Petition to make it illegal for police to have sex with sex workers before arresting them

boing
181

No one deserves to be fucked by police as part of their arrest. That would carry huge emotional and psychological reprucussions for anyone, including sex workers.

They are humans just like the rest of us, and the fact that they engage in transactional sex does not change this.

Allowing arresting officers to use sex workers in this way is to allow and condone the dehumanization of citizens by police. This dehumanization is responsible for all kinds of police violence and abuse that is now running rampant in law enforcement throughout the united states.

17 Likes
182

I think this is the most important point of all in this discussion. Anyone who thinks this is fine doesn’t seem to consider sex workers to be fully human, as if the occupation equals being an emotionless sex robot.

15 Likes
183

Agreed.

There is a supposition that context and emotion are can’t be applied to sex workers because they agree to sex in exchange for money, or that they don’t deserve to have feelings about it given the illegality of that exchange.

Both are dangerous and harmful ideas not only in their application to sex workers, but to any of us who come into contact with law enforcement.

11 Likes
184

I’ve realized that the glaring hole in my reasoning is the subjective experience of the sex worker themselves. Reason is a powerful tool that I don’t think is used enough, but it has its weaknesses.

I have come around on this. This particular situation was obviously a humiliating experience for this person, is a gross abuse of power, and goes several degrees beyond just refusing to pay for a service.

I do stand by my assertion that emotional, inflammatory rhetoric can do more harm than good. I don’t think every point I made was wrong, but ultimately, I was wrong.

14 Likes
185

Agreeing to the blindfold is also agreeing that they will not be able to reliably identify their partner. The sex worker knew that up front.

Here’s some scenarios for you:

  1. A cop pays for sex with a prostitute. The subject of his job never comes up. He pays and leaves. The prostitute is not arrested, nor does she ever know he is a cop.

  2. A cop pays for sex with a prostitute. The subject of his job doesn’t come up. Before leaving the cop says, “By the way, I’m actually a cop.” There is no mention of arrest.

  3. A cop pays for sex with a prostitute. The subject of his job doesn’t come up. Before leaving the cop says, “I’m a cop, and you’re under arrest”. She is arrested for prostitution.

Now under which of those has rape been committed?

186

I would say that this is exactly what YOU are doing, by diluting the meaning of the word when you associate it with things that simply are not rape.

187

Sex workers have no expectation of trustfulness from their clients. That’s why they’re called “Johns”, because that’s the most common fake name they give. A sex worker has no more reason to expect truthfulness, than a guy at a strip club would believe that the girl named Candy who’s working the stripper pole and says she’s a college student studying marine biology, is really any of those things.

If there’s no expectation of truthfulness, this whole whack argument of informed consent goes out the window.

188

Does this apply if there’s no mercenary aspect to the transaction?

I have no reasonable expectation of safety if i walk down a dark alley at night. Does that mean that the police shouldn’t investigate if i get mugged?

(Edited for word choice: mercenary v. mercantile)

2 Likes
189

Mercenary aspect? I have no idea what you mean by that.

What’s that got to do with consent? Oh, yeah - nothing. You walking down an alley is not a criminal act, nor have you entered into a transnational agreement with anyone.

190

You’re right that sex workers can never really have the expectation of trust from their clients. In truth, no one on this green earth can ever really expect truth from anyone.

But I believe that in a just and humane society, or one that strives to be one, no one, no matter their crime, should have to have sex the person that arrests them if they are to be jailed. I can’t think of any way an officer can have sex with a person being arrested in which it wouldn’t be rape. No one would consent to that. Even if they could, it would clearly be unethical.

Yes, johns might similary victimize sex workers. But that is no reason to make victimization part and parcel of the arrest and apprension of those being arrested.

I spent some time imagining myself in the place of a sex worker in this situation. And it turned my stomach. I know how marginalized groups are most often treated by law enforcement, and how they are dehumanized. Is there anything more dehumanizing than to fuck someone, take the money you gave them and then take them to jail?

17 Likes
191

Exactly, how is that NOT rape?

People arguing in favor of raping sex workers for their own good and “protection”, yeah that’s gross.

11 Likes
192

Part of the impact of this thread has been to make me profoundly glad that there is an ocean between many of the commenters and the women I count as friends.

