#abolitionism

[djuvlipen]

"What happened in Germany since full legalisation? Today the police say that only 10% of the women have no pimp. About 90% of the women are migrants from very poor countries, mostly Romania and Bulgaria.

What we see is that prostitution is a very racist system. It is usually the racially discriminated women who enter prostitution – like Roma women from Romania. And prostitution itself is racist too because it fetishizes ethnicity. We have brothels that have a kind of apartheid system when it comes to the women. You go to the first floor for the Romanian women. You go to the second floor for Asian women. You go to the third floor for African women.

We see that prostitution in Germany makes sex buyers more racist. They use very racist and sexist slurs against women and they try to offer refugee women from Syria money for sex.

To allow prostitution makes a country more racist because the sex buyers who, for example, buy Asian women won’t see other non-prostituted Asian women as human. This is what we see. It’s as if we are still a colonialist country.

Legalisation normalises prostitution. For example, we had a TV show that was called ‘Pimp My Brothel’ where a brothel keeper who’s now in jail for human trafficking went into brothels to tell them what they could do better.

Legalisation brings more capitalism into prostitution because the women are the product and are only there to serve the client. So, legalisation strengthens the client’s rights. We even had a court case. There was a girl, I think she was 19, and her punter had not orgasmed and went to court over that. She had to pay him money because he wasn’t able to orgasm with her.

This is what legalisation does."

#abolitionism #anti sex trade #racism #roma #anti black racism #anti asian racism #capitalism #intersectionality #radblr #radfem safe #radfems do interact #radfems please interact #pimping of romani women

[antifainternational]

THROWBACK THURSDAY: this abolitionist pot-holder dates back to the mid-1800s.

#abolitionism #throwback #throwback thursday #tbt #throwback thursdays #original antifa

[damnesdelamer]

#Angela Davis #Assata Shakur #prison abolition #abolition #abolitionism #abolish prisons #abolish the police #original

[clove-pinks]

The strong presence of the sea is grossly under-examined in American literature, doubly so in African American literature. As Elizabeth Schultz observes, "Historically and culturally, the African American experience has been an inland one. Black Americans," she continues, "have not generally turned seaward in their literature." Although she comes to a "however" that adds the observation "the sea is not absent from African American literature," the rhetorical pose imagined in the claim that "the sea is not absent" is that it will take a good deal of searching to find it. And yet, as Jeffery Bolster observes in his ground-breaking 1997 study Black Jacks, "Sailors wrote the first six autobiographies of blacks published in English before 1800". Many of these autobiographies carry clear abolitionist intent and hint at the type of anti-slavery discussions carried on by sailors around the Atlantic world. When scholars of African American literature turn their attention to works written by sailors, like Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African. Written by Himself (1789), most suffer from the misplaced assumption Schultz points to, and thus fail to see the crucial link between sailors and black abolitionism. Indeed, what Crispus Attucks, Paul Cuffee, Robert Smalls, Frederick Douglass, and so many other black revolutionaries in America have in common is that they were all sailors or in some other way directly connected to the maritime trades.

—  Matthew D. Brown, 2013. “Olaudah Equiano and the Sailor’s Telegraph: The Interesting Narrative and the Source of Black Abolitionism.” Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters 36 (1): 191–201. doi:10.1353/cal.2013.0059 (Google Drive link)

‘Drunken Sailors’ by John Locker, 1829 (NMM)

#age of sail #black history #black sailors #sailors #naval history #maritime history #atlantic world #abolitionism #black jacks #olaudah equiano #john locker #maritime art #black history month

[vaguefiend]

Trans women being placed in men's prisons is absolutely abhorrent, and is a practice that must end. Trans women deserve to be protected. But simply saying "trans people should be housed according to their gender" is not going to solve the rampant cruelty of the US prison system.

Every time the proposition comes up to simply incarcerate trans people according to their gender, I wonder about the transmascs, and how we seem to always be left out of this conversation.

Placing transmascs in men's prisons is not a solution.

