to try to ban prostitution. In the Irish Republic, Northern Ireland and Sweden they have persuaded governments.

When the nuns who ran the Magdalen laundries showed aggression towards the young women and girls incarcerated there it was because of suppressed sexual desire. It was a hatred and fear of sex and a disgust at people who they thought freely expressed their sexual feelings.

When a man who has been steeped in this culture visits a brothel he's going to think that the thing to do is behave like an animal. Or what he thinks to behave like an animal would be. He will tend to be disrespectful and even aggressive towards the sex worker. He might enjoy the feeling that he is raping the woman.

There is another book about prostitution in Ireland. It is called Slave by Anna. In this book a woman is kidnapped on the streets of London and taken to Ireland. She is raped many times. Some of the other women she meets are taken to Northern Ireland and Sweden but none of them are taken to London or Manchester. This is curious. There are plenty of brothels in London and Manchester. The only way we can explain this is by saying that some Catholics in the Irish Republic and Evangelicals in Northern Ireland like to have brutal sex. They think that is what sex is - brutal and animalistic.

There are no cases that I am aware of in Britain where a woman has been kidnapped from the streets and raped. If you read in the newspapers about cases of men and women prosecuted for trafficking they don't involve coercion.

It's no coincidence that it is the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland who have introduced the Nordic model where the idea is that men are prosecuted for paying for sex. They have ignored all the evidence that shows that it doesn't work. The 1993 law made things worse for sex workers (as Moran says herself) and the more recent Nordic model makes things worse still. Moran says nothing about women kidnapped and raped in early 1990s Ireland.

The worse it gets the more examples they can give of women damaged by prostitution. They can renew their efforts to stamp it out. The more they try to stamp it out the worse it gets. Just like in prohibition America. Or the war against drugs. But they are the ones who have created this situation. And they have no interest in eliminating the poverty that they say is the cause of prostitution. They want to take away this way of escaping poverty.

In Ireland sex workers feel impure and feel they can't escape. They are more likely to find sex repulsive and the men who pay for sex make it even more repulsive by their attitude. Religious people call for harsher laws which make things even worse. The worse it gets the more they want to crack down on it.

There are two things that could change the face of prostitution in Britain. One of them is the anti-HIV drug called PrEP, and the other is Brexit.

Lots of gay men take PrEP. It can be bought over the internet but they can also get it for free if they join an impact trial. It's not really a trial, they just keep an eye on you at the Sexual Health clinic and test your kidney function etc. They do regular HIV and other STD checks. It's not just for gay men, anyone can go on it. For someone like me who has had unprotected sex with sex workers recently it's good and it would be good for sex workers too.

I found out about it just a couple of months ago and now I'm on it. It's not for people who have HIV, it's for people who want to avoid contracting it. It's effective if taken properly. I'm one of the few heterosexual people on the impact trial, and they're happy to have more straight men. The trials will end this year but the doctor said she'll still give it to me. People will still be able to go on it.

As I said I gave up seeing sex workers over the winter. Now it's spring I've been thinking who to see. Number one on my list is my African lady in Manchester. I have seen her several times and shagged her without a condom. I've had a couple of HIV tests since so I know I haven't got it.

However, it seems that she has chosen this springtime to go on holiday. I look at the twitter page of this brothel and it says who is there next day. There is nearly always a choice of three women. She's not been there for a couple of weeks now but this is what happens. So I expect she'll be back. I'll be ready for her. I don't want to make the trip to Manchester if it's not sunny and dry which is one reason why I tend not to go in winter. It's a nice day out.

I'm old enough to remember that in Soho before Aids they would say "£10 for sex with condom, £15 without". If PrEP becomes commonly used, is it possible that we might go back to that? I doubt it, there are other STDs apart from HIV and condoms make it so much nicer for sex workers.

I can imagine though that some enterprising young lady could be a bit imaginative and offer a wider range of services, for a price. She could offer sex with an ultra-thin condom. They're just as safe, but instead of the customer bringing his own, she would have a range of different brands available. That way she could be sure they aren't old or have been tampered with. She could offer to use a female condom which she would insert before sex.

