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Catherine Stephens
New York, NY
Recent Activity
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Catherine signed the petition | -
Catherine commented on the article |hey Amanda,
You’re confusing prostitution (consenting adults having sex for money) and trafficking again.
Since trafficking takes place in a whole range of non-criminal and regulated industries (many of which you’ve blogged about), we cannot expect Taiwan’s recognition of sex workers’ rights to be a “silver bullet” against either trafficking into the sex industry (which is different from prostitution: “consenting adults having sex for money”) or against commercialised child abuse (which is different from prostitution: “consenting adults having sex for money” and also different from trafficking: “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purposes of exploitation.”)
You’re also using the term “buying women” to describe the transaction sex workers engage in: again, this is a fundamental misunderstanding - buying something means you own it, that you _keep it_. The _temporary_ nature of the transaction in sex work is a major part of its attraction for our clients.
Selling sexual services is an exchange of agreed services, usually over an agreed period of time, for money. Often sex workers, including myself, feel that use of the term “buying women” sees us as nothing more than our vaginas (if we have them, many sex workers don’t). To speak of women being “bought”, describes selling sex as a unilateral and irreversible surrendering of self: heterosexual sex is conceptualised as something that men do to women. In reality, male clients do not “buy” women: they receive specific services for a fee, sometimes within as brief a timescale as ten minutes.
Remember, policies that solve problems are based in reality, not on ideology, assumption and stereotypes. -
Catherine commented on the article |"There's too much relativism for me in the pro-sex workers rights literature."
Can you say what you mean by relativism? -
Catherine commented on the article |
"And what about the right not to be a sex worker in the first place if that's what you want?"
Freedom to choose whether or not to engage in sex is fundamental: it's one of the most basic human rights. Everyone - not just people in the sex industry - should have freedom to choose and respect for those choices, including the absolute right to say no. -
Catherine commented on the article |
"Almost all people who pay for sex are men."
Absolutely true. But there are female clients - I have several, as do some of my male and female colleagues. Generally (though not always) women are more demanding than men ;-) -
Catherine commented on the article |
Much work on this issue is based implicitly or explicitly in the (completely subjective) belief that all prostitution is violence against women. The existence of men who sell sex to men (and women who buy sex from men and women) is generally ignored by these campaigners, as it is contradictory of their ideological viewpoint.
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Catherine commented on the article |
“I haven't seen anything on sex workers reporting trafficking, but it would be nice if it happened.”
In the US, as being convicted of prostitution results in a mandatory prison sentence of minimum 3 months. This acts as a considerable disincentive to report.
In the UK, there have been cases where brothel owners have alerted police to suspicions of trafficking: cases where those suspicions have been proven correct, where victims have been rescued, traffickers arrested – and the police have then returned to the source of their information, to arrest, prosecute, imprison and confiscate their assets. This acts as a considerable disincentive to report.
“When I go to the library, I find books on trafficking, and books on sex workers' rights, but I've never seen books on sex workers' rights that also address trafficking”
There aren’t many books on sex workers’ rights, period. But, off the top of my head, one that addresses issues on migration is Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry by Laura Agustín, who brings together a wide range of evidence based research in that book and on her blog
http://www.nodo50.org/Laura_Agustin/
The NSWP mobility section has resources on this
http://www.nswp.org/
as does
http://sexworkeurope.org/
particularly the manifesto and declaration. -
Catherine commented on the article |
“This is how prostitutes can respond if they choose to believe they DON'T have any personal power (as victims)- I need society to view my profession differently. I need the full protection of the law. Where are my human rights and the policies that will allow me to function?”
“This is how prostitutes can respond if they choose to believe they DO have personal power (the ONLY ones with the power directly related to THIS cause) - To End Human Trafficking, I choose to collaborate in a worldwide effort among my peers (consensual prostitutes) to "down tools" from this date to that date, so that the law can function at optimum within that period to crack down on trafficked prostitutes.”
“The only way I see they could help drive traffickers out is to stop offering services and allow the law to work effectively in that vacuum.”
