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18 comments

1 freetoken  Sat, May 4, 2013 12:48:08am

I’m always wary of researchers with such an clear and hard agenda.

2 stabby  Sat, May 4, 2013 2:26:55am

“Studies” and “statistics” about prostitution are often rather extreme lies from beginning to end, made up by wingnut groups.

3 stabby  Sat, May 4, 2013 2:28:07am

For instance “a majority of women are lured, tricked or trafficked into prostitution” would be bullshit in the US.

4 Decatur Deb  Sat, May 4, 2013 3:30:48am

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5 Bert's House of Beef and Obdicuts  Sat, May 4, 2013 4:23:25am

re: #1 freetoken

I’m always wary of researchers with such an clear and hard agenda.

It’s fine to be wary, but that should just lead to a closer scrutiny of method and conclusion, not outright dismissal.

6 Charleston Chew  Sat, May 4, 2013 4:53:58am

This is political propaganda disguised as science.

“Prostitution Research & Education” is an anti-prostitution 501(c) 3. While I support their right to advocate against prostituion, I find the age-old practice of disguising political propaganda as “objective science” disgustingly sleazy. In that way, they’re really no different than the advocates of “intelligent design” or the temperance movement of 100 years ago.

7 Bert's House of Beef and Obdicuts  Sat, May 4, 2013 5:02:17am

re: #6 Charleston Chew

Did you read the paper?

Science is science, even if done by someone with an agenda. The paper explains the methods, the math, and the conclusions. If it is just sleazy propaganda, you should be able to pick it apart quickly.

8 aagcobb  Sat, May 4, 2013 5:31:13am

We ought to have an economy that gives young women opportunities to work gainfully or obtain an education and more robust social services so that they don’t feel like their best option is prostitution. We should also have well-advertised social services to help women get out of abusive situations or into drub rehab that are well financed enough to provide shelter to every woman who wants it. But the history of prohibition and the drug war makes me very leery of aggressive law enforcement efforts to stamp out vice.

9 Cap'n Magic  Sat, May 4, 2013 6:28:13am

re: #7 Bert’s House of Beef and Obdicuts

And it’s quite easily done-the lack of any references to the legal Nevada brotherls didn’t take a lot of time to ferret out.

10 Bert's House of Beef and Obdicuts  Sat, May 4, 2013 7:39:15am

re: #9 Cap’n Magic

Why is a lack of reference to the legal brothels relevant? They don’t make up a high percentage of the sex bought in the US. If your criticism is that this paper is of buyers under the conditions that sex is illegal? If so, I think it can easily be granted that this paper is about prostitution when it is illegal.

What you can criticize the group for is using this paper to advocate against the legality of prostitution, since the type of men who ‘buy sex’ might be different in an area with legal prostitution, and a lot of the arguments about the harm of prostitution would be less relevant.

Saying ‘they didn’t look at legal brothels’ doens’t mean the study is useless, it just means it doesn’t apply to areas with legal prostiutution. Maybe things are different there, maybe not.

11 Charleston Chew  Sat, May 4, 2013 11:09:07am

re: #10 Bert’s House of Beef and Obdicuts

I think it can easily be granted that this paper is about prostitution when it is illegal.

That’s not what it claims to be.

12 ThomasLite  Sat, May 4, 2013 1:16:09pm
6-Sex buyers were more than 7x’s more likely than non-sex buyers to acknowledge that they would rape a woman if they could get away with it and if no one knew about it.

While my gut says that, yes, the likelyhood would indeed actually be higher, this statistic is quite meaningless. *Of course* the guy who already admits to paying for sex is going to be more likely to admit other, more damning things about himself.
It might actually be a 6x discrepancy - or a 1.1x, or they might actually even be less likely. Who will tell? Sorry, but this paragraph is pointless.

Also nowadays, “5-74% of the sex buyers reported that they learned about sex from pornography.”? Really? And that is different from the general population by more than the margin of error? I’d be surprised.
I will, again, agree they’ll *admit* to it much more readily.

No.7 is interesting, actually:

Sex buyers are far more likely than non-sex buyers to commit felonies, misdemeanors, crimes related to violence against women, substance abuse-related crimes, assaults, crimes with weapons, and crimes against authority.

