The John Next Door: Some more demonizing by the abolitionist fanatics

[Miss*Bijou]

New article, in line with the current "End Demand", "Criminalize the men/clients/buyers" and push for the adoption of the Swedish model. It's a bit long but IMO worth it. And take a peek at the comments...LOTS going on!

The John Next Door

The men who buy sex are your neighbors and colleagues. A new study reveals how the burgeoning demand for porn and prostitutes is warping personal relationships and endangering women and girls.


Men of all ages, races, religions, and backgrounds do it. Rich men do it, and poor men do it, in forms so varied and ubiquitous that they can be summoned at a moment’s notice.

And yet surprisingly little is known about the age-old practice of buying sex, long assumed to be inevitable. No one even knows what proportion of the male population does it; estimates range from 16 percent to 80 percent. “Ninety-nine percent of the research in this field has been done on prostitutes, and 1 percent has been done on johns,” says Melissa Farley, director of Prostitution Research and Education, a nonprofit organization that is a project of San Francisco Women’s Centers.

A clinical psychologist, Farley studies prostitution, trafficking, and sexual violence, but even she wasn’t sure how representative her results were. “The question has always remained: are all our findings true of just sex buyers, or are they true of men in general?” she says.

In a new study released exclusively to NEWSWEEK, “Comparing Sex Buyers With Men Who Don’t Buy Sex,” Farley provides some startling answers. Although the two groups share many attitudes about women and sex, they differ in significant ways illustrated by two quotes that serve as the report’s subtitle.

One man in the study explained why he likes to buy prostitutes: “You can have a good time with the servitude,” he said. A contrasting view was expressed by another man as the reason he doesn’t buy sex: “You’re supporting a system of degradation,” he said.

And yet buying sex is so pervasive that Farley’s team had a shockingly difficult time locating men who really don’t do it. The use of pornography, phone sex, lap dances, and other services has become so widespread that the researchers were forced to loosen their definition in order to assemble a 100-person control group.

“We had big, big trouble finding nonusers,” Farley says. “We finally had to settle on a definition of non-sex-buyers as men who have not been to a strip club more than two times in the past year, have not purchased a lap dance, have not used pornography more than one time in the last month, and have not purchased phone sex or the services of a sex worker, escort, erotic masseuse, or prostitute.”

Many experts believe the digital age has spawned an enormous increase in sexual exploitation; today anyone with access to the Internet can easily make a “date” through online postings, escort agencies, and other suppliers who cater to virtually any sexual predilection. The burgeoning demand has led to a dizzying proliferation of services so commonplace that many men don’t see erotic massages, strip clubs, or lap dances as forms of prostitution. “The more the commercial sex industry normalizes this behavior, the more of this behavior you get,” says Norma Ramos, executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW).

The ordinariness of sex buyers is suggested by their traditional designation as “johns,” the most generic of male names. “They’re the cops, the schoolteacher—the dignified, respected individuals. They’re everybody,” says a young woman who was trafficked into prostitution at the age of 10 and asked to be identified as T.O.M.

Equally typical were the men in Farley’s study, who lived in the Boston area and ranged from 20 to 75, with an average age of 41. Most were married or partnered, like the majority of men who patronize prostitutes.

Overall, the attitudes and habits of sex buyers reveal them as men who dehumanize and commodify women, view them with anger and contempt, lack empathy for their suffering, and relish their own ability to inflict pain and degradation.

Farley found that sex buyers were more likely to view sex as divorced from personal relationships than nonbuyers, and they enjoyed the absence of emotional involvement with prostitutes, whom they saw as commodities. “Prostitution treats women as objects and not ... humans,” said one john interviewed for the study.

In their interviews, the sex buyers often voiced aggression toward women, and were nearly eight times as likely as nonbuyers to say they would rape a woman if they could get away with it. Asked why he bought sex, one man said he liked “to beat women up.” Sex buyers in the study committed more crimes of every kind than nonbuyers, and all the crimes associated with violence against women were committed by the johns.

