To think that you can absolutely buy consent

100% agree, although the pearl clutching will drive you mad in the responses.

Well unless the punter is certain that the woman is not trafficked or coerced, he can't know she's truly consented. So he's not buying consent. He's buying the services of a woman who may or may not be consenting.

It isn't even this "they want something so harmful no one else will do it"

Sex workers will tell you that men treat them badly during sex, either rough or violent, or dispassionately. They've paid for a product and expect you to deliver.

Let’s pick this apart. Someone offers you a million for a shag. It’s not going to be Robert Redford. It’s going to be someone either so repulsive that no one will shag them or they want something so harmful no one else will do it.

Intellectually, there’s a number many of us would consider. Emotionally, there’s no amount of money you wouldn't pay to not have PTSD or trauma.

I'm not a sex worker but if some random offered me a million quid for a shag.... hell yeah! In that situation my consent would literally be bought.

Anyone who works in a chicken factory on their feet all day for min wage isn't consenting by that logic.

Housing. So all situations. But yes, I’m homeless shelters it’s MUCH worse. And friends. More than one.

It depends what line of work you are in. You say you have worked with sex workers. I'd be interested to know if you mean in a professional capacity and if so was that counselling, social work or another branch of health? Because if that's the case then you are de facto going to engage with damaged people in some form or another.

Probably. But the goal of defending the country, preventing invasion and protecting democracy trumps some things. Men getting laid doesn’t.

You touched on addiction and poverty but not abuse. I don’t think I’ve known or worked with any sex worker without some ACE (adverse childhood events), normally abuse or witnessing violence. Sometimes neglect and poor parenting, sometimes bereavement.

And I have known and worked with a LOT of people, including dear friends. You don’t know me any more than I know you.

We know that many front line soldiers don’t get over the trauma too.

I'm interested to hear from those who think that prostitution is qualitatively different from other professions whether they think the armed forces should be shut down for the same reason: that some consent is beyond being bought.

Just to add: The danger is that sex workers who are in a powerful enough position for their consent to be valid/authentic are helping to facilitate the sex industry and are therefore contributing to the existence of a sexual economy in which more vulnerable women will be compelled, trafficked, etc.

They are also contributing to a culture in which women are objectified.

So, arguably, they shouldn't do what they do, because of its effects on other women.

I'm not sure where I stand on that, but we make that sort of judgement in other moral contexts so it doesn't seem a stretch to apply it in this context. For example, lots of people think you should not buy animal furs, even if you know that you are sourcing them from a high-animal-welfare supplier who never kills wild animals, because the existence of legitimate suppliers makes it easy for the unscrupulous traders to operate cruelly or without regard for species protection.

I completely agree that there is no problem, in general, with the idea of buying consent. It's what happens in a million transactions everyday. Every time someone agrees to provide their labour in return for a wage or to sell a product in return for its price, the employer or shopper who purchases the labour or product has bought the provider's consent for them to have it.

In fact, I've never seen the phrase "you can't buy consent" before, though I don't doubt it is going the rounds. When it comes to things like prostitution, the argument is usually a different one, namely that just some commercial transactions (i.e. just some purchases of consent) are off limits because they are cases where consent is invalid or inauthentic

The clearest cases occur when there is such an imbalance of power, such a vulnerability on the part of the 'consenting' person, that they are, in effect, compelled, and the consent is purely nominal. This is the case of many, though obviously not all, sex workers. Especially trafficked sex workers.

There are other sorts of cases where people might believe that it is simply not ethical to consent to certain things in return for money (even if there isn't an imbalance of power). I think I recall correctly that there was a legal case a few decades ago in which members of some sex ring or other were agreeing to various types of extreme mutilation in order to satisfy their own sexual desires and those of the people mutilating them.

The court decided that these mutilations were the sort of things that you just cannot consent to, and that therefore the mutilators were guilty of criminal assault. I can't remember whether money changed hands in this sex ring. But the legal (and possible the moral) principle was that consent to such things is never valid , regardless of any financial transaction.

