Yesterday I posted a Telegraph article about a woman in Germany being forced to choose between losing unemployment benefits and taking a job in a brothel. It now seems likely that the Telegraph article is not true.
In the comments to yesterday’s post, Alison points to this Reuters article, which says:
A spokesman for the Federal Labour Office said that if job seekers said they were prepared to work as, for example, dancers in strip bars, advisers could put them in touch with any suitable employers, but vacancies would not be displayed in job centres.
He also stressed job centres would not look for prostitutes on behalf of brothels, nor offer sex industry jobs to people who hadn’t specifically mentioned it as an area of interest.
Also, according to Alison, “Germany has special laws about sex work, including a prohibition of coercing people into sex work, and provision that sex workers can quit at any time for any reason, without working (for example) a period of notice.”
Finally, Snopes has been looking in the German press without finding any confirmation of the “be a prostitute or lose your benefits” story (hat tip: Heliologue.)
It’s impossible to say for certain, but it looks likely that the Telegraph story is false. Which is good news, of course. Thanks, Alison!
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I posted about this story, too, and Sheelzebub from Pinko Feminist Hellcat alerted me to the Snopes page.
Interesting that I saw this on CNN yesterday…I wonder if they’re going to do any kind of retraction. Also on Fox News (I flipped over there out of curiousity as to how they were covering the story about Hillary Clinton fainting or whatever…it was very nice, by the way, mostly just ‘well we hope she feels better and are glad she’s alright,’ I had expected at least veiled Hillary-is-DEVIL kind of crap), so it looks like this story has become quite pervasive for a hoax.
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Nice to know the Telegraph is keeping up the journalistic standards I’ve come to associate with Lord Black of Crossharbour, even under the ownership of the Barclays.
good job though, Amp. If you hadn’t brought it up, I, at least, never would have heard Alison’s counterevidence, nor would I have bothered to check if the Telegraph may have had an axe to grind. I, like many people, would have heard that, said to myself “what the hell is wrong with German people?! this is wrong!” and been outraged and more than likely, just let it slip from my mind eventually.
it would have been a lot of noise signifying nothing.
But because you posted on it, we got a lot of well thought out responses, and a nigh certain debunking.
Some people talk about how blogs are “self correcting” but you’re one of the few I’ve seen who actually does it.
bravo.
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I wouldn’t call this a debunking. It’s just a contradictory statement, and not a particularly strong one. A spokesman at the national office says “the policy is x, y, z, really it is”. That’s nice, but we have a specific person saying they’ve been told something different in the office that does the actual work.
The spokesman’s statements are also problematic, in that the brothels and other sex industry establishments pay taxes now, and have rights under German law. The bureaucrats are basically saying they’re not going to honor those rights, but in the end they may have to.
At the moment, I would have to file this story as he-says, she-says, and seek new information.
@robert
true, but the story conflates two issues here: brothels have a right to be advertise in job centres and to the extent that these centres are not donig that, they are breaking the law.
The other issue is that workers who refuse reasonable jobs may have their benefits cut. But there is both room for discretion on the side of the agency (eager to avoid the PR disaster resulting if they actually cut the benefits of a woman refusing to work as a prostitute) and safeguards in the law making forced prostitution illegal.
The story relies on the fact that job agencies have obligations towards brothels and that agencies have power over the unemployed and from that brews the suggestion that brothels have a claim towards agencies for either directly supplying them with prositutes (which is nonsense, since no firm has a right to be supplied with anything other than applicants) or that brothels can force job agencies to cut the benefits of those who turn down jobs as prostitutes. There is however no legal claim to the latter, at best the sex industry could cry “bias”, but that is unlikely to impress anyone in this case.
So basically, job centres will have to suggest jobs in the sex industry to women* and these women will be free to turn down these jobs as long as the people in charge have any interest in keeping their jobs (it’s actually a catch-22 for those (if any) who actually think people should be forced into prostitution in that if their preference were enforced they almost certainly would loose their jobs due to public pressure and might find themselves at the receiving end of their prefered policy).
* This might be found to be demeaning by the German high court, which would necessitate a change of the law. Personally I don’t think it’s that offensive and provided women are fully aware that they can easily turn that one down without risking their benefits think it’s an acceptable burden on the unemployed to have to turn up for interviews in the sex industry.
Cheers! Warm fuzzy glow in place :-)
Amp, I don’t think it’s right to say that this story is false. If you look at the Snopes page, German officials acknowledge that this is something which is technically possible, but they won’t do it. At least for now.
I think it’s wrong, too, to suggest the 25 year old woman who brought this story to the attention of the press is “false” because it can’t be “verified.” Throughout history, women’s stories have been routinely dismissed for lack of “verification.” And as to Germany having a policy against coercing sex work, well, everybody has a policy against that, pretty, much, right? Which doesn’t mean that women don’t find themselves having nonconsensual, coerced sex anyway, in huge numbers. So I think there needs to be a little deeper thought given to this than what I think you and others here want to give to it.
Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff (Heart)
The Margins
http://www.gentlespirit.com/margins
Don’t be patronizing, Heart.
The story _is_ false: the original story implied that Germany has a policy or emergent policy of cutting benefits to women who refused to take jobs in the sex industry. This is not true, any more than it’s true that (for example) a state like California, which has a law against nonprofessionals disposing of cremains, is actually going around arresting people for emptying Grandma’s ashes on Venice Beach.
The point here is not–at least for most people–that Germany’s system _cannot_ result in powerful economic pressure for most women to enter the sex industry (most of the posters have acknowledged that it’s a technical possibility), but that a social welfare system like Germany’s isn’t really more likely to force that option on women than any other. Capitalist systems _also_ commodify sex, promote finance over individual need, and disadvantage women–and they give women powerful incentives both to sell sex and to dehumanize themselves. It is therefore extremely problematic to bash Germany’s welfare system, since it provides a much better safety net for women than that provided by most countries.
And as far as her story being dismissed because it isn’t “verified,” that’s not exactly right either. We’re dismissing the idea that _unemployed women_ are being coerced into sex work _by job centres._ Since there was only the one report by the one woman, it not being verified means that there isn’t much evidence to support the Telegraph’s yellow journalism.
The title of today’s entry in Amps blog is, “False story alert: Women in Germany probably not being forced into prostitution by welfare state.” This implies:
(1) That the Telegraph concocted the story of the waitress’s experience with the job centre in Berlin; or
(2) That the report of the unidentified 25-year-old waitress should not be believed because it could not be “verified.”
I don’t think the Telegraph concocted the story; I think it rings true (and more on that below). And I don’t think the woman’s report should not be believed because it could not be “verified” for reasons I’ve already stated. Of course, the job centre, given the hue and cry, is not going to acknowledge this particular incident.
I am wondering why more attention is not being paid to the woman attorney quoted in the original story as follows:
“‘There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry,” said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specialises in such cases. ‘The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits.’
“Miss Garweg said that women who had worked in call centres had been offered jobs on telephone sex lines. At one job centre in the city of Gotha, a 23-year-old woman was told that she had to attend an interview as a “nude model”, and should report back on the meeting. Employers in the sex industry can also advertise in job centres, a move that came into force this month. A job centre that refuses to accept the advertisement can be sued. ”
Unless we are also prepared to dismiss Ms. Garweg’s statements as “unverified” and “concocted,” we will have to acknowledge that this story is probably true, rather than probably false. And I think it would be easy enough to contact Garweg and ask her about it, which is what I think should be done before anybody declares that the story is a “hoax.”
For me, the issue is not which political systems are more likely to coerce women into forced prostitution. I think all political systems coerce women into forced prostitution in a myriad of ways, which is another discussion for another day. So I am not interested in that particular discussion, I don’t care about it at all.
I am posting to challenge the headline of this blog entry and the inference that because we can’t verify the woman’s story, women probably are not being coerced into prostitution by government authorities in Germany. There is as much evidence to suggest that they are as to suggest otherwise.
According to the Snopes article:
“Most German-language sources on this topic point to an 18 December 2004 article from the Berlin newspaper Tageszeitung, which (as far as our rusty command of German allows us to discern) does not report that women in Germany must accept employment in brothels or face cuts in their unemployment benefits. The article merely presents that concept as a technical possibility under current law … it does not cite any actual cases of women losing their benefits over this issue, and it quotes representatives from employment agencies as saying that while it might be legally permissible to reduce unemployment benefits to women who have declined to accept employment as prostitutes, they (the agencies) would not actually do that. ”
So as Robert said, what it boils down to is German officials saying that although they have the legal right to do this, they don’t plan to, meaning we’ve got he-said, she-said. And as I’ve already said, we know from history that where it’s he-said, she-said, it is overwhelmingly the “he” who is believed. Feminism exists in part to confront that particular pervasive, ubiquitous, form of injustice which has served to silence the stories of women for millennia.
Anyway, I don’t think there’s near enough evidence to discount the initial report. Feminists and their allies are obligated to do better with a report of this significance.
For the record, we have been discussing this story at the end of this thread on my boards:
http://www.gentlespirit.com/margins/TheNewChararchy/165.html
Please note, also for the record, that the Margins is woman-only space; only women are allowed to post.
Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff (Heart)
The Margins
http://www.gentlespirit.com/Margins
Snopes has been extremely reliable for years, so I am inclined to believe them.
