Rhoda Grant and 'entitlement'

I've just spotted an article in the Edinburgh Evening News from just over a week ago, about the owner of an escort agency who is facing a potential jail term, but who vehemently denies that his business has anything to do with prostitution.  It has the rare distinction of including a quote from Labour MSP Rhoda Grant on the sex industry that I actually agree with -

"Escort agencies call themselves something different but it is well understood what people are really buying. No one pays that amount of money for companionship."

I think that's probably right. I know of no credible evidence that any escort agency truly makes money on the basis of non-sexual companionship. Escorts are certainly able to refuse to have sex with any potential client they don't want to have sex with, but the flipside of that decision is that no payment will occur, because everyone knows the payment is either wholly or predominantly in exchange for sex. The idea that clients are only buying companionship is largely a fiction designed for PR purposes and legal cover.

So 1-0 to Rhoda. Unfortunately she then throws it all away with this piece of mind-bending gibberish -

"What he’s basically saying is these people [disabled and vulnerable men] are lesser human beings and not entitled to or able to find a real relationship. I know plenty of disabled people in loving relationships. To say to certain categories of people that they have to pay for sex or company is discrimination at its very worst."

Dear God. Who exactly is forcing anyone to pay for sex, or denying them the ability to have a sexual relationship by any other means? If there was a law to that effect, and Rhoda was spearheading the fight to repeal that law, I'd be right there in her corner. Unfortunately she's not doing that. The legislation that she's proposing will have absolutely no effect on the ability or otherwise of disabled and vulnerable men to successfully form 'real' relationships. But for those disabled and vulnerable men who fail to form such relationships and then seek consensual paid sex as an alternative, Rhoda's plan is to throw them into jail, and treat sex workers who pocket a considerable amount of cash as 'victims' of disabled and vulnerable men. She regards this, astonishingly, as an 'anti-discrimination' measure.

The other word that leaps out at me is 'entitled'. It's very hard to escape the conclusion that Rhoda is implying that disabled men are literally entitled to a 'real relationship' - which presumably suggests a relationship that is sexual, even if it has many other facets as well. If so, that's extraordinary. After all, the basic premise of those like Rhoda who want to criminalise the purchase of sex is that no-one has an entitlement to sex. That doesn't just refer to the blindingly obvious point that an individual does not have an entitlement to sex if no-one consents to have sex with them - it also means they do not have an entitlement to sex even if someone does consent, but does so in 'the wrong way', ie. in exchange for payment. And yet Rhoda suddenly seems to be going to completely the other extreme and declaring that not only does everyone have a right to sex, but also to a fully-fledged relationship to go along with it. How exactly does she propose to enforce that 'entitlement'?

OK, she doesn't. It's waffle.

A useful analogy is the medical supply of blood. A person might need/want a blood donation, but that does not mean they have any right to demand that others donate blood. If no blood is made available, there is no right to the blood of others, and everyone accepts that. By the same token, disabled or vulnerable people have absolutely no right to sex if others are unwilling to consent to it. But if people are willing to donate blood for whatever reason, would it still be justifiable for the state to ban the process on the grounds that "nobody has the right to others' blood"?

Of course it wouldn't. So why does Rhoda think it's any of of her business to prevent women having consensual sex with disabled men, just because she personally finds their reasons for doing so distasteful? We already know what her response would be - it's that women only need the money because of poverty. So yes, rather than criminalising vulnerable people, let's end poverty. That would mean the number of people prepared to have sex in exchange for money would decrease dramatically, and that would be a good thing. It would constitute an enhancement of freedom, because people would at last be freely choosing their ideal way of life, rather than freely choosing the 'least worst option' available. But it would also mean that the number of people willing to work as cleaners or shelf-stackers would decrease dramatically, for exactly the same reason. Would Rhoda and the Labour party (so wedded to the Blunkett doctrine that even the most menial and unpleasant work is good for the human spirit and somehow "heals the sick") join me in celebrating that enhancement of freedom? I somehow doubt it.

We've arrived at the curious position where Labour still believe in socialism, but only when they talk about sex work.

Rhoda Grant and the elusive consultation response

I haven't been following the news compulsively of late, so I only discovered a couple of hours ago that Labour MSP Rhoda Grant recently published the results of the consultation on her ideological desire to criminalise the purchase of sex. As regular readers will know, I responded to the consultation (to oppose the proposal), and my first thought was to quickly double-check that my response had actually been taken into account. I was slightly disturbed to see that my name didn't seem to be on the list of 953 respondents. It was hard to be 100% sure because the names weren't presented in alphabetical order, but I went through them three or four times without any luck. My fears were not allayed by the shorter list (which appeared to be intended as comprehensive) of the types of individual who had responded -

"campaign and community workers (in a personal capacity but with experience of working in relevant organisations (Wellcome Trust, Exodus Cry Houston Prayer Watch, Cardiff and Merthyr Tydfil group, Street Ministry, NGO, Navigators, Stop the Traffick, Act for Justice, Youth with a Mission (YWAM), Stellas Voice charity, Act for Justice group, Dunfermline)
Queens Park Baptist Church Action for Justice Group, Glasgow
co-ordinator & befriender for Destiny Lifeline which is part of Destiny Church
workers with a faith-based justice non-profit organisation
anti-trafficking workers and supporters
director of Prevention for Exodus City
worker with homeless and city mission
worker with victims of abuse
worker in a women’s hostel
volunteers with Glasgow City Mission
workers with homeless charities
worker for Women’s Aid refuge
sex workers (male and female)
homosexual sex worker
migrant and sex worker
independent escorts
worker in a massage parlour
contributor to an escort forum
people who use escort services
worker in psychosexual somatics
Christians
parish minister
parish worker
church goer
baptist minister
member of the North Devon House of Prayer in Barnstaple
local church Senior Pastor in east end of Glasgow
manager of a Christian drop-in centre
academics
lecturer
guidance teacher
teachers
counsellor
psychotherapists
psychologist
undergraduate Law student
student
independent researcher on male violence against women
German researcher based in Berlin
retired solicitor and criminal prosecutor
trained paediatric occupational therapist
military doctor
GPs
addictions medical officer
health visitor
social worker
family mediator
victims and offenders mediator
workers in nursing
scientist and scientific journal editor
freelance writer
writer and performer
business owner
foster parents
worker with Barnardo’s Scotland
registered child minder
worked in the Police force
retired police officer"

None of those descriptions apply to me. The only one that is even vaguely close is "freelance writer", but that would be a bit of a stretch, and certainly isn't how I described myself in my submission. I had horrible visions of having to trawl through hundreds of responses to see if I had been incorrectly put in the 'anonymous' column, but first of all I decided to check similar names. To my relief, I discovered that my submission was there, but under the name 'James'. Quite why my surname had been withheld is a bit of a mystery, as it certainly wasn't something that I requested.

