Dutch TV station apologises for interview with a "cured" gay man

This is more or less a translation of an article in the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant. I've included my own contribution where I thought was necessary and my own thoughts on the case afterwards. 

Thony. Photo from his Intagme profile

A week ago the Dutch TV channel EO (Evangelische Omroep - Evangelical Broadcast) published on its youth website BEAM an interview (in Dutch) with the 19-year-old Thony Kraamer, who says that God helped him put an end to his gay lifestyle. The interview caused a lot of reactions and a storm of criticism from individuals and organisations. 

In the interview Thony tells about his life in the gay scene: "Every weekend I was in the sleaziest bars and clubs. I would go up on the dance floor, dress up as a girl, use hard drugs, have one boyfriend after another and still cheat on them... I did literally everything that God has forbidden."

Then he says he decided never again to have gay relations: "Whether I'll live my life as a single man or maybe find a wife, I'm looking positively towards the future. I'm giving my life to God."

Apologies
EO received a storm of criticism after publishing the interview. Kraamer's statements were considered as reinforcing a stereotypical and negative image of homosexuality. 

Today (17 February) EO apologised for the interview. In its statement, the channel said that the aim of BEAM was to tell different stories and opinions and to think, together with its audience, what these stories mean to them: "But it didn't work. Thony's intense story brought to many homosexual readers associations with rejection, estrangement and grief. This should never be the consequence of a personal story, regardless of our good intentions... if we have hurt you, we are very sorry."

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So this was the article and I have to say, hats off to the EO for the apology. I followed part of the Twitter storm that fell on them a few days ago and they were very careful to reply to most Tweets respectfully and say things like "this is just one personal story, we also have other stories, and we think they should be heard". And this is admirable for a Christian TV station and indeed the different stories of young people should be heard. If anything, I'm more angry at Thony and I want to share some thoughts about the whole debacle. 

If you read the interview from the link above (e.g. with Google translate), it actually starts off quite nicely - Thony felt different all his life, played with dolls, dressed up in girls' clothes, didn't like his first kiss with a girl... Then (I don't know when - I guess 16-18 years old?) he came out as gay on Facebook and received very positive reactions from his friends and classmates. Something that many people don't have! Then apparently his "crazy gay life" began - going to bars and clubs, doing drugs, having sex with random guys, boyfriend after boyfriend, webcamming for money... Until he felt he had hit rock bottom.

So first of all, Thony seems to be rather transgender/gender-dysphoric than a gay boy. By his own admission, he dressed up in women's clothes, wanted to be a woman and even asked his house doctor for a referral to the "gender team". Perhaps the clubs, drugs and promiscuity were just an acting out of his anxiety over his gender dysphoria? Perhaps if he had had more support and understanding, both from himself and his family, he would've transitioned and lived a happy life as a woman? Instead of denying everything he is and "giving his life to God". As if gay/transgender is incompatible with God... 

But let's say he is a gay boy, since he considers his previous life to have been gay. In my opinion 18-19-year-olds are expected, or at least excused, to live a crazy life of promiscuity, drugs and clubs (always in moderation, boys!!). The realisation that this is not the life you want should come later. But at whatever age, this realisation should lead you to focus more on yourself, your personal development, education, career and improved relationships with people, in other words, find "the golden mean". Not go from one extreme - parties, drugs and sex, to the other - celibacy and denial of your sexual desires. Most of life, most of happiness, is somewhere in between the extremes. 

But figuring out where the "golden mean" is and how you can be happy there takes wisdom and maturity, which a 19-year-old typically doesn't have. And I have the feeling that Thony's "rebirth" as a God-fearing, law-abiding, hetero-wannabe was strongly encouraged, if not forced, by outside - family or church community. And to be honest, I also have the feeling it won't last forever... 

Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.
You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she still will hurry back.
(Horace) 

A daily dose of hate - the Wicked Witch from the Northwest

In the week before the Bulgarian elections for European Parliament I stumbled upon the Facebook page of a strange creature - Irena Borisova - an EP candidate from the "Green Party" (therefore - the "wicked witch":-) from the town of Vidin (therefore - from the Northwest:-). On her Facebook page Ms. Borisova had listed what she stands "for" and "against" as a politician. I sympathise with the green cause and traditionally vote green - both here in Amsterdam and in the national elections in Bulgaria (although - for another Green Party). So I agreed with many of her points - more green energy, support for local agricultural production, against the TTIP... But then, seemingly out of nowhere, she was also against "the decadent moral tendencies in Western Europe (gay marriages, incest, paedophilia)". Now this is just an insult to common sense - first of all, there's no such thing as a "gay marriage", it's the same as the "straight marriage" but between people of the same sex; secondly - to put it together with incest and paedophilia is pure populism, as I already wrote in my posts Prostituto part 1 and Part 2; third - to claim that these are "Western values" is beyond populistic, it's Putinesque; and lastly - to hear this from a green politician is a disgrace, to say the least. Just that same day the European Greens had boasted on Facebook that their EP group has supported 100% all policies on LGBT rights. And Ms. Borisova's party is part of the European Greens. Naturally, I immediately informed the European Greens and the Greens in EP on Facebook and Twitter about Ms. Borisova's "principles" and apparently I wasn't the only one who did. They thanked me for bringing this to their attention and assured me that they would "look into it". Of course, I doubt that they can influence the choice of candidates from a national green party or a candidate's convictions but I felt somewhat satisfied that I've ratted her out to them. 

Anyway, I also wasn't the first one to notice this strange outburst of homophobia by the wicked witch. My friend L. had already engaged her in an argument, pointing out the same concerns as I had - that she's green and that it's a "nonsense to put these three things [gay marriage, incest and paedophilia] together". The witch replied that it's not nonsense and it's not even only these three things - "because lately in Western Europe it's become fashionable to open up brothels with animals and demonstrate sexual intercourse in front of 3-4-year-old children". O.M.G! While I can agree that there are all sorts of people in the world and such establishments may exist somewhere in Western Europe, I'm more than certain that they'll also exist in other parts of the world and are in no way a "fashion" but completely illegal. Actually I don't want to comment on the ridiculous claims that the wicked witch makes, I'm sure anyone who reads this will understand me, but I want to list a few other, simply to demonstrate the level of political thought and speech in that place I call my birth country and because the more she tried to engage us in that argument, the sillier she seemed.

Two years later we still haven't ticked the others...

 "Scientists have proved that 'special inclinations' [i.e. homosexuality and transsexuality] are a mental disorder, actually - a disease. As I often say, I don't care who goes to bed with whom, but to demonstrate it through parades, to involve children in this and to insist on legalising something, which nature itself shows is abnormal - to me this is unacceptable!". But the next one was my favourite because it made me laugh so hard: "You are trying to present me as a homophobe? Homophobe comes from the Latin 'fobus' which means 'hatred' and I don't hate gay people". Well, for anyone who didn't guess it - I had to laugh because there is no Latin word 'fobus', the word comes from the Greek "phobia" - fear. And of course, that the statements she makes are completely homophobic. When I use big words and make claims about their meaning or origin and I'm sitting at my computer, I always bother to check Wikipedia or a dictionary before I speak - it's a simple question of dignity and it takes one minute. <rant>But I suppose to the wicked witch, wikiPEDIa is just another decadent western tendency.. It must come from the Babylonian word wiki - a space where people add, delete and modify stuff in collaboration with others, and the Mayan pedos - child :D Or as the Mesopotamians would say, ergo, it must be a space in Western Europe and America where children are gang-raped in front of animals for the enjoyment of married homosexuals. </rant>

After my comments that I've informed the European Greens about her position on LGBT rights, the wicked witch made it clear a few times that this is just "her own opinion", to which she has a right (just like we have the right to be gay, she graciously added) and that her party does not necessarily support this position. Now I know that politics is a dirty business everywhere in the world and sometimes has nothing to do with principles, ideas and policies, but in the "rotten West", at least on the outside, there are certain expectations from political parties and their members - that a right wing politician will want to curb immigration, that a left wing politician will want to tax the rich, that a green politician will want less nuclear energy... that sort of things. And I don't know why but I somehow expect that a green politician will also support LGBT rights, but maybe I've been brainwashed from living in Western Europe for too long. So I started wondering, where is the fine line between "party line" and personal opinion? Obviously, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and only in a dictatorship all members of a certain political party always agree on all issues. But there must also be certain continuity and predictability in politics, methinks. Otherwise, another colleague of the green witch will suddenly say it's his own opinion that we need to explore shale gas extraction, another one - that he supports more nuclear energy but that's just his own opinion, right? How can you then make up your mind if you want to vote for this party or this politician?

