Newsnight: Should buying sex be illegal in England and Wales, as it is in Sweden, Norway and Iceland?

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Mike Buchanan

An outstanding piece on Newsnight last night:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03w7wd2/Newsnight_20_02_2014/

From the programme commentary:

Next week a parliamentary inquiry in the UK will recommend we reject legalisation (of prostitution) and criminalise the buying of sex for the first time.

Doubtless the ‘inquiry’ will have been dominated by feminists and their male collaborators. I can’t recall any coverage of this in leading newspapers or elsewhere. These damnable people are expert manipulators of what is supposed to be a parliamentary democracy, as we saw with the whole ‘women in boardrooms’ question. In that case, all members of House of Lords and House of Commons ‘inquiries’ pursued feminist-friendly directions – even the Conservatives, to their eternal shame.

In our public consultation document we call for full decriminalisation of sex work in the UK, along the New Zealand model. After watching this edition of Newsnight, we’ll be looking at the German model. Judging by the programme, it’s working very well for both sex workers and their clients.

There are a number of sections of interest in the programme, which will be available until 27 February. Before then we hope to post an edited version of the programme. The sections:

00:27 – 00:50 Introduction

17:31 – 25:44 Mainly coverage of the position concerning prostitution in Germany, where ‘mega brothels’ are flourishing. Video footage from the largest German brothel, in Stuttgart, is included.

25:45 – 35:05 Studio discussion ably hosted by Laura Kuenssberg, with four female contributors.

The first two contributors were sharply intelligent and highly erudite:

Laura Lee, a sex worker and member of the International Union of Sex Workers.

Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon, an academic and author of the book The Price of Sex.

In stark contrast were the supporters of the ‘Swedish model’ in which buyers of sex are criminalised:

Mary Honeyball MEP, a dour Labour politician (Harriet Harman could be her cheery sister) who can usually be relied upon to talk utter nonsense, and doesn’t disappoint here.

Dorcas Erskine of ‘The Poppy Project’.

These two women were shameless in delivering their misleading ideologically-driven narratives. Any reasonable-minded person who was undecided about the issues surrounding this subject would surely have been convinced by this Newsnight episode that full legalisation of prostitution is the only way to go, for the sake of sex workers and their clients.

About Mike Buchanan

I'm a men's human rights advocate, writer, and publisher. My primary focus is leading the political party I launched in 2013, Justice for Men & Boys (and the women who love them). I still work actively on two campaigns I launched in early 2012, Campaign for Merit in Business and the Anti-Feminism League. In 2014 I launched The Alternative Sexism Project, aiming to raise public understanding that the sexism faced by men and boys has far more grievous consequences than the sexism faced by women and girls.
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  • This is the feminist answer to controling access to all sex, since they only value women for this, which is very sad. The consequences will be more violence against sex workers due to refusal to pay, people not wantng to be caught as a customer, more underground pimping and no control over the health of both sides in a transaction. It will be back to bad old days of underground sex mags and videos which only encouraged crime, rape, DV and child abuse worse than it is now. Since R18 films became legal and more explicit, at least 30% of consumers of online porn are said to be women. Partly because male genitals used to be completely censored which was sexist against women and gays. It did not cause more sex crime legalising them. This bill would. Like the campaigns against page 3 and lads mags this is another example like slut walks that sex is ok for women but not for men.

    Sex being illegal of men seems to be the end game. Marriage is the only legal way to “buy” sex the gender feminists want and they have destroyed that. With their manufactured rape hysteria and the growing definition of rape the feminists are destroying all relationships, or is it they want to create more “rape” opportunities? That is the logical conclusion i.e. that they want to make women’s lives LESS save.

    It is just another example where feminists impose their own ideology on mainly other women’s life choices and put them at risk without any empathy. So sex workers are on a par with stay at home mothers with feminists and have to be stopped as they undermine their attempted control of society.

    They are not doing it for religious reasons so there is no reason for it other than bigotry and societal control. They know that if it was for moral grounds then buying and selling sex would be criminalised for both sexes. However they never press for any laws to make anything women do criminal. Mostly the reverse. In fact legalising selling sex shows it is not a moral decision.

    The problem is that the general public are mostly blind to the feminised laws already in place. If all the biased laws were reversed, something that would be equally unfair, then the media would spend all their time covering nothing else.

    Legalising the sex trade is the only sensible option if you are free of religious teachings. It protects both parties, de-stigmatises the people who choose it as a job due to their preferences, and does no harm to anyone if it is not hidden. It also could generate a lot of tax revenue. In Holland schools and hospitals have been funded this way. It has always be strange to me that people complain about (unofficial) brothels because everyone knows sex is done there, and they do not want it in their neighbourhood, but at the same time sex takes place in nearly every house on a street! All they get now is nuisance from free lance sex workers on the street harassing people. This will only make this more of a danger for mostly innocent men, just being asked the time by a sex worker could lead to a charge from police surveilence, and it will not lessen the danger to the women or our streets.

    This inquiry has definitely not asked the public what they think. At the end of the day the law is supposed to say what consenting adults do, barring physical assault, is no one elses business and like lower taxes most sensible people should want this to be true.

    • Thanks John. The bottom line is that feminists want to give women power over men by putting an artificially high price on sex, something which requires minimal effort. Has anyone ever stopped sex workers choosing alternative lines of work, maybe as engineers, physicists, long-distance lorry drivers, sewage workers…? I think not.

  • Why do they hate us? So men suffer and die…. isolated.. alone…?

    • Thanks Alex. They hate it if we’re anything other than slaves to them.

  • As a general principal I regard with dismay the way this society generally treats sex; as a leisure activity akin to a sport. However given that it is unlikely that we will return to the continence of the past then I reluctantly agree that the only tenable position is not to legislate on adults consensual sexual behaviour . There are after all laws against nuisance such as “kerb crawling” etc. and against trafficking pimping etc . I’m not sure I’d remove the laws against soliciting.
    What I would like to see is a change in Rape laws to be against any form of sexual assault and be sex neutral.