Prostitution has always been risky for women; the average age of death is 34, and the American Journal of Epidemiology reported that prostitutes suffer a “workplace homicide rate” 51 times higher than that of the next most dangerous occupation, working in a liquor store.

Farley’s findings suggest that the use of prostitution and pornography may cause men to become more aggressive. Sex buyers in the study used significantly more pornography than nonbuyers, and three quarters of them said they received their sex education from pornography, compared with slightly more than half of the nonbuyers. “Over time, as a result of their prostitution and pornography use, sex buyers reported that their sexual preferences changed and they sought more sadomasochistic and anal sex,” the study reported.

“Prostitution can get you to think that things you may have done with a prostitute you should expect in a mutual loving relationship,” said one john who was interviewed. Such beliefs inspire anger toward other women if they don’t comply, impairing men’s ability to sustain relationships with nonprostitutes.

Sex buyers often prefer the license they have with prostitutes. “You’re the boss, the total boss,” said another john. “Even us normal guys want to say something and have it done no questions asked. No ‘I don’t feel like it.’ No ‘I’m tired.’ Unquestionable obedience. I mean that’s powerful. Power is like a drug.”

Many johns view their payment as giving them unfettered permission to degrade and assault women. “You get to treat a ho like a ho,” one john said. “You can find a ho for any type of need—slapping, choking, aggressive sex beyond what your girlfriend will do.”

Although sex buyers saw prostitution as consensual, other men acknowledged that more complex economic and emotional factors influence the “choice” to prostitute oneself. “You can see that life circumstances have kind of forced her into that,” said one nonbuyer in the study. “It’s like someone jumping from a burning building—you could say they made their choice to jump, but you could also say they had no choice.”

T.O.M.’s story is a case in point. Her father went to prison when she was 2 years old, and she was 4 the first time her body was exchanged for drugs by her mother, an addict. Growing up in foster-care families, she was abused in every one. When she was 10, a 31-year-old pimp promised he would take care of her. “He was my savior at first—I was stealing food to survive. He said, ‘I’ll be your mom, your dad, your boyfriend—but you have to do this thing for me.’ And then he sold me.”

For the next five years, until he went to jail, her pimp trafficked her all over the Western United States. “I looked very much like a child for the first three years, and that made it more profitable for him,” T.O.M. reports, still diminutive and fine-boned at 21. In Farley’s study, one thing that johns and men who don’t buy sex agreed on was the ease of access to such children: nearly 100 percent of men interviewed in the study said that minors were virtually always available for purchase in Boston.

Trafficked children often have histories similar to that of T.O.M. Research indicates that most prostitutes were sexually abused as girls, and they typically enter “the life” between the ages of 12 and 14. The majority have drug dependencies or mental illnesses, and one third have been threatened with death by pimps, who often use violence to keep them in line.

But the sex buyers in Farley’s study overlooked such coercion and showed little empathy for prostitutes’ experiences or their cumulative toll. Researchers and service providers consistently find high levels of posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, suicidal ideation, and other psychological problems among prostitutes. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s in a back alley or on silk sheets, legal or illegal—all kinds of prostitution cause extreme emotional stress for the women involved,” Farley says.

And yet johns prefer to view prostitutes as loving sex and enjoying their customers. “The sex buyers were way off in their estimates of the women’s feelings,” Farley reports. “In reality, the bottom line is that prostituted women are not enjoying sex, and the longer she’s in it, the less she enjoys sex acts—even in her real life, because she has to shut down in order to perform sex acts with 10 strangers a day, and she can’t turn it back on. What happens is called somatic dissociation; this also happens to incest survivors and people who are tortured.”

Farley is a leading proponent of the “abolitionist” view that prostitution is inherently harmful and should be eradicated, and her findings are likely to inflame an already contentious issue. “Modern-day prostitution is modern-day slavery,” says former ambassador Swanee Hunt, founding director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and cofounder of the Hunt Alternatives Fund, a sponsor of Farley’s study.