But as the Phoenician astronomer William Shakespeare pointed out, "all is well that ends well" - the wicked witch was, of course, not elected for EP - her party received 7989 votes (0.357%), while the witch herself - 50 preferential votes, which sounds like the extended family and a few besties and fellow-biggots from the North-west. Still, a well-known homophobe from an even more populist party did make it into EP. But the real Persian tragedy is that this level of ignorance and homophobia is so commonplace in politics and society, and not only in Bulgaria... 

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Although I already gave credit for the title in the previous "Daily dose of hate" post, let's do it again: 
"A daily dose of hate" is a Facebook page and a blog I follow, which I think are maintained by my distant acquaintance Magdalina Genova - a brilliant blogger (in Bulgarian) and sort of a political and social activist for all things good and fair. Magdalina and I are born on the same date - 30 March - and while I know personally about four more people born on this date, Magdalina's blog sometimes sounds like my thoughts - always annoyed/angry at and ranting about some injustice in the world or another. If you can understand Bulgarian and care about politics and justice - I recommend it. 

Prostituto - part 2

So, to continue my rant about prostitution and the similarities between the anti-sex work and anti-LGBT discourses... 

Out of sight - out of mind

Invisible man

As I mentioned in part 1, in Bulgaria (for example) there are a lot of tolerant, compassionate and progressive people, who don't want to see all LGBT people dead or in a mental institution. Or anywhere else, for that matter. A typical statement you can read in message boards and comments under news articles is "I have nothing against gay people but I don't understand why they have to parade their sexuality" or "I don't discriminate against anyone, let them do whatever they want in their bedrooms but not go out on the streets and demonstrate their sexual orientation". (And believe me, this IS a tolerant attitude over there!) These sentiments are repeated at the highest political and social levels. In 2008, before the first organised and largely promoted Sofia gay pride, the then Prime Minister, now chair of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the Party of European Socialists, Sergei Stanishev, when asked about the pride parade, said that the Bulgarian government fights discrimination and protects the rights of all its citizens but "personally, I don't like the demonstration and manifestation of such orientations". [On an irrelevant but related note: rumour is that Stanishev himself is gay and has (had?) a relationship with the current Foreign MInister Vigenin...] Under pressure from united nazis and Christians, the then mayor Boyko Borisov moved the pride march from the city centre to a more invisible place outside the centre (and later moved it again back to the city centre...). A couple of years later, when Borisov was Prime Minister, he stated that "in GERB [his party] men love women and women love men". Yes, in his party, there are no LGBT people. 

Invisible woman

The anti-sex work debate usually focuses on street prostitution and the abuses that street workers face. Even though some estimate that street prostitution accounts for not more than 20% of all prostitution, the anti's love focusing on this 20% to make their point, disregarding the other 80%, which includes call girls, escorts, webcam workers, etc. who are far more high-level, protected and well paid and where trafficking, abuse and exploitation occur much less often. So it seems the main goal of the anti's is to see street prostitution disappear, i.e. to simply not see any sex workers. But the main way in which sex workers are made invisible is by ignoring their voices. When it comes to policies around sex work, real, actual, active, present- or past-day sex workers are largely ignored, in favour of fake "survivors of prostitution". The Council of Europe Rapporteur I mentioned in the previous part is a perfect example. 

By making any group invisible and ignoring it as small or unrepresentative, governments, policy makers and society find it easier to ignore the group's demands, rights and needs, instead of improving laws and policies that actually protect them. 

When they say your sister is a whore... 

There's a saying in Bulgarian that goes along the lines of "When they say your sister is a whore, you can't prove anymore that you don't have a sister". It sounds a lot wittier actually but the idea is that once a claim/rumour is out there, it's really difficult to disprove it as false, even if it's something as simple as the fact that you don't have a sister.

