Feminist Current
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Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights

Amnesty International has voted in favour of adopting a policy that supports the “full decriminalization of all aspects of consensual sex work.” That is to say, they will be developing a policy that supports the decriminalization of pimps, brothel-owners, and of men who buy sex, as well as the degendered “sex worker.”
For those unfamiliar with the debate, opponents of full decriminalization and of Amnesty’s position advocate for a model that decriminalizes those who sell sex (mainly women and girls) but that criminalizes those who exploit and otherwise harm prostituted women (i.e. pimps, johns, and brothel-owners).
A press release published today specifies: “The policy will also call on states to ensure that sex workers enjoy full and equal legal protection from exploitation, trafficking and violence.” This sentence certainly sounds positive, in terms of Amnesty’s desire to end exploitation, but is naive at best. There is no way to ensure “legal protection” of those in prostitution when you legalize the very abuse and exploitation that the sex trade is based on. At its root, prostitution is about exploitation — that is, a scenario wherein a man pays a desperate and/or marginalized woman to provide him with sexual services because she has no other choice. The very idea of prostitution is one that says women are not fully human, that they are things that men have the right to use and abuse, that men’s sexual pleasure is more important than women’s humanity. The relationship between a john and a woman he buys is not one of equality — he is, in fact, paying for the right not to respect her.
It is not possible to legalize the purchase of sex while ensuring prostituted women are protected from exploitation, trafficking and violence. The industry requires exploitation and violence is inherent to the system of prostitution. The system is violent. It is exploitative. It is about male abuse of female bodies. Prostitution is harm.
What Amnesty has left out of their statement is women’s rights, as well as an analysis of how poverty and racism make poor women of colour particularly vulnerable to exploitation.
In fact, they didn’t mention women at all.
Amnesty’s repeated, insistent use of the term “sex worker” might sound neutral, but is far from it. The term is politicized as it intends to normalize and decontextualize prostitution. Its purpose is to erase the fact that the sex industry requires patriarchy, as well as capitalism, in order to maintain its existence. To erase the fact that, without inequality, prostitution would cease to exist. To erase the fact that, if human rights were a priority and reality in this world, there would be no such thing as prostitution. “Sex worker” erases systems of power, presenting women in prostitution as simple labourers, as though bodily penetration by strange men is comparable to working at General Motors. “Sex work” ensures men remain invisible and unaccountable in all of this, despite the fact that it is only men who drive the industry and only men who are responsible for the harm.
The press release reads, “Sex workers are one of the most marginalized groups in the world who in most instances face constant risk of discrimination, violence and abuse.” But saying that “sex workers” are marginalized, as a group, because they are “sex workers” erases the entire context surrounding the existence of a sex industry at all and the reasons why women and girls are prostituted in the first place.
Amnesty wholly accepts the existence of the system of prostitution and, in their statement and position, effectively denies that “sex workers” are marginalized because they are women in prostitution. That is to say, the only reason that women and girls end up in prostitution is because they are marginalized in the first place as females and that prostitution epitomizes that marginalization. That marginalization, though, starts long before entry into the industry.
“How do women end up in prostitution and why?” is a question Amnesty has intentionally avoided addressing, as is the question of why it is acceptable that this industry exists at all.
While their statement says, “Amnesty International considers human trafficking abhorrent in all of its forms, including sexual exploitation, and should be criminalized as a matter of international law,” they have not acknowledged that trafficking exists only because women do not want to be in prostitution. It exists because prostitution exists. It exists to feed demand. If the sex industry were something freely chosen by women and girls, there would be no need to traffic them. Amnesty’s efforts to draw a clear line between “sex work” and trafficking only shows how deeply ignorant they are, in terms of the realities of the industry. Or, alternatively, that they simply don’t care.