But other feminists defend pornography on First Amendment or “sex-positive” grounds, and support women’s freedom to “choose” prostitution. Tracy Quan, who became a prostitute as a 14-year-old runaway, says that many women do it for lack of better economic opportunities. “When I was 16, it’s not like there were great high-paying jobs out there for me,” says Quan, the author of Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl and a spokeswoman for a sex workers’ advocacy group.

“My view of the sex industry is that if we treat it as work and address some of its dangers, it would be less dangerous,” says Melissa Ditmore, an author and research consultant to the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center in New York.

And yet even Quan admits she had one customer who tied her up and scared her so badly she thought he was going to kill her. Noting that such men often escalate their violence over time, she starts to cry; there is a long silence as she struggles to regain control. “I always wondered if he went on to kill somebody else,” she says finally.

In response to such dangers, a growing antitrafficking movement is now targeting sexual exploitation both here and abroad. “Before this time, we heard from ‘happy hookers,’ we saw Pretty Woman, the whole country was being fed a pack of lies about prostitution, and sex trafficking was invisible,” says Dorchen Leidholdt, cofounder of CATW. “There is a growing recognition that this is pervasive, that it’s enslavement, and that we’ve got to do something about it.”

No one really knows how many women and children are trafficked for sex in the United States, often through the use of force, fraud, or coercion; the scope of the problem is hotly debated, but many believe it is growing. An array of organizations are now working to combat trafficking by building coalitions to reshape policies and change attitudes in the criminal-justice and social-welfare systems. “I think there has been an amazing evolution in thinking, and the movement is growing by the day,” says Norma Ramos of CATW.

Such efforts have led to the passage of tougher enforcement laws and the growing use of “john schools” that offer educational programs and counseling as an alternative to sentencing for first offenders. Their effectiveness is under debate, however; Farley’s study found that johns themselves viewed jail as a far more powerful deterrent to recidivism, and the strongest deterrent of all was the threat of being registered as a sex offender.

Estimates suggest that “for every john arrested for attempting to buy sex, there are up to 50 women in prostitution arrested,” Farley reports.

But the traditional double standard that punished women and forgave men is also being reevaluated. “It’s been accepted that this is something men will do, without any real thought about the victims,” says New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, whose department recently started an antitrafficking unit and increased its sting operations against johns. “It was considered a victimless crime. But it certainly isn’t; we realize that young women are being victimized.”

During her years in prostitution, T.O.M. reports that the police often violated her and always treated her “as a criminal, not a victim. This is the only form of child abuse where the child is put behind bars,” says T.O.M., who has escaped prostitution and is now working as a youth advocate in California.

Many law-enforcement officials say such longstanding practices are changing and credit the efforts of the antitrafficking movement. “I’ve seen a huge shift,” says Inspector Brian Bray, commander of the Narcotics and Special Investigations Division of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. “When I first started, I didn’t really understand how many of these girls have been trafficked. Now our mindset has changed from assuming the girls are criminals to trying to rescue the victims, provide them the services they need, and get information to lock up their traffickers. Most of our arrests used to be female prostitutes, but now we arrest more johns than we do prostitutes.”

Striking developments abroad are also influencing policies in the United States. In 1999 Sweden decided that prostitution was a form of violence against women and made it a crime to buy sex, although not to sell it. This approach dramatically reduced trafficking, whereas the legalization of prostitution in the Netherlands, Germany, and much of Australia led to an explosive growth in demand that generated an increase in trafficking and other crimes. Sweden’s success in dealing with the problem has persuaded other countries to follow suit. “The Swedish model passed in South Korea, Norway, and Iceland, and has been introduced in Israel and Mexico,” says Ramos.

Despite the struggle to control it, human trafficking is often described as the fastest-growing criminal enterprise in the world, and as second only to drug trafficking in its profitability. With billions of dollars at stake, the campaign against sexual exploitation has also provoked a predictable backlash. Last year Craigslist shut down its “adult” classified-ads section in response to the antitrafficking campaign led by Malika Saada Saar, founder of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights. The Craigslist crackdown increased revenue at Backpage.com, where The Village Voice runs its own adult ads.

