To think the use of prostitutes just isn't that big a deal?

I know someone who was a financially successful prostitute.
Every spare penny fed her drug habit. She has lost her children (SS had to step in because she wouldn’t keep the punters away from them). She is now broken, poor and far older than her years.
I’m sure she presented the happy hooker myth to the punters even when her life was going to shit.

winesalot charlotte rose was a teacher and gave it up to be an escort. I've interviewed her on many occasions. She had a daughter and an extremely loving relationship with a man who tragically died recently. She's intelligent and beautiful and actually does have sex with disabled men and sincerely enjoys it and they find it extremely uplifting. It's certainly not a job for everyone and of course trafficking and pimping is horrendous. But that wasnt what the OP was talking about.

Are you having a laugh? Unless someone is forcing you to prostitute yourself, you are choosing to do it, regardless of your circumstances. 'having sex with random men for money was my only option' is bullshit. I can respect the decision to do it if you choose to, but it IS a choice.

What are the other options? Give me some examples.

Strippers who work in a club and don't do private dances, are dancing in full view of many people - they are not alone with men and they don't have to have anything inserted into their body. It's not an ideal job but it's not the same as exchanging bodily fluids with somebody else.

Of course 'celebrity' sex workers lie, everyone lies about their job. Actors don't tend to say 'I find talking to journalists incredibly boring and you know what, this movie is shite' do they? Equally a sex worker who's trying to portray her life as lovely and glamorous isn't going to say 'I've had my vagina torn three times by men who were too rough' is she? All jobs have their shit elements. The difference with sex work is that the shit elements include being infected with life threatening illnesses, having an unwanted pregnancy, damage to your reproductive organs, physical and psychological injury and death. Those dangers are there no matter how famous you are or happy you seem.

Also what about stripping? Some of the responses here would bring that into the equation?
How does that equate if we are going down this line?
Is this somehow less important because a large proportion of customers are female now days?

@freddiemercury read Rachel Moran “Paid For”. She talks about lying bare faced to journalists.

Specifically - some sex workers actively choose their career as a valid option. I don't think they'd like to be lectured on their choice, made as grown adults.

Their 'choice' harms other women, harms women as a class. It sends a message that women are there to be commodified by men and to service men ... Not every choice made by an individual woman is automatically empowering, feminist or harmless just because it is a woman making it.

Yes, @OnlyTheTitOfTheLangBerg - which is why I concluded the post which your quote is selectively taken from with -
The sex worker industry is what we should be criticizing here, & the society which has brought it to bear in such unequal & degrading ways - not the minority of women who choose to profit from it, & certainly not the vast majority, who are exploited, demeaned, & unsafe.

• I didn't say I agreed with the specific sex worker's view which I cited. I also made it very clear that the specialist work she engages it puts her firmly in the driver's seat - her clients are not allowed to touch her. That does not mean I condone the sex industry.

The entire way mainstream society views sex, bodies, womens rights & especially the way women's bodies are commodified as objects to be commented on & appraised, or their owners shamed for non-compliance to some arbitrary patriarchally-imposed standard is repugnant.
Until that entire societal hot mess is sorted out, there is no hope that the treatment of women, within or without of the sex industry, is ever going to improve.
Which is pretty much never, but hey ho, that's a whole 'nother thread.

I spoke to my DH about this and we share similar views
he would never want to have sex with someone who didn't want to have sex with him ( I may have a word about him about this haha) and he would see prostitution as this, Saying that he there maybe enough women who feel happy to do this to make outlawing it difficult. Its similar to porn in that way I suppose
It is a very difficult subject and not really a black and white one idea fits all.

freddiemercury. I’d be very interested to know why you think that the women you interviewed told you 100% of their stories and were 100% truthful.

Do you think that they always did? Or that they wholly and freely chose right from the start? Did they have fulfilling careers before turning to this line of work? Have they hidden abusive childhoods? Just how in-depth did your interviews go that you are 100% confident that they are truly fulfilled and happy at work and in their personal lives?