“This is a historic day for Amnesty International,” the statement reads. And indeed, here are some Amnesty staff members cracking a bottle of champagne over the objectified, exploited, abused, and dead bodies of women and girls everywhere. Now that we’ve moved a step closer to further entrenching men’s rights to access the commodified bodies of women, free of guilt, accountability, or any barriers whatsoever, it’s time for a glass of bubbly, amirite? I assume Amnesty will be sending over a few crates to our sisters on the Downtown Eastside?
@AmnestyOnline staff celebrating a historic moment for the rights of sex workers around the world! #icm2015 #soproud pic.twitter.com/WoOhlKH4WC
— Azmina (@SnazzyAzzy) August 11, 2015
In refusing to acknowledge gender, race, or class as key factors, Amnesty has abandoned women and girls, globally, and has shown they cannot be trusted in their position as advocates for human rights. Despite this, feminists everywhere will continue to insist on women’s humanity. We won’t be abandoning this fight, Amnesty International can be sure of that.
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46 Comments Already

  1. ArgleBargle - August 11th, 2015 at 1:52 pm none Comment author #270202 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch, being crystal clear on what the end game is: “All want to end poverty, but in meantime why deny poor women the option of voluntary sex work?”
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    • C.K. Egbert - August 11th, 2015 at 6:19 pm none Comment author #270235 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      “We want to end rape, but in the meantime why should we prosecute rapists?”
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    • MLM - August 11th, 2015 at 9:33 pm none Comment author #270260 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      Every time I hear this argument made, these words go through my head: “I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that i am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible….except by getting off his back.” ― Leo Tolstoy, ‘What Then Must We Do?’
      “I pin a woman on her back choking her…”
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  2. Mike Lebednik - August 11th, 2015 at 1:56 pm none Comment author #270203 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    I am so very sorry to see this news. The “celebration” speaks power to truth. All I can say in response, as a man, is: thank you, Meghan, and your survivor-allies, for taking the blinders off my eyes and saving me from becoming a john.
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    • tinfoil hattie - August 11th, 2015 at 8:42 pm none Comment author #270256 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      Saving you from becoming a john? Surely you mean, “saving the prostitutes I would have raped had you not enlightened me”?
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      • Priscila - August 12th, 2015 at 8:54 am none Comment author #270312 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
        They’re probably still being raped by others…
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      • Sam - August 12th, 2015 at 2:58 pm none Comment author #270356 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
        C’mon. This person sounds sincere and you didn’t come out of the womb a feminist. I’m thankful to Meghan too and all the radfems who opened my eyes after I spent years as a liberal, Dan Savage-y feminist. Also, I’m a woman. Ha.
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  3. Nic - August 11th, 2015 at 2:04 pm none Comment author #270205 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    That’s one thing I can’t wrap my head around is the insistence that there is this clear line between trafficking and voluntary ‘sex work’.
    Honestly if they are so concerned about trafficking victims and they want to do something to fix it shouldn’t the first immediate thought be to decrease the demand? Regardless if you advocate for decrim or the nordic model I just can’t see how a human rights org can ignore the fact (that you state) that trafficking exists because not enough women actually want to be in prostitution.
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    • C.K. Egbert - August 11th, 2015 at 6:21 pm none Comment author #270236 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      It’s the same way they make the distinction between BDSM and abuse or burlesque and sexual objectification: claim that women are empowered by it while ignoring what actually happens, and declare any feminist who is critical of these practices to be “removing women’s agency.”
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      • Independent Radical - August 12th, 2015 at 2:55 am none Comment author #270288 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
        I am sick to death of all the idealist reasoning that liberals keep shoving down our throats. Pointing that women’s lack of power does not magically suck power out of them. Women lack power because of actual social forces, which must be combated through strategic, collective, not-neccesarily-violent-but-nonetheless-liberal/reactionary-scaring, political actions, not positive feelings or “symbolic personal acts”.