Clearly worried about growing social pressure, the Voice attacked the antitrafficking campaign last month, charging that it has exaggerated the extent of the problem. The most common estimates, oft-repeated by major media, suggest that 100,000 to 300,000 children are trafficked in the United States every year. The Voice reported that this statistic identifies children at risk and claimed that the number of those who are actually trafficked is only a fraction of those figures. But the Voice’s calculations were promptly dismissed as unreliable; Seattle’s mayor and police chief pointed out that their city alone is estimated to have hundreds of minors exploited for commercial sex, and they accused Backpage.com of acting as an “accelerant” of underage sex trafficking.

The Voice also ridiculed Real Men Don’t Buy Girls, the antitrafficking video campaign launched earlier this year by Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher with a series of public-service ads featuring Justin Timberlake, Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper, and Jamie Foxx. The ads reflect a growing recognition that men are the key to addressing this problem.

Sex buyers are overwhelmingly male, and they purchase males as well as females. Whatever its form, the underlying question posed by prostitution remains the same: should people be entitled to buy other human beings for sexual gratification? If such ancient practices are to be curtailed, both johns and men who don’t buy sex will have to rethink their complicity, according to Ted Bunch, cofounder of A Call to Men, a national organization working to end violence against women and girls.

“This is the first generation of men that’s being held accountable for something men have always gotten away with, and that’s why you have such a backlash,” Bunch says. “Our social conditioning is to see women as objects, as property—that’s what commercial sexual exploitation is all about. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry; it makes more money than the NFL, the NBA, and Major League Baseball combined.”

Fighting that behemoth will require the participation of both sexes. “The system has been set up to blame women for the violence men perpetrate, and this has been seen as a women’s issue, so it’s easy for men not to get involved. But men’s silence about the violence men perpetrate is as much of a problem as the violence itself,” Bunch says. “Men feed the demand, and men have to eradicate the demand.”

BTW - Melissa Farley, who is mentioned throughout the article, is obviously a very biased woman who's known for her (non peer reviewed) very biased and questionable interpretation of the "research" she conducts. She's been criticized by numerous peers (academics) and her results have been challenged for many reasons, among them serious ethical and methodological flaws. She was an "expert" witness in the case in Toronto and this is what the judge stated about her:


[353] I found the evidence of Dr. Melissa Farley to be problematic. Although Dr. Farley has conducted a great deal of research on prostitution, her advocacy appears to have permeated her opinions. For example, Dr. Farley's unqualified assertion in her affidavit that prostitution is inherently violent appears to contradict her own findings that prostitutes who work from indoor locations generally experience less violence. Furthermore, in her affidavit, she failed to qualify her opinion regarding the causal relationship between post-traumatic stress disorder and prostitution, namely that it could be caused by events unrelated to prostitution.

[354] Dr. Farley's choice of language is at times inflammatory and detracts from her conclusions. For example, comments such as, "prostitution is to the community what incest is to the family," and "just as pedophiles justify sexual assault of children....men who use prostitutes develop elaborate cognitive schemes to justify purchase and use of women" make her opinions less persuasive.

[355] Dr. Farley stated during cross-examination that some of her opinions on prostitution were formed prior to her research, including, "that prostitution is a terrible harm to women, that prostitution is abusive in its very nature, and that prostitution amounts to men paying a woman for the right to rape her."

[356] Accordingly, for these reasons, I assign less weight to Dr. Farley's evidence.

 

[wolverine]

That study is either bullshit, or the article took selective comments from johns. Me and other pooners I know don't see SPs for the express purpose of degrading them. Nor I ever feel violent because I poon.

 

[Miss*Bijou]

That study is either bullshit, or the article took selective comments from johns. Me and other pooners I know don't see SPs for the express purpose of degrading them. Nor I ever feel violent because I poon.

