review of Paying For It by Scarlett O'Kelly

This book was written by an Irish woman who became an escort as a result of the recession. She is one of the women who some feminists dismiss as being unrepresentative of prostitutes. The same was said of Brooke Magnanti but this is some women's reality. What proportion of sex workers are like O'Kelly and Magnanti is difficult to know, especially as things will have changed over the decades.

In Chapter 11 and 25 she writes about 'wifey sex', where a man feels he should only make love to his wife slowly and gently, not go faster and harder as he would wish. Lots of men go to an escort for this reason. Her advice is for him to talk to his wife - she might want rampant sex sometimes. In Chapter 25 she also writes about premature ejaculation and how to solve it. The answer is the start/stop squeeze technique and pelvic floor exercises.

In Chapter 27 Scarlett tells us how she divided up the men who came to see her into different categories. They are Unhappily Married, Fearful Catholics, Students, Middle-class Liberals, Young Family Man, Mr Self Employed and Manual Labour Man.

In Chapter 28 Scarlett goes into great detail about anal sex. On page 203 there is one paragraph that explains how to do it without pain. Later she goes into great detail about prostate massage. She writes that all of her customers have asked for anal sex. That surprised me, because I thought that most sex workers don't do it.

In Chapter 32 Scarlett recounts how she realized that other sex workers charged less money than she did. This is one of the reasons that she eventually gave it up. I don't think she realized though that most of these women would be charging extra for anal sex, and many of them would not be providing that service at all. That's what I think anyway, I could be wrong. Also, they will be spending less time with their clients than she did.

Several times in the book she says that she had no alternative to what she did, it was an economic necessity. During the recession the only way she could maintain her standard of living was to do sex work. There must have been hundreds of thousands of women in exactly the same situation as her. One wonders what they all did. Presumably they lived much poorer and many of them lost their homes.

If you have a hundred people, all of them in exactly the same circumstances, and 99 of them choose to do one thing, does it make any sense to say that the one person who did differently was forced to do so? That she had no alternative? You could say she had no alternative if she wanted to avoid being poor, in the particular circumstances of a recession. You can't say though that all sex workers at all times don't have a meaningful choice.

She writes that she has no regrets about being a sex worker, and that she enjoyed the sex sometimes. So it's not true that although women in sex work can be positive about it, once they have left they cease to be so.

hatred of clients

One thing that surprised me when I read Sara Pascoe's book is her hatred of men like me. She thinks that we are psychopaths, antisocial and unsympathetic.

I have read a new book that sheds some light on this attitude. The book is The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan, a professor at Oxford.

There are six chapters in the book, each on a different aspect of sex. The two chapters that were of interest to me were the last one (Sex, Carceralism, Capitalism - about prostitution) and the second one (Talking to My Students About Porn - about pornography).

In some ways this mirrors two of the three sections in Sara's book. The third section is about prostitution and the second is about pornography. Sara and Amia's approaches to these subjects are very different though.

This is what Amia writes (on page 151)

"At the level of the symbol, prostitution is seen as a distillation of women's condition under patriarchy. The prostitute is the perfected figure of women's subordinate status, just as the john is the perfected figure of male domination. Their sexual transaction, defined by inequality and often accompanied by violence, stands in for the state of sexual relations between women and men more generally. Seen in this way, the prostitute calls out to be saved, the john to be punished, and their transactional sex to be stopped - for the good of all women."

She is using the word 'john' to mean the clients of sex workers. It's a common term in America. Amia writes that the criminalisation of men doesn't help sex workers. So why do some feminists want it? They want to punish men. That is more important to them than helping women.

There are two points I can make about that. First, these feminists believe that prostitution can be reduced even if it can't be eliminated. They have a statistic which says that the proportion of Swedish men who bought sex decreased after the law was introduced that criminalises men. That is a false statistic, as I have explained in detail here. Second, the law doesn't harm men. In most Nordic model countries very few men are convicted: it seems easy to avoid prosecution for an intelligent sane sober man.

Amia quotes from the book Revolting Prostitutes by Molly Smith and Juno Mac. "The client thus becomes the symbol of all violent men: he is the avatar of unadulterated violence against women, the archetypal predator." This all seems very odd to me. I can understand antipathy towards drug dealers and pimps (if the person accused is really a pimp: lots of people are convicted of pimping offences who aren't pimps).

Amia, Molly and Juno aren't saying that they believe the clients of sex workers are predators, they are saying some feminists believe that. Some sex workers work alone and never have a violent client. There may be gangs who want to take her money. There may be vigilantes who want to harm her.

