Change the world by getting men to stop buying sex: Spain

Because YOU pay, prostitution exists. This campaign, financed by Madrid’s Equal Opportunity programme some years back, takes a bottom-line, you-are-guilty approach.

Are you worth so little you have to pay?

These two come from Sevilla’s anti-demand campaign, also from a few years ago. The men’s clothes apparently show that different types of men buy sex, and the idea is to dissuade them by saying buying sex is the sign of a worthless person.

Do professional psychologists advise how to word these messages? There is no way to know whether anyone is discouraged by them, but as with so many anti-prostitution and anti-trafficking campaigns, one goal is to demonstrate the correct gender-equal values. Taking away the source of income from women depending on these clients, and further consequences, are completely ignored. Before setting up such projects to end demand, abolitionists should be forced to come up with more, wonderful, available, good-paying jobs for women.

7 thoughts on “Change the world by getting men to stop buying sex: Spain

  1. LH

    Abolitionists should not just be forced to come up with wonderful, available, good-paying jobs for women, but also radically change the entire make up of power relations between nations, discrimination of minorities within nations, and as a consequence be willing to pay much much much more for their nice luxury goods, that are now being produced to a fraction of the labour costs, that would have applied, had they been produced in the West.

    I happen to know of one sex worker from Bulgaria, who expressedly regarded working as a prostitute in Spain (and elsewhere from there) as an opportunity to cope with poverty at home, even more so in her case, as she is a Roma, which in Bulgaria means: no future at all.

    Putting this into perspective, abolitionists should read the following page: http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/opportunities/bulgaria-rises-from-the-ashes-55284.aspx, where it is said: ‘There is another thing that attracts the foreign investor toward Bulgaria, that is its cheap labor ,with average salary’s being just 250.euro monthly ‘

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  2. Pingback: Worthless Men, Dirty Whores « Quiet Riot Girl

  3. Thaddeus Blanchette

    What always amazes me about these campaigns is that they completely ignore a very well established fact about the market: buyer and seller exist in a dialectic. Reducing the number of clients isn’t going to make prostitution go away, but it could change the market structure.

    Anecdotally, it seems to me that one of the BEST way to reduce prostitution is to increase female sexual agency. This seems to be born out by my experiences in Brazil and it would be interesting to do a study on this. Men my generation and older very commonly went to prostitutes when we were young and the main reason given was that it was either that or no sex or very little sex at all because “good girls didn’t”. Today, in my students generation, “good girls do” and I see few men 30 and under in the brothels, except in brothels that sell the sort of sexual services that aren’t commonly available on the exchange market (i.e. anal sex and fast sex on demand – what’s called “fast foda” down here).

    So yeah, increase women’s agency all across the board – better and more jobs, more female control over sexuality and social permission to be permiscuous, if that’s what they want, and prostitution is going to decrease. Telling men “you bad, bad boy” probably does nothing at all for most and may actually increase the eisqué/taboo-breaking tesão factor for some.

    I wonder if the folks who put these campaigns together ever bothered to really talk to the men who pay for sex?

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  4. Cliente X

    You are really wrong here. I have been telling that these campaigns doesn`t want to discourage demmand. The problem is that regulationists doesn`t understand the way abolitionists think. What they really want is to condem and demonize johns, so they can legitimate legal measures against us. One year after that campaign is Sevilla (whose subtitle is “prize of prostitution includes: humiliation ill-treatment and violence”, a kind of way to encourage agressions against sex workers) the city hall approved an ordenance imposing fines to both SWs and johns.

    Two weeks ago I wrote a post in which I included some of these recent campaigns. Take a look: http://barriorojo-esl.blogspot.com/2010/09/23-s-dia-de-la-infamia.html

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  5. Drew

    One of the most common reasons why people pay for sex is because they are nervous around the opposite sex or the same sex and one of the other most common reasons is the fact that lots of people get rejected by the opposite sex or the same sex when it comes to sex. So for lots of men and women for that matter paying for sex is the ONLY option for them.
    If the anti-prostitution groups really want to get rid of the demand then they should tell women (and men as well since men reject women for sex too) to stop being so picky and selfish when it comes to a sexual partner but that will get rid of a person’s right to choose who they want to have sex with.

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  6. laura agustin Post author

    x, no veo la diferencia que te parece tan importante – terminar con la demanda, terminar con los clientes.

    precio significa cost, no prize (premio), así que tampoco coincido con tu interpretación de la segunda línea.

    no publico toda noticia que sale de españa entera o ningún otro país, no es mi meta. hay google alerts para eso.

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