End Demand... sounds familar
GUEST VOICE: Mistress Matisse on the “End Demand” Campaign
Quote:
“End Demand” is a slogan coined by groups who advocate for the total abolition of all sex work. They want to do this by greatly increasing the number of people arrested on individual prostitution charges, and by intensifying the criminal penalties for either offering or agreeing to trade sex for money, even if both parties are consenting adults. If you think the End Demand strategy sounds a lot like the failed War on Drugs, you’re correct. It is also ruinously expensive, based on moral propaganda rather than fact, and it also destroys people’s lives for no purpose.
No one wants human trafficking, or for minors to be forced into prostitution. Yet conflating consensual adult sexual behavior with these real, terrible crimes only muddies the problem. Rape is wrong, and it is an extremely serious problem in our society, but too often women who file complaints and seek justice for rape are ignored or silenced. While their rape kits sit untested, End Demand-ers want to direct limited public resources finding and incarcerating people who did consent to sex, because they consented for the wrong reason?
The basic assumptions of End Demand are simply wrong. Most sex workers began sex work as an adult, and because of economic necessity, but not by force or coercion. Sex worker rights advocates do not say that sex work is a perfect job that’s always fair and positive. But you know what else isn’t a perfect job? Working at a fast-food restaurant. Driving for Uber. Cleaning toilets. Standing outside Home Depot, hoping a builder picks you up. Sex work is about labor, not about sex, and any labor system has the potential to be exploitive. But as income inequality rises, and criminal justice systems remain heavily tilted against the poor, arresting someone because they’re trying to pay their bills is both misguided and cruel.
Full article:
http://seattlish.com/post/1006783838...the-end-demand
And here's how the Canadian version of the Swedish Model is working out. Not.
Why Canadian Sex Workers Won't Report Rapes to the Police
Quote:
Earlier this month, there was a media outcry in Canada about reported gang rapes of sex workers in Newfoundland—but police have yet to begin an investigation. In fact, the warning about the 20 or so rapists came not from the police, but from an outreach organization. And not a single sex worker was quoted in the initial articles about the gang rapes.
The reason the cops haven't looked into the matter is the same reason the media couldn't get statements from sex workers in the province: They're afraid to talk and risk being stigmatized in a tight-knit community. They’re backed up against a wall by a leering three-headed beast: criminal charges, violence, and public scrutiny.
In many ways, it’s not a new story. In a country in which government is cooking up laws that will clearly hurt sex workers, of course they don’t want to speak up and report their rapes. New Canadian legislation called Bill C-36, which could become law in a matter of weeks, would further aggravate the problem by introducing harsher penalties for prostitution, driving more sex workers underground. The law is, in many ways, a big step in the wrong direction.
http://www.vice.com/read/two-weeks-a...-heres-why-932
The best that we can hope for is that Clause 6 in Northern Ireland is such a failure and waste of money that the DoJ down here are persuaded not to copy it. Lots of folks will suffer in the meantime.