I don't have much experience with parliamentary consultations, and I must say that the process of responding to this one hasn't filled me with huge confidence. It just doesn't seem satisfactory that responses have to be sent to a person (ie. Ms Grant herself) who has a vested interest in the consultation having a particular outcome. OK, in this instance she seems to have processed the responses conscientiously (although I had my doubts for thirty or forty minutes), but there's an important principle at stake here - sporting events use neutral referees for a good reason. Apart from anything else, the mere perception of bias in the conduct of a consultation could be enough to deter responses from one side of the debate, and thus skew the outcome.

Whether that's the explanation for the depressing outcome of this consultation is anyone's guess. But there's not much doubt that the majority of submissions were from a narrow bunch of ideologues who were encouraged to reply en masse. Hopefully parliamentarians will once again be able to wade through the sea of dogma, and home in on the evidence-based responses from academics that ripped Ms Grant's arguments to shreds.

* * *

UPDATE : Perhaps I spoke too soon - this blogpost refers to 70 submissions that are missing from the consultation, "all opposed".

Response to Rhoda Grant's consultation on criminalising the purchase of sex

Having got into the swing of responding to consultations earlier in the year, I thought I'd have another go with Labour MSP Rhoda Grant's consultation on criminalising the purchase of sex (ie. the Swedish model). I was particularly motivated to take part given that the last consultation on this subject, conducted by Trish Godman, was such a complete joke from beginning to end.

* * *

I am resident in Scotland, and I am responding to this consultation as a private individual. I am a political blogger, but I do not represent anyone other than myself. I am not a sex worker, and to the best of my knowledge I do not know any sex workers. However, given that much of the impetus for the proposed law change comes from women who themselves have little or no knowledge of sex workers, and who primarily see the potential Bill as a means to advance ‘gender equality’ in broad-brush terms (as opposed to improving the lot of individual sex workers in a real-world setting), it seems reasonable to suppose that many of the responses to the consultation will be from women who are as detached from the central issue as I am. There will also undoubtedly be many responses from rather more knowledgeable women, keen to explain how misconceived and counter-productive the proposal is from the point of view of their own gender. But what may well be largely missing is the voice of men. That is deeply ironic, given that the most direct impact of the legislation would be on men, not women. The intention is simple – to criminalise and shame men, and men only, for indulging in a certain type of consensual sex. Given that this disgracefully discriminatory use of the criminal law would be directed against our gender, I feel that it is vital that as many men as possible speak out in opposition, regardless of whether we would be personally affected by the legislation.

It’s important first of all to identify the precise rationale for the desire to discriminate against men. Your consultation document repeatedly uses language that is suggestive of a crusade against slavery in a literal sense - “sexual servitude…a commodity to be bought and sold”. But we know that you cannot be referring to literal slavery, because payment for sex where coercion or trafficking is involved is already comprehensively criminalised and severely punishable. The proposed law change can therefore only have consensual paid sex in its sights. In which case, how can your use of language be justified? Are we supposed to infer that sexual servitude is a self-imposed phenomenon?

Although you don’t spell it out, the answer is of course that you buy into the fantastical ideology that underpins the Swedish law banning the purchase of sex. In noting that the bulk of sex workers are female and that the majority of their clients are male, you discount the obvious explanation of biological differences between the genders, and instead see a manifestation of systematic exploitation and oppression of women by men. It doesn’t matter that many female sex workers believe they are making a free choice, because this is a type of ‘false consciousness’ caused by the economic constraints that women live under in their state of oppression.

The only problem, of course, is that this is bunkum. Men are just as likely to find themselves under the type of financial pressure that drives some women to become sex workers, but the difference is that women may feel they have one additional option open to them. Indeed, one of the papers you cite quotes women who make clear that they do not regard sex work as the only option they have been left with, but simply as an option that is preferable to all the others –

‘What job pays £60, £100 a night? Sometimes you can earn £100 in an hour if it’s busy. You know where you’re well off, don’t you?’

Like you, I come at this issue from a left-of-centre perspective. I can allow myself to imagine a utopian society in which it might be considered a desirable thing that virtually no man has access to consensual paid sex, for the simple reason that no woman feels driven by financial considerations to offer it. But in that utopia, no man or woman would do any other type of work that they would not choose to do if free from financial pressures. Very few people would choose to be cleaners in that scenario, for example. What confuses me is that your party is keen on that (essentially Marxist) utopian ideal for the sole purpose of eliminating sex work, but loathes it in every other context. All forms of potentially unpleasant work other than sex work are not only deemed tolerable, but are considered morally virtuous. Indeed, during the Blunkett era, we were told that work – any work – was an all-purpose cure for sickness, depression and suicidal thoughts. The end result of this bizarre example of doublethink is that you would seek to force many sex workers into another unpleasant job that pays less and that they prefer less.

To put it mildly, that is not a laudable goal in a supposedly liberal society. Until and unless utopia arrives, we ought to be clear-sighted about sex work as being just one more imperfect – but legitimate - option in a world full of imperfect options.

It’s also worth pointing out that a significant minority of the clients of sex workers are disabled men seeking sex for therapeutic reasons, men seeking sex from other men, or women seeking sex from either men or other women. The idea that these individuals are the malevolent drivers of the Great Male Oppression of Women is, I would hope, self-evidently ludicrous enough to illustrate the nonsense of the ideology that lies behind this proposal. In respect of disabled men, some surveys have shown that female sex workers are concerned that they are exploiting their more vulnerable clients (for financial gain), rather than the other way round.

