Over in the U.K., the war on sex work and porn rages on, with ominous implications for our own situation. Here's the latest from AP:
--AP
LONDON (AP) — Classified ads are the latest target of the British government's crackdown on the sex industry.
Minister for Women Harriet Harman on Thursday urged members of the country's largest women's organization, the Women's Institute, to complain to editors who run sex ads.
She said the ads were often disguised as advertisements for massage parlors or escort services, but she said sex is what is usually being sold.
"Many are young women from Eastern Europe, from Africa or Southeast Asia, tricked and trafficked into this country and forced into prostitution," Harman said.
But a spokeswoman for the English Collective of Prostitutes, which promotes the decriminalization of prostitution, said this is not true.
"Most immigrant women working in the sex industry are not being trafficked," said spokeswoman Cari Mitchell. "Members of the WI are being asked to assume anyone coming from another country is being trafficked, which is an absolute lie."
The Home Office last week announced plans to make it a criminal act to have sex with women forced into prostitution — even if the man did not know the prostitute was being "controlled for another person's gain."
Critics say that will only force the sex industry further underground and expose female workers to a greater risk of violence. They also say online versions of the ads will increase.
British lawmakers heard evidence in Parliament Tuesday against a separate ban that would impose stricter licensing requirements on lapdancing clubs.
Peter Stringfellow, who owns nightclubs that feature lapdancing, said the current licensing laws — those that treat his establishments and others like pubs — were sufficient.
"I'm not a sex encounter club, and I don't want anyone coming in my club thinking they're going to get a sexual encounter," Stringfellow told the committee.
The usual yap about trafficking. The usual excuse of imposing restrictions on sex commerce to protect women. The usual victimization of one class of women to satisfy the prejudices of another.
The daily truth of what happens when radfem thinking gets its death grip around the throat of public policy.
Think it can't go that way here? Consider the impact on all those college students of Bob Jensen's traveling dog-and-pony show with his little Reefer Madness movie. He's talking to those who will be making social and political policy in this country in a very few years.
The early effects of this thinking are already visible. Classifieds for sexual entertainment and/or services have already disappeared from publications in this country ranging from alternative weeklies to New York Magazine under pressure from radfem leaning staff members working with outside pressure groups.
Our side has all but lost the battle in much of Europe. Americans tend to be more stubborn about having their personal lives and those trades that cater to them regulated, but the battle over individual sexual liberty is already joined, and judging by the results of the last election, I'd say our side isn't doing all that well.