Some women would like to work with other women to avoid potential violence but that's not allowed. Some brothels were well run and never had any violence but the police have closed them down. If sex workers were allowed to keep themselves safe they would probably be just as safe as estate agents, nurses and social workers.

Perhaps they think that men like me exploit the supposed power imbalance. In the quotation from Revolting Prostitutes there is this: "prostitution as a deeply unequal transaction - one scarred by patriarchy as well as white supremacy, poverty and colonialism. It seems intuitively right to criminalise men who are, in many ways, the living embodiments of these huge power differentials".

Today both sex workers and their clients come from many different backgrounds. The idea that clients are affluent white men and sex workers are poor black women is rarely true. It is more often true of employers and their servants or even employers and their cleaners, but nobody seems to be bothered by that. I do not consider women or non-Europeans to be inferior to me or only there to serve me. I pay women and not men for sex because I am heterosexual. Mostly English women because that is my preference. They have probably got more money than me. Lots of sex workers today are highly educated. Lots of clients are working class.

A clue to one possible reason for the hatred of clients comes from Sara's book. She writes about a gig where a man called Stefan came over to talk to her. On the subject of early internet pornography, he said that the pictures took so long to download that he wished they would do so upside down. He was trying to make a joke, the idea being that he was impatient to see the woman's genitals (the 'good bits') and not so much her face.

Sara took great offense at this. Two pages later there's a note about Alexa, the cloud-based voice service. Sara writes "Stefan wouldn't like her, she's all brain and no good bits." This is very unfair on Stefan. She is assuming that any man who has a strong sexual attraction to a woman's body is incapable of appreciating her personality or her mind. That he thinks women are only good for one thing.

That's a common prejudice, and it's wrong. Where does it come from? Sara writes about millions of years of evolution that reinforce certain attitudes. I think it comes from cultural conditioning and in our culture that comes from thousands of years of Christianity with its disgust and fear of basic human sexuality. Lust reduces us to the level of beasts, so they say.

So some people hate men like me because we are supposedly violent, we've got more money than most and we are incapable of appreciating women's personalities or minds. There is no evidence for any of this. It seems to come from a lurid imagination or an outdated ideology. Or the female equivalent of misogyny. Perhaps I should feel guilty: after all, I am a Living Embodiment. Another word for that could be scapegoat.

You would think that the Radical Feminists would hate men like Jim Wells. Or Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers. But they like Jim Wells. Julie Bindel and Kat Banyard have quoted him (as 'Mr Wells') in recent books despite the fact that he is an Evangelical Christian who doesn't believe in abortion or gay rights. They like him because he wants to stamp out pornography and prostitution.

Amia Srinivasan in her book The Right to Sex comes out unequivocally in favour of decriminalisation. As do Molly Smith, Juno Mac and Emily Kenway in their books. I wish that Sara Pascoe had done the same in her book (see previous post). Even so there seems to be more and more support for decriminalisation and less for the Nordic model. I know which side I'm on, and it's not with Jim Wells.

In 1991, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), an abolitionist group that [Kathleen] Barry founded, took its case of 'prostitution as slavery' to the United Nations. 'To be a prostitute was to be unconditionally sexually available to any male who bought the right to use a woman's body in whatever manner he chose,' CATW told the working group on contemporary forms of slavery. This unconditional availability and the man's right to do whatever he wanted was tantamount to ownership and slavery.

The paragraph above is from Nine Degrees of Justice by Bishakha Datta.

They didn't get anywhere. Sex workers choose their clients. They can and do deny their services to any man they choose. They tell the man what they will accept and what they won't. If a man wants anal sex without a condom he won't get it. There are no 'survivors' who say that he will. In Rachel Moran's book, for example, she states that she didn't have anal sex once.

So the whole basis of Barry's argument is false. The whole basis of the Radical Feminist argument is false. They don't know what they are talking about. Their hatred of men like me is based more on victim porn than reality.

I have never bought a woman's body. Trying to link it to slavery doesn't make any sense. I don't believe that women are only good for sex - only worth 'what some man will pay for her'. This explains more about why punters are hated - people are being told that we buy women and that we think that women have no value apart from sex. This kind of hatred can only come from a repressed sexuality.

review of Sex Power Money by Sara Pascoe

The popular comedian has a lot to say about pornography and prostitution. There is no index for this book, I would have liked to look up 'Nordic model' and 'decriminalisation' to see what her position is. You have to read the whole book but even then you're not sure what she believes.