I will turn now to the specific questions contained in the consultation document.

Q1: Do you support the general aim of the proposed Bill? Please indicate “yes/no/undecided” and explain the reasons for your response.

No, for the reasons stated in my introduction. I also want to challenge some of your own reasons for reaching the opposite conclusion.

“For example 75% of women in prostitution in the UK became involved when they were children…”

That statistic appears to be pure invention. The study you cite questioned only street prostitutes who started work before the age of 18. By definition, therefore, 100% of that sample became involved in prostitution when they were children, not 75%! The 75% figure is the percentage of the sample who reported that they were still working at the time of the study. How you get from there to the claim that 75% of all female prostitutes (not just street prostitutes) started when they were children is something of a mystery, and to put it mildly, this calls into question the credibility of the evidential basis for your proposal.

“The buying of sexual activity is sexual exploitation and is recognised as a form of violence against women.”

Recognised by whom? Your statement may be literally true in the sense that some people (for ideological reasons) regard all paid sex, no matter how consensual, as “violence against women”. It would also be literally true to say that the moon landings are “recognised” as fake, in the sense that some people devoutly believe that to be the case. In neither example is there any particular reason to suppose that this represents the consensus of opinion. Most people, I would submit, expect actual violence to be present in an act of “violence against women”, and not just the incorporeal type of ‘violence’ you are somehow able to discern in consensual paid sex.

“International and Scottish evidence based research suggests that men who have purchased sexual activity believe that a number of consequences including legal penalties, financial penalties or public exposure could act as an effective deterrent if effectively enforced.”

Placing men, and only men, on the Sex Offenders’ Register if they cheat on their wives would also be a highly effective deterrent against the committing of adultery. But it would still be a very silly, illiberal, and discriminatory thing to do.

“The study also indicated harmful and violent attitudes of men who buy sexual activity:

32% stated that rape happens because men get sexually carried away; or (34%) because their sex drive gets “out of control”;

12% said that the rape of a prostitute or call girl was not possible; while 10% asserted that the concept of rape simply does not apply to women in prostitution.”

There have also been numerous studies and surveys showing very similar results among the general male population. It could well be that if a sample of television repairmen were interviewed, 12% of them would also say that the rape of a call girl is impossible. Would this mean that the repairing of televisions contributes to harmful and violent attitudes? Of course not. It would simply mean that television repairmen are representative of the male population at large.

It’s perfectly conceivable that there may be a correlation between paying for sex and harmful attitudes about rape, but the figures you cite utterly fail to establish one.

Q2: What do you believe would be the effects of legislating to criminalise the purchase of sex (as outlined above)? Please provide evidence to support your answer.

Given that your proposal is essentially identical to the laws already in force in Sweden and Norway, the best way of predicting the effect is to examine the Scandinavian experience. This shows that your law will entirely fail to have the desired effect of literally ‘ending’ demand for paid sex. It will in turn fail in its secondary objective of leaving women who suffer from ‘false consciousness’ (those who ‘erroneously’ think they have made a free choice to sell sex) with little choice but to abandon their work. There will still be many potential clients for sex workers, and therefore sex work will continue. However, the profile of the potential client base will change in character. With ‘nicer’ clients most likely to be deterred by the change in the law, prostitutes will increasingly be forced to take their chances with more violent and abusive clients if they want to maintain their livelihoods. They will also have little choice but to assist their clients in evading detection by the police, leading to the abandonment of vital safety precautions.

As far as women who are not sex workers are concerned, there is some evidence that draconian legislation on prostitution increases the rape rate –

“In the multiple regression model the rape rate was shown to be correlated with the homicide rate and anti-correlated with the availability of prostitution. Both relationships were at above the 95% confidence level. It is estimated that if prostitution were legalized in the United States, the rape rate would decrease by roughly 25% for a decrease of approximately 25,000 rapes per year.”

In a nutshell, your proposal will increase the risk of actual - as opposed to metaphysical - violence against women.

Q3: Are you aware of any unintended consequences or loopholes caused by the offence? Please provide evidence to support your answer.

It’s impossible for me to judge the extent to which the harmful consequences I’ve listed above are unforeseen or ‘unintended’. Some apologists for the Swedish model openly acknowledge the increased trauma that has been caused to thousands of sex workers, but regard that as a price worth paying for the prize of a largely symbolic law. I would hope that forms no part of the thinking of proponents of the Scottish proposal, and that they regard the real-world welfare of sex workers as more important than the pursuit of ideological purity, but the wording of much of your consultation paper leaves me with grave concerns on that point.

Q4: What are the advantages or disadvantages in using the definitions outlined above?

I would suggest the disadvantage is not the difficulty in working out what a reasonable person would construe as “sexual”, but rather the difficulty in working out what constitutes a reasonable person.

Q5: What do you think the appropriate penalty should be for the offence? Please provide reasons for your answer.

Obviously I do not think there should be any penalty at all. However, I am aware of the absurdly extreme suggestions that have already been made by some respondents to this consultation, such as lengthy jail sentences and public shaming in newspapers. I would simply note the grotesqueness of applying such penalties to, for example, a vulnerable disabled man who spends a large percentage of his disposable income on a high class escort. They would, I presume, constitute his ‘punishment’ for an act of ‘violence’ against a woman who cheerfully pockets that money and uses it to help fund a life of considerable luxury.

Q6: How should a new offence provision be enforced? Are there any techniques which might be used or obstacles which might need to be overcome?

Q7: What is your assessment of the likely financial implications of the proposed Bill to you or your organisation; if possible please provide evidence to support your view? What (if any) other significant financial implications are likely to arise?

On both questions 6 and 7, I would refer you back to the serious concerns identified by the Association of Chief Police Officers in their submission to Trish Godman’s consultation.

Q8: Is the proposed Bill likely to have any substantial positive or negative implications for equality? If it is likely to have a substantial negative implication, how might this be minimised or avoided?

