Non-feminists, absolutely. I consider myself a pretty hard-line anti-porn feminist, and I hang around with many of the same; I’m not claiming that everyone who fits that description is perfect, but none of the ones I know would tolerate harshing on sex workers. I’m sensitive to the accusation because I’ve so often seen anti-porn arguments dismissed by people saying that they’re just “prudish” or that we’re opposed to the rights and liberties of sex workers. Which is categorically not the case.

Sexual slavery is not the same as sex work, which is what most sex trafficking amounts to.

Agreed, but bearing in mind that somewhere between 30% and 80% of sex workers are estimated to be victims of trafficking (I’m going by UK govt statistics), I think it’s hard to separate the problems of trafficking from the “consensual” side of the sex industry. On the other hand, I do agree with you that there are terrible trafficking problems within farming etc in Europe. (I’m not so familiar with the situation in the US.)

It’s not a question of which job is the worst.

Seeing this discussion, it kind of looks like it is.

That’s not my intention. I’m trying to say that different industries present different problems.

As for your argument that strip clubs cause sexual assault, you’re making the assumption that the club is producing potential rapists, rather than potential rapists being drawn to the clubs. Do you honestly believe that a guy who might rape a woman after seeing a strip show isn’t the kind of guy who probably would have raped a woman, anyway? Objectification is not the same as hypnotizing. If watching a woman take her clothes off on stage is enough to cause a man to rape, I assure you that he would have found another excuse all on his own.

I didn’t say that strip clubs caused rape. I challenged your assertion that the link between sexual assault and strip clubs could only be made “unproblematically” with regard to assaults on the club workers themselves.

Of course I don’t think that the club sits there sucking in innocent, charming men and churning out rapists. I do think that the club contributes to the degradation and commodification of women, though, and my feeling is that this worsens the “ripple effect” that you wrote about.

I wish that it was. With regard to some particularly hard-line anti-porn feminists, it’s not. (I had a reference to a comment thread, but it seems to have been deleted). And in any case, I wasn’t referring to only feminists. Many women who are not feminists oppose strip clubs and have major problems with the women who work there.

But the effects of the exponential rise in human trafficking over the last fifteen years, in addition to sky-high rates of drug abuse, infectious disease, and rapes and beatings on the job, means that sex workers deal with a complex and unusual set of problems.

Sexual slavery is not the same as sex work, which is what most sex trafficking amounts to. But even if it were, the news regularly turns up stories of slavery in garment industry, too. Women in the garment and farm industries also face rapes and beatings. Why? Because they’re usually women of color and undocumented immigrants. So no one gives a shit. As for whether or not people blame farm/garment workers for the abuse that they face, I wish that as true, too. They get the “they wanted to come into this country” and “they’re taking our jobs” and “obviously it’s not so bad or they wouldn’t do it” lines. They can’t even report their rapes, just like sex workers, for fear of being arrested.

It’s not a question of which job is the worst.

Seeing this discussion, it kind of looks like it is.

But it’s hard to deny that strip clubs are part of a cultural trend which seems to be moving towards increased commodification and abstraction of women’s bodies.

I didn’t deny it. In fact, I said it in the post.

As for this tax, it appeals to me simply because it forces patrons to think about why going to a strip club might be linked to rape.

If the men who go to strip clubs behave in the way that you have described, it seems to me that they really don’t give a shit. And I would have said so before your comment.

As for your argument that strip clubs cause sexual assault, you’re making the assumption that the club is producing potential rapists, rather than potential rapists being drawn to the clubs. Do you honestly believe that a guy who might rape a woman after seeing a strip show isn’t the kind of guy who probably would have raped a woman, anyway? Objectification is not the same as hypnotizing. If watching a woman take her clothes off on stage is enough to cause a man to rape, I assure you that he would have found another excuse all on his own.

“But there seems to be this “bad woman” myth going around, that women who work in the sex industry are doing some kind of great disservice to the rest of the female population.”

Is that a strawfeminist? I haven’t really heard any women’s rights supporters take that line.

I also do think that the sex industry does a unique form of damage to women that makes sex worker issues distinct from damaging labour practices in, say, the garment industry or farming. Sex workers generally face many of the same problems as those workers – terrible health & safety record, casual contracts, absence of basic benefits, anti-union policies, etc.

But the effects of the exponential rise in human trafficking over the last fifteen years, in addition to sky-high rates of drug abuse, infectious disease, and rapes and beatings on the job, means that sex workers deal with a complex and unusual set of problems. There’s also the question of public attitudes to their job: I don’t recall any rape trials collapsing recently because some idiot judge or jury considered that all garment workers are “just asking for it anyway.”

It’s not a question of which job is the worst. Each industry contains its own set of problems. But I don’t accept that sex work is a job exactly like any other. I also don’t accept at all that the garment and farming industries do *more* damage to their workers than the sex industry.

Furthermore, I don’t think you can just dismiss the idea that the sex industry feeds into rape culture as well as from it. You say that “strip clubs are actually far more a symptom of our rape culture than a cause” – rather a sweeping generalisation. I don’t think many feminists argue straightforwardly that strip clubs cause rape. Surely such things are chicken-and-egg anyway. But it’s hard to deny that strip clubs are part of a cultural trend which seems to be moving towards increased commodification and abstraction of women’s bodies.

It’s glib in the extreme to suggest that the only sexual assaults you can link to strip clubs are those visited on strippers. I live round the corner from a very large and glitzy strip club myself, and woe betide any woman who dares to walk down the street alone when it comes to chucking-out time. I don’t work there, and I still have to deal with drunken patrons’ catcalls and the occasional one following me down the street. The regular appearance of police boards appealing for information following yet another sexual assault suggests I’ve been lucky so far.

As for this tax, it appeals to me simply because it forces patrons to think about why going to a strip club might be linked to rape. I do agree with a lot of the problems you’ve pointed out with it, but I can’t entirely hate the idea of a group of the sort of smug, entitled bankers who go to my local joint being charged the entry fee, “plus your $5 rape tax.”

A lot of what you’ve said has made me reconsider what would have been my unbridled joy at the news of this proposed tax. Yet I’m not sure whether the blame really is being misplaced in that scenario.

“And it’s also why we need top stop acting like the sex industry is the industry that does the most damage to women.”

I’m confused. Which other industry does more damage to women than the sex industry?