Men Against Porn / Prostitution / Patriarchy - General Council Discussion Thread

“Pornography is propaganda for prostitution”

“It is known that a good part of the women who are recruited for prostitution are minors”, says sociologist Richard Poulin.

SOURCES El Mundo MADRID 16 JANUARY 2017 18:23 h GMT+1


Richard Poulin, in a moment of his interview with newspaper El Mundo. / El Mundo

Pornography is a way of advertising prostitution. This is what Canadian sociologist and anthropologist Richard Poulin denounces. In an interview with Spanish newspaper El Mundo, the expert in human trafficking and sexual slavery explained his position in favour of abolition. He believes “the prostitution industry has been made for the enjoyment of men. It does not matter if it involves children, girls, young people of both sexes, adult women…”.

Question. Surveys show that more and more people ask for a regularisation of prostitution, as if prostitution was just one more way of working. What do you think?
Answer. I think it is a monstrosity. But let me tell you that while calls for prostitution's regulation are very strong in Europe, they are relatively weak in North America. It is necessary to distinguish between those who are in favor of not regulating prostitution at all and those who believe that prostitution is a job like any other, so that it just have to be regulated by the labor laws. According to the latter's reasoning, brothels are workplaces, work environments such as those of any company. And prostitution carried out outside these regulated places would be illegal. Not fighting against prostitution or regulating it as just another normal job, would be a very serious issue. It would greatly raise the number of women and girls engaged in paid sex and sexual tourism. Specially now, when more and more prostitutes are needed, because more and more men pay to have sex. It is something we are seeing in Germany, the Netherlands, Thailand, Spain...

Q. Is the number of men paying for sex increasing in Spain?
A. Yes. In fact, Spain is the country with the greatest demand for women prostitution throughout Europe.

Q. How do you explain that in a society where sexual freedom has long existed, prostitution is still so attractive?
A. In the late 1970s, American feminists already questioned whether such enormous sexual freedom did not also imply sexual submission, because for sexual liberation to be truly a liberation it is necessary that the oppression against women disappears. But it has not disappeared. In fact, prostitution is a form of oppression against women. This oppression still exists, even though there is more sexual freedom.

Q. What would you say to those who claim that there are women who exercise prostitution freely?
A. There are many levels of response. At a sociological level, I would say that it is known that a good part of the women who are recruited for prostitution are minors. And it is also known that many of them are girls who have fled their home because they have suffered sexual assault. When they escape and are away from their relatives, they are recruited for prostitution. That is also why it is easier for them to become prostitutes, because in order to survive sexual assaults, they have already developed the capacity to dissociate themselves from their bodies. According to some studies, between 75% and 83% of prostitutes were previously victims of sexual violence.

Q. Is prostitution a continuation of sexual violence?
A. Yes. It's complicated, but I'll try to explain it with an example. When I started doing surveys and research on the sex industry, I interviewed several strippers in Canada, women who dance naked in front of men who are not allowed to touch them. When I talked to them, these girls said they were delighted to dance naked before those men who could not touch them, they considered it as a kind of revenge for the sexual aggressions they had suffered before. They felt they were the ones who could exploit them. But after spending a few months in the sex industry, dancing naked, these women changed their mind and said that a bum is an bum, emphasizing that men do no see women at the strip club, but bums. And the same thing happens in prostitution. At first, there are women who believe that they have power over men, but then they realize that it is men who have power over them. For me, as a sociologist, it is more interesting now to interview women who have survived prostitution than women who practice it. Because those who are active in the sex industry try to justify their activity, as you surely do as a journalist when someone attacks the media.

Q. What is the responsibility of men who pay for sex?
A. Their responsibility is absolute. If men did not pay for prostitution, prostitution would end, it is as simple as that. Because the prostitution industry has been made for the enjoyment of men. It does not matter if it involves children, girls, young people of both sexes, adult women, it is an industry directed to the pleasure of man.