To be clear, transmascs being placed in women's prisons does not mean they are protected. They are abused there for being trans.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/strip-searches-trauma-isolation-trans-men-describe-life-bars-rcna6490

The problem isn't men's prisons; it's prisons.

By arguing that the problem is men's prisons, the argument is made that the problem is men, rather than the prison system itself. This view is reductionist at best.

The way gender diverse people are treated when incarcerated should show you the cruelty of the system overall, especially towards those who are marginalized. Especially considering the racism in the courts and policing, these issues will disproportionately impact people of color.

Simply arguing that trans people should be imprisoned according to their gender is not a solution, and is at best a bandaid to a festering wound of a system that is notably ignored in broader trans discussion unless it affects white, affluent and well known trans people.

Abolitionism is a trans issue.

#abolition #abolitionism #prison #incarceration #trans women #trans men #transmasc #transfem #trans #transgender #trans issues #trans rights

[sophiebernadotte]

Recent historiography has placed particular emphasis on the social origins and influence of individuals who took opposing sides in debates on the abolition of the slave trade between 1787 and 1807. There is no doubt that family networks and connections influenced patterns of pro-slavery and abolitionist support. Despite this familial focus, comparatively little attention has been paid to the attitudes and interventions in the debate of King George III and his family. As early as 1808, Thomas Clarkson’s History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament recorded how Prince William Henry, duke of Clarence, and his younger cousin, Prince William Frederick, second duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, held diametrically opposed views on the issue. Evidence that has recently come to light in the Royal Archives makes it possible to assess whether the divide between George III’s son and nephew points to a royal family riven by disagreement on the rights and wrongs of slavery. By broadening the canvas of study to include other royal dukes, this article contributes to a much fuller understanding of the family’s reaction to one of the most pressing moral and economic questions of the day. Their views were not just a matter of their own personal opinions; their interventions in debate affected (and on balance, impeded) the progress of abolition and had direct repercussions on the lives of hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans.

#uni life #history student #to read later #king george iii #slavery #abolitionism #royal history #eighteenth century

[racefortheironthrone]

Were there slavery abolition movements before the 19th century in Britain and the US? How much of the form that abolitionism in the 19th century Anglosphere was due to the fact that Britain and especially the US were societies with slavery rather than slave societies?

See here for the first question.

Regarding the second question, I will quibble with the argument that the U.S was a society with slavery rather than a slave society - the southern United States was absolutely a slave society - which only really holds if you do a very crude averaging of north and south that is pretty distortive.

#slavery #abolitionism

[silvermoon424]

These comments were taken from a video about Daenerys Targaryen. For non-Game of Thrones fans, one of Dany’s major character arcs is her going on an abolitionist crusade to attempt to end slavery in an area that is essentially the heart of slavery in the continent she’s on.

I just have to post this because the second screencap contains one of the most fucking baffling takes I have ever read. Apparently Americans are bad, uneducated, and enforcing our values on others because most of us abhor slavery and view it as a special kind of evil, unlike enlightened Europeans who... just view it as a historical fact? And apparently it's weird that Americans expect strong opposition to slavery to be a universal human trait??? And this garbage comment got 106 upvotes???

Real fucking rich coming from a European, whose people literally invented the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonialism and who’s still benefitting from it to this day. I’m not absolving the US of anything or saying that this person should be held personally responsible for the crimes of Europeans hundreds of years ago, but it’s honestly pretty fucking alarming how blasé they are about the topic of slavery. And how they think being disgusted and outraged about slavery and wanting to go to end it by any means necessary is an exclusively American thing. 

Honestly the ASOIAF/GOT fandom has so many slavery apologists in it it’s unreal.