OK, Ishe, do I have this right – the _only_ way that women who sell sex can show they have power is
- not to campaign for the same human rights and protection of the law as _everyone_ else_,
- not to undertake the range of actions that sites like change.org promote – letter writing, lobbying, media outreach, awareness raising – like _everyone_ else_,
- not present solutions which include us, in the way that is now customary for black people, women, people with disabilities, LGBT, and other discriminated and marginalised groups to be included
- not advocate responsible consumerism, presented as the solution to almost _every other industry_ in which trafficked labour is used, e.g., fairtrade (and there’s huge evidence that this works - in Turkey, in the first six months of operation, a well-publicised hotline for reporting fears about trafficking (in any field: hotel and catering, domestic service, agriculture, etc.) received three quarters of its tip offs from sex workers’ clients; in Italy clients play an integral part in the reporting process and in a recent court case here one of the women was able to give evidence, leading to successful conviction of a trafficking gang was a result of a client paying £20,000 of her debt and freeing her from slavery; there’ve been several examples of this sort of behaviour from clients)
- not draw attention to the fact that if we were not arrested for coming forward, we ourselves, the most likely to see evidence of trafficking in the sex industry, would more be able to report anxieties about trafficking
no, the _only way_ that women who sell sex can show they have power is to put our knickers back on and walk away, because that way law enforcement don’t have to try to tell the difference between different women selling sex (for example, listening to what we say) but can relax knowing that everyone in the sex industry is a victim of trafficking?
_That’s_ your solution? -
Catherine commented on the article |
"And a man who abuses prostitutes (of any class) isn't doing that because he has an inordinate respect for their intelligence. He's doing it because they are an object of scorn."
Yes! Absolutely, the attitudes of wider society enable and permit violence against sex workers: “Sometimes individual rights get squelched for the common good.”
Hilary Kinnell’s study of violence against sex workers revealed “Evidence shows that the majority of robbery, abuse, harassment and physical or sexual violence experienced by sex workers in the course of their work comes from those who do not pay for sex. Many of these assailants make no pretence of being clients, but express hatred of sex workers and appear to feel their actions are legitimated by the social attitudes of abhorrence for commercial sex.”
and
“A substantial amount of violence to street sex workers comes from members of the ‘general public’, such as gangs of youths, aggrieved local residents and vigilantes. Attacks include shouted abuse, projectiles (e.g. cups of urine) thrown from cars, and assaults requiring hospital treatment.”
In the nearly ten years I’ve been working in the sex industry, I’ve met _no-one_ who felt they had the full protection of the law, who was confident of police respect if they needed to call them, or thought they’d receive the same fair hearing in a court of law as someone in any other occupation. And this is in the UK, where women who sell sex are _not_ breaking the law (though two women working in the same flat at the same time are automatically criminalised as the premises can be defined as a brothel and premises are more likely to be raided. Almost every way of working with or for a third party is criminalised as “controlling for gain”.) In the US, its far, far worse – any woman calling the police to report violence against her is liable to a mandatory three months in gaol.
It is vulnerability which creates victims, not sex work itself, and the law creates and _enforces_ our vulnerability.
“Squelching” the human rights of one group does nothing to increase access to human rights of others. I quote the UN Declaration of Human Rights, article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Continuing to confuse consensual adult prostitution with trafficking or slavery enables trafficking and slavery to flourish. -
Catherine commented on the article |
"Catherine, minors are not allowed to consent to having sex with adults, even though they know themselves best, because of the power imbalance inherent in such a situation (and sometimes for other reasons, like sentimentality). Some people believe that the power imbalance between the purchaser of sex and the prostitute is similar to the power imbalance between an adult and a minor (not all of whom are harmed by sex with adults)."
So ... adult women who sell sex have the decision making ability of children?
or
Adult women who sell sex who say they're OK with it should be treated like children?
or
Adult women who sell sex who say they're _not_ OK with it should be treated like children?
or
Adult women who sell sex are equivalent to children because of the _reasons_ they have sex?
In your opinion.
And, in your opinion, treating we adult women who have sex for money like children (because - in your opinion - there is an inherent power imbalance in having sex for money that is irrevocably and absolutely balanced on the part of the purchaser, not the provider), so, treating us like children makes us more powerful how?
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