Talk:Violence against prostitutes

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Potterat 2004 reference

A "204 per 100,000" homicide rate is presented for female prostitutes credited to "Potterat et al., 2004" which is vague and I would like to improve this reference. Looking through the publications of JJ Potterat in 2004 (the one I assume this refers to since they wrote on the subject) the only publication I came across in that year related to the issue was Mortality in a long-term open cohort of prostitute women published April 15. The abstract cites a 'crude mortality rate' of 391 per 100K overall (I think this means deaths per year for all, including ex-prostitutes not active) and a CMR of 459 per 100K for "the period of presumed active prostitution only".

It does say "The CMR for death by homicide among active prostitutes was 229 per 100,000" but this is not 204. I'm confused at where the 204 came from. Anyone have an idea? Some data within the body of the study not present in the abstract?

If we can find out the context of the 204 homicides (I'm assuming annually?) I'd like to know if that is for 'active' or overall. I'm led to think that if 229 is murdered actives that 204 might be overall, since presumably one is at least a slightly lower risk of homicide while not on the streets. Ranze (talk) 01:55, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The full article, which can be accessed free, says "The workplace homicide rate for prostitutes in the moving cohort (eight murdered on the job) was 204 per 100,000 person-years. The standardized mortality ratio for homicide in the cumulative cohort was 7.9, and in the moving cohort it was 17.7." This actually an extrapolation from a small sample of 9 deaths in a specific area. So presumably the extrapolated 15 others who were murdered are supposed not to have died "on the job", as it were (though the concept of "workplace" is somewhat probematic in this case, I would have thought). In fact I think the risk of homicide is not "slightly lower" for women who do not work on the streets, it's massively lower. The article refers to the 8 murders as occurring "while soliciting", so I assume they were all street-workers, since women in brothels do not directly 'solicit'. Paul B (talk) 18:57, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We should be using 'sex worker' not 'prostitutes'

It is 2014. Using prostitutes is slang and have a negative connotation. This is unacceptable. Sex worker is the correct term to be used in all context.

24.239.124.140 (talk) 15:23, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this notion, I'm not sure how we recommend a page for renaming though. The article itself even uses the phrase 'sex workers' rather than 'prostitutes', and the page Violence against prostitutes could be set up as a redirect --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 23:40, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agreed also and did the move. Mosfetfaser (talk) 17:56, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Glad this is sorted --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 19:32, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I disagreed with this move and reverted it. The literature uses "violence against prostitutes" more frequently in my quick search, and the scope of this article is about prostitutes, not sex workers more generally, which includes a much broader variety of job descriptions. We have tons of articles and categories that use the term prostitute and it isn't regarded as an incorrect term here, so we shouldn't rename this article for that purpose - I think prostitutes makes the scope of this article more clear.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:11, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Could you bring up some actual sources rather than asserting that your quick search qualifies them as such? The article is specifically about sex workers and the word prostitutes is definitely slang with negative connotations and this isn't about the pejorative. Furthermore the article itself uses both. I'm reverting per WP:BRD as you are editing against consensus --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 18:53, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The article was updated only in the past 2 months, [1], a change we should likely revert, since every source used to build the article uses the term "prostitute" as far as I can tell. If you want to do a page move, your option is at WP:RM, not move-warring - but there is no consensus anywhere else on wikipedia that "prostitute" is an inappropriate term - indeed we categorize people as Category:Prostitutes. Sex worker is a much broader term, and while sometimes used as a euphemism for prostitute its use here muddies the waters and changes the scope of the article incorrectly - we aren't talking about violence against porn stars or violence against strippers - while such violence may occur, it would be best treated in different articles; violence against those who are involved in the sex trade, especially since this is often illegal, is a topic of special study and we shouldn't use euphemisms to avoid the way the literature used to build the article discusses the topic.

Another point, from Sex work, is the following: "Because of the agency associated with the term, "sex work" generally refers to voluntary sexual transactions; thus the term does not refer to human trafficking and other coerced or nonconsensual sexual transactions.". However, this article does cover a broader scope beyond voluntary "sex work", and includes trafficking, for example. Indeed, it might even be considered insulting to call a girl trafficked from nepal to an Indian brothel there to work against her will a "sex worker" vs a victim of forced prostitution.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:06, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Prostitute" is certainly not slang: it has a very long history as an established word in standard English. Whether it is desirable to replace it with the trendy "politically correct" expression "sex worker" is another matter. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 10:53, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"the trendy politically correct expression sex worker" he says, without any prejudice... --Drowninginlimbo (talk) 11:17, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Drowninginlimbo: What has prejudice got to do with it? The expression "sex worker" is clearly trendy: it did not even exist when I was young, but in more recent times it has very rapidly become common. As for "politically correct", that is less easy to define, but I think the remarks above make it clear that the expression qualifies: it is an expression which we are told we should use instead of more traditional, standard English usage, by people who believe that it avoids undesirable connotations attached to the more traditional wording. Isn't that pretty well what "politically correct" suggests? OK, there is an edge to my use of the expression "politically correct", but that edge is about my attitude to the belief that insisting that people change words they use somehow contributes to improving the world, not about my attitude to prostitutes/sex-workers/whatever-else-anyone-may-prefer-to-call-them, which I can only assume from your comment is what you assumed. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 09:45, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

for me the main issue with 'sex worker' is (a) it suggests agency, and indeed it has been promoted as a term by people who voluntarily choose this line of work - but the scope here includes people who aren't doing it voluntarily and are even more prone to violence and (2) sex worker is ambiguous as it could refer to anyone in a broad variety of trades, which changes significantly the scope of the article.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 10:30, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed Edits

Hi I'd like to expand upon this article. I have a list of sources on my user page for anyone interested. I'd like to include more information about the prevalence of violence against prostitutes, especially in comparison to other women. I'd also like to expand upon the ramifications of the legality of prostitution in regards to violence among other things.Abergin13 (talk) 00:26, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]