She doesn't mention the Nordic model, where men are criminalised for paying for sex. She mentions decriminalisation once, on page 310 of the hardback edition.

"I am listening to the people who want to sell sex - I think the law should respect their wishes and they should be decriminalised and supported. I think all human beings should be free to use their body how they want ... unless that involves buying access to another person. Then I think they should have a wank and shut up."

That sounds as if she believes in decriminalisation as in New Zealand instead of the Nordic model as in Sweden. However, people who believe in the Nordic model usually think that it is about decrimalising sex workers as well as criminalising their clients. That is not the reality though, as I have detailed elsewhere on this blog.

Her position is unclear. That could be because she doesn't understand what she is talking about. Or it could be deliberate. By coming down on one side or the other she risks alienating a lot of people.

On page 2 she wrote this.

"I went on PunterNet when I got home. It was mostly men discussing the parking restrictions around sex workers' houses. These men are breaking the law by paying for sex, but they're only worried about traffic wardens."

That is false. Men who pay for sex are not breaking the law in Britain. How could she make such a basic error? When I read that I felt that she doesn't know what she is talking about, but I persevered. What she is writing other people will be thinking. Whatever she writes will influence many young people.

Is it possible that she is not calling for men who pay for sex to be criminalised because she thinks they already are?

You might think that she is the sort of person who tells it like it is. However, finding out what she believes and why can take a long time. The most irritating example of this is where at the end of a chapter and section she writes.

"I also can't simply sign off on 'sex work is work', even if for some people it is. It is not so simple as sex for money, because of the imbalance of power."

I have heard this phrase many times before, 'imbalance of power' or 'power imbalance'. I have never heard it explained. Sara does explain it, but you have to wait till the end of the next three chapters. She takes three whole chapters to make a convoluted argument that no prostitute has a choice to do what they do. They hate it but they have no other option to get money to live or to eat.

Punters are delusional, thinking that sex workers have a choice, or that they enjoy it.

"And it's the 'choice' that means real-life Stewart and all the other real-life Johns can defend their behaviour because the people they pay for sex are doing so of their own volition. 'If they didn't want to do it they wouldn't,' they rationalise. 'No one is making them.'"

This suggests that prostitutes are poor, uneducated and have limited employment opportunities. Considering that in the rest of the book she quotes academic studies frequently to support her arguments, it is interesting that she offers no evidence for what she says.

Has she looked for academic studies that throw light on this belief? She wouldn't have to go far to find one. In the further reading section at the end of the book she suggests Brooke Magnanti's book Sex, Lies and Statistics. Her other non-fiction book is The Sex Myth, which covers a lot of the same ground.

In The Sex Myth Dr Magnanti quotes a 2009 study called Beyond Gender: An examination of exploitation in sex work by Suzanne Jenkins of Keele University. It comes from detailed interviews with 440 sex workers of many different types. This is what Dr Magnanti writes.

"Sex work is frequently assumed to be a choice suitable only for the uneducated. But 35.3 per cent of the men and 32.9 per cent of the women had degrees, and over 18 per cent of the total held post-graduate qualifications. Only 6.5 per cent had no formal educational qualifications."

Even the examples that Sara uses in the three chapters don't back up what she writes. In the film Indecent Proposal the alternative to being paid for sex is driving a cab and waiting tables. That's what millions of people in America do. Not the worse thing that can happen to anyone. Not something that must be avoided at all costs. She speculates that the men who are paid for sex by her friend Stewart might be facing eviction, but she doesn't know that.

In the three boring chapters she gives a number of scenarios. Someone eats in a restaurant but can't pay. The manager could force her to wash dishes or he could force her to have sex.

"I think it is reasonable to consider a forced sex act as something that will hurt and harm someone, while washing dishes or stacking shelves for a few hours will not. Is that fair?"

There is another scenario, one that she doesn't present us with. One that is more in accordance with reality. Imagine a group of women who eat in a restaurant but can't pay. They are all told by the manager that they have to wash dishes or stack shelves. One of the women says "Can't I just give you a blow job instead?". She is the one who knows she will not be hurt or harmed by it because her attitude to sex is different from the others. Nobody is telling any of them they have to have sex.

Some women don't want to work for a minimum wage and just get by. They could do that, or they could train to be a professional, which brings its own problems, like burnout. Or she could do sex work. Or she could do the kind of work she likes even though it doesn't pay much and top up her income through sex work. That way she could get her National Insurance contributions paid which is always a good idea for the future. Or she could do sex work while she trains to be a professional, instead of something like waitressing or bar work. More time for study and more time for fun. Or maybe she just responds to having clients which is always more demanding and to some people more rewarding than working in a factory.