Bonus post:

GET THEIR ASSES BRITTNEY

#game of thrones #daenerys targeryan #pro dany #pro daenerys #anti slavery #abolitionism #abolitionist #daenerys defense squad #asoiaf

[yngsuk]

Freedom seemed elusive when slavery was no longer its antagonist. Abolitionist discourse, expurgated of the terrifying details that scandalized and titillated Northern audiences, was little more than a colloquy on the degraded character of the enslaved and the unproductivity of slave labor. The anemic vision of freedom expounded by Northern industrialists and white abolitionists most often failed to exceed the minimal requirements for a disciplined and productive workforce. This rhetoric deployed in the context of Reconstruction insinuated the need for compulsion when inclination failed and condoned the use of coercion, if and when it aided in the transition to free labor. [...] The liberal proclivities of abolitionist discourse in the antebellum period had provided a powerful natural rights argument against the institution of slavery, but in the postbellum period, it yielded ambivalent effects—elitist and racist arguments about the privileges of citizenship, an inordinate concern with discipline and the cultivation of manhood, and contractual notions of free labor.

Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America

#quote #saidiya hartman #afropessimism #slavery #antiblackness #reconstruction #liberalism #abolitionism #racial capitalism #*ayden

[haggishlyhagging]

The morals of women are crushed. If there be any human power and business and privilege which is absolutely universal, it is the discovery and adoption of the principle and laws of duty. As every individual, whether man or woman, has a reason and a conscience, this is a work which each is thereby authorised to do for him or herself. But it is not only virtually prohibited to beings who, like the American women, have scarcely any objects in life proposed to them; but the whole apparatus of opinion is brought to bear offensively upon individuals among women who exercise freedom of mind in deciding upon what duty is, and the methods by which it is to be pursued. There is nothing extraordinary to the disinterested observer in women being so grieved at the case of slaves, slave wives and mothers, as well as spirit-broken men, as to wish to do what they could for their relief: there is nothing but what is natural in their being ashamed of the cowardice of such white slaves of the north as are deterred by intimidation from using their rights of speech and of the press, in behalf of the suffering race, and in their resolving not to do likewise: there is nothing but what is justifiable in their using their moral freedom, each for herself, in neglect of the threats of punishment: yet there were no bounds to the efforts made to crush the actions of women who thus used their human powers in the abolition question, and the convictions of those who looked on, and who might possibly be warmed into free action by the beauty of what they saw. It will be remembered that they were women who asserted the right of meeting and of discussion, on the day when Garrison was mobbed in Boston. Bills were posted about the city on this occasion, denouncing these women as casting off the refinement and delicacy of their sex: the newspapers, which laud the exertions of ladies in all other charities for the prosecution of which they are wont to meet and speak, teemed with the most disgusting reproaches and insinuations: and the pamphlets which related to the question all presumed to censure the act of duty which the women had performed in deciding upon their duty for themselves. One lady, of high talents and character, whose books were very popular before she did a deed greater than that of writing any book, in acting upon an unusual conviction of duty, and becoming an abolitionist, has been almost excommunicated since. A family of ladies, whose talents and conscientiousness had placed them high in the estimation of society as teachers, have lost all their pupils since they declared their anti-slavery opinions. The reproach in all the many similar cases that I know is, not that the ladies hold anti-slavery opinions, but that they act upon them. The incessant outcry about the retiring modesty of the sex proves the opinion of the censors to be, that fidelity to conscience is inconsistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, let the modesty succumb. It can be only a false modesty which can be thus endangered. No doubt, there were people in Rome who were scandalised at the unseemly boldness of christian women who stood in the amphitheatre to be torn in pieces for their religion. No doubt there were many gentlemen in the British army who thought it unsuitable to the retiring delicacy of the sex that the wives and daughters of the revolutionary heroes should be revolutionary heroines. But the event has marvelous efficacy in modifying the ultimate sentence. The bold christian women, the brave American wives and daughters of half a century ago are honoured, while the intrepid moralists of the present day, worthy of their grandmothers, are made the confessors and martyrs of their age.