The study *is* bullshit. Like all of her studies. There are many problems with the way she does her research and how she chooses to interpret the results. These are just some of the criticism:

http://goo.gl/YxsYE
http://goo.gl/XV57N
http://goo.gl/qLgNM
http://goo.gl/3ugHH

 

[Tugela]

That study is nonsense. Personally, it is women who I regard as people. They are the ones I can connect to, pretty much all my friends are women.

Men, on the other hand, to me are little more than tables and lampshades (or whatnot) that happen to be able to walk and talk - I don't really see them as people at all.

 

[threepeat]

That study is either bullshit, or the article took selective comments from johns. Me and other pooners I know don't see SPs for the express purpose of degrading them. Nor I ever feel violent because I poon.

I agree.

I think there's quite a bit of spin to this article and cherry picking of "facts," like saying the average age of death of an SP is 34. What does that prove? SPing is a young woman's occupation, so those who die will be young. That's like me saying the average age of death of NHL hockey players is 25. Age of death and life expectancy are two very different things.

 

[juniper]

Mademoiselle Bijou and other Readers: I think the researcher conflates two sets of SPs, the one being primarily "streetwalkers" and the other being self-identified as "escorts" or "companions". The second group is what we have here on PERB with very occasional (and glaring) exceptions. This second group consist of businesswomen who are, for the most part, quite independent who have made conscious decisions to enter the business not only for monetary reasons but sometimes for the excitement, the power and/or the sexual enjoyment itself. The women neither feel guit nor shame about their choices and are free to retract their services if, and when, they desire. The other group, referred to as "streetwalkers", are a very different variety of women, many of whom were abused as children and most of whom are currently in thrall to pimps. The researcher fails to differentiate between the two groups.

 

[jdtipper]

I would just like to add my opinion to this.

All men buy sex.
All women are prostitutes and liars.

Ill explain my reasoning.
Guys want sex, plain and simple. They go to a bar, find a gal and BUY her drinks. If she gets drunk enough. she might go home with him. Or lets say he meets a gal in a store and they agreee to go out. Buddy PAYS for dinner, movie and drinks. Usually it takes more than one date to get her to sleep with him, so he PAYS for a couple more dates.

Woman are liars (okay settle down ladies).
Usually in the morning, for some reason, they find it necessary to pile on layers of warpaint just so they can "be pretty enough to leave the house".
When really, in fact, they are covering up how beautiful they really are. They are lying about their true appearance to appease society. They are usually enhancing their appearance to attract a mate or get a better paying job.
How many times have you heard a guy say he hoked up with a hot gal, but then when he woke up in the morning some...thing was laying beside him. Could it be that the booze had wore off, or her warpaint came off...who knows. I hate makeup.

Secondly woman are prostitutes.
Society looks at a prostitute as a woman who exchanges money for sex. Money or drugs....who cares. Now really look at almost any relationship now-a-days. The woman somehow as extra spending money when they have a husband. And all the husband prays for....is sex. Hmmm, don't they always say "what's mine is hers, and what's hers is her's."
And what do most women look for when they get into a 'serious' relationship.....that big shiny rock. All that hard work they had to do to get that Rock.... No more having sex all the time, or heaven forbid...suck his dick when he wanted you to. That's history baby.
How often do you hear being said to a newly-wed husband...."well, looks like your sex life is over". Because it's TRUE. They got that Rock. Idiot.

You know when husbands get sex...when the wife wants to buy something big, like a kitchen. So there we go he pays, she puts out.

And I know, not everyone is like this....at least not the gals on here......but 90% of normal people are.

 

[threepeat]

Woman are liars (okay settle down ladies).
Usually in the morning, for some reason, they find it necessary to pile on layers of warpaint just so they can "be pretty enough to leave the house".
When really, in fact, they are covering up how beautiful they really are.

That's an interesting point. I remember when I was in high school there was this really hot girl who also happened to be really smart, but she pretended to struggle in class so she could fit in with the cool kids. A little sad, I guess, that she would feel the need to have to do that.

 

[markjacob]

Dr. Farley is a stupid person, and a stupid woman at that.