That's for her to decide. She can decide if she will be hurt or harmed by it. Don't say they don't have options when it is you who is taking away their options.

So Sara says that they have no choice, but then she contradicts herself. On page 318 she writes about a disabled sex worker called Jane.

"She performs as a dominatrix, which gives her the power to refuse things she doesn't want to do, and is adamant that she enjoys her job sometimes."

All sex workers have the power to refuse things they don't want to do. They don't have to do anal sex, for example. Yes, some of them do enjoy it some of the time. Sara told Jane about a exit strategy scheme.

"When I excitedly told her about an exit strategy scheme I've heard of, where sex workers in northern Europe are given jobs in old people's homes and they're 'really good at it because they are not grossed out by the human body', Jane replies, 'I find that very patronising.' She says, 'I can earn £200 an hour - I don't want to earn minimum wage in an old people's home.'

When I started writing this book I assumed that anyone in sex work or prostitution would want to get out of it at any cost. And that is not true. There are people who have options and choices, who opt and choose to sell sex. It is possible to be well-meaning and wrong. This is where feminism has not supported sex workers properly. When some of them have told us, 'This is my choice - please help me to earn my money safely,' our own feelings get in the way - 'I don't want you to do that'; 'you will always be a victim to me.' Kind feelings can create more problems."

Very sensible, but it won't earn you many brownie points with the Julie Bindels of the world. It's as if this book is written by two different people. Perhaps her reason and emotions are saying different things. She needs to realise that not everyone has the same emotions as she does, especially the hate.

So does she still believe that punters are 'psychopaths'? This is what she writes at the beginning of the book. They are delusional, thinking that sex workers enjoy having sex with them. Or the opposite. 'Pain, discomfort or unwillingness turns them on. It makes them feel more powerful.'

Perhaps there are a few punters who are delusional and a few who want to inflict discomfort. Most punters though will realise that sex work is like other jobs. Sometimes good, sometimes bad but mostly neutral. A cab driver loves the occasional trip out into the country and hates being stuck in traffic. When bored he or she may think about what they are going to have for dinner tonight, but it doesn't make sense to call that dissociation.

Some people would refuse to drive a cab even if it meant having to live on benefits. The ones who do it and stick at it are glad that option is available to them. Legally and safely. You can say that they don't want to drive you somewhere, the fact that you have to pay them means they don't want to do it. But of course they do want it - they want your custom. And they don't have to take you south of the river if they really don't want to.

I have put more about her book on this page.

Julie Bindel's new book

Julie Bindel was on Woman's Hour today talking about her new book. Nice free publicity for her although I don't expect it will do her any more good than with her last book.

She stated that women need to reclaim feminism because of the influence of men. Men are taking leadership roles in feminist groups and that's why some women have started believing things that she doesn't agree with. The idea that prostitution shouldn't be banned, for example.

That's ridiculous though because the books that have influenced me the most are by women authors. Molly Smith, Juno Mac and Emily Kenway. Also the feminist philosopher Martha Nussbaum. I can't think of one male author.

She said she wanted to see a world without rape, domestic violence and prostitution. No doubt that will resonate with suburban housewives although I'm not sure how many still listen to Woman's Hour.

Her idea is that feminist policies shouldn't please men. However there are some men who are very pleased with Julie Bindel's policies. Jim Wells for example. He is a religious bigot who, like her, wants to get rid of prostitution, pornography and erotic dancing. Gavin Shuker is very pleased with the policies of Jess Phillips who has worked with him and other Evangelicals in the APPG on Commercial Sexual Exploitation. Gary Haugen of the IJM was very pleased with Laura Lederer. William Hudnut was very pleased with Catharine MacKinnon.

The worst kind of patriarchal men hate prostitution, pornography and erotic dancing. Also gay rights and abortion. They are happy to work with Radical Feminists. The liberal men who Bindel doesn't like don't believe that the way to solve social problems is to give the police more powers and arrest more people.

There is a male influence in feminism that women should reclaim feminism from. In her previous book Julie Bindel quoted 'Mr Wells'. Mr Wells is the Northern Ireland politician Jim Wells, who is a religious bigot. He is an Evangelical Christian. Kat Banyard also quoted him extensively, in her book that came out about the same time. Banyard also used his false statistic.

