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

Go back and read catinjapans post about choice. Really read it.

Choice is a construct designed to end thinking.

"Choice" is influenced by and depends on other determination factors.

Consent is taken away when sex is paid for. It is not consent. The whole reason that the same encounter wouldn't happen if no money was involved.

You're imagining a scenario where "Katy fancies a new bag and do the friendly, wouldn't harm a fly guy, Peter is offering her £50 for a quick bunk up round at her nice bungalow. Nice gentle guy he is". You're doing that to justify it to yourself.

That's not what is happening. Not even close. You should get your head around it and help your friend to do the same.

Sara Pascoe has a very interesting podcast talking with sex workers. One of the ladies, amongst other things, specialises in working with disabled clients. They are well educated, articulate sex workers who have made an active choice in how they want to live their lives. One is a qualified teacher for example, but chooses to be a sex worker instead. I’d recommend a listen

And in the fairness of balance, did she have a trafficked sex worker on? A drug addicted sex worker? A sex worker who has suffered trauma growing up at the hands of males?

Or was it just articulate, well-educated women?

If the podcast also talks about the horrific, traumatic side of prostitution, I might listen to it.

There are women who don’t mind it or actively seek to do it just for the money.

and

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.

Honestly? I don't give a fuck if they don't like to be lectured. 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. It leads to situations such as that in Holbeck in Leeds, where women and children going about their daily business are propositioned by men assuming they must be prostitutes. It feeds rape culture and the belief that too many men hold that they have a right to sex whenever and however they want it, so long as they have the cash to rent a body.

Not every choice made by an individual woman is automatically empowering, feminist or harmless just because it is a woman making it.

#NordicModelNow

Disabled people have no more right to sex than able-bodied people.

Which is none.

Sorry loureeddododo I think my post may have conveyed the wrong message.

I abhor prostitution and men who pay for sex. The term “using” just adds to my impression.

There are women who don’t mind it or actively seek to do it just for the money.

All the women I knew who found it relatively easy (and I knew hundreds of women all over London in my time) were the ones who had been abused as children and were able to effectively dissociate from their situation at will. It was a learned skill, to not give a fuck about sexually servicing a man you wouldn’t even have a drink with in your normal day to day,

Soon

I wince at “using a prostitute” as though she is a slot-machine. You don’t “use” humans. You interact with them. A man doesn’t “use a prostitute” - he has sex with a woman for money

That entirely depends if it’s the women’s choice as we know not all woman are doing it out of free will

Buying women is sordid, nasty and just awful. No woman actively chooses to become a prostitute. She does it because she has no other option.
Generally, I agree.
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.

(I also judge the fuck out of women who bleat on about sex work being a valid employment choice yadda yadda rather than stepping up and helping women get out of that situation).
Then you are, in some specific instances, blaming the women themselves, who choose sex work as a valid option & see no need to be offered "help" to get out of it - because this is their active & rational choice.

My chum X, for example, who chooses sex work as a viable method of raising enough money to pay off her mortgage while also supporting her child. Who doesn't even allow her clients to touch her, because she provides a specialist service, where she is in charge, & they pay £170 an hour for the privilege?
X is certainly not being exploited.
X has a business plan & will retire on its proceeds when she chooses.

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 know two escorts (prostitutes)

One hated it but did it to pay her way out of horrible debt.

The other really didn’t mind. She would come in to work the next day with hundreds of pounds in her bag. Even shown me her website. She’s married now with two kids.

There are women who don’t mind it or actively seek to do it just for the money.

Having said that I just couldn’t be with a man who had used prostitutes.

Could you have sex with someone knowing that they didn't fancy you, didn't even like you, and would probably rather be doing almost anything else than touching your genitals? Does that thought turn you on?

Men who use prostitutes are people that would answer yes to that question.

I wince at “using a prostitute” as though she is a slot-machine. You don’t “use” humans. You interact with them. A man doesn’t “use a prostitute” - he has sex with a woman for money.

It’s not ‘work’ or an ‘industry’, it’s organised crime.

YES!!! Its absolutely is.

Think the others a bit uptight.

Ah yes, the childish fallacy that if you are against another person's body being bought and used as a wanksock, you must hate all sex. How original, and how utterly bollocks.

And yes, for the record I'm against surrogacy too.

Drinkygin - Given this forum is anonymous and that posters don't have a bio you can read that details all their experiences, how can you possibly know what anyone here knows about or has experience of? Are you simply assuming that because you think that people with experience of something can only have the one opinion of it?

Comparing prostitution to abortion is pretty

My issue is more with the societal structures that lead women to "choose" prostitution as their best option, because often, it seems to be the only viable option. So sure, it's a choice, but it's not much of a choice usually.

It was phone sex followed by dancing jobs (back then it was ‘table dancing’ rather than ‘pole dancing’) that groomed me into thinking prostitution was normal. All the other girls did it, so being the one that didn’t go on ‘cases’ made me the weirdo. Eventually, you give in and once you’ve done it once it becomes harder to resist in future.
It’s a seedy underworld that preys on youth and insecurity and vulnerability. It’s not ‘work’ or an ‘industry’, it’s organised crime.

And I was a fancy London club girl, not a street worker giving hand jobs for crack money. The happy hooker is a myth, because even if you feel ok about it at the time, the experience leaves you mistrustful and prone to disassociation.

Regardless of whether the woman 'consents' to it at the time...OP do you honestly believe that this won't have a long term impact on her psychologically? Has anyone made this point yet? sorry haven't rtwt

@IfNot no I’m not wrong.

You said that all these posters who are against the sex industry don't know what they are talking about because they have no experience of it.
Well, I'm telling you that you are wrong because, at the very least, 4 of the posters DO have experience.

I hope those who dont find it a big deal never end up trapped in a situation themselves or have to watch while their sisters or daughters get sucked in to the seedy underworld.

We already know that the problems with universal credit, problems created by the designer of the bloody system itself and all out of the recipients control are driving women to drastic measures.

Look how many threads there have been on MN where exs refuse to pay for their kids or suddenly reduce their payments leaving the resident parents in the shit

Not everyone has family and those who do well your elderly parents wont be around forever and what if your sister meets someone and moves to Dubai or Australia or wherever.

None of us know what's around the corner. None of us know we wont be a victim of some horrid accident that renders us unable to work or so severely traumatised they turn to drugs or alcohol and have to fund an addiction.

Prostitution, very much like abortion, will happen whether illegal or not. I have always wondered if really, it wouldn't be in the sex workers' interests to make it legal and regulate it, to protect their rights etc.
I also realise that it is a very complex topic that I don't know much about.

I can understand why your friend doesn't want his wife to know. Frankly, if I were the wife I would definitely not want to know.

Having said that, I will absolutely not call him scum. Nor will I judge anyone who uses porn, and God knows many people do judge that.

The way I think about this is, how would I feel if my daughter told me she was selling her vagina to men.

And this gives me an immediate answer.

YABVU

Sara Pascoe has a very interesting podcast talking with sex workers. One of the ladies, amongst other things, specialises in working with disabled clients. They are well educated, articulate sex workers who have made an active choice in how they want to live their lives. One is a qualified teacher for example, but chooses to be a sex worker instead. I’d recommend a listen.