Read “Selling Olga - stories of human trafficking”, written nearly twenty years ago but unbelievably relevant to this topic.

I think that although we can accept that there are women who do do this willingly and love what they do, I think you still have to ask how any woman has reached a point in her life where she feels that the thing she is best at is having sex with men.

you can’t tell me that any woman who prostitutes herself willingly has the same kind of self worth that most of us do.

I can sort of see wanting to work on a sex chat line, It’s just chat and meaningless, you never meet the men and are likely never going to talk to them again. I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t keep a straight face for a start, but to willingly have sex with men is a whole different matter.

And I know this is perhaps controversial, but I equally don’t agree that someone with severe disabilities should be exempt from judgement over using a prostitute. It’s unfortunate that some have such severe disabilities that they will never have a real relationship or a sexual encounter. But that shouldn’t give them the right to feel that they are entitled to have sex with a prostitute.

I read an article once about a young man whose parents took him to Spain to see such a prostitute, and his attitude was that he just wanted to feel loved. As sad as that may be, it’s an illusion.

Also, if you think about someone with severe disabilities having sex with someone who can do most of the work, and you turn the genders around and imagine that person is a woman, you have to think about what a male prostitute having sex with her, given she can’t, actually means/entails. No, it’s not the man’s fault that he has to rape a woman who can’t have sex naturally, but that is essentially what it is.

If it’s not right for a woman then neither is it right for a man.

And the willing ‘escorts’ or sex workers are doing nothing more than perpetuating the concept that sex for money is acceptable and are enabling men to believe that paying for sex is ok. It’s not OK it is one of the most degenerated industries exploiting women. As for the willing women themselves, really, no self respect and, as explained above, no respect for other women either, but that’s a different discussion.

Dulang refusing to see any other point if view is wilfully ignorant

Prioritising the views of those making money from organised crime (aka ‘the sex industry’) over those who have left and no longer have a financial incentive to defend it? That’s true wilful ignorance.

I believe this is already the case

Holbeck is evidence that it is not. Prostitutes are not being arrested (subject to certain conditions being met) but neither are punters.

It infuriates me that so many on here refuse to believe that some women enjoy their escort work.

And it infuriates me that some women are wilfully blind to the damage prostitution does to a society in general and to women in particular and how selling it as an empowering choosychoice perpetuates that damage, so we all have our crosses to bear.

@IfNot how do you know I don’t? Very presumptuous of you.

Do you have children...more specifically, a daughter? If so, would you be happy for her to do sex work for a living?

Women are not something to be bought!

Dulang refusing to see any other point if view is wilfully ignorant.

As PPs have said - decriminalise the selling of sex and criminalise the buying of it, or what's known as the Nordic model, would be a good start. Along with much better funding for the charities and agencies supporting women to leave prostitution.

I believe this is already the case

She said "why not get paid for doing something I want to do anyway". The happy hooker is NOT a myth.

Telling the truth is bad for business.

Just wow. You are talking crap OP. I haven’t RTFT but if you really think that the majority of women and girls who work as sex workers do so through a thought-through choice and freely and willingly consent then you are wilfully turning a blind eye to the circumstances they are in. Many are coerced (how would a punter such as your friend be able to know?), many are desperate, many are feeding habits and most are vulnerable. A person in that position is not freely giving their consent, they do so through desperation or fear. If you think it’s someone “willingly providing” a “service” then go give it a try yourself.

You must have had an incredibly sheltered and privileged life. And that's great, until your ignorance and lack of imagination negatively affect other people.

You have demonstrated repeatedly here that you don't understand abuse, you don't understand trafficking, you don't understand consent, you don't understand choice, you don't understand trauma, and you don't understand exploitation. Not even close.

It hadn't even occurred to you that the women whose bodies are being bought and sold would come from abusive backgrounds, but you still insist it's a choice? Bullshit.

You are full of shit and I don't believe you came here wanting to learn.