When Julie Bindel and other Radical Feminists say that men who pay for sex - like me - are like rapists and wife beaters, where does that idea come from? You can understand why right wing religious bigots will say that. They hate promiscuity in all its forms. They associate sex with aggression, violence and death.

They are disgusted by prostitution and don't believe that there are some women who aren't. So they think that sex workers must have something wrong with them, be coerced, or desperately poor. They cannot believe that there are some women who choose prostitution for the same reason that other people choose their jobs; a combination of financial reward, number of hours worked and like or dislike.

They might say if I think it's valid job why don't I do it? I think being a waiter or a masseur is a valid job but I'm not doing those either. I wouldn't want to do those jobs because they like sex work involve meeting lots of new people, anticipating their needs then remembering them if they return. Some people like that. I don't.

On page 71 Julie Bindel states that 'abolitionist feminists' succeeded in 'effectively decriminalising large numbers of formerly prostituted women'. She uses this belief to counter the accusation that her kind of feminist is 'carceral'. Carceral means thinking that you can solve social problems by giving the police more powers to arrest people. It means wanting to arrest men who pay for sex. Radical Feminists have always said that they want to stop women from being arrested, so I don't see how women no longer having to disclose criminal records for soliciting defends them from the accusation of being carceral.

It wasn't the Radical Feminists by themselves who achieved this judicial review. It was academics (who Bindel hates) and 'feminist lawyers' too. She doesn't say if these feminist lawyers were Radical Feminists or other feminists. The judicial review doesn't decriminalise sex workers. Why isn't Bindel campaigning to allow women to work together for safety? Why isn't she campaigning to allow soliciting? Why isn't she campaigning to remove criminal records for brothel-keeping? Other feminists are campaigning for these things. This would be the real decriminalisation.

People who support the Nordic model say that they want to decriminalise prostitutes. They say they want to shift the 'burden of criminality' from prostitutes to their clients, from women onto men. Yet there is no Nordic model country that has done this. People like Bindel don't campaign for it. Occasionally they will say that you can't decriminalise women until you criminalise men. Former Irish justice minister Frances Fitzgerald doubled the penalties for brothel-keeping with the introduction of the Nordic model there. She gave some stupid excuse for that but it seems that genuine decriminalisation for sex workers would compromise the ability of the police and the state to wipe out prostitution. Which is weird because the evidence is that the Nordic model increases demand.

In this book Julie Bindel implies that anal sex is standard for sex workers. She wants to know if men would rather 'take it up the ass' than work in McDonald's. She mentions Rachel Moran and her book several times. Rachel Moran never had anal sex in all the years she worked as a prostitute. She didn't even have vaginal sex for the first two years. She only started vaginal sex after 1993 when a law was introduced which restricted prostitution. Even then she only did penetrative sex 'sporadically', preferring to do domination.

As for oral sex, there is a difference between oral sex with a condom, oral sex without a condom and cum-in-mouth. Lots of prostitutes don't do cum-in-mouth. In fact, lots of sex workers only do hand relief. There are a great many establishments where women do massage and hand relief. They don't do oral sex or penetrative sex. I'm not sure that the word 'prostitute' is even appropriate for these women which is one reason why the term 'sex worker' is better.

Women don't sell blowjobs on Hartlepool harbour for five pounds (page 131). I have never encountered anything like that even though I have been to red light districts where I met drug addicts.

On page 219 she briefly mentions 'women escaping prostitution in Cambodia'. Most prostitutes in Cambodia are not coerced into it. If they work in a brothel they are not kept there and do not need to escape. The only time they need to escape is when they are arrested by the police and taken somewhere, often somewhere run by American Evangelicals such as those in the International Justice Mission.

If you are talking about sex workers who would like to do something different (often after they have built up considerable savings) there is an organisation called Empower in Thailand that did literacy classes for them. Empower was refused funding by the American government because they refused to sign an oath that they do not support or condone prostitution in its many manifestations and that no funds will be going toward harm prevention among sex workers. Some feminists such as Laura Lederer worked with the Evangelicals, they justify it by saying they are fighting trafficking.

In 2003, as part of the Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act Reauthorization Act, the administration announced that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would stop funding any group perceived as encouraging sex work. The new policy stated that groups “advocating prostitution as an employment choice or which advocate or support the legalization of prostitution are not appropriate partners for USAID antitrafficking grants or contracts” (Hill 2003). This rule meant that nonabolitionist groups doing AIDS/HIV outreach or offering other harm-reduction services to sex workers were no longer eligible for funds from USAID. Among the international programs partially funded by the United States was a sex workers’ literacy class run by Thailand’s Empower, a group that since 1985 has advocated for the rights of women in the entertainment industry in that country.

