"New law could criminalise men for buying sex" (IT)

iptba

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2011/0103/1224286669821.html

New law could criminalise men for buying sex

CONOR LALLY, Crime Correspondent

THE GOVERNMENT is considering radical new criminal legislation that would shift the Garda’s approach to prostitution by making it illegal for a man to buy sex but not for a woman to sell it.

The legislation would put the Garda’s emphasis on prosecuting male clients rather than targeting women working as prostitutes.

I'm sure loads of men will welcome this law for one reason or another but I won't be one of them.

I have never used a prostitude nor have I plans to use one.

But I recall seeing cases of women in a region having a "sex ban" to force the men in the community to do something or other. It effectively can/could mean women have all the power. A question of supply and demand - if there is a monopoly on the supply, the price can be set very high. Prostitution may stop this monopoly to an extent. Or another way of putting it is that one could have a women-controlled state, where men are slaves because women institute sex bans until they get what they want. All dramatic sounding I know. And I'm sure lots of PC men will revel in disagreeing and feel all superior. But that's the beauty of the internet - one can express non-PC views.

Unfortunately politicians can't afford to not be PC so I imagine this will probably go through.

I'm not even sure if many people would write in to newspapers to complain?

Part of my reasoning is that I'm not convinced every woman is forced to do it. It might not have been her first career choice but lots of people including lots of men do jobs that wouldn't be their career choice. I certainly wouldn't want to work a mile underground in a mine in dangerous conditions for example. On a more mundane level, not many children (or their parents) would hope they would grow up to clean toilets for a living or whatever.

Josh_Calvert

this so so stupid....can we not move into the real world in the 21st century instead of turning ireland even more into a feminazi playground...

amacachi

Feck all to do with feminism, maybe a tiny branch of it that believes that sex is evil.

But yeah, great to know that there'll be a few thousand hours spent on drafting this ridiculous legislation.

FruitLover

making it illegal for a man to buy sex but not for a woman to sell it

I'm curious as to how this makes any sense at all. Seems kind of like making it illegal to buy ganja, but not illegal to sell it

Dj Stiggie

FruitLover wrote: »

I'm curious as to how this makes any sense at all. Seems kind of like making it illegal to buy ganja, but not illegal to sell it

That's basically it. If you knew it was illegal to buy weed but there was no risk for the dealer, you wouldn't be so quick to buy it.

The same applies for sex. If a man is risking prosecution for paying a woman to have sex with him, rather than the prostitute taking the risk, he would be more inclined to think twice.

amacachi

Dj Stiggie wrote: »

That's basically it. If you knew it was illegal to buy weed but there was no risk for the dealer, you wouldn't be so quick to buy it.

The same applies for sex. If a man is risking prosecution for paying a woman to have sex with him, rather than the prostitute taking the risk, he would be more inclined to think twice.

Aye, the principle of trying to stifle demand has been shown over and over again to be an effective way to enforce the prohibition of something.

minidazzler

Hmm, this article stinks of sh1te TBH.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern has asked Attorney General Paul Gallagher to examine a report on similar laws introduced in Sweden that target male clients and have halved street prostitution over 10 years.

The Internet has halved street prostitution, not their law, since the internet has become more widespread this kind of thing was inevitable.

Personally, I don't see a good reason to have prostitution illegal, but that's just me. Of course it shouldn't be legal to be a pimp, forcing women into prostitution, but if they want to do it then who are the government to judge morals.

Keep the status quo, curb crawling is more sleasy anyway.

jill_valentine

If I may interject - I think the idea is that if the burden of criminality is shifted onto the client rather than the prostitute, then a) it will reduce the demand, and b) it will make prostitutes themselves a little bit less hostile to the Guards generally; in theory, making life that little bit safer for the women themselves.

Ideally, I'd like to see prostitution legalised and regulated, but that's not going to happen anytime soon, so long as any of the Parnell Street Stringfellows Prayer Brigade are still rattling around, but as it is, I can see the reasoning behind this move.

deirdre_dub

making it illegal for a man to buy sex but not for a woman to sell it.

Good news for male prostitutes, I guess? Good grief, if they want to tackle prostitution, then they should tackle prostitution, and not just the male clients of prostitution.

Men would no longer have to be caught soliciting or kerb crawling. Women could still be prosecuted for soliciting but not for the sale of sex.

As a way for combatting male clients of prostitution, I say "fair enough". As a way of combatting prostitution, it is obviously combatting only a part of the problem it claims it is combatting - namely that part where the male is the client and the female is the prostitute. As for whether prostitution should be combatted in the first place - that is another question.