Q. If that is true, why do many men not think about this?
A. No, they obviously do not. As many people do not make reflections when buying a shirt or shoes made by children of the third world. Men do not want to hear or see what's behind prostitution. They do not want to know that by the age of 16, one in three women has been sexually assaulted, which means that violence against women is huge. In Canada, the feminist movement is very strong and violence against women is a big problem. There are such huge numbers of sexual violence because there are so many men who commit sexual violence against women. It may rise to one of every three men. All this shows that the social relations between men and women are complicated, and it explains, in part, why men find it normal to pay for sex. Many men still think that women should be submissive and those who are not, deserve to be beaten.

Q. Listening to you it is clear that you are against prostitution. But the “million dollar question” is, how can we finish with it?
A. No, it is not the “million dollar question”. It would actually be quite easy to end prostitution if the Swedish model were implemented. That model, which has been applied in Sweden since 1999, penalizes the pimp and the clients of prostitution, but not the prostitutes. It also offers alternatives to women who want to get out of prostitution, many of whom do not have studies because they were taken when they were 14 or 15. Addionally, the Swedish model has educational programs in schools, which aim to prevent girls from being recruited for prostitution in the future, and boys from becoming clients of prostitutes. Thanks to all this, the number of women prostituted in Sweden has fallen drastically, as well as men who pay for sex. There, for example, there are no longer trafficked women, because prostitution is not profitable.

Q. However, what surveys show in Spain and oher countries more and more young people consider paid sex as something normal, as a way to have fun, a leisure activity...
A. Prostitution is trivialized and the sex industry and pornography have trivialized it even more. We could define pornography as propaganda for prostitution, and there are more and more young people who consume pornography at younger ages. In Canada, for example, the age of rapists has dropped.

Q. You also relate capitalism and prostitution. However, prostitution has always existed, long before capitalism arose...
A. Yes, but what neoliberalism has done is to promote that idea that we said earlier, the idea of the regularization of prostitution. Neoliberalism believes that everyone is responsible for their own decisions and according to this premise, prostituted women are responsible for prostitution. In the past, prostitution was regulated because of hygiene and public health reasons, to avoid the spread of venereal diseases. Today, many want to regulate it, because it is considered that the one who exercises it, does so freely. It is a huge difference.

 

Oh boy I hope this is formatted ok, sometimes I use the internet for so long my brain gets a bit scrambled lol and I make bad grammar errors that simply do not reflect how I would speak offline. Like grammar errors that make it look like English might not be a first language HAHA!

Another great article by Mick Parkin in the Labor and Greens Nordic Decriminalization.

Spoiler

The paid-sex lobby often say that criminalising the men who use women in prostitution would just “drive the women underground”, and so make them less safe. (*)
That sounds like common sense, but in fact it’s completely wrong, because it is based on a false analogy.

For example, it would be perfectly right to say that making tattoo parlours illegal would just drive them underground – but tattoo parlours are very different from brothels.
And the simple difference is that with tattoos the customers have got everything to GAIN from using a legitimate parlour rather than the underground – e.g. they avoid getting blood poisoning. However, with prostitution, the “customers” (i.e. the punters) have got everything to LOSE from using a legitimate brothel. They would have to use a condom; only do things which had been agreed in advance; and generally be under a lot more surveillance than if they were doing their business down a back-alley (**)

So, legitimate tattoo parlours could draw 99% of customers away from the underground and close it down. With prostitution, only the less dangerous men would move to legitimate brothels. Those who wanted “underground” sex would simply ignore the legitimate brothels and carry on abusing prostitutes in the same way as before, given that there will always be an endless supply of women desperate enough to go into the underground.

So, the legitimate brothels would not REPLACE the underground, they would just exist in PARALLEL with it.

In fact, this parallel / legitimate sector would generally make things worse.

For one thing, it would normalise prostitution, and thus draw more women into that kind of “work”. As a result it would create a massive pool of women who could be easily groomed to accept a move into the underground, when they were no longer “fresh meat” in the eyes of the legitimate sector.

So, as with most of what the pro-paid-sex lobby says, it can seem like common sense if you are willing to just think in slogans.
However, when you look at the full context and see through the false analogies, it becomes obvious that their agenda is a form of free-market fundamentalists which would only be bad for the “workers” and society in general.

(*) – There have been several attempts to create these “safe spaces”, but they have always turned out to be very far from safe. However, for the sake of this argument I am assuming that it would be possible to create spaces which were slightly safer – by, say, having a bouncer on the premises.
(**) – True there will be some men who prefer the clean sheets and sense of normality which comes with a legitimate brothel… but those are not the most dangerous kind of men.