Running from the Rescuers: New U.S. Crusades Against Sex Trafficking and the Rhetoric of Abolition by Gretchen Soderlund

PornHub, OnlyFans and Nick Kristof

I have been wondering why I am no longer able to download pornographic videos from PornHub and similar sites. It seems that I have found the answer. It's all to do with an American called Nick Kristof, who I came across a while ago in the context of trafficking and brothel raids in countries like Cambodia. Kristof's credibility took a big hit a while ago when Cambodian woman Somaly Mam was exposed as a liar. She fabricated a lot of lurid details about her and other women's involvement in prostitution.

There used to be a site called Backpage where sex workers could advertise. That was closed down by federal law enforcement. In 2012 Kristof wrote an article for the New York Times accusing Backpage of enabling trafficking.

SESTA/FOSTA is a law passed in 2018. It stands for Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. It was supported by Kristof. It makes life more difficult for sex workers to advertize. It could make blogs like mine illegal if it is seen to 'promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person'.

The Survivors of Human Trafficking Fight Back Act was passed in 2020. It, like SESTA/FOSTA, allows people to persue legal action against platforms including PornHub. Kristof called for this.

Kristof wrote another article in 2020 for the New York Times called 'The Children of PornHub'. Pornhub announced new policies to restrict users’ ability to upload videos without registering - and bar downloading videos altogether. Even with their restructuring, MasterCard, Visa, and Discover banned payments to PornHub’s parent company, MindGeek.

I don't feel sorry for PorhHub. Porn stars don't like it because their videos can be pirated on PornHub. It has become something of a monopoly where lower wages, less control and fear of speaking out become increasingly common for performers. Kristof doesn't care about that though. One of Kristof's primary sources for the anti-PornHub article was Laila Mickelwait, the Director of Abolition for a non-profit organisation called Exodus Cry who seek the complete abolition of the legal sex industry, including sex work, pornography, and strip clubs.

The founder of Exodus Cry is Benjamin Nolot. It is associated with IHOP aka IHOPKC (International House of Prayer Kansas City) which is led by pastor Mike Bickle. Both Nolot and Bickle are Evangelical Christians who oppose gay marriage and abortion. Bickle seems to be antisemitic too. The public don't realise that behind the 'anti-trafficking' campaigning are nasty religious bigots. We can all be against non-consensual sex, but this is a puritanical crusade against consensual sex work, pornography and erotic dancing.

As Kelsy Burke writes on slate.com
"When anti-porn groups use language about “trafficking,” they hope to attract broad support, since all of us can agree that no person should be forced into labor or servitude, sexual or otherwise. Yet groups like NCOSE and others led by conservative Christians use “trafficking” as an umbrella term for all sex work, including that which is legal and consensual. According to NCOSE’s guiding values, “the commodification of sex acts is inherently exploitative.”"

As Melissa Gira Grant writes in The New Republic
"As a result of their years spent building influence, “fighting trafficking” as defined by these groups has also led to policies to defund AIDS programs that worked with sex workers and instead support programs mandating abstinence over condoms. Catholic groups used fighting trafficking to block funding to anti-trafficking programs that offered referrals for birth control and abortion. Women’s rights groups teamed up with religious right groups to shut down Craigslist’s and Backpage’s ads for sex work. All this was accomplished by religious right groups marketing themselves as anti-trafficking groups who were invested in protecting women and children from abuse. Meanwhile, their approach led to police abuse of sex workers under the guise of anti-trafficking raids and “rescues,” while also dismantling sex workers’ efforts to work independently and protect themselves. This isn’t fighting human trafficking: In some senses, it has increased the likelihood of exploitation and violence."

The campaign against PornHub was co-sponsored by NCOSE (National Center on Sexual Exploitation). NCOSE was approved for a loan of between $150,000 and $300,000 under Trump’s coronavirus bailout program. There are associations with Trump and with Q-Anon. Now NCOSE is going after OnlyFans.

In December I published a post about webcams. I had found a number of images on my laptop. I thought they derived from OnlyFans but in fact they came from Chaturbate. I said that webcams can be a useful way of getting an income for students or young mothers. OnlyFans have been in the news recently. They banned sexually explicit content but then changed their minds. NCOSE have been putting pressure on MasterCard to ban payments to OnlyFans.