Snopes conclusion is:
We suspect this is another case where, like a game of “telephone,” a story has been garbled as it has passed from one news source to the next, and somewhere in the rewriting and translating process what was originally discussed as a mere hypothetical possibility has now been reported as a factual occurrence.
However, if evidence comes to light showing this story to be true, I’m willing to change my mind – and you can be that Snopes will change to reflect that evidence as well.
Absolutely true, and it does give one pause. But it’s equally true that for the past two hundred years or so, “protecting women from sexual abuse” has been an excuse used by reactionaries who are more interested in keeping people in their place than in liberating anyone. I bet the Telegraph also claimed to be protecting women when it defended colonialism and opposed women’s suffrage.
Incidentally, the article seems to have misspelled Ms. Garweg’s first name. It’s Mechthild, not Merchthild. Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in their reporting!
Hi, Heart. Welcome.
I’m not convinced we’ve got a “she said – he said” situation. First of all, that seems to assume that all german officials and experts who have said this isn’t happening are male. However, articles like this one quote a few women as well as men. (Warning, the translator is an anti-feminist, and so is his blog.)
More importantly, I’m not convinced that “she said” exactly what the Telegraph reported she said. From a comment on a thread at Chicago Boyz:
So we have two conflicting versions of what the unidentified waitress said – one from a left-wing German weekly, and one from a right-wing British paper. It seems to me that the paper written and edited by people who actually speak German are less likely to have screwed the story up.
Also, when you read the Telegraph story closely, even it doesn’t actually claim that the waitress had actually been threatened or told that she’d lose her unemployment benefits if she didn’t take this job. The headline implies that someone said “take this job or lose your benefits” – but the headline’s quote is never actually attributed to anyone, or even mentioned in the story. The story says that the waitress faced “possible” cuts, but it seems to be reporting this as a theoretical possibility – at no point does the story claim that anyone in authority actually said they’d cut her benefits.
Also, the waitress herself is never quoted saying that she had actually been threatened with loss of benefits. So that’s another strike against your “she said, he said” interpretation – you’re just assuming “she said” something that contradicts what “he said,” but the story doesn’t provide any evidence to support your assumption.
At this point, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence at all that anyone in Germany has been told “take a job as a prostitute or lose your unemployment benefits.” But perhaps some future information will change my mind.
Amp, I think governments (all of them, doesn’t matter which one we’re talking about) are, for all intents and purposes, always a “he” vis a vis individual women. When women enjoy equality in the world, then that will change. But women don’t enjoy equality now anywhere in the world with men, by any measure, and governments continue to reflect the sensibilities, needs and desires of men, continue to be led primarily by men as well as informed in their governing by millenia of sexist laws, values, codes, standards. The fact that a government spokesperson is a woman doesn’t make a situation she-said, she-said, it makes a situation government-said, she said; there is a significant imbalance of power and, again, governments are still sexist institutions, wherever they exist. A woman government employee doesn’t equal “the government,” anymore than a maid who reports to callers that the boss is away equals the boss, or a waitress who recites the day’s specials equals the restaurant owner.
As to the employment center not knowing the establishment it referred the 25-year-old woman to was a brothel, I think you have to, again, look a little more deeply. In just my cursory reading, I learned that large numbers of prostituted German women work out of bars and always have, and that this is common public knowledge. In one article I read and might be able to find, someone, some official, was quoted as saying that it was too difficult to distinguish bars from brothels, so employment centers didn’t make any attempt to. Which means whenever a woman is referred to a bar, there is a high likelihood that it is indeed a brothel, and again, this is common knowledge.
As to the waitress never “actually saying” she was threatened with loss of benefits, come on, Amp. If you read the article, it says this:
“When the waitress looked into suing the job centre, she found out that it had not broken the law. Job centres that refuse to penalise people who turn down a job by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer.”
The woman looked into suing the job centre; the clear inference is that her benefits were threatened if she failed to apply for work at the brothel. Additionally, earlier in the article, the woman is not identified “for legal reasons.” My hunch is that Mechthild Garweg represents this woman in some sort of action along these lines and this is why she does not reveal her name.
In any event, I have written to the author of the original article published by the Telegraph and have asked her for more information. I did some poking around and unless she (the author) shares a name with someone in the UK, she is an HR person for a large corporation. And I think that would give what she has to say some additional credibility, no matter what anybody may think about the Telegraph.
I am having a reeeeeaaaally hard time understanding the sanguine attitude being taken here towards the fact that this is only a “theoretical possibility,” when we do know that indeed it IS a possibility. Government sources and attorneys agree that it is. That is significant for women. That is major for women. Whether it’s happened or not (and I believe it has).
Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff
The Margins
http://www.gentlespirit.com/margins
Hi, Heart. Welcome.
Hey, Amp.