THE PIMP-DECRIMINALISERS WANT THE PROSTITUTION INDUSTRY TO BE TOTALLY NORMALISED.
HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF WHAT THAT WOULD ACTUALLY INVOLVE

Any sane person wants the women in prostitution to be decriminalised. What makes the Pimp-Decriminalisers, such as the so-called English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), unique is that they also want to decriminalise the pimps and punters.

Their supposed justification for this is based on the idea that only by making prostitution a Totally Normal activity can we bring it out of the shadows and thus keep the women safe.
We have already shown that prostitution can never be safe, and that it will always have an underground, even under pimp-decriminalisation (i)

This article is about something else – it's about what would happen if they ever did get their wish and prostitution became totally normalised.
What follows is a list of things which have ALREADY happened.
However, given that all the regimes we consider are still very far from being Totally Normalised, these examples only represent the tip of the iceberg.

IF YOU HAVE ANY OTHER EXAMPLES OF WHAT “NORMALSATION” REALLY MEANS, PLEASE ADD THEM FELLOW NOFAP USERS!

(1) – A RIDE FOR A RIDE – (Daily Telegraph – 18.12.2015)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…/Driving-instructors-may-offer-…
“The government in the Netherlands has clarified that it is legal for driving instructors to offer lessons in return for sex.”
In other words, if you are a woman (and this is mainly going to be used on women) you simply have to accept that, as part of your normal life, any man you have got a purely professional relationship with can ask you if you want to sell yourself to him.
True, you can say “no”, but you will not be able to complain that the very question insults your humanity... because “sex-work” is just another normal way to pay your bills.
(Perhaps this is one reason why, as the same article mentions, The Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Lodewijk Asscher, has called the legalisation of prostitution “a national mistake”.)
- - -
(2) – TRAFFICKING BECOMES “JOB CREATION” - (Banishea – Germany – 19.08.16)
https://banishea.wordpress.com/…/08/19/its-an-accident-stu…/
In Germany it is already legal to advertise jobs as a “sex-worker” in foreign countries, as long as the contract is “not exploitative”, with one definition of exploitative being for no more than 50% of the woman's takings to go to her pimp.
Taking her passport is also perfectly acceptable as it is now known as “processing her paperwork”.
- - -
(3) – GERMANY – May 9th, 2016 (Feminist Current)
http://www.feministcurrent.com/…/legalization-has-turned-g…/
POP-UP BROTHEL IN A GARAGE
In Germany men can go to parking garages for drive-in sex.
Obviously a pop-up brothel is much harder to regulate, even if the authorities had the will to do so.
Men can now even order women the way one would order a pizza thanks to a mobile app produced last year.
.
GANG BANGS
A company called Uschi Haller Fun & Films hosts and films gang bang parties with different themes
.
MOBILE ADVERTS
The Pimp-Decrimers ultimately want there to be no restrictions on where brothels are located, which is “logical” given that they believe it is a job like any other.
But even in the present regime, in Germany, with restricted areas where advertising is forbidden, the pimps can just use adverts which are driven through the city on trucks or vans> Equally, trolleys are parked until enough residents complain, then they are moved to another street.
.
TV = LIFESTYLE PROMOTION
A channel called RTL II airs reality shows that promote a positive view of prostitution, showing prostituted women talking about how much they love what they do and how exciting everything is.
.
BARELY LEGAL PAEDO BROTHELS
In 2010, RTL II aired a program about a brothel called Teenyland in Cologne which caters to pedo-sexual fantasies. Women that look and dress like minors are available in rooms called “The Princess Room” or “The Classroom.”
.
HELL'S ANGELS
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…/german-mega-brothel-linked-to…/
Hells Angels bikers allegedly procured women for the club in return for favours including free admission, said state prosecutor Sjors Kampstra.
- - -
(4) - SCHOOLS
http://www.svz.de/…/lack-und-leder-auf-dem-lehrplan-id68885…
In one German text, there is a project in which students “modernize a brothel.” and discuss what “services” it should offer.
- - -
(5) WOMEN ON PERSCRIPTION
https://www.indy100.com/…/german-green-party-disabled-claim…
- - -
ALSO – MEGA BROTHEL – CHANNEL 4
- - -
(i) – NORMALISATION DOES NOT GET RID OF THE UNDERGOUND

 

I don't want to hear one word about 3rd wave feminism in this thread. I'm calling illogical bullshit on it right now. End of fucking discussion on that.