-Harriet Martineau, ‘Society in America’, qtd. in Alice S. Rossi, The Feminist Papers: From Adams to de Beauvoir

#alice rossi #harriet martineau #female oppression #abolitionism #amerika #womens history #the more things change the more they stay the same

[djuvlipen]

MYTH: The Nordic Model is more dangerous for sex workers than decriminalisation

There is a vocal campaign for “decriminalisation of sex work”. By “decriminalisation” campaigners don’t just mean that selling sex is decriminalised, but so is buying sex, brothel keeping, pimping, and advertising prostitution. They want prostitution to be treated just like any other job and claim that this makes “sex workers” safer – and that the Nordic Model is more dangerous for “sex workers”.

For example, the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) claims that the Nordic Model, “undermines sex workers’ safety” and is more dangerous than full decriminalisation. A number of other organisations make the same or similar claims, often quoting studies that purport to back up these claims – although many of the studies that we have looked at appear to have multiple flaws.[*]

The Nordic Model is based on the understanding that nothing can make prostitution safe and so it aims to reduce the size of the industry. It has several planks: It decriminalises selling sex and provides support, routes out and genuine alternatives to those caught up in the industry; it makes buying sex a criminal offence – with the aim of changing men’s behaviour; and it has strong laws against pimping, brothel keeping, sex trafficking, and advertising prostitution.

It is well known that male violence against women and girls (VAWG) is generally under-reported to the police, and that this is particularly true for the endemic violence that men perpetrate against women and girls involved in prostitution. Levels of reporting of these crimes are affected by changes in education and awareness, how well victims expect their complaints to be dealt with, and how prostitution is understood by the authorities. These and other issues make it difficult to compare rates of violence against women involved in prostitution between countries with any accuracy.

This is why the homicide data is of particular interest – a dead body that has met a violent end is an unarguable fact.

Therefore to test the claim that the Nordic Model is more dangerous for “sex workers” than full decriminalisation, we looked in detail at the homicide data for women involved in prostitution whose murders were related to their prostitution. This data is collected and collated by German social scientists who run the Sex Industry Kills project (the website is temporarily down for maintenance).

If the claim is true that the Nordic Model is more dangerous than decriminalisation, we would expect to see higher rates of homicide of women involved in prostitution in countries that have implemented the Nordic Model and lower rates in countries that have implemented full decriminalisation – or legalisation, which is similar.

In fact the data shows the exact opposite as we will demonstrate.

We chose Sweden, Norway and France as examples of the Nordic Model, and New Zealand, Germany and the Netherlands as examples of full decriminalisation and legalisation.

Comparing the data across these countries for the years that the various legislative approaches were in force is complex. There is considerable variation in when the legislation in question was introduced. For example, the Nordic Model was introduced in Sweden in 1999, in Norway in 2010, and in France in 2016. Full decriminalisation was introduced in New Zealand in 2003. The legalised approach was introduced in 2000 in the Netherlands. Legal brothels have existed in Germany since the 14th century and its red-light districts as we know them today were established in the 1850s. However, it wasn’t until 2002 that pimping was legalised in Germany – so we have used that as the start date.

There is also considerable variation in the size and populations of these countries – ranging from New Zealand with a population of only about 5 million to Germany with a population of about 84 million.

This shows a lower homicide rate in the Nordic Model countries and none at all in Sweden. (There was a murder of a prostituted woman and another of a prostituted transwoman in Sweden during this time. We have not included these murders because they were not directly tied to their prostitution.)

This leaves no doubt that the rate of homicide of women involved in prostitution is significantly higher in fully decriminalised New Zealand and legalised Germany and the Netherlands than in the Nordic Model countries of Sweden, Norway and France.

This shows that the claim that the Nordic Model is more dangerous for women involved in prostitution is false.

Rather, this is evidence that the more prostitution there is, the more women will be harmed in it – sometimes fatally. All the evidence suggests that legalising or decriminalising the entire industry leads to an increase in its size. Therefore policy and legislation should aim to reduce the size of the industry.

We do not claim that the Nordic Model is safer – because we do not believe that anything can make prostitution safe.