Try not to sound so enthused. ;-)
Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff (Heart)
The Margins
http://www.gentlespirit.com/margins
Hey, Heart. Sorry if I sounded a bit stiff, but what else is new? I’ve always written like I had a stick up my ass.
To tell you the truth, I’d be very enthused if you started posting on “Alas” regularly, although I know you’d mainly post to disagree with me. :-) I disagreed with you a lot on “Ms,” as you know; but I nonetheless respected you a lot, learned from your posts, and admired your writing. There are no hard feelings against you from this quarter, Heart; sorry if you’ve gotten a different impression.
I’m not sanguine about the “theoretical possibility,” and I certainly hope that someone in Germany alters the law so it is no longer a theoretical possibility. However, given all the non-theoretical cases of women being forced into sex in the world, I’m not going to be as heartsick over a case that – so far – appears to have happened only in theory. Nor will I apologize for thinking that it’s good news if a story about women being forced into prostitution by the German government turns out to be false.
And yes, clearly the article is implying that she got told “take this job, or lose your benefits.” But there’s a big, and to my mind, suspicious, difference between implying something and actually saying it. When reporters try to make an exciting story with inference instead of actual statements, that suggests the possibility that they’re covering their asses.
Nonetheless, I’m still not certain that the telegraph story is false. I hope you’ll post whatever you find out from the reporter here.
I didn’t know that translations were pro-feminist or anti-feminist, but there we are. I doubt that my personal views had a significant impact on my translation of the Taz article, but FWIW, I favor legalized prostitution, oppose coerced prostitution and, all other things being equal, would sooner criticize Gerhard Schroeder’s quasi-socialist German state than defend it. But in this case all things aren’t equal; the charges are clearly unwarranted, and my first loyalty is to the truth, not to being pro- or anti- anything as an end in itself.
I don’t see so much of a tension between the German left and the British right as an unholy alliance between the more extreme elements of both, who share little in common beyond a perverse eagerness to believe the worst about mainstream German society. For the leftist Germans, the objective is to oppose all reforms on the unemployment system at every turn, in this case by raising the spectre of coerced prostitution. For the rightist Brits (and, alas, for more than a few of my fellow bloggers on the American right), it’s about keeping as much distance as possible between the UK and continental Europe at every turn. It’s not really about feminism, pro or con, for either group. It’s about maximizing outrage to promote an unrelated agenda.
Amp, I think you just said something important. (And it’s time to change the stick up your ass. Just a reminder.)
given all the non-theoretical cases of women being forced into sex in the world
I think that this is in fact what ought to be focused on. We shouldn’t stop being vigilant for new developments, but it isn’t as if the world is a coerced-sex-free-zone right now. There are plenty of real battles to be fought.
I live in NZ (where prostitution has recently been legalised). I imagine that here, too, there is could be a theoretical possibility of women on benefits being required to take on a legitimate job offer in what is now a state-sanctioned career.
I write extensively on such social issues and for that reason am anxious to determine whether the DT article is genuine or bogus.
Is anyone aware of whether it has been confirmed or whether Snopes has been proven right?
You’re right, Bean. Heart was not being patronizing. I apologize, Heart.
>>And yes, clearly the article is implying that she got told “take this job, or lose your benefits.”? But there’s a big, and to my mind, suspicious, difference between implying something and actually saying it. When reporters try to make an exciting story with inference instead of actual statements, that suggests the possibility that they’re covering their asses.>>
Not to mention that it contradicts the Reuters article, which reports that job centres do not, “look for prostitutes on behalf of brothels, nor offer sex industry jobs to people who hadn’t specifically mentioned it as an area of interest.” That means that unemployed women can refuse any and all sex industry jobs; in fact, they have to ask for them specifically before they’re offered. So what the women in the Telegraph article was told cannot be true, or cannot apply to sex work: “Job centres that refuse to penalise people who turn down a job by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer.” Not forcing women to take jobs in the sex industry is either policy or liability; not both.
I wouldn’t go that far, piny. We know that the national government doesn’t allow local job centers to list prostitution jobs or to force women to take them, but we don’t know how much control the central government exercizes over local job centers, and we don’t know whether women know their rights and feel empowered to lodge a complaint. It’s possible that the person at the local job center didn’t understand the rules or just got a kick out of messing with a vulnerable woman.
In Oregon prostitution is “officially” illegal, but every week many escort ads get printed in Oregon’s weeklies, so excuse me for not putting much weight in the “official” story coming from the German government. The official way women are supposed to be treated and the real way they are treated often confict when there are big profits to be (Walmart’s “official” policy about gender equality comes to mind as well).
(by Amp) “However, given all the non-theoretical cases of women being forced into sex in the world, I’m not going to be as heartsick over a case that – so far – appears to have happened only in theory.”
