So Just Reduce the Harm

I need to write more about harm reduction, and why as an abolitionist my aim is harm elimination, not harm reduction for all those inside the sex trade.

Harm reduction is an expression that accepts that porn and prostitution will always be will us, and all we can do is accept that there always harm to those inside the sex trade. It just we must reduce the harm – but with the idea that the sex trade should continue business as usual.

In that environment, harm reduction is just moving the chairs on the Titanic. Or maybe just patching up the prostituted class to send them back into hell.

Until we believe that there is no need or reason for men to buy and sell the prostituted class – all that will be done is harm reduction.

If we cannot dream harder, then all the time, in every continent, for every type of the prostituted women and girls – there will the constant threat and reality of death; the constant threat and reality of rapes on an industrial scale; the constant threat and reality that most prostituted women and girls have all their choices stolen from them; the constant threat and reality that the vast majority of prostituted women and girls were coerced in, or were internally or externally trafficked; the constant and reality that sex torture will be their norm.

All that is made acceptable in any cultures that claims harm reduction is the solution to the sex trade. For most harm reduction is more about making the normal hate and sadistic violence of most of the sex trade invisible – or much worse, it just made out that is what the “job” is.

If you believe in harm reduction as the answer, than look to yourself at what you are saying.

You are saying being inside the sex trade is just a job – maybe a nasty job – but it has risks.

The risks, are these the risks you mean – rape by thousands of men, sexual torture, being forced to do all sadistic porn fantasy, being beaten up regularly, anal rape, oral rape, strangulation, high risk of getting internal injuries, high risk of getting life-long STDs, extreme trauma, and of course the likelihood of being killed or not being able to live.

Are those risks made acceptable by pretending being inside the sex trade is just a difficult job?

Yes – if you framed the prostituted class as sub-humans who are made into goods to be brought and sold for sexual greed.

I do not class it as labour issue – it not a “job” for the vast, vast majority of women and girls inside the sex trade – no, for them it a form of slavery, for all their basis human rights are stripped from them.

With slavery, you do not reduce the harms and keep the institution of slavery – no, you free the slaves, punish all those who profit, gain or use the slaves, and therefore eliminate the harms of slavery.

That is why the Nordic Approach is bloody good start to eliminating the harms of the sex trade. It is start, not the end – the end would living in a world that could even imagine why humans ever invented a system where the prostituted class was in existence. A world that cannot imagine the buying and selling of the prostituted class to have power and control over them.

But, for now, we can start with decriminalising all the prostituted class – for most have all the rights already stolen from them; most live inside extreme hate and violence, so all choice has no relevance to them; most may not even know how long they will live.

We must now fight and organise long-term holistic exiting programs on a mass scale. It must be more than just three months of getting her out, maybe a brief drugs/alcohol program, maybe moving her to a new distance. There must be more.

That more is a recognition of the long-term and usually extreme trauma that the vast majority of exited women have.

Know that living inside a culture of multiple and endless sexual torturing, inside a culture where murder is a reality, in a culture that tell you are the role of someone who deserve to be made trash, in a culture where no space for pain and grief – that will give the prostituted trauma which is more extreme than many soldiers on the front-line.

We must have specialise long-term facilities for exited women with PTSD – without that many may go back into the sex trade, for at least there they can deaden all emotions.

We must build cultures that punish on serious level any man who make the choice to buy or consume the prostituted. It should not be some pathetic fine, that most punters/consumers think nothing of. There should be prison sentences – after, most consumers of the sex trade are supporting a system that is sadistic.

Give punters prison sentences for rape, or grievous bodily harm, hell for a hate crime. Give consumers of porn prison sentences for conspiring in rape/sexual torturing.

Send those men the message, that all cultures view them as unacceptable.

And we must send the profiteers of all aspects of the sex trade to prison. These people organise, participate and make huge profits from the sexual torture and destruction of the prostituted class.

There can no excuses made for being a pimp, being a porn producer, running an escort business, running “private” sex parties, managing a sauna for sex only, managing sex club and on and on and on.

We must stop making the management class invisible in the sex trade – and letting carry on business as usual. We must make them afraid of serious punishment.

That would reduce the harms of the sex trade.