The Nordic Model aims to change men’s behaviour, prevent new women and girls being drawn into the industry, while providing women (and others) caught up in it with routes out and viable alternatives so that the prostitution industry reduces in size. The homicide data suggests that when well implemented, this approach does reduce the overall size of the industry and therefore the overall amount of harm to women involved.

Prostitution – the most dangerous occupation of all

We need to bear in mind that these numbers are likely to be an underestimate, because many women involved in prostitution are isolated and are not reported if they disappear and few countries keep accurate records of this data. The Sex Industry Kills team works hard to gather data from a variety of sources, including official statistics (where available) and media reports.

Many women who have been involved in prostitution – whether on the street or in brothels – for any length of time say that several women they knew disappeared suddenly and they always wondered what had happened to them and often suspected they had been murdered. Not least because they feared that they themselves would be murdered every single day that they were in prostitution.

Just as in other forms of male violence against women and girls, for each murder there are typically many other women and girls who are violently abused and attacked. The Sex Industry Kills team is aware of 64 attempted murders of prostituted women in Germany during the time frame we are looking at.

Research in the United States found that punters perpetrate a large proportion of the lethal and non-lethal violence perpetrated against women involved in prostitution and that prostitution is the most dangerous occupational environment of all in the United States.

We do not accept that any woman should be facing these odds – particularly as prostitution serves no essential role – unless you consider the subordination of women and the shoring up of male supremacy as essential.

This is why we campaign for the Nordic Model and against full decriminalisation.

Appendix: Raw data

The charts in this article are based on the data in the following table.

Source: Sex Industry Kills project and United Nations Population Division

The Female Population column shows the average total female population for the years the legislation was enforced, not the female population in 2023 alone. For example, for New Zealand, it shows the average female population for the years 2003 -2022. This is used in the bar chart that shows the average annual rate of homicide.

Further reading

Remembering the women who didn’t survive prostitution

‘Decriminalisation of the sex trade vs. the Nordic Model: What you need to know’

FACT: Prostitution is inherently violent

  [*] For example, see:

MYTH: The Nordic Model hinders the global fight against HIV

MYTH: Amnesty’s research in Norway has proved the Nordic Model is harmful to “sex workers”

Response to the Queen’s University Belfast review of the operation of Northern Ireland’s sex buyer law

Critique of the Médecins du Monde study into the Nordic Model law in France

Do prostitution laws in Europe affect the incidence of rape? – Analysis of a recent study

This page was first published on 25 August 2023.

#Nordic Model #abolitionism #anti sex trade #radical feminism #radfems do interact #radfems please interact #radfems do touch #radfems please touch #radblr #radfem safe

[fuckyeahanarchistposters]

#ftp #acab #1312 #hate cops #fuck 12 #hate the police #abolish the police #police abolition #aboliton #abolitionism

[hollytanaka]

Abolition and the Liberation of Palestine

Discussion starts at 16:50 timestamp

Prison industrial complex (PIC) abolitionists have always understood the work to dismantle the PIC to be connected to global movements against war, militarism, and colonialism. In the past few weeks, we’ve seen mass mobilization in solidarity with the Palestinian people as they face one of the deadliest assaults by the Israeli military in its history.

On Wednesday, Nov 1, join us for a critical discussion on the ongoing war on Palestine. Dr. Angela Y Davis, Lara Kiswani (Executive Director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center), Stefanie Fox (Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace), and Nadine Naber (INCITE! National) will join us in a discussion moderated by Mohamed Shehk (Campaigns Director of Critical Resistance) to help us understand the situation on the ground in Palestine, how our organizations and people everywhere can mount effective resistance to the genocidal war against Palestinians, and how we can use abolitionist strategies such as Dismantle-Change-Build, Divest/Invest & “Defund,” and “shrink and starve” to do so.

Organized by Critical Resistance. This event is also a fundraiser for Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA), who are providing much needed aid to the people of Gaza. All funds will go to MECA after accessibility costs for this event.