I would think all the non-theoretical evidence of women and children forced into sexual slavery would logically lean someone towards thinking this has actually happened and isn’t just theoretics. If female bodies are the 3rd most traded item on the black market and global trafficking and prostitution as insanely profitable as we know it is, that makes the financial incentives for the German government and brothel owners to force unwilling bodies into prostitution more likely to believe than not.
Maybe there’s something to be said about the easy believability of this story in light of what average people know about capitalism, welfare reforms, and prostitution.
Thanks for the good words, Amp, you too, piny.
A poster on my boards brought up an interesting point: she wondered whether Germany had laws against sexual harrassment. If so, wouldn’t having to work in a brothel– even as a maid or clerk or something– be covered under such laws. Because when you think about it, even the referral is sexist, is sexual harrassment. I mean, if I went to the local unemployment office or a temp agency looking for a job, I would hit the roof if someone sent me to, say, Hooters or a massage parlor or a strip club, even if it were to apply for a job as a clerk or something like that. The *referral* would seem like sexual harrassment to me.
If I think about it this way, it makes the story not only more horrifying, but more believable. Even the posters here don’t see a problem with someone being referred to a brothel to do something besides turn tricks for a living, it’s as though that should be acceptable and not experienced as sexism, and that being so, why would German officials feel any differently, given that prostitution is legal there?
Great point, Samantha– I think if we really do find sex slavery horrifying and we are concerned about it, we are more likely to believe this story. Sex slavery flourishes because it is invisible to most people, though it goes on right under their noses. That’s how it all works, you know? Societies pretend to oppose it while simultaneously creating situations which allow it to flourish anyway. And in that scenario, those who are victimized become invisible.
Heart
I can definately see where the people who are saying, basically “it doesn’t matter if its actually true, if there’s a loophole where it could be true we need to be hopping mad and fixing it!” And I agree with this to a point….however, and maybe I have too much faith in things not being this obviously, legally unjust, but it seems to me that even if this were true I don’t think much outraging and hopping up and down would need to be done on our part. Knowing that Germany is a country with a legal system and a court system that are at least as legitimate and authoritative as ours are…even if this is true it will be struck down by a cascade of public outrage. I can’t see anyone in Germany standing up and publicly declaring that women should be forced into prostitution or risk losing their unemployment benefits. I mean, if something like this were to happen in this country, it would be one of the few things that the feminists and the christian right would agree on…and if it can do that it says a lot about how long it would last a challenge in the public eye. There’s virtually no one who would be for such a thing as this, and those who were for it would pay lip service to being against it or become pariahs to all but a few extremists. Even it were technically possible and it passed a legal challenge, I bet there would be a law on the books closing whatever loophole or changing whatever statute made it legal as soon as the German legislature (I’m sorry, I forget what it is called in Germany) could reasonably do so. Whatever you think about government and its unfairness towards women or any other minority group (and this is not to deny that unfairness), the fact remains that government officials in general, above all would like to remain government officials…and I can’t see that any legislator at any level of government in any Western country with a semblance of a free press would keep his seat if he supported forcing a woman into prostitution via unemployment benefits or did not support measures to keep this from happening. You just cannot hide or talk your way out of a voting record like that.
If this story is true, then the outrage to some extent is necessary and productive, but we can be pretty certain the situation will be resolved because of the accountability that the public officials have (i.e. having to defend themselves at reelection time). However, there are many confirmed cases of sexual slavery around the world that do not have that guarantee, in places where almost any level of public outrage will not change things, and so I feel like maybe that’s where our outrage and energy should truly be focusing. This is not to say that this should be ignored…but I think its a situation that will be resolved without much of a fight to the contrary…which is why it doesn’t give rise to much ire in me…because it seems like it was more of a mistake than a willfull mistreatment of women, and even if it wasn’t there is almost no way it will continue. Again, I’m not saying that governments don’t get away with bad stuff all the time, but a situation like this continuing will have NO support from anyone, and much opposition, therefore I don’t think it will stand very long.
Being offended at a job offer, wether it is at Hooters working the cash register, at a brothel mopping floors, turning tricks at a brothel, is NOT quite harassment. Harassment is much more involved and drawn out than a suggestion or an offer… there must be repetition and/or a power imbalance to make the jump from gross to harassment. For the woman in the article to be threatened with loosing her benefits (wether implied or direct) pushes the offer towards harassment. For me to be pointed towards a job posting only to find out it’s at “Chez Derriere”… that’s not harassment, no matter what the job posting is for. I can be offended all I want, but that doesn’t make it harassment. Is it harassment if I’m pointed towards Zoolanders House of Hot Pants?
I’m waiting to hear more… as many have pointed out, the two “conflicting” articles really don’t conflict much at all, as overall policy doesn’t mean beans about what’s really going on out there. It’s officially part of the landlord tenant act that you can be evicted from your apartment for having an animal, but it happens all the time.