In any debate it's easy to spread rumours and unfounded and unprovable claims but it gets worse when you employ rheological fallacies, which make it seem like your claim is or can be true. In the anti-LGBT (or rather, anti-gay) discourse there are plenty of unprovable claims like "God hates fags" or "75% of gay men have had sex with more than 1500 men" or "Gay prides are not about rights but pure pornography" but I will mention here a few recent and very absurd ones designed purely to create a moral panic, which on the outside, to the dumb reader, may appear to be substantiated. 

- The EU wants to legalise incest seems to be another legitimate sounding rumour. The EU and US and their human rights are, of course, the worst enemies of Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, etc. law-abiding orthodox Christians and it follows that after legalising same-sex marriages, the next logical step is legalising incest, peadophilia and zoophilia. Just last year I heard at an unfortunate encounter in Bulgaria that "The European Parliament is now discussing measures to legalise incest because the Nordic countries, especially Norway and Iceland, are pushing for it". The idea that the EU will have a say in incest and even "legalise" it may sound legit to some but that Norway and Iceland are in the EU is simple ignorance with which you just can't argue (or next you'll find yourself trying to convince someone that Africa is a continent or that the Earth is round..) The rumour itself was started by a crazy Russian woman who claimed that her Norwegian husband and his family molested their son and the social workers and the whole state actually encouraged paedophilia and incest and then spread like wildfire in all Putinesque media and circles. So someone heard a fake story about incest in Norway and decided that the EU will legalise incest and that incest and paedophilia are "Western values".

Jamie and Cersei at a hearing in the EP...

I would probably find it more believable if someone told me that Jamie and Cersei Lannister are lobbying the EU to legalise incest than Norway and Iceland :-) 

- The Netherlands is a country of gays and paedophiles. The Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriages and is also popular for its liberal stance on marijuana use and, of course, prostitution. The Dutch government, its embassies and Dutch foundations fund a lot of LGBT initiatives around the world, including contributions to all gay prides in Sofia. In the narrow minds of extreme conservatives and Christians this makes the whole country worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. But my example - in 2013 the Bulgarian judiciary organised a seminar with Dutch experts on improving the workload of magistrates. A recently leaked letter from a high-level magistrate quotes his reasons to decline the invitation: "I see that there will be a Dutch expert. As you know, this country is ruled by gays and they also have a paedophile party, which is making its way to Parliament"... While there are open LGBT people in Dutch politics, none are in the government and you can hardly claim that the country is ruled by gays (of course the claim itself is preposterous enough). The mere existence of Association Martijn, however, allows all anti's to use it as "proof" that the country is infested with paedophiles (and by extension - gays). In reality, the association is not a political party, has hardly any support, let alone trying to make it to Parliament or have any sort of power. It's been banned and unbanned a few times and in April 2014 it was banned for good. But once the claim is out there - no one cares about these "details". The magistrate who refused to allow a Dutch expert to teach the "Orthodox, traditional-value" and completely rotten Bulgarian judiciary was awarded 40 monthly salaries upon his retirement in 2014. 

Lastly, I want to share my frustration with the campaign for EP elections in Bulgaria - if you listen to some of the candidates and their messages you'll get the impression that next year the EU will force every Bulgarian to marry someone of the same gender and then have sex with animals in front of kindergartens every morning... 

In the anti-prostitution discourse there are even more ridiculous but legit-sounding claims that seem founded in "carefully selected" research. Maggie McNeill has a long list of them in her blog and in the Washington Post and Dr. Ronald Weitzer more here. 

But to mention a few for my readers: 

- The average age for entry into prostitution is 12-14 years 

As Maggie points out, this is first of all a mathematical impossibility because it suggests that for every sex worker who started at 20, there's one who started at 6 to 8... Or for every one who started at 24 there's one who started at ... 0 to 4. It took me five seconds to do the math but the myth is more important than the math... Anyway, it seems the myth refers to a study of the first sexual experience of minors. And minors are always below the age of 18 but myth or math - who cares, let's create a moral panic..

- In The Netherlands 50-90% of sex workers are forced. 

This is another commonly repeated lie because (apart from "the Dutch are always to blame":) it came from an Amsterdam city official in 2009 which was not based on anything but a simple guesstimate. In reality, a 2007 official evaluation on the lifting of the ban on brothels found out that around 8% of the interviewed sex workers said they had started under some form of coercion. Sex workers in the Red Light District will tell you that the forced prostitutes are even fewer than this. 