Your proposal will have profoundly negative implications for gender equality, for the very simple reason that it is intended to. Female sex workers and their male clients will no longer enjoy equality before the law when they enter into a consensual paid sex transaction. Both genders will suffer harmful consequences – men will be less equal than women in respect of the criminal law, but women will be less equal than men in the perception of a society that has deemed them incapable of making free, rational decisions and being held responsible for them.

There is no way of ‘minimising’ these negative implications. They can be avoided by not enacting the proposed Bill.

* * *

You can read Ms Grant's whole consultation document, and find information on how to submit a response, by clicking HERE.

No, a sham consultation is not 'proof' of anything

Rather like Arnold Schwarzenegger refusing to die in the Terminator films, the one slice of Marxist-inspired thinking that Scottish Labour remains quaintly wedded to has just reared its ugly head again. The Highlands Labour MSP Rhoda Grant has picked up where Trish Godman left off, and embarked on yet another attempt to impose on society the dogmatic and faintly ludicrous notion that the buying and selling of sex, no matter how consensual, always constitutes "violence against women", and that it is somehow possible by legal means to "end demand" for prostitution, thus eradicating the "violence". Her bill would introduce the discriminatory Swedish model, which criminalises the clients of prostitutes, but regards sex workers themselves (even those acting entirely independently and earning a decent living from their chosen form of work) as "victims" who don't know their own minds.

I develop a bit of a headache every time I try to work out how on earth infantilising women in this way, and telling them that they alone are incapable of taking rational decisions for themselves, is supposed to assist the cause of gender equality. The explanation from radical feminist groups would doubtless include the all-purpose get-out clause of 'patriarchy' rather a lot. But are we really expected to believe that a patriarchal system, in Scotland in the year 2012, makes it so impossible for women (but not men) to have access to money that they literally have no choice but to become prostitutes? That is the only way that sex workers acting independently could even conceivably be regarded as "victims of male violence against women", but it just doesn't describe a world I recognise. Many people of both genders have money problems, and I'm quite sure that many sex workers would in an ideal world rather be doing another job or no job at all - but then so would many cleaners and factory workers. Are those people all victims of violence? In many cases, sex workers have simply looked at the range of options open to them and chosen the one they most prefer, or least dislike. That is indistinguishable from the choice made by the vast majority of people in the working world - the only gender difference being, frankly, that some women may feel that an extra (and potentially lucrative) option is open to them that is not open to men. But even the latter point is far from an absolute - men pay men for sex, women pay men for sex, and women pay women for sex. All of those facts make the claim that paid sex is always a form of male violence against women, somewhat problematical to say the least.

Indeed, if Rhoda Grant's proposal became law, one of two things would be bound to happen -

1) Women who paid men or other women for sex, or men who paid other men for sex, would be convicted of a criminal offence on the implicit grounds that they had committed "male violence against women".

2) The law would be implemented selectively, in order to maintain the ideologically-driven fiction that the only form of prostitution that exists is women being "forced" to have sex with men in exchange for money (often rather a lot of money).

Call me cynical, but scenario 2 seems far more probable.

The greatest absurdity of all is that Ms Grant is seeking a waiver that would allow her bill to proceed without a consultation process - on the grounds that the outcome of the consultation on Trish Godman's doomed bill in the last parliamentary session has already "proved" the need for a change in the law. For the uninitiated, that consultation would have been a strong contender in any 'Sham Consultation of the Year Awards'. It made the UK government's recent consultation on the independence referendum look like a model of neutrality and open-mindedness. The first question enquired whether respondents wanted to criminalise both the sex worker and the client, or just the client, and simply took it as read that no-one in their right mind would want to maintain the status quo of criminalising neither. That wording was presumably intended to 'lead' anyone opposed to the criminalisation of sex workers, and nudge them towards the Swedish model as the 'only' option available. Many of the other questions related to 'barriers to enforcement' of the proposed law, which again was intended to communicate the message that the only objections any reasonable person could possibly raise would be technical and practical ones, rather than objections to the whole principle of a discriminatory law.

A tiny number of responses was received, mostly from groups and individuals with a fierce ideological commitment to the Swedish model. When news leaked out that two-thirds of respondents had answered 'yes' to a question which essentially made 'no' impossible, one of the respondents tweeted "Yay!". Which is as much as to say "Yippee, we all agree with ourselves!".

Of course a consultation is needed if this bill is going to see the light of day, and a genuine one this time.

A free choice to make the 'right' decision?

Remember Sophie Bridger, the young Liberal Democrat candidate in the Inverclyde by-election who made the soon-to-be-MP for the constituency look about two feet tall in one of the TV debates? Well, I just happened to stumble across a blogpost of hers from a few weeks ago, on the subject of the Icelandic bans on strip clubs and the purchase of sex -

“'I guess the men of Iceland will just have to get used to the idea that women are not for sale.' It’s hard not to be won over by such emotive words from Guðrún Jónsdóttir of Stígamót, an Icelandic campaigning organisation against sex work. I would love to live in a country without strip clubs, lapdancing or prostitution...

Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that legislation of this nature is illiberal. Whose rights are being infringed by a cheap lapdance? Not the buyer – he’s paying for a service. If the lapdancer is providing that service willingly, and not being coerced into her work, then she’s not having her rights infringed either. There are sex workers who do it because they enjoy it – not because they are being coerced, or to pay for a drug habit. So why should we prevent them from doing their work?

It’s not that simple, of course. People are being forced into prostitution, through trafficking and addiction and that is not acceptable. But criminalising prostitution will just push it underground, putting already vulnerable sex workers in danger...

...Liberalism means letting people make their own decisions. All we can do is ensure that those who engage in sex work do it because they want to, not because they have to. I hope that one day, I will live in a society without prostitution – not because it is illegal, but because women have decided that they are not for sale."

I think the last point is naive and unrealistic - giving people a free choice, but ultimately expecting every last one of them to exercise that free choice in conformity with the values of just one section of society, is a contradiction in terms. Human beings are made differently from each other - and the fact that many people find prostitution incomprehensible or morally objectionable is neither here nor there to the minority of women and men who take the opposite view and make a free choice to become sex workers. By the same token, there are many other much more 'legitimate' jobs that, if we're honest, a lot of us would never dream of doing and wouldn't want members of our families to do - but the idea of wanting those jobs to literally cease to exist on the basis of those subjective feelings is silly.