NCOSE lobbying led to Walmart withdrawing Cosmopolitan magazine from display. NCOSE has used the language of feminism to try to portray Cosmopolitan as part of our hypersexualised society where women are expected to satisfy men's urges. However, the magazine has helped women to find their own sexual satisfaction.

NCOSE has benefited from alliances with anti-porn feminists concerned about women’s exploitation, including Gail Dines and Julie Bindel. This is yet another example of where Radical Feminists have teamed up with religious bigots. Catharine A MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin worked against pornography with the mayor of Indianapolis William H Hudnut. He was a Christian pastor. Laura Lederer helped bring feminist groups such as Equality Now together with Christian groups such as the National Association of Evangelicals and The Salvation Army. This coalition helped bring about the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA).

The TVPA has caused problems around the world, it has enabled the American government and the State Department to put pressure on countries to allow or conduct brothel raids which have harmed sex workers. This happens in poor countries like Cambodia but in Japan tens of thousands of women from the Philippines were denied entry even though most of them were not sex workers. It could be the reason why brothels were closed down in large numbers in Britain from 2005 onwards.

I have put a lot more information about trafficking here.

my strange day out in Manchester

The last time I went to Manchester was 2019. I have had many nice days out in Manchester over the years, visiting the numerous brothels. Yesterday I thought the time was right to see how many of them remain.

I got off the train at Manchester Oxford Road and went to Cosmopolitan first. This is the nearest brothel to the station. The receptionist said that a woman would be available in ten minutes. She invited me to sit on one of the plush sofas to wait. When I got talking to her she said that this woman is petite and slender. I said petite and slender doesn't do it for me and I will come back later.

There used to be a brothel very near to the centre of Manchester called Cherrys. I tried to find it in the backstreets but it's not there any more, as far as I can tell. So a bit of a walk took me to the Piccadilly Club. Two young women were available, both young blondes. One of them smiled and the other didn't, so I thought I might as well have the one that smiled.

I paid £35 and went upstairs to the room. When I got an erection I said that I wanted to get on top of her. Instead of lying down on her back she positioned herself against the wall, half sitting and half lying, with her legs apart. She invited me to penetrate her, which I did. I had to prop myself up on my hands, with my head up against the wall, which wasn't comfortable for me.

I told her I wanted her to lie down so that I could get on top of her but she said she doesn't do that, none of the girls do that. Several times during the half hour I had with her she said that I don't understand, she's not stopping me from getting on top of her, but I am asking for something special that none of the men who go there get.

So I left the Piccadilly Club without having had an orgasm. I could have walked to Passions but I decided to go in the opposite direction. I could see that the door of Manchester Angels was closed, but then I think they used to start around 7pm and go through the night.

My favourite brothel was Salon 24. As far as I knew it was closed, but I thought to be sure I could go there. It was indeed closed, with weeds growing up around the entrance and car park. The last time I was here I paid £120 to have sex for an hour without a condom with a big black woman. After that I went to the Red Light District where I started talking to a scruffy woman in a doorway who then urinated in front of me. I didn't pay her to or ask her to, she just needed to piss.

I walked through the central shopping area of Manchester and then Chinatown. I went to Tropical Palms which is a brothel in a seedy alleyway. There was a receptionist who said they have just one woman there. The woman was about 50 years old, but she looked very sexy. She had long blonde hair in tight curls and a sexy dress. I paid £40 and went upstairs with her.

She asked me what I wanted to do. I said I want to get on top of her and shag her. She said no, I won't be doing that, she is going to get on top of me. I thought not another one. I lay on the bed, she put a condom on and did some oral sex, then took off all her clothes. She said I could touch her. I didn't know what she was going to do but I thought I'll just let her get on with it. I wasn't in the mood for another argument.

She got on top of me, inserted my penis into her, then moved up and down. This continued for a long time but I didn't have an orgasm. Then my time was up. Many people think that when you pay for half an hour with a sex worker she has to do everything that you tell her to do. That's not true at all. They tell you what they will let you do with them.

Cosmopolitan is nearby so I went back there. There were 3 women available, all blondes. I chose the one who was the least petite and slender. Her name is Heidi. The receptionist asked me if I wanted a small room (£40) or a large room (£45). I chose a large room. In the room Heidi asked me if I wanted to use the shower. She also asked me if I wanted her to put a porn film on. None of these options were available at the Piccadilly Club or Tropical Palms.