Spoiler

Male Porn Stars are Feminist? Their Product Paints a Different Picture

 

SOURCE: fightthenewdrug.org/too-many-people-focus-on

Damn if I still drank coffee it would be organic and fair trade for sure.

 

Care to elaborate? Tbh I'm not for or against it nor do I even have any opinion of the term whatsoever to be downright honest lol and I won't respond to whatever you share, I just think it's fair that you explain in more than a sentence why patriarchy doesn't exist.

But no one is making you play fair lol. Just asking nicely really

Or perhaps the answer lies in this article.

Either way, thanks for the 2 cents Good to hear your views! http://isj.org.uk/theories-of-patriarchy/

 

Well it's not really my message. Although I certainly am a messenger. Your words are duly noted but the thread will remain as is.

 

Speaking for one who believes in partriarchy, that's quite exactly what the majority of the porn industry is founded upon.

 

Well, patriarchy is now our main focus. Enjoy.

 

I suppose the problem with most forums is conflicting views. Well it's not necessarily a problem. I mean it is, but it's more like an extension of a much deeper mechanic of how individual's perceptions operate in the world at large.

I like threads to be constructive, not destructive. It's kind of worthless to have someone come into a thread and try to argue or tell you it shouldn't be a certain way, imo. I wouldn't start a thread if I knew that was gonna happen but in our world this happens anywhere and everywhere.

 

I will agree with the sentiment that patriarchy doesn't really exist in society at large, in terms of the First World at least.



Fuckin' storm comin'.





I got no time for critics and haters man. Absolutely no fucking time for bullshit commentary.

 

Your 2 cents is noted but not appreciated. Thanks for nothin other than a worthless opinion.

 

Fuck man I'm ready for war but I don't like it.

Be back tomorrow.

 

Music to help keep the vibes PROPER in this thread:

 

Fucking going to come into this thread after I already tried to explain that if you had opposing views on these topics TO GO START A THREAD ELSEWHERE LOL YOU'RE GONNA COME IN HERE AND TALK ABOUT PATRIARCHY NOT EXISTING? WHILE I COULD CARE LESS ABOUT THIS EMOTIONALLY I'VE SWORN TO TAKE A STAND FOR EXPLOITED HUMAN BEINGS AND I WILL NOT FUCKING BACK THE FUCK DOWN FROM MY MISSION HERE NOR WILL MY INTENTIONS BE ALTERED BY OPINIONS. START YOUR OWN DAMN THREAD IF YOU WANNA COUNTER ARGUE ANYTHING HERE SHOW SOME FUCKING RESPECT BEFORE YOU COME IN HERE TALKING AGAINST THE PURPOSE OF THIS THREAD.

 

Patriarchy and the Politics of Gender in Modernizing Societies: Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan

IF YOU HAVE NO RESPECT TO SHOW AND COME IN HERE LOOKING FOR A DEBATE I HOPE YOU'VE DONE YOUR HOMEWORK BUT WHY FUCKING WASTE BOTH OF OUR TIME?

CAN YOU NOT FIND IT IN YOUR HEART TO LIVE AND LET LIVE?



IF NOT AT LEAST GO START A NEW THREAD CALLED "THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS PATRIARCHY" OR SOME SHIT PLEASE THANK YOU.

I'm certainly not here to gain followers or be popular.

I'm not mad but I really hate getting sidetracked from the purpose of this thread. I love this community. Just because the mission of this thread takes a 'no holds barred, take no prisoners' stance on these topics doesn't mean I'm upset with anyone as an individual human being. I don't hold anything personally here.



Enjoy the soundtrack and other topics if nothing else. This can get tedious.

 

"Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight."

~ Joan Chittister


'My partner sent me this article & it is sooo insightful. She makes several good points about relationship dynamics under patriarchy. So true.':

(Some, certainly not all men) Men Dump Their Anger Into Women