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

Plus this part of the article was particularly sad from the sex workers point of view;

“When I took a sex worker down to a residential place for severely disabled people for the staff to experience what a sex worker is like, they asked her what she would do if a client bashed her over the head with his uncontrollable arm, or threw up over her and she replied: "I would duck the arm and I would clear up the vomit, that's part of what I do: clearing up excrement".”

Yes I gave two examples, but two examples of people who are relatively well known. I know many more in real life as I taught children and adults with disabilities for many years. I also had a relationship with a disabled man.

I stand by my point. NO ONE IS ENTITLED TO SEX.

@IfNot no I’m not wrong.

suppose if it was made a legal profession and taken off the streets then some level of control could be expected

Oh like in Amsterdam - where this hasn't worked at all. Trafficked women now make up 70-80% of sex workers in Amsterdam and the mayor who advocated for it has now changed her mind and is trying to change the original 'lets legalise, it will be great' stance.

Burney that is not an "interesting read". It's a load of romanticised twaddle. Have you even thought about the "sex worker".

The last paragraph says it all. Vile.....

I really love the idea of sex workers giving disabled people the chance to be touched in a non-medical way, perhaps for the first time in their lives, to be held in a warm pair of arms and have their sexual dreams respected and lived out.

I think it’s grim, but everyone’s different

Yes, its soooooo uptight to believe that women's bodies are not commodities

If you say people with disabilities should have access to prostitutes that is no different to saying anyone should. No one has a right to sex.

And so what if there’s one happy sex worker in a hundred - no punter knows who he is getting so it’s the same as ‘using’ the unhappy ones every time.

Also to the PPs disagreeing with all sex work- lap dancing etc, you are totally clueless and are arguing about something you have no experience or knowledge of.

You are wrong. All kinds of people, with all kinds of past stories post on MN.

Thanks, Arya - it’s a long time ago and I was very young and shielded by that false sense of invincibility that youth provides. Sometimes it seems more like a film I watched than I life I led. It’s honestly a surprise to me that I wasn’t found dead under a Mayfair club ‘s fire escape or similar.

I would’ve argued argued to the death that it was consensual at the time, but the truth is you are groomed into thinking it’s a normal choice and only when looking back you see how fucked up it really is.

So, OP, if you follow the train of thought that says women always have another option, know they have another option and so prostitution is 100% a choice, made by otherwise healthy women - then why don't more women from happy, healthy childhoods who are 100% a-okay with their lives make this 'choice'? Why is the industry over represented by vulnerable people with abusive backgrounds, debt problems, drug problems?

Surely if it's just a choice like any other, then all sectors of society would be proportionately represented?

I agree with you OP, but there's only 19% of us.
Think the others a bit uptight.

Using anybody is beyond the pale. YABU.

And what everyone else said about needs.

But people wouldn't consent to a LOT of things if money was not involved. Would not consent to rubbing strangers bodies (massage therapists), clearing someone's gutters, delivering someone's post....

Massage therapists, postmen, window cleaners, etc have employment rights, health and safety protections, holidays, sick leave, and so on. They also have the right of refusal to provide their services to customers who are abusive or who pose a danger to them, they also have the option to walk away from their job and find another.

Giving two examples of disabled people with sex lives does not negate the fact that many others don't. I think this is an interesting read: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/10/sex-workers-disabled-people

If consent is bought, it’s not consent IMV.

Of course I’m sure there are a small number of women who have many other options and would choose sex work over all of them. If the only women in the industry were those women, I’d have less of a problem. But that will never be the case, and I believe the choice is never made in a vacuum.

Oh these poor lovely men and their "needs".

Sex is not a need. Food is a need. Water is a need. Shelter is a need. Nobody dies from lack of sex. Plenty of people (mostly women, and even when it's men, the perpetrator has usually been a man too) have died during sex.

I don't mean middle aged overweight men having heart attacks, I mean from strangulation / hitting etc. which is subsequently claimed by the perpetrator to be consensual.

There is no "right" to have sex either. So if you can't find someone willing and able to have sex with you, just take care of yourself or just don't have sex.

@DuLANGMondeFOREVER Glad you got out the other side, I hope things are better for you now

What do we think the chances are that OP is a male punter (and possible incel)?

But people wouldn't consent to a LOT of things if money was not involved. Would not consent to rubbing strangers bodies (massage therapists), clearing someone's gutters, delivering someone's post...

I doubt anyone has felt sick and taken multiple boiling hot showers to the point of self harm after being paid to deliver post or clear gutters.

"Payment for sex is coercion" is bollocks.

A quick google tells me that the name for the logical fallacy being committed here is "equivocation." Though I think one or two others I vaguely recall might also apply.

I’d rather deliver someone’s post than work as a prostitute...

You have heard of soliciting I assume?

Even in the incredibly rare cases that you might find someone with zero money worries that enjoys being a prostitute, that can pick and choose their clients, feels completely safe in refusing to sleep with certain prospective clients, and could stop with no negative repercussions at all, it's still buying into the notion that you can rent someone's body as a commodity for your own use, and contributing to an industry is which directly results in the trafficking, rape, and death of many, many women and children. So regardless of whether a man determines he has definitely found himself a totally happy, willing, untrafficked woman to pay for sex, he's creating demand. That demand will result in someone dying. His hands aren't clean at all

Absolutely this.

Most of the time the men don’t care if they’re trafficked anyway. I think this took place in Ireland but again I may be wrong, someone set up an advert for a prostitute when the men called it went to an answering machine where a woman made it clear she was unwilling and unconsenting to being a prostitute, no men called anyone to help her and they left their details to make a booking. I think it was reported in the guardian or the telegraph but I’m not 100%.

Clouds is anyone suggesting that prostitution be made illegal?! God no.

You have a skewed understanding of the concept of "choice"