Question 1. Both Ren Ev and I have repeatedly asked radical feminist anti prostitution activists three questions and never get answers to them. Question 1 is if you advocate abolishing the sex industry what is your plan to do this, how will you achieve it, what happens to the sex workers that are currently in the sex industry and when will it be accomplished? To be this dedicated to the concept of abolition someone must have a strategic plan. What is it?
Question 2, I have made repeated requests to radical feminists that we try to drop the acrimony and work on issues we both can agree on. Is it so awful to work with actual sex workers that you can’t work with us? Wouldn’t it be more prudent and helpful to all if you found out what we really advocate rather than obsessing on Larry Flynt, Nevada Brothels and abusive pimps, issues that the vast majority of swr activists are actually working on? Why fight us when there are actual abusers and abuses we could ally with each other to combat.
Question 3. Why does everything have to be analyzed for faults if relayed by sex worker rights activists? I discussed the very anti prostitution org in Minneapolis called Women’s Recovery Center as one I have worked with in the projects development and support and send referrals even now. And all that came was condemnation of this program from radical feminists with factual misrepresentations of WRC not offering psychological assistance to exiting sex workers. Which is perhaps a weakness in their website because they do offer it. Why are they considered a poor resource even though the project is radical feminist? Is it just because they don’t hate SWOP East and still work with us thus they are collaborators with the enemy? If this is the case it is a very sad statement. That some/many rad fems are far more interested in politics and war with sex worker rights activists than actual work. This is 2007, not 1967. Militancy had a very important place in the sixties and seventies. Without it feminism wouldn’t have been successful. But this is 2007. Times have changed. Methods need to also.
Please, I would like answers to my questions. Ren would too.
Brenneman
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Bound, Not Gagged 
We’d ALL like answers to these questions.
It’s funny that Josie is running around the blog responding to every other post but this one.
Oh- and now she’s been joined by somebody posting as ‘person.’ Perhaps this very credible commentator can provide some answers?
Jeepers Jill Brenneman and Ren, I can’t imagine where any hostility could possibly be coming from.
Seriously, do you think we can read your blogs honeys?
OK, so all hostilities aside, I personally cannot speak for the radical feminists. I don’t identify as one and don’t know all the rules about what makes one and furthermore don’t give a crap.
However. all that said, the points of agreement seem clear.
1. We all want to help women who want to get out of prostitution to do so.
2. We all want to stop police abuse
3. We all want to stop arrests of prostitutes
As far as I can see, those are the points of agreement. Anyone else?
Cmon Karly, I’m typing as fast as I can. Give me a chance to catch up! 🙂
So, Josie, what is your answer to question 1?
”
Jeepers Jill Brenneman and Ren, I can’t imagine where any hostility could possibly be coming from.
Seriously, do you think we can read your blogs honeys?”
Jeepers? WTF? Are we suddenly in Mayberry? Given your topic illiterate challenges to me perhaps you should read our blogs. Then you would know what you were talking about rather than coming off as a topic illiterate author that failed to do the minimal research needed to substantiate one percent of her posts.
You are responding with hostility? That part was missed in the astonishment of how off target you are.
Save the honey’s comment as it is misogynist as hell in the context you are using it. Neither Ren nor I are your honey.
Conveniently you throw a series of red herrings to throw off attention from the fact that like every other anti I have asked this question to, probably Ren has the same experience when she asked the question you immediately divert attention via an attack.
You were born 30 years too late. You should have been General Westmoreland’s press secretary.
If you are SO convinced about ending prostitution and fighting patriarchal misogyny why are you launching scuds ad current and former sex workers?
Sounds like some latent misogyny to me. And a real lack of reading comprehension skills..
Ask General Westmoreland how the war in Vietnam is going for me.
Jill, WHAT IS YOUR BIG QUESTION that I have been missing.
Perhaps you weren’t looking, but I’ve been typing constantly, talking to everyone. Maybe I missed a question you had. Try not to take it personally.
Josie you misunderstand me. I’m not particularly sensitive. You made statements that were incorrect about me and I responded.
My question to abolitionists is always the same.
What is the plan to abolish the sex industry? What are the procedures and protocols that will make this happen? What is the strategy? When will it happen? And what can we do to make sure the fight to end the sex industry doesn’t leave current sex workers behind because the TVPRA/USAid thing is currently sentencing current sex workers to death.
Please do what no other abolitionist has ever been able to do for me and explain to me this plan.