Giselle

If its not illegal for a woman to sell sex, then a sex worker can report any abuse to the police without fear of prosecution, making the work safer for the women.

Maguined

But the entire point is that they don't want women selling sex? It seems ridiculous and obvious to me that if an act requires two consenting adults and you want to criminalise only one side of the consenting adults you are being discriminatory and biased.

Aswerty

Maguined wrote: »

But the entire point is that they don't want women selling sex? It seems ridiculous and obvious to me that if an act requires two consenting adults and you want to criminalise only one side of the consenting adults you are being discriminatory and biased.

This is very much the reason I don't like the sound of this legislation. It appears to just be one more case of "positive" discrimination.

Giselle wrote:

If its not illegal for a woman to sell sex, then a sex worker can report any abuse to the police without fear of prosecution, making the work safer for the women.

Considering it's not currently illegal to sell sex, surely this should already be the case. It obviously isn't though. This is because the problem with prostitution is human trafficking and endemic drug abuse and not the act itself.

Scanlas The 2nd

The diamond industry in Ireland won't be happy about this.

Mike 1972

deirdre_dub wrote: »

Good news for male prostitutes, I guess? .

If this legislation works in the way that the original article suggest surely its going to be struck down on gender discrimination grounds.

28064212

Just so we're clear: In the case of two consenting adults, if a man pays a woman for sex, and the woman robs and/or assaults him, he has no option to go to the Gardaí? Isn't that the exact problem that they're trying to eliminate, that a victim doesn't receive protection from the law?

If they want to make it safe for the people involved, then legalise it (in more than just name) and regulate it

PCPhoto

28064212 wrote: »

Just so we're clear: In the case of two consenting adults, if a man pays a woman for sex, and the woman robs and/or assaults him, he has no option to go to the Gardaí? Isn't that the exact problem that they're trying to eliminate, that a victim doesn't receive protection from the law?

If they want to make it safe for the people involved, then legalise it (in more than just name) and regulate it

I dont want to be part of the PC brigade - but what choice is there if he robs or assaults the woman (its a cash business so they should have a fair amount of money nearby...at least I dont think they accept credit cards - do they? )

for me - like all these new laws and regulation - enforcement is the key, we need extra gardai on the streets enforcing the laws that exist - not just picking and choosing some of them and enforcing them at different times of the year, we all know that theres a "clampdown" on drink driving around bank holidays and public holidays....how about doing it constantly ....and at times when people are more likely to drink-drive.....11pm-12am near pubs with large car parks is a start !! rural pubs or pubs difficult to get to...or even pubs where the driver has to go through housing estates to get to them.

28064212

PCPhoto wrote: »

I dont want to be part of the PC brigade - but what choice is there if he robs or assaults the woman (its a cash business so they should have a fair amount of money nearby...at least I dont think they accept credit cards - do they? )

That's my point. The people supporting this law have looked at the current situation, where the prostitute has no recourse to the legal system, and decided a good way to rectify that is to make sure that the client has no recourse to the legal system instead. Either way is equally stupid, which is why I called for legalisation and regulation

Pherekydes

iptba wrote: »

But I recall seeing cases of women in a region having a "sex ban" to force the men in the community to do something or other. It effectively can/could mean women have all the power. A question of supply and demand - if there is a monopoly on the supply, the price can be set very high. Prostitution may stop this monopoly to an extent. Or another way of putting it is that one could have a women-controlled state, where men are slaves because women institute sex bans until they get what they want. All dramatic sounding I know. And I'm sure lots of PC men will revel in disagreeing and feel all superior. But that's the beauty of the internet - one can express non-PC views.

Puerile nonsense. Women hold the power when it comes to sex? I have news for you: women want sex just as much as men, and in normal loving relationships don't withhold it. If your partner is withholding sex then it behoves you to find out what's wrong in the relationship, not to seek it elsewhere.

I'd also imagine that, despite popular perceptions, men don't seek out prostitutes at the first sign of lack of sex in their relationships.

iptba

Pherekydes wrote: »

I have news for you: women want sex just as much as men

Lots of people, both men and women, would not be convinced by a claim that the libidos of men and women are equal on average.

I am not convinced that everyone who agrees with such a statement in such a discussion is being honest. Honesty should probably be the core value of a discussion. People who post or agree with opinions they don't actually hold should question what they've become. I don't know why one should take people seriously in other discussions if they post or agree with messages they don't think to be the truth.

mikom

THE GOVERNMENT is considering radical new criminal legislation that would shift the Garda’s approach to prostitution by making it illegal for a man to buy sex but not for a woman to sell it.