#abolitionism #prison industrial complex #anti imperialism #angela davis #critical resistance #anti war #anti zionism #palestine

[unimatrix-420]

#politics #acab #defund the cops #abolition #abolitionism #police state #book recommendations #anarchy #anarchism #anarchist #mutual aid #anti capitalism #capitalism #twitter #memes #political memes

[libraryben]

Organized pro-censorship activism has produced double-digit increases in documented censorship attempts in public and school libraries, prompted state and federal legislation aimed at restricting the right to read, and animated the presidential campaign as Ron DeSantis runs on the issue while Joe Biden looks to coordinate a federal response against book bans by naming a “book ban” czar. For anti-carceral activists and librarians working in prisons and jails, efforts by the state to limit access to information are old news. Incarcerated people are subject to severe forms of censorship that include bans on maps, images or books in foreign languages. In some cases, prison mailrooms simply refuse to distribute reading material at all. “It’s almost like the outside is reproducing what’s been happening for a long time on the inside,” Sarah Ball, a jail services librarian at New York Public Library, told Truthout. It’s hard to put numbers to book banning in carceral institutions. The Marshall Project maintains an incomplete database of books censored in prisons and jails alongside a list of prison book ban policies. But Ball says these resources likely don’t capture the entirety of the problem. “So much of what happens inside prisons is extralegal,” she said. “Some of the books that are rejected aren’t even sent back. The person who sent it doesn’t know. The person meant to receive it doesn’t know. There is no accountability and no oversight.” Garrett Felber, an abolitionist organizer with Study and Struggle, a collective that supports radical study groups in prisons, agrees. “It’s just arbitrary and case by case,” he told Truthout. This makes organizing against carceral book bans even harder to do. “How do you fight a form of censorship that’s not about banning titles or lists, it’s just people in mailrooms making arbitrary decisions based on whose mail it is?” It shouldn’t be this way. In 1962, Muslim activist and educator Martin Sostre was denied access to the Quran while incarcerated at Attica. (At the time, only Bibles were allowed inside.) He filed suit against prison officials, arguing that he had a right to practice freedom of religion. Sostre won. His case laid the groundwork for a decade of litigation that affirmed the First Amendment rights of incarcerated people and spawned dozens of prison book programs. Sostre’s legal precedents should have secured the right to read in prisons and jails.

But that right to read has since been severely restricted, and not just by the capricious elimination of books when they arrive in the mailroom. Stephen Wilson, an abolitionist organizer currently incarcerated in Pennsylvania, told Truthout that the bans extend to many kinds of printed materials. “The policy says we can have internet materials, but the mailrooms continue to deny access to PDFs,” he says. The same content targeted outside is targeted inside. “They don’t want these materials behind the walls,” said Wilson. “The very mention of George Jackson in California prisons is enough to have a gang file opened on a person by prison administrators. Materials that center the experiences of queer and trans people are routinely denied also.”

#Libraries #Censorship #Book Bans #Prison Libraries #abolitionism

[sophiebernadotte]

This article examines the idea of anti-slavery sociability as part of a wider analysis of the informal elements of the transatlantic anti-slavery movement. It considers how American abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman drew support for the American anti-slavery cause from French salons during her time spent living in Paris from 1848 to 1855. This case-study highlights how a focus on the informal dimensions of anti-slavery activism illuminates the often underappreciated work of female abolitionists in the transatlantic reform sphere. Through the connections she established with the likes of French writer Victor Hugo and Russian exile Nicholas Tourgueneff at salons in Paris, most notably that of Mary Clarke Mohl on the Rue de Bac, Chapman was able to cultivate European support for abolitionism in myriad ways. This included financial donations, goods to be sold at anti-slavery bazaars, and, perhaps most importantly, testimonies against American slavery from renowned Europeans like Hugo that could be republished in the United States.

#to read later #uni life #history student #abolitionism #us history #french history #nineteenth century #womanhood #social history