        Everyone wants to blame radicals for terrorism, but I feel like the obsession with symbolism and “subversion” (for the sake of subversion) play a part in it. Obviously most liberals are not literal terrorists, but they do practice violent acts, and claim that they are “exposing/subverting patriarchy” or some other nonsense, through them. They have little regard for actually attempting to target and bring down powerful institutions, let alone any desire to get the ordinary masses involved (I guess they think we are all boring and vanilla, plus is everyone is “rebellious”, “subversive” and “kinky” then no one is.)
        I think it is important that we expose idealism in all its forms (post-modernism, positive-thinking, the view that being a “strong person” equals tolerating mistreatment and reinterpreting bad situations as good) as part of combating liberal feminism and its allies.
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  4. C.K. Egbert - August 11th, 2015 at 2:04 pm none Comment author #270206 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    I think that they simply do not care. Instead they don’t want to change anything about the patriarchal institutions or men’s absolute sex-right to women. They don’t want to stop trafficking; they want it to be normalized and socially acceptable. A world without the sexualized abuse of women is simply unthinkable to them, so they attempt to make the abuse more palatable by claiming “empowerment,” “agency,” “consent,” and doing everything they can to silence women who speak against the harm that men have inflicted.
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  5. Eliza Karat - August 11th, 2015 at 2:12 pm none Comment author #270208 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    This is UN-FUCKIN’-BELIEVABLE.
    …champagne and trafficked victims for Amnesty International dicks!
    *slow clap*
    “@SnazzyAzzy @AmnestyOnline staff celebrating for the rights of pimps johns human traffickers and rapists around the world #SHAME #icm2015″
    https://twitter.com/ElizaKarat/status/631207041609170948
    I like @Scarletswalks anger:
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  6. Hecuba - August 11th, 2015 at 2:47 pm none Comment author #270210 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    Interesting that the photo contains 99.9% females and the males are missing. Why are the two males hiding behind the female staff? Is it because AI doesn’t want males featured prominently in the photo celebrating male sex right to purchase women and girls so that males can rape and subject them to sadistic male sexual violence with impunity?
    We know it wasn’t women who were the ones who initiated this male created policy but as usual men always disappear when it suits their political agenda. But as usual women are doing mens’ dirty work for them.
    Male Supremacist AI thinks it has succeeded in winning a huge victory for male sex right to treat women and girls as males’ disposable masturbatory objects, but Sweden shows no sign of capitulating to women-hating male demands. Males living in Sweden who attempt to purchase any woman for the purpose of subjecting her to rape and/or male sexual violence are committing a crime. The Nordic model will not be eradicated just because one fake organisation which openly claims only men have human rights has voted on maintaining male sex right to female bodies.
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    • Francois Tremblay - August 11th, 2015 at 5:05 pm none Comment author #270230 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      “We know it wasn’t women who were the ones who initiated this male created policy but as usual men always disappear when it suits their political agenda. But as usual women are doing mens’ dirty work for them.”
      Bingo! That’s the standard tactic in any gynocide event: make them women do the dirty work so you can then turn around and say women WANT this to happen!
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    • lagatta à montréal - August 11th, 2015 at 7:40 pm none Comment author #270251 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      Sadly, Amnesty is NOT a fake organization, and I’ve signed countless petitions over the decades, including ones against sexual torture. Why the fuck is a prestigious human rights association so clueless about the harm the “trade” is doing to women, girls, and other oppressed and marginalized people (such as transpeople).
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      • pallygirl - August 11th, 2015 at 10:51 pm none Comment author #270267 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
        Because *men* are frequent victims of imprisonment without trial and torture.
        AI shows its true colours – only create policies that deliver the primary benefit to men.
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  7. Jessica - August 11th, 2015 at 2:53 pm none Comment author #270211 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    Thank you so much for this. I have been so confronted by women who claim to be feminists who support this Amnesty travesty. I’ve been told to check my privilege by women who claim to be happy, secure “sex workers” who love their job and try to silence me by saying that I don’t know “what it’s like”. These happy hookers are so blind to their own privilege it’s almost laughable.
