If you think punter forums are grim you should see how this parenting website talks about sex workers
When anti-prostitution campaigners advocate for the Nordic model, they often do so by citing the horrific way clients talk about sex workers, particularly on punter forums. (The Nordic model is a prostitution law which is advertised as feminist because it criminalises clients, but which actually harms people who sell sex.) Diana Johnson, the Labour MP who proposed a Nordic model bill in Westminster in December, read out extracts from such forums in her speech. MP Jess Phillips regularly reads out extracts from these sites in parliament as part of her on-going Nordic model advocacy.
The way men talk about women on prostitution review sites is horrible and misogynist. The point of reading out their words is to highlight how grim these people are, and how distant they are from wanting anything like what is best for women who sell sex, and how little we should want them to have any kind of power over sex workers. That’s all fair enough — although, ironically, the Nordic model increases clients’ power over sex workers, making people who sell sex more vulnerable to pushy or violent men. But this interest in the misogynist content of these punter sites makes me think how Nordic model advocates themselves talk about sex workers.
Mumsnet’s feminism boards remind me of punter sites in a variety of ways: the janky, early-2000s-style of the site itself, the profusion of acronyms and site-specific jargon, the stable-but-pseudoanonymous identities of the users — and the acrid disdain for women who sell sex. Scroll prostitution debates on the feminism boards, which take an overwhelmingly pro-Nordic model position, and you’ll find sex workers referred to as “dick receptacles”, “morally challenged”, and told “… prostitutes who get into the lifestyle as a choice have as serious personality flaws as the men who pay to fuck them”. Many sex workers are mothers, and might want to use Mumsnet for community and advice. But they are told “I wish to God that prostitutes … would stick to their own community and forums and not inflict themselves upon us. The less we see of prostitutes on Mumsnet the better.” One Mumsnet user suggested: “perhaps we should form a group and chase the prossies out!” Another writes, “you whores pander to men, you undermine women, you steal our husbands, you spread disease, you are a constant threat to society and morals. How can women ever be judged on their intellect when sluts make money selling their bodies … there’s no such thing as an honest whore.” A different commenter again adds: “No honest, decent woman would ever think of being a prostitute.”
Family relationships are a huge part of Mumsnet, for obvious reasons. On that, one commenter writes, “you prostitutes wouldn’t understand the concepts of love and fidelity because for you lot, it’s for sale, along with your knickers”. Another asks “ever wondered why the [boyfriend, husband or partner] of a prostitute doesn’t mind what she does? Ever wonder why you’re not treasured enough? Are you not worth it?” One of the most shocking comments on the site, in response to a post by a sex worker, runs: “As for children being removed — so what? Why would anyone think it’s a good environment for a child to be raised by someone who, according to you, chooses to allow men to fuck them for money?” Research on violence towards sex workers has found that loss of child custody is consistently one the most harrowing experiences that sex workers report. To wish that on another woman, in a parenting forum, with a sneering “so what?”, is heart-stoppingly cruel.
A sex worker who is posting in a thread becomes upset, and someone ‘mimics’ her, writing: “I don’t know why people are being mean Gov, I only said I fuck for money … and these women in long-term relationships with much higher self esteem said I was wrong … boo hoo”. Another adds her own version of the mimic, writing: “‘Daddy didn’t love me’, ‘Uncle raped me’; ‘Husband beat me up’, ‘Boyfriend got me hooked on drugs’ … Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s always somebody else’s fault”. One woman professes seemingly feminist concern for people “forced into prostitution”, but nonetheless adds: “I have a couple [of] rental flats. I would evict any tenant I discovered working as a prostitute”.
In March 2020, Anna, a worker with an NGO, posted about the support the NGO was trying to offer sex workers in the pandemic. (The NGO advocates for the Nordic model, so it’s politics are actually in line with Mumsnet — you would think.) Anna’s post generated fury in response. Commenters were apopolectic that the organisation was “encouraging” sex work (“I think anyone encouraging women to prostitute themselves right now are abusing them”), accused sex workers of spreading COVID (“anybody having sex for monetary gain … [is] contributing to the spread and potential death of people”), and broadly were infuriated that the organisation acknowledged that sex work existed and that women who sell sex might need support (“How about telling men that using [women] for sex is dangerous at this time. Is it possible that a public body would ask men to forgo prostituted women for the sake of public health or is that too much to expect of NGOs and/or men? Anna?”). Offering services to sex workers was dismissed as “woke middle class people defending the ‘rights’ of other women to be abused through prostitution.” These are criticisms that are routinely levelled at sex worker-led groups and services which support decriminalisation. Obviously, these criticisms are ridiculous in that context, too. But to see them levelled at a service which does actually support the Nordic model is new. It seems that these politics have functionally ended up opposing the existence of any services for sex workers.
Misogynist punter forums are brandished at the sex worker rights movement as if we need to answer for them — as if we’re defending these men. But many feminists do defend and even praise Mumsnet, calling it “a pleasing hotbed of radical feminism”, a wellspring of ‘vibrant feminism’, and comparing it’s ‘demonisation’ to witch-hunts.
In thinking about how the sites are different, you could argue that clients have the ability to perpetrate real life harm, while this Mumsnet stuff is just mean comments online. But several of these comments — the loss of child custody, someone’s suggestion of ‘forming a group to chase the prossies out’, the threat to evict, the opposition to services for sex workers — point to real life harms that Mumsnet users can do to sex workers in their community. For feminists who support the Nordic model, it often seems like the only form of harm they can see is physical abuse perpetrated by clients against sex workers — which comes to symbolise all male violence against women. This positions ‘womanhood’ as the key form of oppression, and removes women from the category of people who can perpetrate harm. But actually, your landlady evicting you because she finds out you’re a sex worker is a harm. Getting someone’s kids taken off them because they’re a sex worker is a harm. Services being cut into non-existence is a harm. Being deported is a harm, regardless of the gender of the police officers and border guards who do it to you.
The sex worker rights movement is working to reduce the power of abusive men, including those who post grim misogyny online. But in their obsession with misogynist posts on punter forums, Nordic model advocates never grapple with the fact that some of the most fervent ‘feminist’ campaigning for their preferred legal model comes from a site that drips with misogyny directed at women who sell sex. Do we really think that users of this site — where the kind of discussions quoted here are normal — are truly advocating for a law that will protect women who sell sex? Do they want what is best for sex workers? And if not, what does that say about the Nordic model that they are so enthusiastic about? If we are going to talk about the policy implications of the misogyny directed at sex workers online, this has to be a key part of that conversation.