However, I agree with the main thrust of Sophie's argument. The current Icelandic government is the first majority left-wing administration the country has seen in its history - and it's a great shame that such a welcome development has almost inevitably been accompanied by the customary pigheadedness of the Nordic left in relation to sex work, refusing to see the industry in its true complex form, and instead reducing everything in infantile fashion to 'male exploitation of women'.

UPDATE (12:50pm) : A final little flurry in the Total Politics Awards - this blog has been voted the 95th best political blog in the UK (having failed to make the top 300 last year), and I've been voted the 143rd best political blogger. Thanks again for all your support.

Word-Search Wednesday : Denis MacShane's greatest hits

I'm still undecided about whether Word-Search Wednesday will be a regular feature, but after perusing Denis MacShane's Wikipedia biography it was extremely tough to resist this one...

(Click to enlarge)

One lesson I learned from the George Foulkes word-search is that these puzzles are much too difficult to solve unless the words to look for are provided, so I'm going to reveal them straight away this time -

Stalin : Denis once pointed out that left-wingers who campaigned against the Iraq War were just like the left-wing apologists for Stalin in the 1930s. Well, someone had to say what everyone else was thinking.

Nicolas Sarkozy : The candidate who Denis, as a well-known socialist, naturally wanted to win the French presidential election of 2007. Apparently Ségolène Royal was anti-Semitic, or something.

José María Aznar : The conservative Spanish Prime Minister who in 2004 appeared set to win the general election. Denis, as a well-known socialist, was naturally delighted, particularly because all those forlorn left-wing hopes that Aznar's support for the unpopular Iraq War might be his downfall were about to be dashed.

José Zapatero : The socialist who won the 2004 Spanish general election, partly because of Aznar's support for the unpopular Iraq War. Denis naturally professed himself delighted - it was what he'd wanted all along.

Khalid Mahmood : In the early days of the Afghanistan War, Denis penned an Observer article entitled 'The Five Myths Muslims Must Deny', but selflessly allowed Muslim MP Khalid Mahmood to take all the credit. It was just a favour for a pal, really - Denis had initially offered to do exactly the same favour for Lord Ahmed, who weirdly couldn't bring himself to accept such generosity.

"A giant red herring" : How Denis described Gordon Brown's famous "five economic tests".

"Jesus Christ, no" : How Denis responded when asked by the Scotsman if he had described Gordon Brown's famous five economic tests as a giant red herring.

Survive in government : What Denis told the Scotsman would be impossible for anyone to do if they had described Gordon Brown's famous five economic tests as a giant red herring.

It was on tape : The reason we know that Denis did, in fact, describe Gordon Brown's famous five economic tests as a giant red herring.

"I have no idea why I was removed as a a minister" : Denis later candidly confessed that he was clueless as to why he didn't survive in government after describing Gordon Brown's famous five economic tests as a giant red herring.

His garage : The place Denis claimed £125,000 worth of parliamentary expenses for.

Suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party : What Denis now is as a result of claiming £125,000 worth of parliamentary expenses for his garage.

Asperger's : Gary McKinnon, the man faced with the terrifying prospect of being caged as a "terrorist" in the US for the unspeakable crime of seeking information about UFOs, has this syndrome. Or, at least, that's the official story, but Denis reckons it's all a crafty ruse. What's that? You want evidence that the doctors got it all wrong? I'm appalled. Look no further than Denis' intellect.

Twenty-five thousand : The number of "sex slaves" (trafficked women) Denis claimed the Home Office had estimated were "working in the massage parlours and brothels" of the UK. No such estimate ever existed, and the true figure is likely to be a small fraction of the number Denis quoted.

A different journalism : What Denis suggested should report on prostitution in future, after struggling to answer the impertinent questions asked by journalism in its current form about where the twenty-five thousand figure had come from.

Apologise : What Denis once suggested Ossama el Batran should do for every killing of a Jew by Hamas. El Batran was not a member or supporter of Hamas, but rather an Egyptian postgraduate student at Cambridge University. However, he'd asked Denis a probing question, so deserved nothing less.

Mussolini : The democratically-elected President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, was temporarily deposed by a military coup during Denis' fondly-remembered stint as Minister for Europe. Denis shrewdly realised that the best way of helping the situation was to call Chavez a "ranting populist demagogue" and to compare him to Mussolini, along with a strategic pretence that the military men were acting on behalf of "the people". This daring gambit paid off - democracy was restored within days, as Denis later jubilantly confirmed had been his objective all along. A grateful nation subsequently funded a statue of Denis in Caracas by popular subscription.

Indelible pink paint : What Denis was once undeservedly sprayed with after being undeservedly driven to a remote village and undeservedly stripped naked.

And that's the lot. I'll try to post the solution to the puzzle over the weekend.

If you're a sex worker or cleaner and think you know your own mind, forget it

Is there a more satisfying sight known to man than that of Labour outcast Denis MacShane making a prize idiot of himself - again? My previous favourite example was when he wrote an article in the run-up to the 2004 Spanish general election, gloating that his own party's socialist allies were going to reap no reward for opposing the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq. A few days later, the socialist leader Zapatero was Prime Minister-elect of Spain, and the country's troops were looking forward to an unexpectedly swift departure from Iraq. MacShane characteristically brazened it out, hastily redefining the outcome as yet another unalloyed triumph for the Third Way!

His latest foot-in-mouth moment came when he went off on one in the House of Commons about an LSE professor of feminist political theory who asks her students as part of their course to consider whether there is any difference between women hiring themselves out as "low paid and often badly treated cleaners", and hiring themselves out as prostitutes. MacShane denounced this as the peddling of "poisonous drivel", but there was just one snag - the professor in question, Anne Phillips, actually does believe there is a fundamental distinction between the two concepts, as her extensive writing on the topic confirms. To a degree, therefore, she is actually on MacShane's side, but was he intelligent enough to spot that? Was he intelligent enough to even consider the possibility? To him, someone who isn't prepared to close down all thought and debate on the subject must be an apologist for the trafficking of women and exploitative prostitution.

