In Hamburg, there is a street lined with #brothels that women and children are not permitted to enter, it's called "Herbertstraße".

Did you know that the gate keeping everyone but sex buyers, pimps, and exploited women out was set up by the Nazis?

(The gate is usually closed.) The gate at Herbertstraße was set up in 1933 under the Nazis to shield on-goings from view. Officially prostitution for a woman's own profit was illegal, especially in a street setting, but under state control, it was permitted and widely practiced.

(Herberstraße today).

The life of Joop Wilhelmus - an exemplary tale of many a "#sexualrevolution|ary's" extreme hatred of women and children...🧵 Joop Wilhelmus is born in 1944, son of a Communist, sent at an early age to GDR socialist fraternization camps. Begins writing in leftwing papers at 14. Noticed for his braggadocio, claims of having first had sex at 12 years of age, and attracting "hot chicks" with his politics.

There's a new website educating about the largely forgotten and understudied history of Nazi military brothel networks during WWII by German feminist historian Anne S. Respondek. "The male right to sex" in full brutal force looks like this... 🧵wehrmachtsbordelle.de/2023/09/12/gla… During their time in power the Nazi war machine established a brothel network stretching entire occupied territory. Brothels catered to (nearly) every sector of the male population incl. not just soldiers, SS, police and elites, but military allies, workers and even camp inmates.

One of Germanys biggest news magazines, Der Spiegel, headlines:

"We will be ashamed"

Deploring 20 years of failed German #prostitution policy.

Here's the story of how the law let women down, the people (often survivors) ringing the alarm & the politicians admitting the mistake The article opens with the story of "Lena" (20), the victim of a "loverboy" pimp, a trafficker who makes their victim think they're in a loving relationship - in Lena's case a martial arts world champion. Atypical about her story is that he got sentenced to 6 years and 3 months.

Every femicide in the sex trade warrants action and no country is doing enough to stop men using lethal violence against women in #prostitution. But the radio silence on the recent case of a woman murdered in a German apartment brothel, compared to the Irish case is deafening. I don't think anyone can prove their case on what policy is better based on homicide data alone because as far as I'm aware no country is tracking murders of women in prostitution specifically. The cases and survivor reports we do have indicate lethal violence is a concern always

Reading about legal experts and sexologists who work with child rapists repeatedly going "oh, if they'd just pay someone 18+ for it, it's totally fine!" and the totally fine thing is cutting someone's skin or keeping someone in a basement for a dozen men a day. I'm furious. Women in prostitution are not sponges for rape and abuse. Not only are men very capable of raping both their stepdaughter and the barely 18-year-old woman at the brothel, a disproportionately large number of women in the sex trade are themselves child sexual abuse survivors.

Having made terrible experiences with window #prostitution in Amsterdam, the city plans to build a mega-brothel euphemistically called an "erotic center" instead. 100 women in rooms plus social and health service, security, hospitality, entertainment, education & cultural events. In Germany, we call these places "mega brothels" and we have many of them. The biggest is the Pascha brothel in Cologne with 150 individual rooms. Such places may also include strip clubs, restaurants, spaces for concerts and business meetings. None of this has made women safe.

Does your job include men you don't desire reviewing, touching and penetrating your body plus a daily fear of intimate injury, unwanted pregnancy, STIs, revenge porn, robbery, rape and murder at the hands of your clients? No? Then it's not comparable to #prostitution.

https://twitter.com/kattenbarge/status/1633595813027889153

I once did an internship for a film maker and the boss made me cry within 2 days by myself in the bathroom. I guess this experience means I know what it's like to be in prostitution!! Does that make any sense? No it doesn't. Let's not pretend a desk job is remotely comparable.

I actually go out of my way to not say that #prostitution is paid rape for every woman in the trade. I always say "many" or "countless" or "often". I never point to individual women and say "you were raped". That's not my place and it doesn't help anyone. What I do want is... ...for the many women who felt traumatized by johns including the not overtly violent ones, the seemingly ordinary ones, who stick to agreements to be able to trust that feeling and not be gaslit into "if this upset and haunts you, you were in the wrong profession".

I know this isn't a scientific study but I just wanna get a vague sense of what sadistic "sex" acts present in the legal German sex trade people think are harmless and what shouldn't be normalized and possibly illegal.

Let's start with hitting to the point of brusing. Strangulation which btw is never fully safe and always carries a certain level of risk of brain injury and death

Some people are calling me a liar for saying the commercial sexual exploitation of teenagers aged 16-17 was legal in Germany till 2008 & in Switzerland until 2013.

I wish I was lying.