- More than half of Amsterdam brothel owners have criminal records. This is not one that's particularly pervasive internationally but I'm including it because of its utter distortion and absurdity. It was used in the reasoning behind the European Parliament resolution on prostitution from the end of February 2014. When real researchers actually bothered to trace this claim they found that: it wasn't about Amsterdam but only part of the Red Light District; it wasn't more than half but less than one-third; and the most spectacular one - it wasn't about brothel owners but about coffee shop (where they sell marijuana) owners... But when you start your sentence with "A 2009 study found out that..." and don't provide proper references, you can get away with it, even if you're a Member of the European Parliament. 

The anti's will always find rumours, hear-say or unfounded claims to further their agenda. Luckily, there are also always diligent researchers and activists who are ready to refute these claims, but once it's out there - most people react to the scandalous, the morally outrageous claim and can hardly ever be convinced that the reality is different. But of course - no victory comes easily... 

Tempters, homewreckers and sinners!

Now this part came a bit unexpectedly, I hadn't thought about it until I got into a sort of an argument in the comments of the blog post "Does legalised prostitution really increase human trafficking in Germany" on FeministIre. A certain georgefinnegan was one of few very vocal commenters against sex work. At first I thought the guy was just conservative or religious but from several different comments, something here, something there, I was left with the impression that he objects to prostitution because prostitutes sleep with married men, therefore they ruin marriages, therefore their job is a disgrace to society and traditions, therefore it shouldn't exist, let alone be legal (in a way it's a refreshing attitude not rooted in the "victims of human trafficking" or "violence against women" paradigm). In another comment, george had admitted to talking to a prostitute once, even flirting with her. All of this made me assume, whether correctly or not, that he actually wanted to visit a sex worker and use her services but didn't because of moral considerations (and I admire his level of restraint in the name of fidelity and marriage!). We also know, although I can't quote sources now, that the people who most vehemently oppose LGBT rights are often people who themselves have homosexual desires. I'm sure that, like me, a lot of gays and lesbians have had sex with married men and women but to shift the responsibility only to gays, lesbians or sex workers for people's infidelity is simply not serious - it's a two-way consensual and conscious interaction. People who want to cheat will cheat, be it with sex workers, people of the same sex, or their secretary or possibly anyone they come in contact with. Obviously we can't ban interpersonal communication to prevent cheating. And while with gays and lesbians these outside-marriage activities have the potential to cause romantic complications, with sex workers it's actually just a business transaction. But some straight and bi men and women prefer to have an easy scapegoat, which they can blame for their failed marriages/relationships instead of making an effort to understand what's wrong and work it out or leave and try to be happy with someone else... Someone had told me that this is why so few men actually support sex workers rights - because they are scared that they will appear to want to use sex workers' services (whether they actually do or not). Needless to say, in the same way in backward countries like Bulgaria, so few straight people defend LGBT rights, again out of fear of being perceived as gay/lesbian themselves. 

IDAHO - Ай-да-го....

IDAHO - ай-да-го...

I've been planning to write this post for a long time and decided to post it today, on the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO), because of what happened a year ago. The Bulgarian part of the title is supposed to be a word play - it sounds like IDAHO but means something like "screw it" - to express my annoyance better... 

So on IDAHO 2013, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) presented the findings of the largest EU LGBT survey. More than 93 000 LGBT people from all over the EU responded to the survey, whose aim was to study their experiences with discrimination, hate crimes, hate speech, access to justice, etc. The results of the survey showed that violence, discrimination and hate speech are still wide spread in the EU, while the majority are not reported to the authorities. You can see the results in different graphs here  and here or just some of the main findings in this three-minute video.

 But just to mention some main points: around 50% of respondents felt discriminated on the basis of their sexual orientation and 90% of them did not report this to the authorities; around 66% avoided holding hands in public; 80% had heard jokes about LGBT people and felt insulted; 20% had felt discriminated at work or when looking for work; around 25% had been attacked because of their sexual orientation. And so on. When it comes to trans* people all these numbers are even higher. 