Snopes is doing the right thing… wait to hear about it from a real German news source, and since someone else mentioned they’d seen it on CNN or Fox, I’m hopeful we’ll hear something.
One other thing… my limited knowledge of German unemployment benefits is that are on a time-line, and that they scale down the longer you’ve been out of work (ie X percent for A weeks, X-Y for B weeks, etc. etc). I also believe that here in Canada, you will have your benefits stopped entirely if you don’t find a job within X weeks, and sooner if you are determined by a case worker that you are not accepting “reasonable offers”.
The story is not unreasonable or unbelieveable. It is unusual in light of the type of employment she has been offered and the implied threat of loosing her EI over refusing to take it. But it is ludicrous to suppose that the German government would be encouraging the coercion of women (or anyone else) into the sex trade. They simply aren’t that hard up for money yet. Now with the debit in the States going into the trillions….
Wookie, I think you are talking about a hostile work environment, not sexual harassment. And a hostile work environment is often part of a sexual harassment scenario, but sexual harassment can and does exist apart from that one factor. You don’t even have suffer any sort of material or economic loss to have experienced sexual harassment.
****
From the EEOC site
http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/fs-sex.html
Facts About Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.
Sexual harassment can occur in a variety of circumstances, including but not limited to the following:
The victim as well as the harasser may be a woman or a man. The victim does not have to be of the opposite sex.
The harasser can be the victim’s supervisor, an agent of the employer, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or a non-employee.
The victim does not have to be the person harassed but could be anyone affected by the offensive conduct.
Unlawful sexual harassment may occur without economic injury to or discharge of the victim.
The harasser’s conduct must be unwelcome.
It is helpful for the victim to directly inform the harasser that the conduct is unwelcome and must stop. The victim should use any employer complaint mechanism or grievance system available.
When investigating allegations of sexual harassment, EEOC looks at the whole record: the circumstances, such as the nature of the sexual advances, and the context in which the alleged incidents occurred. A determination on the allegations is made from the facts on a case-by-case basis.
Prevention is the best tool to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace. Employers are encouraged to take steps necessary to prevent sexual harassment from occurring. They should clearly communicate to employees that sexual harassment will not be tolerated. They can do so by establishing an effective complaint or grievance process and taking immediate and appropriate action when an employee complains.
See also: How To File A Charge of Employment Discrimination
***
I think this description is a rather perfect fit for the scenario described in that article, if you’ll take a look.
As I ‘ve thought about it, I think the scenario described in that article is also pretty much just pure sexual discrimination, discrimination based on sex. Because men wouldn’t be referred to these places to work, and if they were, the effect on them would not be the same as it would be on women. This is discrimination against women *as* women, which is prohibited by U.S. law (which doesn’t mean it is nevertheless rampant).
How hard it’s been for even feminists to see that this is true is evidence of what women have lost in recent years at the hands of male supremacists — of all stripes.
Heart
>>I wouldn’t go that far, piny. We know that the national government doesn’t allow local job centers to list prostitution jobs or to force women to take them, but we don’t know how much control the central government exercizes over local job centers, and we don’t know whether women know their rights and feel empowered to lodge a complaint. It’s possible that the person at the local job center didn’t understand the rules or just got a kick out of messing with a vulnerable woman. >>
I’m not saying that this means that this incident didn’t happen, but that unless the Reuters article is inaccurate, it is not possible that what she was told was true. The national government does have control over what is and is not actionable. It is not possible that the German government would simultaneously prohibit a job centre from forcing women into sex work and allow a job centre to be sued for refusing to force women into sex work.
I don’t know a thing about German law, but you’re probably right. It seems more likely that brothels would sue the central government for crafting regulations that discriminate against one kind of legal business. I can’t imagine that would fly, but who knows?
At any rate, it’s clearly a sloppy, poorly-reported story. I’m curious to hear the real scoop, though.
I’m repeating what I said in another thread on this — sorry if that’s a problem, but I don’t know that anyone read it.
Anyway, part of the perversity here is that the original purpose of unemployment benefits is to increase the independence of workers. One of the underlying problems with capitalism is that workers have to take any job they can get, or starve — hence “wage slavery.” There’s less freedom in worker’s choices than there appears to be. Unemployment benefits are meant to allow workers a little slack so they can drop a job and find a better one without having to worry as much about starving or becoming homeless in the meantime.
Forcing someone to take any available job eliminates the fundamental purpose of unemployment benefits.
The existence of social welfare programs doesn’t mean a state is no longer capitalist. It’s an ameliorating element in a state in which capitalism is dominant. Marx talked about the first pro-worker reforms in England in Capital, Volume I. Had such reforms not been achieved, capitalism would have collapsed, since capitalism has a tendency to eat away its own foundations.