But it's true. Paid rape of teens was legal.

stern.de/politik/deutsc…

cbc.ca/news/world/swi… Now some man is defending legal CSA of 16-17 years olds saying it ain't rape. Germanys age of consent is 14 so legally he's correct. Morally however he's just exposing himself as pro nonce. Survivors of this legal child rape are adults now but they can see your comments btw.

#Prostitution itself is dehumanizing. The societal stigma that blames women and pretends the industry exists because of "nasty greedy nymphos" is just the top layer of hatred. The industry itself hates women. This shows in the way that women have to advertise/are advertised. A 🧵 I'm just going to describe the images I see logging onto a legal #prostitution advertising website in Germany, where supposedly regulation and bureaucracy keep women safe. First the name: "KaufMich" means "BuyMe". Not "BuySex", site owners knows its women for sale, not sex.

It's 2022 and survivors of prostitution in Germany cannot speak publicly without harassement and threats. A number of survivors, social workers and other experts will be speaking at a series of events in Berlin and the venue is being intimidated in hopes that they will cancel. Mind you literal brothel and escort agency owners can host massive conferences about how to best alter laws in their interests and squeeze women in the trade for every last penny - but the big protests happen when women say: "To me and many more prostitution was paid rape".

Libertarians are really out here saying that protecting the infrastructure for the 3% who choose to sell sex with other options available is equally as important as supporting the exploited 97% who are pushed by poverty, addiction and organized crime, in breaking free. Holy holy If youre in the sex trade truly for shits and giggles, don't need it & could leave anytime I really couldnt care less. No one is stopping you from being promiscuous if this is genuinely about sex not money. Dont need to maintain the infrastructure that exploits millions just 4 u.

Miss me with this "women have pussy power over men" shit. This is an MRA talking point youre parroting. For every pretty girl who gets a guy to carry things for her, there are dozens of us harassed, stalked and assaulted by men who found us just "too enticing". It's not power to get a man to look at you sexually since you have absolutely no control over whether and how he acts on it. The woman who is so utterly bewitching men just do whatever she wants while still accepting "no" for an answer is a sexist myth. Sex appeal doesn't empower

Prostitution arose historically with land ownership, class society, militarization and slavery. The earliest records we have strongly indicate that the first women were in situations of sexual slavery - debt bondage at best - and many were first sold to be raped as girls.

https://twitter.com/eyeofscottie/status/1552144331330359296

It's amazing to me how people can celebrate historic prostitution. For every Theodora of Byzantine there's countless who endured unwanted pregnancies, illness and death from STIs and child birth. The life expectancy of a woman in prostitution without condoms would have been low.

Several German prisons experiment with letting convicted rapists close to finishing their sentences go to brothels as a form of "therapy to learn sexual interactions with women that are free of violence".

No woman is "experimental ground" for rapists.

n-tv.de/panorama/Einze… This is a result of framing prostitution as "therapy for men". If men can get psychotherapy in prison why not sexual therapy? A therapist may help them work on social skills - according to several German prison wards a woman in prostitution should teach him not to rape. Insanity.

@OnlyFansPostinL if your goal genuinely is to protect women from entering the sex trade or realising they're being mistreated in it you need to stop shaming them for how they're surviving/the lies they fell for. Societal hatred & stigma does not prevent entry but definitely exit. I bet half the people who follow this account are men who just hate women, especially those they view as promiscuous or "public goods", and who get off on their public humiliation - first by being sexually objectified and then second by being shamed and dehumanised for it.

Just wondered about the coherence in believing there's no meaningful difference between prostitution and a retail or office job, but also if you haven't sold sex you can't talk about it (unless you're pro the industry of course). But you said my job is virtually the same?? 🤔🤔🤔 If you argue that prostitution is the same as regular work & the only difference is stigma maybe this is a somewhat coherent position. Still since I sell my body by sitting at a computer, I should be able to talk about the nature of prostitution since u guys said its all the same

My stalker tried to hide behind his minority status as a Muslim migrant, trying to guilt trip me, when I feared for my safety and that of my family and started talking to police, by claiming he'd be deported (he had citizenship of a peaceful developed country, but nvm).

https://twitter.com/SydneyLWatson/status/1547616338826240000

My case is is almost harmless compared to multiple teenage girls I personally know who were victims of gang rape and filmed child sexual abuse, groomed by... groups of Muslim men and boys. My solidarity will always be with victims regardless of perpetrators' minority status.

Until 1997 German men could legally rape their wives. Furthermore the law held that women had to pretend to enjoy #maritalrape our be found at fault in case of divorce. Here's the reasoning of the Federal Court of "Justice" from 1966 translated to English: "The woman does not fulfill her conjugal duties simply by letting the intercourse take place impassively. If, by reason of her disposition or for other reasons (...) she is unable to find satisfaction in conjugal intercourse, marriage nevertheless requires of her a concession..