Heidi is everything you would want a sex worker to be. She gave me some oral sex and when I had an erection she had no problem at all with me getting on top of her. I did ask her if she would let me use one of my thin condoms. She said no, which is fair enough. Still a very enjoyable experience.

If I went back to Manchester I would go to Cosmo and I would be happy to see Heidi again. I won't be going back though, because there is an even better option nearer to home. Six times this year I have been to Angel Lodge in Liverpool. Twice I have seen Megan, who lets me use one of my thin condoms. She said she is happy to let me use a thin condom if I give her an unopened pack. To show that they haven't been tampered with.

I have also seen Katy, Taylor, Alicia and Lucia at Angel Lodge. I will see Megan again. She takes the place of the big blonde woman I saw several times last year at Christys. I saw Jodie three times and I also saw Luisa, Paige, Becky, Maria and Charlotte. I would see Jodie again but she no longer works at Christys.

episode 3 of Taken

I watched the third episode of Taken: Hunting the Sex Traffickers last night. The oddest thing about it is that the deported sex worker Sylvia decided she wanted to return to Britain to be a sex worker again. Towards the end of the episode they showed her at the airport.

She said she wanted money for university. In the first episode they implied that these migrants are street sex workers. In an earlier post I said that few of them will be street-based sex workers but some will want money to go to university.

"For example if they're doing sex work on a street in Brazil, then they are happy to come and do sex work in a relatively controlled environment in the UK, that doesn't mean they're not exploited and that doesn't mean bad things won't happen to them here."

The justification for what the police do is that women will want to come to Britain to do sex work but they can't allow this to happen because women are getting raped and robbed. However, the police are raiding brothels. They have closed down the well-run brothels where nobody gets raped or robbed.

Sandra Hankin ran two brothels in Manchester called Sandys Superstars. Nobody was raped or robbed there. The police closed her down. So they have created this situation.

They said women are treated as commodities. Let's say that I brought Thai women to Britain to work as masseurs. Nothing sexual. Would I not be just as much treating women as commodities? What's the difference?

Rosana Gomes got ten pounds every time one of the sex workers got a customer. Is that exploitation? It doesn't sound as if she controlled them in any meaningful sense. Instead she was the interface between men enquiring about Brazilian sex workers and the sex workers themselves. She answered the phone and got ten pounds for each punter.

There is a Daily Mail article about all this that is very inaccurate. Sylvia wasn't the victim of a violent human trafficking network. Viner and Gomes weren't violent to her. She didn't escape to Brazil. She was deported. Viner and Gomes were not her captors.

episode 2 of Taken

I watched the second episode of Taken: Hunting the Sex Traffikers last night and there wasn't anything in it that has changed my opinion. What they seem determined to do is to deny agency to sex workers.

They know these women are not coerced but they need to show that they are victims. Throughout they have said that the women are exploited. That is a matter of opinion.

In last night's show they had a man talking about Learned Helplessness Syndrome. While he was talking they showed footage of street sex workers in Madrid, although I don't know how that is relevant to the subject of the documentary which is Brazilian women in Britain.

Learned Helplessness is not a syndrome. It is a theory not a fact. You can't just diagnose Learned Helplessness when someone does something you don't want. He said that the women are not threatened with having their families attacked. The manipulation is more subtle than that.

Mark Viner had relationships with some younger Brazilian women. The idea is that he psychologically manipulated these women into thinking that he loved them. I don't believe that. They say he had a million pounds. Do you not think that was the attraction for them? They lived the high life for years and then moved on.

I'm not trying to denigrate the women. I admire them. I'm not trying to blame the victims because I don't believe they are victims. They are just trying to make money and sex work allows them to do that. For themselves and their families.

Some of the women were raped and robbed. This happens because they have closed down all the well-run brothels. Such as Sandys Superstars in Manchester. And arrested women who work together. They have created this situation just as they have created the situation in which heroin addicts die of overdoses.

Then they say "Look how terrible prostitution and the drugs trade is, we must crack down on them". Give us more power. It's not working. It will never work.

In Cambodia and other countries women who are detained by anti-traffickers often run away. The anti-traffickers cannot accept that the women didn't want to be 'rescued' and instead say they are incapable of deciding what is best for them. It's called 'false consciousness'. See running from the rescuers.

There is a word for denying the agency of women: it is called objectification. I don't believe in the theory of objectification but if you do - or at least Martha Nussbaum's version - you can see that women are being denied the ability to choose for themselves. Not just the ability to choose, the very idea that they are capable of choosing sensible actions for themselves.