And that, in a nutshell, is what is so wrong with Labour's approach (and indeed the approach of some politicians from other parties) to prostitution and other aspects of gender politics. It was no surprise that when MacShane finally made a less-than-gracious apology for insulting Anne Phillips, he revealed himself to be yet another Labour supporter of the Swedish model on prostitution law, which on ideological rather than rational grounds defines even the most scrupulously consensual and non-coercive transaction between a sex worker and client as "male violence against women" - including, perversely, when the "perpetrator" is not male, or when the "victim" is not female. Adherence to this warped logic invariably goes hand in hand with an unshakeable belief that a huge percentage of sex workers are trafficked and/or coerced. When the often patently ludicrous statistical "evidence" offered in support of this belief is challenged by the likes of Laura Agustin, the response is generally the rough equivalent of MacShane's hysterical reaction to Phillips' encouragement of debate. You cannot challenge what we already know to be true! Thinking is not permitted! Those who think are on the side of men who abuse and exploit women!

Any ideology that can only sustain itself by shutting down thought and disallowing awkward questions must be a weak one indeed. With that in mind, it's highly significant that it was the specific comparison with unpleasant cleaning work that hit such a nerve with MacShane. After all, his ideology won't permit the possibility that some prostitutes might legitimately dissent from his view that sex work is always demeaning and can never be consensual - if they believe they feel differently, it's by definition a kind of 'false consciousness'. And yet, of course, virtually any other kind of work is regarded by Labour on equally dubious ideological grounds as an all-purpose boon for the well-being of the individual. Once again, they have the phony evidence at their fingertips to 'prove' it - David Blunkett can recite it backwards. Cleaning toilets for eight hours a day cures depression and banishes all suicidal thoughts! Nothing is better for a bad back than some good old-fashioned manual labour! Any kind of work at all is better for the sick and vulnerable than (gasp) being on benefit. And if they don't realise that, well...they simply don't know what's good for them, do they, and must be 'helped' to see things as they really are. Sound familiar?

So to sum up : prostitutes who take a personal view that their work is not demeaning or exploitative are not entitled to that opinion. But cleaners who take a personal view that their work is demeaning, exploitative or bad for their health are not entitled to that opinion either. Little wonder, then, that some people are so scared of allowing rational thought to be brought to bear on this authoritarian and absurdly contradictory belief-system. Of course, it also begs the question of exactly what pay-grade you have to reach before you're allowed to know your own mind about what you do for a living. Suspended Labour member of parliament, perhaps?

My response to Indy on prostitution

I've been having an exchange with Indy on a previous thread about the discriminatory Swedish law on prostitution, and as my latest reply was several light-years over the character limit, I though I might as well devote a fresh post to it! Indy had said -

"In Scotland both buying and selling sex is illegal as I understand it..."

Not so - in fact, the opposite of that statement is true. All sorts of things associated with prostitution are currently outlawed (kerb-crawling, overt advertising of sexual services, etc.) but the actual buying and selling of sex behind closed doors is perfectly legal. In fact, it's so legal, it's taxed. The Trish Godman proposal to import the Swedish law would change that, criminalising only the buyer, while perversely leaving the seller with no responsibility whatever for what would by then be regarded as an illegitimate transaction, even when that person is acting completely independently.

"In the first place the Belle De Jour type of prostitute (if she really exists)..."

If by "Belle de Jour type of prostitute" you simply mean someone working through free choice and without coercion, yes of course they exist, and in considerable numbers. For example, see this open letter to Holyrood from one such person -

"My name is Laura and I am an independent escort. I am not pimped, coerced or working under duress in any way. I am not labouring under any addiction, nor am I the product of an abusive background. I have been a sex worker for some 16 years and it’s fair to say I love my job.

The first part of Trish Godman’s opening statement makes for interesting reading ;

“People who buy sex do so of their own free will, whereas the majority of prostitutes are unwilling participants in this exchange of cash for sex.”

Of what “majority” does she speak, exactly ? Over the years I have met women working at every level of the sex industry and in fact, it has been my experience that the vast majority of those women are happy in their work. Sure, there are days we dislike, the same as every other job, but the only women I have ever encountered who are truly unhappy are those who are drug addicted, or trapped through fear. This proposed legislative change does not take the above into account in any way, it seeks to prohibit the purchase of sex regardless of any circumstances."

Returning again to Indy's comment -

"she...is not likely to come to the attention of the police in the first place and if she does i.e. if a self-employed woman, not being coerced or constrained into acting as a prostitute, makes her living providing a sexual service for a particular group of clients e.g. disabled men then she could probably get herself classified as a sex therapist of some sort and thus be outside the application of the law."

Because she is presumably working behind closed doors and takes care over how she advertises her services, she already is outside the application of the law, and the introduction of the Swedish model would not change that. The question you instead need to address is why it is just or rational to criminalise her disabled clients (or indeed her other clients), but not her, when she is getting as much out of that consensual transaction as they are. Furthermore, your hint that prostitution might be acceptable as long as only "certain groups" are the purchasers opens up a whole new can of worms, and another area of inequality before the law if we were ever to go down that road.

"For practical purposes the laws on prostitution these days relate primarily to street prostitution and to the provision of prostitutes as part of organised criminal activity."

As I understand it, you're saying that's precisely as it should be. Why, then, do you want to introduce a law that would change that?

"After all it would serve no-one's interests to lock up even more drug addicts in our already overcrowded jails and everyone recognises that."

Would it serve anyone's interests to lock up (or more likely heavily fine) disabled clients of prostitutes? I can't find the link, but I seem to recall reading a study that suggested that as many as a third of the clients of sex workers are "the lonely and the sad", ie. not necessarily disabled, but very far removed from the one-dimensional charaterisation of clients we're supposed to be buying into. Trying to create a legal framework that casts all these people regardless of circumstance and motivation as "exploiters of women", and the people who freely choose to provide them with sex (many of whom are not even women) in exchange for often considerable financial reward as "victims of male violence against women" is plainly nonsensical, and worthy of the logical contortions seen in authoritarian states down the years, where whole swathes of law is/was rooted in dogmatic articles of faith, rather than the "seeking of truth from facts".