She could take PrEP every day and offer unprotected sex, perhaps only with a regular customer she likes. There could be a PrEP club, where unprotected sex is available on the understanding that both the sex worker and her clients are taking it every day.

I stopped taking it every day when I realized that my African lady isn't there at the moment. But now I've started again because I've heard that anti-viral drugs like PrEP are being tested to see if they can stop people getting coronavirus. There are two ways to take it: either just take one tablet a day, or only take it befor and after you know you're going to have unprotected sex according to instructions.

Brothels are closing because of coronavirus (COVID-19). Overpool Angels is now shut.

Number two on my list of desirable ladies is the young oriental woman called Sara who I have mentioned in previous posts. She's not always working in Chester but she was recently. I texted her and asked her if I could use an ultra-thin condom and she replied yes. On her page on Vivastreet she said she would be there until Monday the ninth of March. However, when I texted her on Monday she said that she'd left Chester.

I was hoping to put a link to her Vivastreet page here for you but it seems to not function now. That's a pity because there were photos of her and a video of her doing a sexy little dance. I can put a screenshot of the page here though.

My third choice would be Eva the Spanish girl at Overpool Angels. I'm not sure she's there this year though, especially considering we've left the EU. They can't just get on a coach and turn up at Victoria coach station anymore. Having said that though, girls like Sara from Asia don't seem to have that much of a problem.

I was told by a Brazilian woman that often they say they are Italian to get to EU countries. Many Brazilians have Italian ancestry and that gives them permission to come here.

Since Eastern European countries joined the EU there have been large numbers of women coming to Britain to work as prostitutes. In some places they outnumber British women. It could be that British women are reluctant to compete against them on price. Could it be that in the future there will be fewer sex workers in Britain and the price for sexual services will be higher? That's a possibility.

Maggie Mae

I have just found out that there was a traditional song about prostitution in Liverpool. The Beatles were one of the groups that sang it.

Oh dirty Maggie Mae they have taken her away
And she never walk down Lime Street any more
Oh the judge he guilty found her
For robbing a homeward bounder
That dirty no good robbin' Maggie Mae
To the port of Liverpool
They returned me to
Two pounds ten a week, that was my pay.

I didn't realize that Lime Street was the Red Light District of Liverpool at one time. I also didn't realise that Maggie was the slang word for prostitute.

You would think it would be somewhere nearer the docks, because of all the sailors. I did locate somewhere near the docks in Liverpool but it was outcall only so I forgot about it. It might have been Secrets Escorts. I always wondered how that worked. Women would go to hotels near the docks where their customers were staying. If a man was resident on a ship would he try to smuggle a woman on board? Perhaps several men would invite one woman to be with them overnight.

Anyone would think you haven't seen a woman for months!

I read that there used to be a system where a sailor would stay with a woman overnight in her house or flat. She would cook for him, perhaps an evening meal and breakfast the next day. They would spend the night together. Sex workers often like to have a number of regular clients. Then they don't have to continue to find men.

That's a much better system than street prostitution, the sort that I encountered in Hope Street in the 1980s. Another system could be if there was a large room with tables and chairs. The room is divided into two. Women would come in through one door and men through another. The men could look at the women, a man could ask to talk to one he likes. Or she could ask to talk to him. They could agree a price then go to a bedroom. It's not a brothel, women would pay an hourly rate for a room.

Women would not be employees there. They would go there when they feel like it, perhaps with their friends. If they needed the money that day or if someone was looking after the kids. A woman could go as frequently or as infrequently as she liked. It would be a bit like a hotel.

There is also Temple Spa 21 near the centre of Liverpool, at 21 Temple Street. If you pay their minimum price you get a massage and a topless wank. If you pay more she will take all her clothes off.

Paul Curtis has created a mural of Maggie Mae, who was apparently a real person.