Sex In The Public Square - Melissa Farley in Scotland: Trivializing prostitution and trivializing violence against women - Comments

Farley in Chicago

Michael — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:23:00 -0700

We became aware last night that a similar report to that published in Scotland, was going to be released shortly in Chicago, although we have not yet seen this. As in the Scottish study, it was produced in conjunction with a local group with a similar philosophy, the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation. An article about this by David Heinzmann appeared in the Chicago Tribune today.

I agree that it's very

Adele — Mon, 05 May 2008 07:39:21 -0700

I agree that it's very important to deconstruct faulty, skewed "research" like this. Farley also has an article in the Spring 2008 issue of Ms. Magazine called "The New Abolitionists; Taking on the Global Sex-Trafficking Industry", which will serve to popularize her views that there's never consent in sex work and that not listening to the actual sex workers is "the" feminist response.

Emotional labour

Michael — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:38:00 -0700

The problems with this report are so many that it would not be possible to catalogue them all, rather it is important to look at the bigger picture of how these responses were obtained from men and how they were interpreted and reported, to demonstrate that one can deduce no new knowledge from it.

One objective appears to have been to provide a vehicle into which they could inject their largely erroneous interpretation of research in sex work. This demonstrates their remarkably facile understanding of sex work. For instance they attempt to compare men's assesments with that of the women, which led to headlines about 'deluded punters'. They never actually asked the women, but relied on an ideological position that women in sex work hate their job and derive no satisfaction from it. There are two major problems with this. The first is the fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of sex work, which Elizabeth alludes to, and has described in her research on strip clubs . This is work and the successful sex worker strives to satisfy her client, even if it is providing the illusion of a consensually satisfying relationship. Both partners indulge in a certain degree of fantasy. The other problem is that there is research on sexual satisfaction in sex work, for instance Anna Kontula' s paper "Sex workers view to sexual pleasure¹ ".

Finally this research is seriously compromised ethically, without any oversight or consent, or intent to benefit the population of men studied, in fact the opposite. There is no attempt at confidentiality, researchers were traumatised and most likely the subjects too, on learning of the deception. Unethical research should not be published, and indeed could not have been published, had they not resorted to publishing it themselves.

Updates

A consortium of researchers and other experts in sex work have submitted a critique of the report to the Scottish Parliament, and investigations are under way as to how public authorities funded unethical research.

Margo MacDonald MSP (Member of Scottish Parliament), has also written a critique in Scottish newspapers. Another article was published on May 5th in the The Scotsman.

^1. Seksuaalisuus seksityössä (In Finnish with English summary, as pdf . English translation in press, as 'The sex worker and her pleasure' Current Sociology ✦ July 2008 ✦ Vol. 56(4): 605–620)

Melissa Farley in Scotland: Trivializing prostitution and trivializing violence against women

Elizabeth — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:58:07 -0700

Melissa Farley and her fringe research mill Prostitution Research and Education have teamed up with a Scottish anti-prostitution group to produce a new 'research' report with the problematic title "Challenging Men's Demand for Prostitution in Scotland: A research report based on interviews with 110 men who bought women in prostitution" (PDF here).

Readers of this site will understandably be rolling their eyes and groaning, "not again!" But it is important to remember, awful though it is, that other folks take Farley's research seriously and that it deserves serious attention to help mitigate the damage it can do to real efforts to advocate for women's safety and sex worker safety. Such 'studies' play to particular political positions, in this case pressure to export the Swedish 'solution' through Europe, but political expedience is not the same as sound policy. Check today's Daily Record (Scotland) for the most recent orchestrated flood of bad news coverage of a poor study to support wrongheaded policy.

It is important to stress, again and again, that Farley's research cannot be considered reliable and certainly doesn't approach even basic scientific standards. The problems with the current study are many but can be summed up in terms of ethical concerns, bias and inadequate attention to detail in the write up. The write up is problematic enough that it is hard to judge the quality of the research, but the very clear bias is enough to call the findings into question. The bias also leads to the making of recommendations that are not proportional to the findings. Below I address just a few of the major problems. (Watch this space for links to critiques by other feminist sex worker advocates and researchers.)