Now you're probably wondering what exactly annoyed me so much... Well, it was the "surprise" with which these results were met. I watched live the conference where the survey results were presented - here in The Hague, at the closing of a two-day conference organised by the Dutch government and attended by, among others, (then) Princess Maxima, Members of the European Parliament, ILGA Europe and EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding. Unfortunately I can't find now a recording of this part of the event but I got really annoyed by the reactions to the survey findings. The MEPs and Reding were acting all surprised, shocked, flabbergasted and what not by the results. They had no idea that homophobia, discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes were so widespread in the EU. They expressed their direst concerns about the position of LGBT people, their strongest condemnation of discrimination and their continued commitment to the improvement of LGBT rights in the EU... I thought that even ILGA Europe's participation was in the same weak "oh this is so terrible, we had no idea" style, even though they publish an annual review of LGBT rights in Europe, called Rainbow Europe, which pretty much confirms the same findings every year. 

I think if you ask any random 20 LGBT people on the street you'll get exactly the same responses about their experiences. Of course I know that official data, based on almost 100 000 responses, is important and necessary and more reliable, but if you live in this world, don't pretend that you don't know how wide spread homophobia is! 

The most reasonable and honest comment I heard at the conference came from Michael Cashman, a British MEP, chair of the Intergroup on LGBT rights in the EP. Cashman said that we need to address the elephant in the room - that there was "political cowardice" among many of his fellow MEPs to work for the improvement of the situation of LGBT people because, even if they support our rights, they still want to be re-elected... And, as we know, LGBT rights is a controversial and unpopular issue in many countries and among many people. Of course this little outburst of honesty was pacified by Reding with some more bla bla about a roadmap, strategy and all sorts of future tenses.. So I tweeted 

#euLGBTsurvey indeed the commission is all about bla bla rights, bla bla concerns, bla bla roadmap... TIME TO ACT and not just BLA BLA!
— Bobby Gerasimov (@BobbyGerasimov) May 17, 2013

Whether in response to my tweet or not, Reding went on to explain what the Commission is doing to further LGBT rights (sorry for not remembering the important details): "Now we're doing ... and this is NOT BLA BLA; then we'll do ... and this is NOT BLA BLA"... However, I remain unconvinced... This survey, whose results were, like I said, obvious and predictable to anyone who cares to ask, was commissioned in 2011, carried out in 2012 and presented in 2013. The EU roadmap against homophobia and discrimination was voted by the Parliament in 2014 but it still has no legislative value. To move forward, the Commission needs to come up with a binding directive, which will then need to be transposed by the member states within, let's say 3 years... At this pace, I wonder if the EU will actually do anything on this matter in my lifetime. Even something as simple (in my opinion) as Member States recognising the civil status of same-sex couples from other Member States, regardless of their domestic marriage legislation. I mean, isn't it ridiculous that if I'm married to a man in the Netherlands, this man will be my no-one in Bulgaria and most other EU countries? Whether we decide to move and live there or just go on holidays and I have to visit him in a hospital? If you have a car, a property, a spouse of the opposite sex, a child or a bank account in one member state you have them in all of the EU but a spouse of the same sex you can have in only certain countries? I mean, even the US went further in this direction and I always thought we in the EU were a bit more ahead when it comes to human rights and civil liberties...

But, the fight continues and let's hope that one day... 

Prostituto - (some of) my views on prostitution, part 1

For my friends - don't worry, I haven't started prostituting myself. But I've been rambling about prostitution and the rights of sex workers on my Facebook profile and planning to write a post about it for a really long time... Anyway. Apparently the word prostitution comes from Latin and means something like "to put out, put forward". So I'd like to put forward some of my thoughts on prostitution. 

In my line of work (the anti-trafficking field) prostitution is an important topic - is it the root of all trafficking, is it work like any other, is it violence against women.. Our organisation and I (and all my friends,it seems) subscribe to the "work like any other" philosophy but in general it's a very polarised debate, which has been getting on my nerves unusually strongly lately. And then I realised why - the anti-sex-work rhetoric currently in Western Europe reminds me so much of the anti-LGBT rhetoric in my native Bulgaria, as well as in Russia, Uganda and many other backward countries and ... well let's admit it, in the more "progressive" countries until 10-20 years ago (and nowadays too). What I find  a bit confusing is that anti-sex-work "activists" are largely feminist organisations who also support LGBT rights but don't see their own hypocrisy in denying sex workers rights. As a gay man and an anti-trafficking activist, born and raised in Eastern Europe and living in Western, I'm exposed to both debates and I find them personally and professionally offensive. 