She takes a simple issue and complicates it to obfuscate her personal political aim. It really is a simple issue. I explain it here:

First of all, products or services only enter the market when there is a perceived demand. So first the men demand sex, are willing to pay for it, and women who don't mind supplying it for whatever nominal amount both parties can agree on, sell it.

Is it degrading women?

Yes, but only for the participating woman and only if she chooses to be degraded. It is not degrading for other women, the ones who are not participating in the exchange. And just because some men then develop the point of view of a degrading picture of women because they were consensually given the opportunity to degrade the ones who allowed it, it is still only an attitude developed by a man, not an action of degradation against women who were not participants.

The problem then is that non-participating women find others consensual activities degrading to them, when there was no direct relationship in their activities to them. It is like saying that as a straight man, I object to gay men fucking each other in the ass because it somehow victimizes me. There is no such thing as a "solidarity" amongst men that others' actions are offensive to all of "manhood", but for some reason, some women seem to think that there is this concept of "womanhood" that is unified and can be violated. They will be sadly disappointed to realize that a significant number of women would not agree on even the basic reasons for these violations, to the point that one would question whether "womanhood" for these purposes exists.

Rather than strengthening and enabling women, she is disabling them by taking false viewpoints on the reality of gender politics, and by characterizing women as being victimized when they are not. She ultimately would like all men to conform their behavior but by creating false victims, shaming people, and other dehumanizing tactics, she just creates less understanding between the sexes, less understanding within the sexes, and less understanding of human nature. Without understanding, changing behavior is impossible in the long run, and a backlash that creates more extreme behavior is likely.

In fact, that is what we are seeing today with the result of decades of misinformed feminism, the same kind that she projects. For example, pornography has become more male-centric, less female-centric, and more and more about degradation and less and less about healthy sex. Feminism has lost its battle to change gender relations, reduce the more extreme elements of anti-female behavior by men, and stopped the sexual objectification of women.

While I agree with legalization, I disagree with more regulation. If the purpose of regulation is to keep women safe, then people will be disappointed that it won't work. There will always be women who won't want to fall under regulation, for a myriad of reasons. Some want to start younger than they would be allowed, others won't want the hassle, others won't want to pay taxes, others won't want to pay what will likely be increasing fees as governments get involved and use it as a revenue source, etc.

Any person who engages in prostitution knows that there is going to be a level of risk. Every person should have enough agency to decide what level of risk is acceptable to them. Regulation it itself will not take away that risk; what will take it away are those women who are smart about how they do their job - ie: deciding to work in an MP, choosy about their clients, etc, and that has nothing to do with regulation. A woman who does a risky job such as this in a stupid manner might end up facing horrible consequences. How is regulation going to help a person who would make stupid decisions, if in fact she was stupid enough to make those decisions why would she be smart enough to submit to regulation? Regulation would only capture the smart ones and miss all the stupid ones, and its the stupid ones that the whole concept was intended to save.

Regulation is all about increasing revenue for governments and police forces, and it's a PR exercise in containing prostitution for the conservative public who doesn't want to face the reality that it exists in their neighborhoods.

 

[shockley]

BTW - Melissa Farley, who is mentioned throughout the article, is obviously a very biased woman

You may be right, Melissa Farley, for whatever reason, may be biased. However, one could also argue that the people who participate in this industry both as a buyers and sellers are also biased when it comes to their point of view. Everybody has an agenda, right. This is not hard science like Fowler-Nordheim tunneling. Naturally the questions are constructed and answers are interpreted in a manner that validates what one believes in prior to the study they undertake. But lets get real, this is not something that is unique to one side of the argument or the other. I am sure many of her peers would support her findings. I believe your view of Melissa Farley's study is extremely slanted for the obvious and aforementioned reasons. Consequently, this detracts from the intellectual sincerity of your post.

