Launched this week in Ireland, ‘Prostitution – We Don’t Buy It’ is an Irish movement organised by The Reach Project, encouraging men not to buy prostituted women. The new movement was launched by Tom Meagher, bereaved husband of Melbourne woman Jill Meagher who was murdered in September 2012 by serial predator and rapist Adrian Bayley, who was then out on parole. With Meagher at the event was sex industry survivor Rachel Moran, author of Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution (Spinifex Press 2013).
Discussing the men who purchase sex and the lies they tell themselves, Meagher said:
Two years ago I read this document from an interview with a man who had repeatedly and very violently raped a number of prostitutes in Australia. His answer to the question, ‘Why did you do this?’ was ‘I paid for her, I can do what I want with her.’
Ten years later that man was out on parole and raped and murdered my wife.
Hear Tom Meagher and Rachel Moran at the launch (via Irish Video News):
Reports on the event can be found here and here.
It is so encouraging to see new movements like this putting the focus on male demand for sexual exploitation.
See also: ‘Management should starve girls like this to make them perform: men who buy women for sex’, MTR
‘Lateline exposes harms of sex work: sex industry goes nuts’, MTR
‘Two prostitution survivors describe how it feels to be paid to be raped’, MTR
‘The danger of the monster myth,‘ Tom Meagher, The Drum
10 Responses
Nooo!!!
Just because you pay a sex worker for a service does not mean you can do what you like with them.
This is why we need full decriminalisation, to give more power to sex workers. We also need to fight wh*rephobia in all its forms which says that paying for sex = you have a right to the sex worker’s body. NO YOU DON’T!
Sex, paid or unpaid, is a negotiation between two or more people. Accepting money in exchange for sex does not and never should mean that you are giving up your bodily autonomy. Just like saying yes to casual sex does not and should never mean that either.
It’s so heartening to see men speaking against the commercial sexual exploitation of women. The Nordic model of prostitution legislation is based on the recognition that it is men’s demand for women and children to sexually exploit that fuels prostitution and sex trafficking. It is great to see men speaking out and educating other men.
Tom, despite your grief and utter loss, thank you for lending your support to this problem of the sex industry.
Sorry Bee, but “more power” to women in the sex trade would mean ensuring these women get the economic power – and thus choice – to leave the industry whenever they want. This is not the case for the vast majority of women who are only there to survive.
So promoting the sex trade achieves nothing for these women, in fact it actually creates a false sense that these women want to be there. Marginalised women need human rights and the right to a full working wage, that would be ‘giving them power’.
Bec, I have to disagree with your statement that ‘sex, paid or unpaid, is a negotiation between two or more people’. That statement neglects to take into account unequal power and economic situations. Men who buy sex are paying to circumvent consent- because if the woman was really consenting, there would not be any exchange of money. That is exploitation, not legitimate choice.
Full decriminalisation, as in, decriminalising pimping and buying women for sexual exploitation does not give more power to the women being exploited. Sweden has got it right- criminalising sex buyers who fuel the whole system of commercial sexual exploitation.
Too many johns truly believe if they have paid, they are entitled to whatever they want. We know this because they say as much on their own review websites. (See http://www.collectiveshout.org/in_their_own_words) It shouldn’t be surprising, as men who think they are entitled to women’s bodies don’t tend to view women as whole human beings.
Has anyone else noticed how the term ‘whorephobic’ gets thrown around whenever there is legitimate criticism of the global sex trade that exploits women and girls? It is propaganda from sex trade profiteers, a way of silencing and preventing analysis of the realities of prostitution.
Are prostitution and trafficking survivors who tell the truth about their experiences of rape, violence and trauma at the hands of pimps and johns ‘whorephobic’?
The pro-sex lobby deliberately misrepresents criticism of men who exploit vulnerable women and children in the sex industry as hatred of ‘sex workers’. What if we extended the same arguments to sweatshops? If we were critical of exploitation of sweatshop workers, would it be a reasonable response to argue ‘well you just hate sweat shop workers’ or ‘can’t you just respect the free choice and autonomy of empowered sweat shop workers’?
Laura, I don’t think Bee was suggesting to promote prostitution, but rather to decriminalise it. If people think it’s possible to pay money to compromise someone else’s autonomy, that’s a huge problem. The reality is that prostitution is a viable job for many people, while for others it’s a desperate situation. We need to protect the rights of all these people, and the first step is acknowledging their existence.
To me this campaign seems dishonest. “What I hate most is when they try to kiss me – hands all over me, breathing on my face” – this could be a coercive situation, or it could be a client/provider mismatch. The latter is solved by clearer, more open communication, which is not aided by stigmatisation.
In a bid to protect our basic human rights, let’s not throw half of us under the bus. We’re better than that.
Keith, the reality of prostitution is that is rarely chosen- is it a legitimate choice when there are no viable alternatives? Research indicates that 90% of women in prostitution wish to exit but have no way to do so. The sex industry want to obscure that reality by touting the happy hooker myth, because guess what- it’s a massively profitable industry, and if it was only comprised of women who wanted to be there that would be very bad news for those with vested financial interests.
What is it about the words of a prostituted woman that sound dishonest to you? Is it a surprise that women may not enjoy being penetrated, kissed and touched by men who repulse them- man after man, day after day? It’s more comfortable to pretend that women who service multiple men each day just ‘love sex’, and that they are not being raped over and over.
The idea that women being bought are somehow on equal footing with the men who buy them is misguided- that maybe there is a lack of communication and the woman should just point out she doesn’t enjoy the designated sex act, and the buyer will say ‘oh ok!’ and respectfully back off. Men who buy women for sex have the expectation they can use them however they like, and when women set boundaries, they feel ripped off.
If we really want to protect human rights, it isn’t by decriminalising the purchase of sex and making it easier for men to sexually exploit vulnerable women.
The whole point of the ‘We Don’t Buy It’ campaign is to discourage people like Keith justifying men’s buying of women on some basis attributable to women. The campaign encourages men to understand prostitution to be a harmful thing to do full stop. It doesn’t matter whether or not anyone thinks any particular woman might have chosen to enter the sex industry, men should take responsibility for their own choices. They can easily choose to not prostitute someone. In fact, most men don’t. The sex industry endlessly encourages men to choose to prostitute women, its revenues depend on it. It breaks down obstacles to choosing by telling men they’re not really responsible for their decisions–prostitution is always attributed to some characteristic of women: that we love it, we need the money, we’re damaged anyway. The We Don’t Buy It campaign attempts to restore some sense of responsibility among men that their choices are autonomously and consciously made. Women do not provoke them, and are not to blame for them.
Jamie, by clearer communication I meant on sites such as Adultwork where providers can clearly state which services they offer. Some enjoy kissing, others don’t but offer other specialist services.
As a feminist I would never assume a woman was lying, abused and lacking agency – that would need to be shown for each individual case. Otherwise where does it end? Maybe tomorrow we decide YOU lack agency. We need to be aware of the bigger picture here.