About a prior post of you, me and farley working together, you will have to ask her about working with me. That is up to her. She hasn’t been particularly open to that concept since 1997 unless forced by circumstance. She doesn’t respond to email contact from me and I don’t have any direct contact with her as I have no telephone number for her, so you would have to facilitate communication and plead the case for her to work with me. Best of luck on that.
Oh, THE PLAN!
Yeah, I don’t have the master plan in my 3 ring binder. Do you?
The closest thing to a workable solution at this moment seems to be the (not so popular here) Swedish model – arrest the johns, arrest the pimps, give prostitutes better options.
The Amsterdam model seems to still be in flux, they have cracked down like crazy on pimps, are ambivalent about johns, and are spending millions of Amsterdamian pennies on buying up the brothels as a way of shutting them down.
The German model is also in transition, but the illegal trafficking that was brought in by the legalization scared the pants off them (so to speak) and they are scrambling to delegalize asap.
So, I guess, at the moment I’m advocating the Swedish model. Pimps hate it, johns hate it, and prostitutes hate it. But it is working to cut down on trafficking and violence.
So there is my answer to the big question.
And with that, I bid you all goodnight. It has been fun, but my fingers are tired and so am I.
Jill: You also forgot “who is going to pay for it” (i.e., the education, housing, medical, theraputic, child care, job training that many former sex workers/ prostituted women will need once the revolution comes) and “what about the sex workers who are in it willingly and do not WANT to leave?
Also Josie’s not replied to a single question, point or comment I’ve brought to her, so I cannot say as I am surprised. You forget, in the eyes of many, I am pure evil or something.
Again ALL sex workers at some point will want to quit. It might not be until they’re 90 years old and their arthritis is slowing them down (lol) – but let’s face it gals – at some time we all are going to want to quit. So the exit support services are there to help at that time. No one is going to force any one to do anything. As to the plan – if you’re part of the group working towards abolition – you know the plan. And you aren’t going to go around broadcasting the plan just so people who have nothing better to do but cause trouble for the sake or trouble. Anyone interested in talking to Melissa on the phone – gee folks guess what? There’s a neat little invention online called the phone book – she’s listed. If the State Department could get her number, and UNLV can get her number – she’s not hard to find if you want to talk to her. As for emails – I can’t imagine with all this press that she might just be busy travelling and doing interviews and doing the best she can to get to the emails as fast as she can. Or maybe even taking a few days off for rest to recover from the stress of suddenly becoming everyone’s “boogie man”. Melissa is not the problem here folks. She’s not a legislator or a pimp. She doesn’t own or run a legal or illegal brothel. She doesn’t work in the sex industry. She doesn’t make laws or arrest prostitutes. If you guys would stay focused on what you do believe really is the problem – then maybe we’ll get somewhere.
http://cmte.parl.gc.ca/Content/HOC/committee/391/just/reports/rp2599932/justrp06/12-chap6-e.htm#TOCLink_12_4
I’d like to suggest you read this report – and notice how Sweden’s approach PAYS FOR support services and cracks down on violence from johns, pimps and traffickers – the real threat to prostitutes.
“She doesn’t work in the sex industry. ”
Exactly. And, as far as I know, she never has. Yet she is the expert. Our should be patron saint.
I could study the auto industry for years, write countless papers about it, the unions, the companies, the wastes, the dangers, the farming out of jobs to cheaper labor in other countries, the perks, the upsides and downsides, but if I’ve never, ever, worked a day in a Detroit Motor Factory, can I really know what I am talking about the same way a fellow who has spent a decade on a Ford Assembly line would?
And Sweden definatly has some good things in place with their model, I don’t think anyone said the Swedish Model is Complete Crap.
” As to the plan – if you’re part of the group working towards abolition – you know the plan. And you aren’t going to go around broadcasting the plan just so people who have nothing better to do but cause trouble for the sake or trouble”
Okay, so it is super-duper top secret James Bond 007 for abolishionist eyes only! So, okay, if we’re not allowed to see the plan, how are we supposed to know whose interests in really has in mind, who it might be good for or determental to, whether or not we should support it in whole or in part, or if there really even IS a plan?
“This is a good plan. Just accept it”
Sorry, that just doesn’t work for me, and as often as sex workers are asked to consider, examine, explain, ponder, think, and are called out to justify everything, you’d think perhaps a little two way consideration was in order.
I find it very hard to understand how a top secret plan is ever going to materialize as consistent practice.