Workers in some parts of the US are required to take certain low-paid or unpaid jobs in order to continue receiving benefits. If there’s any truth to this story at all, then it sounds as if the same has happened in Germany. In the US, there is an ongoing, systematic effort to dismantle social welfare programs in order to drive down workers’ wages and independence. Europe has followed suit; the IMF and related institutions force such programs on the “developing world.”
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By definition:
Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.
I don’t see how a job offer would fit into this definition. It’s not a request, a favour or a lewd suggestion or grope. The implication in the definition that it affects an individuals employment implies that the individual is already employed, which can’t apply to a job offer (particularly not one that is only connected with the sex trade by environment, like a clerk job at Hooters). It’s not like the counsellor at the job center is going “Hey baby, you gotta nice rack, you should apply Dean’s House of LUV!”
But thanks for the oodles of pasted text defining sexual harassment.
Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.
wookie: I don’t see how a job offer would fit into this definition. It’s not a request, a favour or a lewd suggestion or grope. The implication in the definition that it affects an individuals employment implies that the individual is already employed, which can’t apply to a job offer (particularly not one that is only connected with the sex trade by environment, like a clerk job at Hooters). It’s not like the counsellor at the job center is going “Hey baby, you gotta nice rack, you should apply Dean’s House of LUV!”?
I don’t know that you can shut up the definition of sexual harassment so narrowly as you are suggesting.
I think that being referred to a brothel, sex chat lines, a massage parlor, Hooters, or a strip club is, by very definition, “verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature”. The job placement service doesn’t have to say anything more than, “Report to XYZ brothel” to a woman for this to be so. And I think that a woman’s “submission to or rejection of this conduct” certainly does “explicitly or implicitly affect [her] employment.”
Additionally,
The harasser can be the victim’s supervisor, an agent of the employer, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or a non-employee.
I think a government employment service could be understood to be “an agent of the employer,” but in any event, according to this section, women can be harassed by “non-employees” as well.
Then, too, according to this section, it is not necessary for a woman to suffer economic injury in order for sexual harassment to have occurred, to wit:
Unlawful sexual harassment may occur without economic injury to or discharge of the victim.
And:
The harasser’s conduct must be unwelcome.
In the case at hand, the referral to a brothel by a government employment service was conduct which was, again, by definition, both “of a sexual nature”, and “unwelcome. ” If a job placement service asked me to report to Hooters and fill out an application for employment, I think that would constitute “verbal conduct of a sexual nature” on the part of an agent of the employer which was “unwelcome. ”
So I think referring women to places where women are prostituted in any way, to include Hooters, strip clubs, sex talk lines, brothels, saunas and massage parlors which are fronts for prostitution, or any similar establishment, is, by definition, sexual harassment. I think as I’ve already said, it also discriminates against women AS women.
But thanks for the oodles of pasted text defining sexual harassment.
My pleasure.
Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff (Heart)
The Margins
http://www.gentlespirit.com/margins
…But the same language is used in laws that define harassment on the basis of religion. Would it be harassment if a job centre offered a devout Catholic a job as a receptionist at an Islamic organization? Or asked an atheist to sweep floors at the local Methodist church?
piny, I don’t think so. I think it would be harassment to push the offer or turn it into “an offer you can’t refuse” through coercion, but I don’t think the initial offer is harassment. Specifically where we’re looking at non-faith or non-sex trade specific tasks (clerk, janitorial, etc), I can’t stretch my imagination far enough to include those offers as harassment.
Heart: I do think that legally, the definition of harassment MUST be fairly ‘narrow’ or at least fairly precise. This I think is where you and I disagree… simply in Heart is painting with a much wider brush than I am, and I am arguing for the sake of definition.
Something that you find offensive is not nessecarily harassment. Just because it exists, is suggested to you as a possibility or happens to not fall within your comfort level because of your belief system does not make it harassment. Last time I checked, very few people seeking jobs were “report to Hooters and fill out an application”, or told to report anywhere, for that matter. You’re given help in finding leads, the “reporting” and applying is completely up to the job seeker. In the article which started this whole discussion, the woman in question was contacted by the employer in response to her profile in some type of job bank.
To argue that being offered a legal job in a place that doesn’t happen to suit me equates harassment in my mind is silly. I can be offended all I want, but it’s not harassment until the ante is upped, so to speak. There has to be something else in the circumstances to warrent the simplest-case scenario to be considered harassment.
Is the industry discriminatory on basis of gender? Quite probably. It’s actually probably a pretty discriminatory industry on a lot of things… gender, size, appearance, sexual orientation… you name it.