And since I've read so many good blogs, articles and arguments in favour of (the decriminalisation of) sex work and I feel I can't add anything new, I will here prostituto my thoughts only on the similarities (in my opinion) between anti-LGBT and anti-sex work rhetoric. And since this is largely just my ramblings, I won't cite sources everywhere, I'm sure the claims I look at here can be easily found on the internet. 

To be or not to be - this is a question... 
In the anti-LGBT discourse, the question of choice, of nature vs. nurture, seems to be very important. The anti's claim that we chose/decided to be gay, because it's "fashionable" (???), because of "the benefits" (???), because we wanted to be fabulous or I don't know what. The more "compassionate", "tolerant" and "progressive" anti's will say that maybe we didn't choose per se to be gay, but we were forced into it by the circumstances of our lives - controlling mother, absent father, bitch older sister, an unresolved Oedipus/Electra complex... So the hardcore anti's view us as perverts and untermenschen that should not exist, while the more progressive, compassionate and tolerant anti's view us as sick people, victims of our upbringing, sort of addicts, that need to be helped, cured, rescued from our own demons, whether by Jesus or specific treatment (preferably not at the expense of the state). Whichever the case, the implication is that since we chose our disgusting lifestyle and are choosing not to "turn" straight, we shouldn't complain that our rights are denied or not respected, it's our own fault and we should find a way to deal with it. 

As a response, the LGBT movement is desperately trying to prove that "baby, we were born this way". While both sides throw academic and medical research at each other to prove their points, I don't understand why if someone just decided to be gay (even if, let's say for the sake of the argument, for the "benefits" and the "fashion") he/she is any less deserving of equal treatment and non-discrimination. Even if I'm convinced that baby we were born this way, I'm also convinced that the question of choice shouldn't matter. People should simply be treated equally and have equal rights and that's it. 

In the anti-sex work debate, the question of choice is also very important, albeit in a different way. The hardcore anti's claim that all sex workers are forced into prostitution by violent pimps and traffickers, manipulative madams or even their own families. The more compassionate, progressive and tolerant anti's say that maybe some did choose to be sex workers, but they were just forced into it by the circumstances of their lives - poverty, unemployment, oppression, gender inequality, lack of other opportunities... The first mostly view sex workers as immoral, indecent, whores, untermenschen, and the latter - as victims who need to be rescued, reformed, whether by Jesus or well-meaning, all-knowing and all-powerful feminists. While I agree that for many sex workers poverty, oppression and inequality were among the reasons to enter the industry and these are certainly the root causes of human trafficking, I fail to understand why this makes the decision to undertake sex work any less valid. How is cleaning toilets, washing dishes or picking strawberries for 10 Euros an hour for 10 hours a day any better than selling sex for, let's say, between 50 and 200 Euros an hour (or more?), being your own boss, defining your own working hours, place of work or type of work and clients? If sex work is degrading (and again, I don't deny that it can be), at least it pays way better than other degrading jobs, like the ones mentioned above or even working at a f*cking call centre. The most blatant denial of the idea of freely chosen sex work came just last week from Mr. José Mendes Bota from the Council of Europe, in his report "Prostitution, trafficking and modern slavery in Europe": "...I had the opportunity to meet with Ms Pye Jakobsen, co-ordinator of the Rose Alliance, an advocacy organisation of sex workers from the major Swedish cities. [...] She told me ... that only a small minority of sex workers, perhaps 5%, were forced into it. [...] I believed her when she told me that most of the people she knows in the sex industry work voluntarily and out of free choice. However, I remain convinced that voluntary prostitution is only a myth." (my emphasis). Apparently sex workers don't know how things are, but anti-prostitution activists and CoE Rapporteurs know better. Yes.

It's for the children (tilt your head to the side)
A few years ago, a stand-up comedian (Kathy Griffin or so) said in her show that "it's for the children" and similar phrases (with a tilt of the head to the side) are used to justify just about anything anyone wants to push for. While I don't necessarily support the second amendment, this photo of Dr. Evil is a good illustration of the idea and there's even a Wikipedia article about how such phrases can often be used as a logical fallacy to pursue an agenda. When it comes to anything related to sex, like sex work or homosexuality, "it's for a children" becomes a hysterical shrill and if anyone dares speak out against it - well they must be either paedophiles or monsters! 