So, tl:dr: the slogan "you can't buy consent" is false, but that is a complete red herring, because all that needs to be shown in relation to discussions around sex work and similar is that there are some situations in which consent in return for money is invalid.

The consent is bought in the scenario above.

When lots of privileged, rich people choose a form of sex work as their profession, come back and discuss it with us. Until then, you’re talking bollocks.

But it affects all women as a sex class unfortunately.

I think that theoretically, consent for sex can be given in exchange for money.A woman should be able to make her own choices about what to do with her body, even if that might cause her harm. A full range of life choices available would have an impact though. I suspect that though sex for money CAN be freely given, in reality, it seldom really is.

"an employer can buy a specific portion of the employee's time, energy, and expertise - not their life or their feelings, emotions, or convictions, which are internal and cannot be externally redirected"

This assumes that we all think selling sex also involves selling "their life, feelings, emotions, or convictions". I don't think it does

How does this work with any other job then?

"No I don't want to clean your house"
"I'll pay you £70"
"OK then I'll do it"

Has the cleaner not consented to clean because it's conditional? Are you exploiting the cleaner because their consent is conditional?

One can buy the appearance of consent, but not consent itself - similar to loyalty, love, truth, faith, etc. If I bribe an otherwise credible witness to give false testimony under oath, and the court accepts that testimony and the jury is convinced of it (it sounds as likely as not, this is the only firsthand witness, no one can disprove the testimony) then the law accepts it as truth, but it is not truth. What actually DID happen still happened; no one can change that.

Consent itself is either there or it isn't. This is why we don't generally consider it prostitution if, say, one partner has considerably more money than the other and the richer partner enjoys buying the poorer partner lots of expensive gifts, which the poorer partner accepts but can't reciprocate in kind. If someone does not consent, but says they consent in order to receive monetary compensation, that is not consent although the law may judge it to be legal consent in context.

So everyone's consent to work at their job is not genuine, because money is involved, and they're all actually slaves? Not seeing the equivalency here; an employer can buy a specific portion of the employee's time, energy, and expertise - not their life or their feelings, emotions, or convictions, which are internal and cannot be externally redirected.

Exactly this. So well articulated. 🙌🏼

You only have to see how many of these women were sexually abused as kids or teens to see why they aren’t truly consenting.
Sex has to be completely mutual.

Shakespeare understood:
”My poverty, but not my will, consents”

(Romeo and Juliet)

I think if someone wants to sell access to their own body, for any reason they choose, they should be allowed to do that. I think a lot of women have a hard time believing that not all women feel the same way as they do about sex and their own bodies, and that it’s deeply patronising to state that women ‘don’t really understand what they’re doing or what it means’ when they sell a service. I don’t think anyone can make that statement about other women without having complete disdain for them, and that isn’t feminism. It’s denying women agency over their own bodies, and again, that isn’t feminism as far as I’m concerned.

Yes, some sex workers regret it. So what, though? Millions of women regret their marriages too, but we don’t ban them from getting married. Millions of women also enter into marriages that are extremely transactional - I’ve seen many, many threads on Mumsnet where women literally admit to marrying men they don’t love simply because they’re in their 30s and want a baby before it’s too late, and then have sex they don’t enjoy in the name of ‘TTC’ because it’s a means to an end and they hope to get what they want out of it. I think that’s every bit as transactional as selling sex for money.

I also think a lot of the sex workers who regret it later regret it primarily because they’re judged for it (usually by the very women who claim to care about women’s wellbeing).

Clearly, sex work can be horrific and exploitative and dangerous and coercive - much like many other forms of work can be all of those things. But we don’t ban people from working in all garment factories because some illegal sweatshops employ desperate and vulnerable immigrant women in dangerous and exploitative conditions. We don’t ban all seasonal agricultural work or car washes or labouring on the grounds that sometimes those jobs are done by trafficked people who have fallen victim to modern slavery.