Tell Sarah Benson what *YOU* think
She has written an article here and got her confederates to dare people to argue on Twitter:
http://crime.ie/20120608/a-message-f...y-prostitution
Here is my comment (in case she manages to get it deleted):
Hello Sarah, first let me bring up something that really bothers me:
"The vast majority of women, and indeed the small cohort of men who become involved in prostitution are without other meaningful options. They lack family and social support systems, access to money or education or alternative employment options. They may also be living with the trauma of previous abuse or the crippling problem of addiction. In this context, you are talking about a choice that is simply no choice."
So how, exactly, did you arrive at the conclusion that the best way to help those people is to campaign to eradicate the very last option that remains?
Because it seems to me that will leave them with no option on survival, and life at all...what's the idea?
Make the end quick and merciful perhaps?
Are you quite sure you have the right to make that decision with another person's life? Especially when you have absolutely no personal experience of what it is like to somehow manage to survive, on the edge, with no options.
Trust me, you have to be there...the fear is the worst part. Some nights you lie awake rigid with terror that something will happen tomorrow that will make your life that little bit harder and push it into the impossible zone. It's like living on death row...without having a clue when your execution will be...and you still have to walk through the same world as everybody else with their safe lives, and guaranteed tomorrows...
Thinking about it, I suppose I can see how you might get the idea that it would be best all round to push all those lives over the edge and GET IT OVER WITH.
But tell yourself whatever you like, you still do not have the right to make that decision on behalf of another adult human being.
Over the past 23 years I have talked to a lot of sex workers,and I do mean a lot, and I have never talked to a single one that had "eradicate my livelihood" at the top of their wish list, so how come Ruhama doesn't know that to? Or could it be that Ruhama does not care what sex workers really want or need?
Might that be contributing to another fact...that in 23 years I have never met a sex worker who wanted to engage with Ruhama at all, let alone place their life in your hands?
Of course there are other reasons too, for instance your opinions on how the sex industry works it is incompatible with their personal experience of is (as well as the personal experience of more than 100 Guards who raided 100 premises last week without finding one suspected victim of trafficking or coercion).
Where do you get your information anyway?
You refuse to listen to sex workers unless they say what you want them to say. If they don't you just ignore them and if that doesn't work you gag them as best you can.
You certainly do not listen to clients.
However well you mean, it is always extremely unhealthy for any person to be insistently informed that their own first hand experience was not what actually happened, especially by a third party working on guesswork. The more insistent they are, the worse the cognitive dissonance. Even people who would not know the words for something like that (though many sexworkers would), can still sense, instinctively, that it is bad for them, and stay away...and they have stayed away...for 23 years.
The findings of your own organisation confirm that decriminalisation between '83 and '93 increased safety for sex workers and excluded trafficking and the exploitation of children. Why on earth are you contradicting that?
"Presentation to the Oireachtas Justice Committee
On 23rd May 2006
By Kathleen Fahy, Director of Ruhama
“There have been huge changes within the sex industry since 1989. For a number of years the majority of women we worked with were in street prostitution, with most of them operating for themselves, with no involvement of serious criminal gangs. While brothels were in existence their prevalence was much less than today. Encounters with non national women were extremely rare.”
“Information technology and newer forms of communication, (mobile phones/ internet advertising escort agencies etc) are replacing streetwalking as a way of making contact with clients. This makes it easier for pimps and procurers to operate, and renders an already secretive trade even more invisible”"
When somebody sells sex "because they have to, not because they want to" their survival can depend on the market for sexual services. Taking that market away can easily amount to taking their lives away.
Trust me, when a person does not choose to sell sex, you do not have to coerce them into destitution by taking their market away...because they will stop selling sex the minute they have a real alternative.
I was a streetworker until 1993 and I wanted out so badly my heart was breaking, but nothing Ruhama offered was a real viable alternative for me at any time in those 4 years.
I gave you a chance to show me the organisation had changed this year but if it has changed at all it is only to become more irrelevant and self serving, and less sincere than I ever. That is what you have chosen to show me in the past 6 months, and that seems to be all you have to offer any sex worker in Ireland today.
The hard truth is that the vast majority of sex workers in Irelad wish Ruhama and Turn Off the Red Light" would leave them alone and go and save whales before they cause any more harm.
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Originally Posted by samlad