    They tell me I’m second wave and they’re third wave (like the second wave is finished) and as such I am the cause of their inequality. I know I missed this “re-direction” but jeez, rich, white, conservative men couldn’t have scripted these “feminists” better. While they’re all fighting for their “right” to wear lipstick and have their bodies sold and making sure that they don’t offend male “allies” who insist on define feminism their way, I see that the so-called second wave (including younger feminists who still get it) are actually still trying to raise women up. The second wave model is the one that seeks to empower women, to reduce poverty, to improve healthcare, to reduce violence. The “third” wave come across as nothing more than ignorant spoilt rich kids spouting rhetoric they don’t understand, refuting feminist writing and research they’ve never read yet dismissed.
    I wonder if they will eventually learn how manipulated they are. I am over arguing with them. They remind me too much of nasty high school girls so I find it hard to take them seriously. Every time I try to engage I feel that I’m talking to a Cosmo fashion spread: “Femistic Chic – how to get the look while still getting the guy” – bedazzled dungarees teamed with come f’ck me heals and a “girls can do anything” sexy crop top.”
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    • Bronwyn Williams - August 12th, 2015 at 7:47 am none Comment author #270307 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      If anything, it’s even more discouraging for ‘first wave’ feminists, of the Female Eunuch era. We burnt our bras and let our body hair grow and genuinely felt the world could be ours. We were well educated and our fertility was under control.
      But somehow, men have reclaimed their territory – patriarchy is more alive and well than it ever was.
      It’s a bitch to be 60, after a lot of years helping abused women, and be told by the new generation of feminists that you either have no idea what ‘feminism’ means, or you’re some sexually repressed, moralising wowser.
      They’re women aren’t they – these young, neo-liberal feminists? Why can’t they see the inequality in men buying women for sex? Where is their respect for the humanity of the prostituted.
      And, on a more pragmatic note, don’t they know getting fucked several times a day is pretty rough on your body – haven’t they ever had a sore vagina, or gagged on a penis, or had semen dripping out of them?
      Have they ever thought about how anal sex would feel?
      Maybe they’re the real prudes.
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    • Erika - August 12th, 2015 at 8:19 am none Comment author #270310 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      Dead on!
      …and frankly anyone who uses cliched phrases from the academe like “check your privilege” and frames everything as “2nd vs 3rd wave” is probably the most privileged person in the conversation. They do not understand, because many from their generation no longer have the attention span necessary to read whole, lengthy, scholarly books (irony not lost on me), and they probably do not understand the continuous progression of the past into the present, something known as history. And why would they? They have already decided those fuddy duddy, old books hold no value for them. That is prejudging, and as such, it is a reflection of their own prejudice. They are indeed manipulated, and this manipulation is unexamined by them.
      Kudos to Ms Murphy for another excellent blog post! I really enjoy her writing.
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    • Tim - August 12th, 2015 at 1:15 pm none Comment author #270345 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      I came to adulthood in the mid 1970s, when second-wave feminism was going strong and it mostly felt like I “got it” pretty soon although of course one keeps trying to grow in understanding as time goes on. There were so many great women writing and speaking about feminism, as well as some men writing about men working to change and be different and it all made a lot of sense. Then there was the backlash of Reaganism, and after a while things started to change and I started to hear things that didn’t make much sense and eventually I heard that we were in third-wave feminism. I was baffled, but there were so many people saying stuff about choice and empowerment and I kind of thought, well, if they say so and after all I am getting kind of old; maybe I just don’t “get it” anymore.
      Then I found this site, among others, somehow by following links from some related subjects that didn’t have to do directly with feminism; I don’t really remember now. But it has been the proverbial breath of fresh air.
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  8. Disillisioned - August 11th, 2015 at 3:05 pm none Comment author #270213 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    What infuriates and saddens me the most about this is all the well meaning people who are naive enough to think they are helping prostituted women.
    They have no idea about the damage it causes when we say it’s ok for a caste of women (and children) to exist as commodities for men to use as they please.
    I feel like all this stuff is going to carry on getting worse before it gets better.