 

[Miss*Bijou]

You may be right, Melissa Farley, for whatever reason, may be biased. However, one could also argue that the people who participate in this industry both as a buyers and sellers are also biased when it comes to their point of view. Everybody has an agenda, right. This is not hard science like Fowler-Nordheim tunneling. Naturally the questions are constructed and answers are interpreted in a manner that validates what one believes in prior to the study they undertake. But lets get real, this is not something that is unique to one side of the argument or the other. I am sure many of her peers would support her findings. I believe your view of Melissa Farley's study is extremely slanted for the obvious and aforementioned reasons. Consequently, this detracts from the intellectual sincerity of your post.

Actually, no, the point is that not enough of her peers would support her - so she does not publish her results in academic publications for that reason. Feel free to actually take a look at the links to her peers' criticism of her research and methodology.

We/I are talking about our own experiences, how is that biased and how does that detract from any kind of sincerity in my post? That makes no sense. Exactly who else would be in a better position to comment on the fact that her research, since it's always focused on her pre-determined opinion, ignores a whole bunch of other perspectives - one of which I can say I know about because it's based on my own personal experiences.

And additionally, it's more than a little puzzling that the results obtained by Melissa Farley should be so completely different than a study that was done in Canada. Unlike Melissa's Farley's research, the results for the Canadian one are available (http://www.johnsvoice.ca) and will either be published or have been published (peer reviewed!) this year.

Report of the Preliminary Findings for Johns' Voice:A Study of Adult Canadian Sex Buyers -
http://www.scribd.com/doc/60417247

"John's Voice" study, Chris Atchison,
SFU Dept. of Sociology and Anthrolpology,

Pt. 1 of 2

(quicktime player)
http://www.workingtv.com/first/23nov09/4.mov
http://www.workingtv.com/first/23nov09/5.mov

(windows media player)
http://www.workingtv.com/first/23nov09/4.wmv
http://www.workingtv.com/first/23nov09/5.wmv



But thanks for chiming in, Hunsperger. Nice try. :thumb:

 

[vancity_cowboy]

i've got an idea - hatrick should take farley for a ride in the trickmobile! :nod: ound:

 

[Miss*Bijou]

There are a few really good blog posts criticizing Farley's "research".
I'm posting this one because it links to the other ones as well.

Newsweek Publishes Prohibitionist Fear-Mongering About Sex Work, Tries To Pass It Off As Journalism
by Jamie Peck


Newsweek’s provocatively titled article The John Next Door has been causing quite a stir on the Internet for its endorsement of Melissa Farley’s shoddy, biased research tactics. At the base of this backlash is its reliance on slanted and often anecdotal “research” that was gathered by well-known “abolitionist” Melissa Farley, who is not trained in sociology, polling, or any kind of accurate information gathering. (“Abolitionist” here is code for “prohibitionist”–Farley wants to outlaw all forms of sex work the world over, from strip clubs to pornography to pro dommes.) There are too many things wrong with the article to go into in just one blog post, but here are a few of the major ones.

1.) Right off the bat, it conflates “buying sex” (which is illegal) with lap dances, porn, and phone sex, which are legal. The reason she had so much trouble finding a control group of “non-sex buyers” is because her definition of “buying sex” was so absurdly broad that it included any and all forms of adult entertainment. Surely there’s a difference between watching the occasional adult video and frequently enlisting the services of a prostitute? In the eyes of this “study,” though, they’re exactly the same.

2.) As Salon’s Tracy Clark-Flory writes, “Farley has a very narrow view of what type of sex is healthy and OK.” Number one on her list of “bad sexual acts” is anything having to do with BDSM (check out this extremely wackadoo, ignorant, and hateful piece she wrote called “Ten Lies About Sadomasochism.”) She holds up the existence of BDSM sex-workers as evidence that all sex work is bad. But, operating under the belief that BDSM is a twisted abomination of human sexuality, one might just as quickly hold up BDSM practices between married people as evidence that all marriage is bad. This is clearly an absurd line of reasoning.

3.) She completely ignores the fact that many consumers of adult entertainment are female, and many prostitutes are male or transgendered.

4.) She distorts the facts at every turn. In addition to extrapolating things about the whole country based on people who live in Boston, she intentionally skewed her sample populations. Also, the article itself straight up lied about some things. (Maybe don’t do your journalistic research about prostitution by talking to someone who hates prostitution?)