For the avoidance of doubt, I'll go back and emphasise the point "freely choose to provide". If the prostitute is not acting freely, of course the law should take punitive action against whoever is responsible for de facto slavery. But that's not what the Swedish approach is about.

"That's why it would be much more effective to focus on arresting and charging the clients."

I've already set out why I don't think that's true, and this article expands on that point much more comprehensively than I can, explaining why the much-trumpeted "success" of the Swedish model is a mirage born out of wishful thinking. But even if, for the sake of argument, your proposition was correct, I would still have considerable difficulty with the idea that "effectiveness" automatically trumps natural justice and equality before the law. After all, a law relating to street violence that solely criminalised males under the age of 25 (and allowed everyone else to act with impunity) might well be reasonably "effective" at tackling the problem, but I trust most people would accept that it would be grossly discriminatory, and contrary to our most fundamental values as a liberal democracy.

Gender politics : time to 'seek truth from facts'?

Indy left an interesting comment on my post about gender politics the other day -

"I don't actually agree with you there. There are certain types of employment that attract different genders. The majority of care workers are women, the vast majority of NHS staff are women, the vast majority of nursery staff and primary teachers are women. The vast majority of bankers are men.

So there is a gender aspect to the situation we are in because the UK Government's cuts will hit women working delivering health or social care services much harder than they will affect the bankers - although bankers have far more responsibility for creating the financial situation which has led to the cuts in the first place.

To add insult to injury we are repeatedly told that the cuts are necessary because we have all been "living beyond our means" - as though the country is teetering on bankruptcy because we have too many nurses or care assistants or nursery teachers. I think we all know that is the most arrant nonsense.

At the end of the day the UK Government has made its choices because it values the work of bankers more than it values the work of nurses or care workers or teachers. Are you so sure that this is not because the bankers are overwhelmingly men and the nurses, care workers and teachers are overwhelmingly women?"

What I find most striking here is that Indy starts by saying he/she disagrees with me, but nothing from that point on actually directly takes issue with what I said, which was about discriminatory thinking on the part of policy-makers in relation to domestic violence and prostitution, and also about whether generically blaming "men" for the financial crisis was sexist. It seems to me that the implicit suggestion is that by identifying areas of discrimination and prejudice against men, I am by definition denying that there is still discrimination and prejudice against women. It should surely be obvious that simply doesn't follow, and as it happens it categorically isn't true. I wouldn't disagree for a moment that women are being disproportionately affected by the Westmister cuts. I've no idea whether sexism is a driving force behind the coalition's actions, but the notion certainly doesn't strike me as being inherently implausible.

So what is going on here? Why do so many on the left refuse to accept that it's perfectly possible to simultaneously acknowledge the existence of discrimination on the basis of gender against both men and women? I pointed out in my earlier post that Scottish Labour's attitude to gender politics is rooted in Marxism, and that's not a bad place to look for the explanation. A hundred years ago, both gender and class inequality was a one-way street - it was almost always women and an easily-defined working class who found themselves on the wrong end. Faced with a world of such clear-cut contrasts, it was easy for reformers to come up with equally clear-cut narratives to explain the underlying problem - the exploitation of one class by another, and the exploitation of women by men. An "original sin" analysis, you might almost say. The consequential logic is obvious - to claim that other groups (eg. men) suffer from inequality is one way of denying that original sin, and thus to perpetuate the root cause of the oppression. That's the prism through which much of the left continues to view gender politics today.

But the world has moved on, and the pattern of inequality and injustice is now much more complex, both in relation to gender and class. Original sin no longer makes sense as a comprehensive explanation - which also means that, contrary to appearances at the time, it never fully made sense. The analysis contained flaws from the start. Deng Xiaoping recognised that in the late 1970s when he moved the Chinese Communist Party away from the rigid dogma of class struggle that was holding his country's development back. The guiding principle from then on was to "seek truth from facts". Now, strange though it may seem to advise our politicians to take a leaf out of a dictator's book, I'd have to say that's an excellent motto to apply to gender politics in this country. The business of the left should be to combat injustice and inequality without fear or favour wherever the facts suggest it exists - not to distort those facts to fit a redundant narrative of blame it has (understandably) become emotionally wedded to as a result of decades of struggle to advance women's rights. That means, for instance, championing the cause of all victims of domestic violence on an equal basis, and not solely the ones who fit the "original sin" template, ie. women beaten by men.

A few more examples off the top of my head of the double-standards this ideology leads to -

1) I recall seeing an article in the Scotsman two or three years back, about how the medical profession was expected on the basis of statistical projections to become heavily dominated by women in the years to come. Someone was quoted as saying that, instead of seeing this as a "problem" that had to be addressed, we should instead be embracing the advantages brought about by the "feminisation" of medicine. Now, can anyone keep a straight face when arguing that we should stop seeing the male domination of the political class as a problem, and instead celebrate the wonderful "masculinity" of the House of Commons?

2) Probably the most fundamental gender inequality of the lot is that women live several years longer than men. Some of that differential is biologically unavoidable, but by no means all of it. If the situation was reversed and men lived longer, it seems highly probable that it would be a policy priority to reduce the longevity gap by identifying and addressing the underlying causes. There would certainly be no suggestion from the left that women only have themselves to blame for dying younger. But, as it is, what is the reaction to men's plight? More often than not, a patronising and disinterested observation that they don't look after their health as well as women. To call that "pathetic" doesn't even begin to do it justice. Actually, we might look back to point 1 for part of the explanation for why men are less careful about their health - the feminisation of doctor's surgeries. Similarly, the feminisation of education must surely be a factor in boys falling behind in so many subjects - but, again, ideology doesn't permit us to view that as in any sense a "problem". It's always boys' fault for not adapting to the preferred methods of their teachers, and never the other way round.