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  9. Jonas - August 11th, 2015 at 3:32 pm none Comment author #270216 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    It’s sad to see that people goes as far as to drink champagne to celebrate that they now support that we men, around the world, should have the right to buy women & girls (and sometimes boys, other men & transpeople) as we see fit for our sexual pleasures.
    No matter how many so called human rights organisations completely ignores the buyers in their discussions, this won’t change.
    When they talk about decriminalizing all aspects of the sex trade, its the very buyers (who is overwhelmingly male) that is mostly strengthen. These are privileges that needs to be dismantled, not catered too in a society that claims to be about equality and justice for all. All, a word you think would include everyone and not just us who are born with a penis.
    There can’t be no equality and/or justice by claiming it’s all good to allow male sexuality stand at the front and centre, as it does in regards of the sex trade.
    As a man I simply don’t wont these privileges. I don’t want the right to buy anyone for any sexual activity. If I’m too lazy to masturbate, well, than it is my loss no one should have to be (ab)used because of that.
    Male sexuality is not a Universal right that needs to be catered too 24/7 and I hope to see many more men actually take a stand. Esp men who claim to support women. If they truly do support women. And I kind of dislike to put it this way but if they care about their mothers, sisters, girlfriends or female friends, and don’t wish to see them being sold to men that has one messed up fetish after the other.. well then they should extend that care to every other woman as well, otherwise its just hypocritical.
    Demand that this privilege is being denounced, taken away, dismantled. There are other ways to help women who for any reason is in the sex trade without putting all of us men on a damn pedestal and drink champagne.
    What is next ? Will Amnesty begin forming an opinion that in order to help the growing population of poor EU citizens–in which more and more are now forced to sit and beg in street corners–these people shall start with taking a job at brothels so that any man that has money can abuse them as they see fit, if they so wish.
    End demand. Put the spotlight & heat on the buyers.
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    • Hannah - August 11th, 2015 at 4:57 pm none Comment author #270228 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      I hate when people say “think about your mothers, sisters, daughters etc” because really it should be “think about HUMAN beings and their rights” but otherwise good comment.
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      • Jonas - August 12th, 2015 at 4:17 am none Comment author #270294 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
        Thank you for your comment Hannah. I agree with you and should have made a better effort in pointing that out in my post.
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  10. lagatta à montréal - August 11th, 2015 at 3:54 pm none Comment author #270219 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    It is so odd, especially given the strong sexual sadistic component of all torture Amnesty was about fighting (of women but also of men, as well as children).
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  11. Francois Tremblay - August 11th, 2015 at 4:36 pm none Comment author #270226 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    Well, it’s not like we didn’t expect it, but today is a dark day for women around the world. Amnesty International has joined the side of the men who want to exploit and harm women. All these women are now laughing and celebrating a job well done for the Patriarchy.
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  12. nightcap - August 11th, 2015 at 4:44 pm none Comment author #270227 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    Amnesty makes my head hurt with their doublethink. Like “We’re committed to gender equality but refuse to acknowledge that ‘sex work’ maintains and reproduces the gender hierarchy” or “Nonconsensual sex is a grave human rights violation, but it’s the state’s responsibility to prevent that. Men don’t have to care if the women they’re with want to have sex with them.”
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  13. Raquel Rosario Sanchez - August 11th, 2015 at 6:07 pm none Comment author #270234 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    Decriminalization and legalization increases human trafficking. Every comprehensive study out there on the dynamics of the sex trade in countries that have gone implemented this resolution has shown that decriminalization/legalization policy has has the effect of increasing human trafficking. That’s what the research shows.
    It’s not particularly shocking, if you think about it. This was never meant to be up for a vote; it was meant to be a policy and that policy was crafted by the owner of England’s largest brothel ‘The Escort Agency’. It’s disappointing but at the same time, we should have know how this was going to develop once we learn how this “resolution” came about.