Do abolitionist not want to work for real world solutions? Don’t you need to recruit from the ranks to fully solidify your action? How does secrecy allow for real change? At some point, you’re going to have to talk to someone besides yourselves.
>>Jody writes>>As to the plan – if you’re part of the group working towards abolition – you know the plan. And you aren’t going to go around broadcasting the plan just so people who have nothing better to do but cause trouble for the sake or trouble.>>
When was this plan developed Jody? Before or after 2003? Please answer this question. It’s easy, I just want a year.
Yesterday, while bouncing around this blog and the blogs of contributers and so on and so on, I found a comment that almost made me pee my pants, to paraphrase: ‘1983 called. It wants it’s debate back.’
I wish I could remember where I saw that, but I found it fitting to much of the antis talking points.
“As to the plan – if you’re part of the group working towards abolition – you know the plan. And you aren’t going to go around broadcasting the plan just so people who have nothing better to do but cause trouble for the sake or trouble.”
So you’re doing activism of some sort, but no one’s allowed to know what it is?
it’s a COOKBOOK! it’s a COOKBOOOK!!!!…
eh, no, sorry, that was flip. i think maybe it has to do with removing body thetans or something.
Quoting Josie:
“As to the plan – if you’re part of the group working towards abolition – you know the plan. And you aren’t going to go around broadcasting the plan just so people who have nothing better to do but cause trouble for the sake or trouble.”
Oh, please. Josie, give it a rest. We already know what your “plan” for outlawing prostitution and sex work is: it’s the same old tired nonsense of criminalizing and hmiliating and shaming men (especially men who have been proven to do harm to sex workers) who cater to sex work; it’s really about imposing your regressive and reactionary views of sex on such women without having the integrity to castigate them directly.
I’m not a sex worker or a client of one, but I can see from my own observations of cities in the US whom have tried their variation of the Swedish Model that all it has succeeded in doing is to further inject loathing and fear and shame on the men who are targeted…and most of them not even for any notion of violent behavior; only for merely seeking consensual sexual companionship. Indeed, most of the men who end up going to some of those “johns schools” actually end up more angry and violent than before thanks to the propaganda leveled at them there by the dominant antipornradfen ideology; thus making life that much more threatening for sex workers. But, I guess that’s the entire point, isn’t it….to make sex work so harsh and deadly that the only solution will be to quit under duress.
Rather than own up to the obvious direct attack on sex workers and their “patriarchial” and “misogynic”sexuality; it seems that most anti-sex work abolitionists prefer to take the more paternalistic approach of claiming to be for sex workers’ best interests…even as they blissfully ignore and dismiss entirely their experiences, their voices, and their wishes.
And yet, this is called “activism”?? This is your “plan”???
Sorry, but having people make up their own minds and make their own choices (while getting rid of some of the most abusive practices) sounds to me like a much better plan. And respecting a person’s right to determine her own sexuality and seek sex on her terms beats bashing men over their erections and women over their damp panties any day of the week.
Oh…and not all men who frequent sex workers are innately violent or misogynic..some are regular people who for their own reason seek the kind of sexual companion that they might not be gettting from their siginificant others. It is perfectly nobile to go after the abusers and the exploiters without casting all men as “pimps” or “slave traffickers”.
Anthony
However here are some questions
The plan to end the sex industry which we will call Operation Old Prune Face is confidential?
How powerful is the Operation Old Prune Face plan that a select working group can implement it an wipe out prostitution worldwide? Should we be concerned about nuclear weapons?
How successful could activism this steeped in cloak and dagger possibly be?
Who are the enemies of Operateration Old Prune Face that are so powerful they could derail such a sacred plan? Even Jesus was open about his plans.
When was developed and who is on the committee?
Could it be that Operation Old Prune Face doesn’t really exist and is just the stupidest cop out answer to the question that could have possibly been given?
What is the plan to end the sex industry? Answer “That is classified, only the most elite radical feminists know and it is not being revealed at this time to protect it from those that would undermine the freedom of prostituted women.”
yeah Jody or should we say Oliver North?
wince.
Shoot! I had the plan on a CD but I left it in the sun on the dashboard of my car and now it’s all wrinkled up. I’m hoping to get a new plan for my brithday.
…and a spell checker too.
I am serious, you kids need to get out of the house and enjoy life a little. Isn’t there somewhere you would like to be on Friday night?
Love to chat, gotta dance. Later ladies.