I think it’s a bit odd to have this discussion without knowing more about how German unemployment benefits work. As I understood it, a “job centre” isn’t just a place that gives you leads on jobs. It’s run by the people who dispense benefits, and one of the conditions of getting benefits is that you go on the interviews to which they refer you. And in that case, I guess I do think it’s harassment to refer people to jobs at brothels or strip clubs, even if they’re not required to take those jobs. Why should women be required to venture into a hostile atmosphere for no good reason? I don’t know whether it’s harassment under German law, and I don’t see why American law would be relevent. But it’s harassment as far as I’m concerned.
piny:…But the same language is used in laws that define harassment on the basis of religion. Would it be harassment if a job centre offered a devout Catholic a job as a receptionist at an Islamic organization? Or asked an atheist to sweep floors at the local Methodist church?
I think the same language is used when we are talking about sexual and religious discrimination, but I think sexual harassment, in general, is a specific form of discrimination which is unique to sexism. Employers are required by law to accommodate people’s religious preferences in the workplace; there IS no similar accommodation which would be possible for women recruited to brothels and the like; they would be forced to endure discrimination via harassment regardless because sex work IS discriminatory and sexist by its very nature, by definition. If this were not true, then men would be recruited to brothels equally and in the same way women would be, same with massage parlors and sex talk lines and so on, but we know they are not and would not be, and there is a reason for this: women are the people, in general, who are prostituted, and they are, in general, prostituted by men. It virtually never occurs in reverse; women do not prostitute men. Where men ARE prostituted, it is men who prostitute them.
The only time the comparison would hold might be where a job center specifically recruited members of a religion to work in a religious establishment which preached the inferiority of, or hatred towards, the recruits. So for example, to recruit Jews to work in an anti-semitic church would be a similar kind of harassment, in that no “accommodation” for Jewish employees would be possible in an institution which is anti-semitic.
but I don’t think the initial offer is harassment. Specifically where we’re looking at non-faith or non-sex trade specific tasks (clerk, janitorial, etc), I can’t stretch my imagination far enough to include those offers as harassment.
Would offering a Jewish person a janitorial job in the World Church of the Creator be harassment, do you think?
Something that you find offensive is not nessecarily harassment. Just because it exists, is suggested to you as a possibility or happens to not fall within your comfort level because of your belief system does not make it harassment.
This keeps being said in various ways, but I think it’s incorrect. In fact, charges of sexual harassment begin with the offense of the targeted person. The definition of harassment, according to the EEIOC, includes “unwelcome … verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature,” and the key w0rd there is that the conduct is “unwelcome.” In other words, it is *offensive* to the targeted person. The EEOC language I posted speaks to the issue of offense where it says, “The victim does not have to be the person harassed but could be anyone affected by the offensive conduct.” It’s kind of silly really, to even have to argue this. If someone says something sexual which is offensive, *yes,* I am being sexually harassed, whether or not the incident ever formed the basis for a formal charge of sexual harassment, or whether it ever could. If you [rhetorical “you”] say something sexual to me and I say I’m offended and you are harassing me, you are! And you are obligated to stop.
To argue that being offered a legal job in a place that doesn’t happen to suit me equates harassment in my mind is silly.
That’s not what I’m arguing at all. I’m saying that being recruited to a brothel is sexual discrimination and sexual harassment. There are few comparisons we can draw in any other kind of work because of the very nature of prostitution.
sally: It’s run by the people who dispense benefits, and one of the conditions of getting benefits is that you go on the interviews to which they refer you. And in that case, I guess I do think it’s harassment to refer people to jobs at brothels or strip clubs, even if they’re not required to take those jobs. Why should women be required to venture into a hostile atmosphere for no good reason? I don’t know whether it’s harassment under German law, and I don’t see why American law would be relevent.
Sally, I agree with what you say here, and my point isn’t, of course, that U.S. law applies in Germany, my point is that by our own legal standards as Americans, those of us who are Americans, (and Canadians, because Canadian law is similar), the scenario laid forth in the original article amounts to sexual discrimination and sexual harassment. It is something which would likely be barred in the U.S. on that basis alone.
Heart
Hello:
I am late to this discussion, so it is probably over, but I found this quote interesting from early on….
“Personally I don’t think it’s that offensive and provided women are fully aware that they can easily turn that one down without risking their benefits think it’s an acceptable burden on the unemployed to have to turn up for interviews in the sex industry. ”
There are certain things that are just demeaning, and would make it harder to find a job because one’s confidence would be devastated to realize that it had come to this, someone asking to see your naked torso or whatever. As someone with a disability, it would be equally demeaning for me to be obligated to work for a phone-donations company that used scripts talking about poor, pathetic cripples.
I am put in mind of stories I have heard from friends who, as newly single mothers, were berated in front of their children by welfare workers…if this is what it has come to, why bother to try at all?
— zorro
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