    Amnesty International has sided with the demand side of an exploitative industry that relies on the ever younger bodies of women and girls it considers to be disposable. Good for Amnesty International because now we can all stop pretending like they ever cared about the rights and well-being of survivors and people leaving exploitation and abuse.
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    • pallygirl - August 11th, 2015 at 10:55 pm none Comment author #270268 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      I agree, AI has lost credibility with me in respect of women’s and girls’ rights. I’m never supporting another appeal of theirs and I will tell others too.
      30+
  14. Lucia L - August 11th, 2015 at 6:25 pm none Comment author #270237 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    I’d cry if I wasn’t so nauseous.
    Catering to the top at the expense of the bottom. Guess which has a larger volume?
    I no longer support Amnesty International. I can’t.
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  15. Susan Smyth - August 11th, 2015 at 6:37 pm none Comment author #270240 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    AMNESTY PIMPS-INTERNATIONAL
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  16. J - August 11th, 2015 at 10:23 pm none Comment author #270261 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    Amnesty needs a name change. I suggest Neoliberal International.
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    • Erika - August 12th, 2015 at 8:33 am none Comment author #270311 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      …or how about “Amnesty for Pimps, Johns, and Traffickers International” (APJTI.)
      This news is just sick. I have donated to, and participated with, AI campaigns in the past, but will no longer be considering them for charitable contributions.
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  17. Reva - August 11th, 2015 at 10:49 pm none Comment author #270266 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    Amnesty has proved that humans=males and females=those sexy things that are somehow alive to give humans sexual pleasure and babies.That makes Amnesty a true ‘human’s’ rights organization.
    It has also shown the difference between throughly studying a serious social issue and just acting based on your own ignorant opinion without listening to those you’re trying to help.Of course they’re celebrating this as it gives humans the right to rape,abuse and traffick sexy things.
    FUCK YOU AMNESTY.
    I don’t want to live on this stupid planet anymore.
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    • Hannah - August 12th, 2015 at 5:08 am none Comment author #270300 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      People like you and me shouldn’t have to leave the planet, Amnesty should get off.
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  18. Non-PC RadFem - August 12th, 2015 at 9:50 am none Comment author #270317 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    This is how MRAmnesty PIMPternational treated its head of AI’s gender unit…
    “It has been a strange, disorientating and upsetting few months for Gita Sahgal. The former head of Amnesty International’s gender unit was suspended in February after a very public and acrimonious dispute with her bosses [..]”
    “The row – over Amnesty’s links with Islamist pressure groups – has led to a succession of negative headlines for a body unused to such bad publicity. According to Sahgal, the affair was symptomatic of an organisation that has lost its moral bearings [..]”
    In her first newspaper interview since leaving the charity altogether, Sahgal delivers a withering critique of her former employers, describing the modern Amnesty’s leadership as suffering from “ideological bankruptcy” and “misogyny” [..] Sahgal told the Observer that an “atmosphere of terror” prevailed inside the organisation in which debate is suppressed and staff are cowed into accepting the prevailing line.
    “I think the leadership is ideologically bankrupt, as has been shown in the handling of this,” said Sahgal. “There have been systemic failures even before I went public. Questions need to be asked of the political and senior leadership. There is a deep misogyny in the human rights movement and the kinds of issues that women have to face tend to bring that out.”
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    • Meghan Murphy - August 12th, 2015 at 11:41 am none Comment author #270332 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      Brutal!
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  19. Kate - August 12th, 2015 at 10:39 am none Comment author #270325 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    I’ve noticed a trend in comments from the pro-sex industry side on “feminist” sites like Jezebel arguing that this policy has nothing at all to do with trafficking, which everyone already thinks is super bad. They always say something like “Hey, nobody likes sex trafficking, I’m talking about non-trafficked women….”
    What’s hilarious/infuriating about this is that the very existence of trafficking suggests that plenty of people really like partaking in and profiting off it.