Via Eminism:

The article cites the 2004 study in American Journal of Epidemiology by Potterat et al. to indicate that “Prostitution has laways been risky for women; the average age of death is 34.” But this is misleading, because it does not mean that the average life expectancy for prostitutes is 34 or that the average prostitute dies at age 34. Potterat et al. are simply reporting that among the active prostitutes who died in the studied period, the average age at which they died was 34. If that is not clear, consider this analogy: average age at death for those who die while enrolling in college is probably somewhere near 20, but nobody would claim that the average college student dies at 20.

This might be laughable, if I didn’t think people would actually fall for it. The average prostitute dies at 34! We must save her from herself before she reaches that age, or her blood will be on our hands! But wait, there’s more.

The article also cites the same Potterat et al. study to say that “prostitutes suffer a ‘workplace homicide rate’ 51 times higher than that of the next most dangerous occupation, working in a liquor store.” But working in a liquor store is not “the next most dangerous occupation.” Potterat et al. state that taxicab drivers are much more likely to be murdered than liquor store clerks: the “workplace homicide rate” for prostitutes is seven times higher when compared to taxicab drivers. That is still pretty high, but why does Bennetts feel the need to exaggerate the already horrible figure?

Further, “the overwhelming majority” of the “prostitutes” in this study were streetwalkers, and almost two-thirds were recruited at sexually transmitted infection clinic. Other participants were found at HIV testing sites or addiction treatment facilities, or identified by the police. Thus, the study systematically excludes prostitutes who are less visible to public health and law enforcement officers (e.g. escorts), who are likely to be much less prone to violence.

I could play this game all day, but I’ll stop. I think those examples are good enough.

5.) She fundamentally rejects the idea that any adult person could ever consensually choose to be a prostitute, lumping child and adult prostitutes into one catch-all “victim” category. This is condescending to the adults who choose to be prostitutes, as well as counterproductive to helping underage prostitutes and other genuinely abused sex workers.

Via Tits And Sass:

According to Bennetts, when Farley says something, she’s “report”ing it, but The Village Voice wasn’t reporting when they tackled faulty statistics two weeks ago. (Bennetts endorses the 100.000-300,000 number that Ashton Kutcher himself admitted was fallacious and proceeds to imply that VV said nothing worth saying.) She includes quotes from CATW, an organization that categorically rejects the possibility of any prostitute anywhere ever choosing that work and has demonstrated a complete disinterest in approaching trafficking or prostitution from a human rights standpoint instead of law enforcement. These people are bad news for sex workers. Where were Newsweek‘s editors? Where was common sense?

6.) The article relies on anecdotes to support its arguments. They didn’t publish the actual study, because it’s “exclusive to Newsweek.” If this study ever makes it into a peer-reviewed journal, I will eat all my pornographic DVDs.

In the end, articles like this are harmful because they perpetuate the inaccurate idea of sex workers all being uniform, voiceless victims. Instead of convincing men not to buy sex (which is simply not going to happen) or stepping up law enforcement (as the article recommends), we should recognize the fundamental personhood and agency of sex workers. It’s not going to help them to get arrested, talked down to, or denied their ability to make a living. Instead, they need laws that will make their jobs safer, as well as education and resources with which to help themselves if and when they decide to leave the industry (all of which Farley seems to have little interest in, because that would necessitate accepting that they’re still going to do this job). Resources currently going towards law enforcement could go towards things that actually help prostitutes, like drug counseling, housing, job programs, etc. (This is excluding the cases where children are actually getting kidnapped and trafficked; I agree that the people who do that should rot in jail.) That Newsweek would publish this biased dreck as journalism instead of editorial is evidence they either care nothing for objective reporting, or have done zero research on Farley’s background.

Some people are suggesting a boycott, but it’s not like most of us were reading Newsweek to begin with. I think a flood of angry emails to letters@newsweek.com will get our point across quite well. Happy ranting!