The anti-gay discourse often equates homosexuality with paedophilia. Russia's anti-gay (propaganda) law is supposedly meant to protect children from the decadent homosexual lifestyle and even from seeing any non-heterosexual people. Mr. Putin stresses that it's not illegal to be gay in Russia, gays have their bars and whatever, and the law is there simply ... "for the children" (tilt your head to the side). After all, it's okay to see tits and violence everywhere around but mind you, hearing a good word or seeing a gay role model is too much for their little heads. In Bulgaria I've often heard or read "How do I explain this to my children???" ("this" being two men/women holding hands or just a pride parade or, maybe in 500 years - that the child's classmate has two mommies or two daddies). Duh - how do you explain anything to your children - that the grass is green and the sky is blue, that some people are of a different colour and others speak a different language... The implication is, of course, that if children see gay people or hear that it's normal to be gay, they will automatically become gay themselves... 
And there's your logical fallacy - gay people are born in straight families and look at straight people holding hands and kissing and making out everywhere, every day, all day long, and still don't become straight, why would then any kid who sees a gay couple become automatically gay? NON SEQUITUR (does not follow)! 
Yes, Mr. Spock, when you say "it's for the children" (and tilt your head to the side) - logic is not necessary. 

While the anti-sex work discourse is usually in the name of women ("prostitution is a form of violence against women and an obstacle to gender equality"), I've noticed the use of the children "card" more and more often to push the anti-prostitution agenda. The anti-prostitution agenda in Western Europe at the moment is the promotion of  "end demand" initiatives and the "Swedish model" (for those who don't know - it suggests that the buying of sex, i.e. clients of sex workers, is criminalised, while selling sex, i.e. sex workers themselves, is not). I won't ask what Mr. Spock would say about the logic of selling something being legal and buying it - illegal, but will return to the use of the "it's for the children" (yes, tilt your head to the side again) rhetoric. It goes along the lines of "women and girls make up the overwhelming majority of all trafficking victims" or "prostitution is a system in which men pay to use women's and girls' bodies". Looking at the Eurostat trafficking statistics from last year, we can see that minors were around 10% of all identified victims. I didn't see (maybe I didn't look hard enough) a division of under-age girls trafficked for sexual exploitation, so I assume this 10% includes both girls and boys and I know that a lot minors are trafficked for begging, perhaps more than for sexual exploitation. Of course women ARE the overwhelming majority of identified trafficking victims (although I wrote in my first post about the difficulty in identifying victims of labour exploitation and that there may be actually more male than female victims) and even one girl trafficked for sexual exploitation is one too many. But it's clear that statements like the above only use the child card to generate more sympathy for their cause. What's even worse, though, is the way the child card is used to promote the Swedish model and other end-demand initiatives, suggesting that the criminalisation of clients of sex workers will reduce child abuse and child pornography. o_O NON SEQUITUR!

What did you say Mr. Spock? Yes it is, but say it to Commissioner Malmström, who in this recent video message says: "For a little ten-year-old girl to be exploited in the prostitution market, or for producing pornography, there has to be a client and there has to be a user". I'm sure the Commissioner knows that child abuse and child pornography are already criminal offences in the EU and have absolutely no connection to consensual adult sex work. But this example is apparently favourite for the European Commission. It was also given by Commissioner Georgieva during discussions on the Swedish model in the European Parliament in February. But when you say "it's for the children" - well, it must be the right thing to do... despite Spock's objections... 

To conclude this point: I'm not a psychiatrist but I'm quite certain that children simply cannot satisfy the sexual needs and desires of normal adults, whether they are gay or straight. From what I know, child abusers are attracted to the innocence of children and their young bodies. LGBT people and people who pay for sex have very different needs, including certain kinks, that they cannot get from children. So in both anti-LGBT and anti-sex work discourses, the child card is used to imply that children are in danger and to appeal to the "humane" part in us. Anyone who attempts to deconstruct this logical fallacy would be labelled a monster or child abuser. 

Part 2

I want to stress again that these are just my thoughts on the subject. I realise that sex workers, victims of trafficking, lesbians and trans* people have different experiences and may have a very different opinion from mine.