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    • Meghan Murphy - August 12th, 2015 at 11:33 am none Comment author #270328 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      These people are wildly and happily ignorant about the reality of the sex industry — who men are buying and why. It is enormously insulting. “Oh we’re just talking about the ‘happy hookers,'” is, essentially, what they’re saying. So fuck the rest of them (‘the rest of them’ being the vast majority), eh?
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    • Raquel Rosario Sanchez - August 12th, 2015 at 1:34 pm none Comment author #270348 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      You are right. I think what’s particularly baffling is that if you think about it for a second, no john or punter ever goes out looking for a trafficked person. No john ever says “I made an appointment at the trafficking parlour…” or something like that. No john ever admits to condoning trafficking; they all claim to be patrinizing prostitution. Pro-sex indrustry advocates argue in their minds and in the public arena that the punters or johns are visiting empowered sex workers, at best and reluctant prostitutes who still like their jobs, at worst.
      Trafficking requires a front and other names to be palatable. There are some distictions that are key but I think it’s telling how in debates like this we are meant to throw our hands in the air and pretend we have no idea what ideology and narrative is supporting the increase of human trafficking. As if both did not connect, when the research (and common sense) point out that they do.
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  20. Jane (the first) - August 12th, 2015 at 11:41 am none Comment author #270331 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    Excellent article and comments.
    C.K. Egbert is correct. They simply don’t care. As Kenneth Roth’s wavering excuses on Twitter demonstrate, our NGO/corporate overlords began with their financially profitable conclusion and are making up the justification as they go along. I am not at all surprised by the vote, but the fact that “human rights” organizations are willing to express such open contempt for women is still shocking.
    The third-wavers cheering this abomination don’t care either. I believe they’re deeply broken people who only live for themselves, yet want to be thought of as good. They are using the majority of prostituted women and children as bargaining chips in an attempt to force society to normalize their sociopathic self-indulgence. They really are that selfish. They think by policing language with ridiculous terms like “whorephobia” they can force men to respect them. It won’t work.
    I cannot comprehend the mentality of people who think they support social justice while being indifferent to women who experience being fucked by four men just to pay a day’s rent in a brothel, and even worse. On top of that they have the nerve to virtue-signal over their disgusting rationalizations. I’ve seen both Melissa Gira Grant and Molly Crabapple say that the way to end trafficking is to abolish national borders. Oh how clever! If there are no borders, then kidnapping typhoon victim in the Philippines and shipping them to German brothels isn’t trafficking! One world, one love, man!
    To paraphrase Andrea Dworkin, postmodern liberals think they can have their degeneracy and their virtue too. Bad people who don’t bullshit others into thinking they’re good have a cooler spot in hell than they do.
    As several of the reports about Rotherham said, there’s a lot more money in pimping than in selling drugs. Aside from neoliberal inhumanity and male entitlement to women’s bodies, I believe that’s the main driver behind Amnesty’s betrayal.
    15+
  21. terracotta - August 12th, 2015 at 12:07 pm none Comment author #270338 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    This abomination makes the misogynistic frat boy t-shirt “Stop Rape: Consent” into official international human rights policy.
    Men don’t pull themselves out of poverty by their bootstraps and women don’t pull themselves out of poverty by sucking strange men’s dicks.
    15+
    • Meghan Murphy - August 12th, 2015 at 12:10 pm none Comment author #270340 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
      “Men don’t pull themselves out of poverty by their bootstraps and women don’t pull themselves out of poverty by sucking strange men’s dicks.”
      Quick! Someone put this on a t-shirt and send it to Ken Roth!
      13+
  22. Jonas - August 12th, 2015 at 12:26 pm none Comment author #270342 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    I just had this very excellent blogpost pop up as I was surfing the web.
    Called On Amnesty International, poverty, and “voluntary sex work”
    6+
  23. Karina - August 12th, 2015 at 1:35 pm none Comment author #270350 on Amnesty cracks champagne in celebration of johns’ rights by Feminist Current
    From now on, I will always call Amnesty International a “former human rights organization”. And I will never, ever support this disgraceful organization again.
    12+

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