3) Jim White wrote an excellent piece on Yahoo the other day, pointing out the supreme irony in Richard Keys' claim that football had "gone mad" for introducing a female assistant referee to the top flight of the sport, when it was he who held the risible belief that the sole fact of Sian Massey's gender rendered her incapable of understanding and correctly implementing the offside rule. Yet the adherents to the "original sin" analysis of gender relations can see nothing risible about insisting that the sole fact of their gender somehow makes women incapable of committing violence against a partner, or indeed freely entering into a transaction that commercialises the sexual act.

Incidentally, I should say in closing that I've got no particular axe to grind here - I'm not personally aware of ever having been the victim of gender discrimination. It may well happen one day, but it hasn't yet. And, to put it mildly, I'm not particularly a hyper-masculine sort of chap (I even like Jane Austen in small doses) so in some ways the feminisation of society has suited me well enough. But for others it's a very different story.

If gender equality isn't an issue for the left, what is?

It goes without saying that the Tory MP Dominic Raab was a thoroughbred idiot for making his 'Kevin Baker-esque' remark that feminists are "onbnoxious bigots", and deserves everything that's coming to him as a result. Which is a pity, in one sense, because there's a fairly obvious grain of truth in the broader point he was making, if only he could have expressed himself in a slightly less abusive manner. Specifically, he suggested that Harriet Harman's claim that men were to blame for the financial crisis was sexist. Well, the simplest way to judge if double-standards are at play is usually to take the polar opposite of a statement and try it on for size. If a bank with an overwhelmingly female management team had made a catastrophic blunder, would it be deemed reasonable to blame that on the shortcomings of women in general? Plainly not, and rightly so.

'Reverse sexism' is absolutely endemic in our society, and its manifestations are so familiar we don't even register them most of the time. I used to watch Australian soap operas when I was a teenager (I'm glad to say I've long since kicked the habit) and it suddenly dawned on me one day that the characters who did something stupid or selfish were almost always male - and of course it was invariably the women who showed them the error of their ways and got them to apologise. Generally, the only female characters who were ever permitted to go slightly astray were teenagers - the message seemed to be that grown-up women are 'mature' in every sense and are thus blameless, whereas many men never attain that state and are thus blameworthy. That's a recurring theme in advertising as well.

Does any of this really matter? Well, it certainly does when the underlying assumptions start influencing government decisions and legislation. I've discussed in the past the pernicious effect of Scottish Labour's insistence (and sadly other parties are not immune to this) that domestic violence is almost exclusively something that men do to women, in spite of the plentiful evidence that it's also something that women do to men, men do to men, and women do to women. Thousands of victims effectively become 'the enemy', because if their stories are heard and taken seriously in sufficient numbers (ie. if they no longer seem like aberrations or 'outliers'), it jeapordises the precious official fiction. And when you're already in a vulnerable position, being the enemy of policy-makers as well is not a comfortable place to be.

Perhaps the most extreme example of the very concrete gender discrimination this distorted thinking can ultimately lead to is the Swedish law on prostitution, which criminalises men who pay for sex, but regards women who sell sex - even when they are acting completely independently - as the victims of 'male violence'. I've no idea how that law nominally treats the inconvenient examples of women who pay men or other women for sex, or indeed men who pay men, but the guiding thinking is clear enough - the former "can't happen", while the latter is "marginal". Once again, allowing the full range of experiences to be heard on an equal basis would imperil the ludicrously simplistic narrative of blame.

Whether prostitution should in principle be legal or not is a matter for debate. But if it is to be a criminal act, and two adults consensually agree to commit it, it's surely self-evident that it's grossly discriminatory to regard just one of those adults as wholly responsible for the decision, and the other as the equivalent of a helpless child - purely on the basis of the gender of each. The ideology that underpins the law is actually rooted in Marxism - the notion that women can't be responsible for a seemingly free choice (because their thinking is distorted by male oppression) is a classic example of 'false consciousness'. Which makes it doubly ironic that the politicians who are most keen on applying the Swedish logic in Scotland are to be found, again, in the Labour ranks. In pretty much every other respect The People's Party abandoned socialism (not to mention social democracy) years ago, but it remains quaintly wedded to full-blooded Marxism when it comes to gender politics.

What's truly depressing is that vigorous opposition to this irrational and unjust ideology is generally only associated with certain sections of the right, particularly the radical libertarian right. If equality - true equality - between the genders isn't to be considered a natural concern for the left, I really don't know what is.

The Sun? Hypocritical? Perish the thought...

Not that I particularly want to give Simon Cowell praise for anything (even when it's due) but I'm very pleasantly surprised to see that X Factor contestant Chloe Mafia will not be axed from the show simply because of allegations that she worked as a "£160-an-hour escort" (is our knowledge of the exact price supposed to make it worse somehow?). I read the original article on The Sun website a couple of days ago, and it was utterly breathtaking to see that publication - of all publications - taking an implied judgemental stance on matters of sexual morality. I shouldn't have been surprised of course, because it's hardly the first time - tabloid journalists have a remarkable knack of seamlessly switching back and forth between 'laddish' mode and 'outraged evangelical preacher' mode. The most nauseating part of the article was the account of an undercover reporter who was "repeatedly invited" onto a double bed by Ms. Mafia, but instead "made his excuses and left". Well, how terribly noble of him. But does anyone doubt for a moment that The Sun would have been perfectly content for their reporter to go ahead and do the deed (on expenses, naturally) if they had calculated it would sell more papers? Of course, the main reason that couldn't happen was that it would have been incongruent with the pious subtext of the piece - namely that if the story could be substantiated, it was a complete no-brainer that Mafia's involvement in X Factor was untenable.

Now I may be missing something here, but as far as I'm aware what Mafia allegedly does for a living is perfectly legal in the UK (there may be some grey areas over the advertising of escort services on the internet, but as things stand the work itself is legal). So why should her participation in the show ever have been thought to be in jeopardy? Yes, she's done something that a certain portion of the population finds morally objectionable, but the same would apply to anyone who has ever had an abortion, eaten meat or had an affair - all also legal activities. Why is it taken as read that certain types of intolerance will always be pandered to, but not others? Regardless of personal moral values, it's always a good start to view every individual as first and foremost a human being, rather than as some kind of walking embodiment of one particular choice they've made in their life.