Lesbians seeking prostitutes are in the clear though, right.....

jill_valentine

Before we go working ourselves into a lather, I would be highly surprised if the law specifies that the client has to be male and the prostitute female. I think that's likely just a weird wording by the Irish Times in an attempt to explain the situation to their gentle readers.

Again, I'd like to see legislation and regulation too, but that's never going to happen with the current generation of aul' wan pleasing politics. Nothing that progressive or radical is ever going to get through the current Irish political system. In the meantime, I think it is better to penalise the client rather than the prostitute because the client is less likely to be acting under any kind of duress, and because tackling the demand side of things is now seen to be quite a bit more effective than trying to cut the head off the hydra.

Finnbar01

If anything this law will force more women to seek out and work for pimps, as men will be too scare and therefore trade will begin to dry up.

Also most of us engage in prostitution in our relationships and marriages.

jill_valentine

Um. I'm not sure about that reasoning, no.

Pherekydes

iptba wrote: »

Honesty should probably be the core value of a discussion.

Are you honestly implying that a lack of prostitutional services will leave men open to being manipulated by women?

Pherekydes

Finnbar01 wrote: »

Also most of us engage in prostitution in our relationships and marriages.

Can you unpack that statement? Does it mean (what I think it means) that men in relationships pay, one way or another, for sex within the relationship?

iptba

Pherekydes wrote: »

Are you honestly implying that a lack of prostitutional services will leave men open to being manipulated by women?

It appears to me the possibility is there in the future - if society became more matriarchal.

Pherekydes

iptba wrote: »

It appears to me the possibility is there in the future - if society became more matriarchal.

Can I ask you a straightforward question: what proportion of men engage with prostitutes do you think?

BrianD3

The idea of an organised sex ban and men being "slaves" to their sex drive sounds like the most ridiculous thing ever. I'd imagine if it happened the winners would be the divorce lawyers.

Then again.....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8025457.stm

Kenyan women hit men with sex ban

Women's activist groups in Kenya have slapped their partners with a week-long sex ban in protest over the infighting plaguing the national unity government.

The Women's Development Organisation coalition said they would also pay prostitutes to join their strike.

Reward

amacachi wrote: »

Feck all to do with feminism, maybe a tiny branch of it that believes that sex is evil.

But yeah, great to know that there'll be a few thousand hours spent on drafting this ridiculous legislation.

Of course they are feminists, the only groups that are anti prostitution are feminist groups and the religious right.

The Swedish system that they are recommending is feminist and if you google a bit for the Dignity Project you will find them associated with anti prostitution feminists from the UK http://www.endprostitutionnow.org/support-the-campaign/our-supporters.aspx

These groups use sex trafficking as a front to criminalise men for using prostitutes.

Finnbar01

Pherekydes wrote: »

Can you unpack that statement? Does it mean (what I think it means) that men in relationships pay, one way or another, for sex within the relationship?

Yes and women too.

Reward

These people have no real evidence of a trafficking problem here, there was no evidence found in the UK.

If a woman decides to travel from one country to another to work in the sex trade, she is labelled "trafficked".

No doubt these groups have pornography in their sights too.


"There is something familiar about the tide of misinformation which has swept through the subject of sex trafficking in the UK: it flows through exactly the same channels as the now notorious torrent about Saddam Hussein's weapons.

In the story of UK sex trafficking, the conclusions of academics who study the sex trade have been subjected to the same treatment as the restrained reports of intelligence analysts who studied Iraqi weapons – stripped of caution, stretched to their most alarming possible meaning and tossed into the public domain. There, they have been picked up by the media who have stretched them even further in stories which have then been treated as reliable sources by politicians, who in turn provided quotes for more misleading stories.

In both cases, the cycle has been driven by political opportunists and interest groups in pursuit of an agenda. In the case of sex trafficking, the role of the neo-conservatives and Iraqi exiles has been played by an unlikely union of evangelical Christians with feminist campaigners, who pursued the trafficking tale to secure their greater goal, not of regime change, but of legal change to abolish all prostitution. The sex trafficking story is a model of misinformation. It began to take shape in the mid 1990s, when the collapse of economies in the old Warsaw Pact countries saw the working flats of London flooded with young women from eastern Europe. Soon, there were rumours and media reports that attached a new word to these women. They had been "trafficked".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/trafficking-numbers-women-exaggerated