I spent much of my life around sex workers of assorted genders. They were my friends, housemates and occasionally (non-commercial) lovers.

In the situation that is the basis of this thread, I would be very keen to see that cop’s blood pooling on the pavement.

7 Likes
193

One possible solution would be to say that by law, a person can never give consent to sex in return for money, in the same way that an unconscious person cannot give consent, and a minor cannot give consent.

I’m not sure what specific crime the cop actually commits by having sex with a prostitutesex worker and then subsequently arresting him/her, but it’s clearly an abuse of their power and must constitute some crime.

The point is that actually having sex isn’t necessary in order to secure evidence of willingness to engage in prostitutionas a sex worker sufficient to secure a conviction. If the police officer is intending to arrest someone for soliciting prostitutionsex work, they can do so without actually having sex.

5 Likes
194

You’re making a broad statement that simply isn’t true. A john lying about his name doesn’t change the nature of the informed consent and if it’s common or expected, then it’s an accepted practice. A cop lying about why he’s patronizing the sex worker’s services does change the informed consent aspect. If a police officer intends to make an arrest, they aren’t a real client, they’re a law enforcement officer, and they don’t need to have sex to make the arrest. A cop that isn’t there in the course of their duties and is just patronizing the sex worker’s services isn’t acting as a cop. It’s just a john who happens to be a cop. The sex worker agrees to have sex with someone for money, regardless of whether they know the person’s real name or not. They don’t agree to have sex with a cop for the purposes of getting arrested. Your lack of understanding of the nuance is very odd.

5 Likes
195

15 Likes
196

Well I apologize for feeling the wrong way about having been raped.

Edit: I’m not sure if @ActionAbe’s post is advice or an instruction, but clearly the right thing is for me to turn off notifications.

10 Likes
197

Did you actually just compare being a Capricorn to being an officer of the law?

I’m going to go smoke outside because if I light a match in here, the straw men will go up like the Chicago Fire.

11 Likes
198

If that’s what you truly believe, that by consenting to a blindfold a sex worker is also consenting to sex with any one person, instead of just the person she thought she was making an agreement with, I don’t think we can carry this conversation any farther, because we have vastly different ideas about consent. Specifically, I don’t think it’s transferable.

However, I will answer your question.

When any person consents to sex, it’s based upon who they believe that person to be. If a person deliberately misrepresents an aspect of themselves, knowing that that misrepresentation would change whether the person in question would have consented, then the consent is based on a lie, and it isn’t meaningful consent.

As a fictional example: In the movie Chicago, Roxy Hart has an affair with Fred Casely, because he claims to have connections with the nightclub manager. She would not have had the affair (or, at least, not with him) otherwise. When the deception is revealed, she is so traumatized by the deception that she murders him.

Is that an appropriate response to the deception? Of course not. But it illustrates the idea that a sexual act can be traumatic retroactively, if it’s based on deception. Why? Because deception undermines consent.

The difference between your first two scenarios and your third scenario is that an off-duty cop is just a normal bloke. Deception undermines consent if, and only if, the consent was contingent upon the deception. Do I think that a sex worker would turn me away if I were an assembly line worker at a Ford plant rather than an assembly line worker at a Chrysler plant?1 Probably not, so the lie about career doesn’t undermine the consent. Do I think that she’d turn me away if I said my name was Harrison Scott instead of Scott Harrison?2 Probably not, so the lie about the name doesn’t undermine the consent.

A cop who would be arresting a sex worker would be an on-duty cop, which is a completely different thing. That’s not an omission about a career, it’s a deception about a detail so critical that if the sex worker knew that detail, the officer knows that she would not have consented. The deception therefore undermines the consent to the point where the sex wasn’t actually consensual in the first place.

1 Neither of those is my actual job.
2 Neither of those is my actual name.

10 Likes
199

How fucked up is that vice officers are getting paid to not only have sex on the job, but to do it by decieving an unwilling and soon to be detained individual?

It makes my skin crawl when I consider it.

12 Likes
200

So if I can boil down the two arguments I see repeating in this thread.

  1. Some people feel the need to protect the word ‘rape’ even if it means real humans are hurt.
  2. Some people feel the need to protect other humans more than the semantics of a word.

I’m going to side with the humans.

14 Likes