Isn’t this a bit of a chicken/egg thing? Those without stable relations are going to be more likely to pay for sex (I believe this is established fact here in NL, however with that being quite legal here might make a difference? I’d say not, but I’m willing to be surprised!). Delinquents are far more likely to lack stable relationships (or those who lack stable relationships are far more likely to descend into delinquency, whatever way you like. works both ways, anyway). If they’d taken the time to compare sex buyers and non-sex buyers with somewhat stable lives, It might actually make for meaningful statistics.
1 and 2 are purely factual, not sure if they’re even supposed to be specifically negative. Suppose “10 things you don’t know about…” sounds better than “eight things you… etc”.
3 and 4: Funny thing, research around these parts shows that those figures actually go way down after legalization (though certainly not anywhere near far enough - yet).

Haven’t got the time to delve more deeply into the complete article, and while I completely agree with Bert/Obdicut that the agenda alone should not lead to discounting the article completely, I can’t say I’m impressed by the presentation at the very least. Cleaverly phrased would be the charitable way to put it, I suppose.

13 Bert's House of Beef and Obdicuts  Sat, May 4, 2013 2:42:58pm

re: #11 Charleston Chew

That’s not what it claims to be.

It claims to be a survey of men who buy sex vs men who don’t. That they don’t include the very small minority of legal sex-buyers doesn’t really seem like a big problem.

The presetnation is, as Thomas says, poor, and some of the statistics are absolutely meaningless. It also is not exactly news that, in the current situation, prostitutes are victimized and their clients are often men who like victimizing women. But there are people who have a rather, ah, rosy view of prostitution and those who use it, too.

14 ThomasLite  Sat, May 4, 2013 2:52:51pm

re: #11 Charleston Chew

Fair ‘nuff, it is a prop piece from an anti-prostitution group; they’re hardly going to acknowledge the idea it could actually be legalized. Is that fair? Well, I’d say it paints an incomplete picture; that certainly diminishes the significance of any conclusions drawn from the data at the very least. Obdicut is right it isn’t claiming to be something it isn’t per se; you have a more than decent point in that it’s not as complete a picture as the author(s) might want you to think.
They’re not explicitly claiming it is either, though.

15 FemNaziBitch  Sat, May 4, 2013 6:53:00pm

I thought it was most interesting that the authors stated there wasn’t much information to work with regarding the sex-buyers. I thought it was clear they were doing the best with what they had.

And, obviously, I thought their conclusions were interesting.

16 FemNaziBitch  Sat, May 4, 2013 6:54:54pm

re: #8 aagcobb

We ought to have an economy that gives young women opportunities to work gainfully or obtain an education and more robust social services so that they don’t feel like their best option is prostitution. We should also have well-advertised social services to help women get out of abusive situations or into drub rehab that are well financed enough to provide shelter to every woman who wants it. But the history of prohibition and the drug war makes me very leery of aggressive law enforcement efforts to stamp out vice.

I do think legal prostitution would reduce sex trafficking and exploitation.

17 klys  Sun, May 5, 2013 6:02:04pm

re: #16 FemNaziBitch

I do think legal prostitution would reduce sex trafficking and exploitation.

I always wrestle with the agency of choice in this discussion and end up coming down on the side of I want people to be free to make decisions about what to do with their bodies within reasonable limits (e.g., no organ sales). There are some people who would be comfortable selling sex. I think a legal framework for that should exist and would do much to reduce trafficking and exploitation.

That being said, I acknowledge that prostitution as it tends to be practiced in the US now is not a good thing, and I wish law enforcement would concentrate more on the johns and pimps than the women themselves.

18 FemNaziBitch  Mon, May 6, 2013 10:14:21am

re: #17 klys

I always wrestle with the agency of choice in this discussion and end up coming down on the side of I want people to be free to make decisions about what to do with their bodies within reasonable limits (e.g., no organ sales). There are some people who would be comfortable selling sex. I think a legal framework for that should exist and would do much to reduce trafficking and exploitation.

That being said, I acknowledge that prostitution as it tends to be practiced in the US now is not a good thing, and I wish law enforcement would concentrate more on the johns and pimps than the women themselves.

Yeah, I’m going to do more research on it. sometime … .


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