Guardian article on sex workers and disabled people

I have no idea what you or anyone campaigns for. If you are campaigning, bloody good for you.

If you are not, you are a hypocrite and your angsting is misplaced. I think point about AOC in other countries is very good. Be interesting to find statistics on child abuse in Germany but I bet it is a lot, lot less. I have heard of no Rochdale scandals in Germany for eg.

Really must go now. New level on candycrush I hope.

Challenging the political and ethical basis of prostitution is not the same as shaming and abuse.

There has been no discussion about child prostitution - the point is about changing attitudes towards sexual behaviour. Some behaviour is more tolerated now than before (e.g. masturbation, homosexuality) while other is less tolerated (e.g. child sexual activity). Nothing to do with child prostitution.

I don't agree that legalising and regulating prostitution would make it safer. If I did, I would support that route despite my political and moral objections. I would still consider pimps and punters to be exploiting prostitutes.

I don't agree that these are the "easy moral certainties of the privileged". I don't agree that the wishes of the "loney and desperate" to have sex nor the precious agency of a small number of willing prostitutes outweigh the harm done by prostitution.

Spero, before you go, how do you know what I campaign or don't campaign for ?

Thankfully, the AOC is not going to be lowered. But when I see people advocating for it, people who are intelligent and should know better, I feel impelled to put my opinion on here too.

Exactly Spero, my crude example above is the kind of chat that someone would have to have with all disabled people. Perhaps with the rider that if they can get someone to agree to have sex with them willingly then thats fine. Otherwise they are denied any choice and need to forget and somehow ignore the daily reminders that other people are able to enjoy part of their human existence that they are not. Mainly as we would rather stop a problem by not addressing it.

Just noticed loads of other typos. Bastard ipad. Bye now.

grateful not fateful

And if you are so upset about age of consent being lowered to 14 can you please start agitating and campaigning for police to actually enforce the existing law? NEVER in all my years of care proceedings have the police ever prosecuted the boyfriend of a pregnant 15 year old, even though there is pretty conclusive evidence in the form of her baby that he put his penis up her vagina.

Loads of young teenage girls are having sex and they are being utterly betrayed by their rubbish parents, ineffectual law enforcement and utterly putrid society.

I fail to see any link between this and disabled people being able to buy sexual relief from another adult who is autonomous, trained, safe and well - and crikey, may even get some genuine satisfaction from their work.

I can see I have reached the useful limits for me of this discussion and while I am fateful to all of those who engaged with me respectfully and well, and have me much to ponder, I now think I will just be bashing my head against the cold hard wall of moral 'certainty' - just as the Victorians did with maturation and homosexuality.

So time to take my own advice and leave before I get angry and say something unhelpful. But on the whole, a worthwhile discussion I think.

After a quick google it seems that the AOC, is widely spread though out the EU. Two notable countries that have 14 as their age is Germany and Italy, Spain opts for 13. Ireland is 17 where as Malta and Turkey are the highest at 18.

Do you think AF that our society is the main reason that lowering the AOC would endanger children, in terms of more people would abuse even younger children. It seems Spain, Germany, and Italy may have far diffrent and possibly better attitudes to young people (i.e. not raping or abusing them.)

Flora, I was thinking particularly of paras 12 a and 12 b of the link posted by SGB.

I am intrigued as to how a discussion on whether the disabled should be allowed to purchase sex from a trained professional in a safe environment has somehow segued into child prostitution. Not really seeing the link I must confess.

As the saddest irony of all, by shutting down consideration of how the purchase of sexual services could be safe and regulated you almost guarantee - if what you say of the likelihood of trafficking and exploitation is true - that the people sought out to provide paid for gratification will be working on the margins of society, desparate and unrecognised.

Yet I and others like me must chose celibacy otherwise we are direct players in the game of exploitation and rape?

This is what I am finding really hard to take. That the blame is on me for maybe having a perfectly natural urge that someone might be willing to help me with in return for money (hey! Maybe I could buy him dinner! Cos that's ok isn't it, thousands of women chose to do that)

Instead of going after the lonely and desparate with the easy moral certainties of the privileged, why aren't we going after these criminals who treat women as less than human? Why are we so intent on shipping trafficked children back to their country of origin without any proper safeguards as to what they go back to?

Lowering the age of consent will put more children at risk.

yes, under-16's have sex, we know that and there is already some leeway in the law for over 13's for what an abuser can get prosecuted for and when the ages of two protagonists are very similar

but lowering the AOC will whittle away at the lower limit even further

that is why, despite my misgivings about successive UK govts, they have never ever entertained the idea of doing such a dangerous thing

awful, awful, awful

Bloody hell Xenia that is an awful idea. Those laws are there to protect children.

Eh?

So ok lets think about how this celibacy rule would be explained to disabled people.
"Sorry X as all brothels and women who sell sexual services live on the top floor, you are banned from having a sexworker visit your home."
"What's that you say?" "Able bodied people can climb the stairs, pay there money and get on with it"
Ah well see since your disabled and there fore unable to get up the stairs it's far easier to impose a celibacy rule on you than it is on the able bodied population."
"No X we are not doing this to pick on you as you have a disability, we are doing this because we are protecting women, I am sorry if that makes you feel that your life is shit."

All we need is to train social workers to have that chat, or possibly some volunteers could be found.

Yes as seen above plenty of female escorts are happy and willing. If we stop that ability to earn we are anti women in my view and we are reducing not improving women's rights.

FF not everyone believes 16 should be the age of consent. I would lower it to 14 as long as your partner is no more than say 3 years older. That is a children's rights issue but absolutely no one on mumsnet which has no topic at which it is more censorious than the idea that children may have sexual feelings - it is the hot topic of our age.

I wonder why threads like this always attract absolute twats like that.

Actually, that was a rhetorical question.

That is not a joke.

HTH

More pro-pimp lies. That Guardian article was amended as you can see from the bottom paragraph and the Guardian published this:

www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2013/mar/11/corrections-and-clarifications

It is illogical because the two are unrelated. We believe that all sexual activity between adults and children is wrong and between two children is wrong. We define children as those under 16. This has not always been the case in the UK and is not the case in every other country. There are people who believe that sexual activity with children is not necessarily harmful to children and this was part of the civil rights movement in the UK in the 70s, which seems quite unbelievable now. I believe we, as a society, are much more against child sexual behaviour than we were in the past (and quite right, in my view). I'm making this point to show that just because values and attitudes change about one aspect of sexual behaviour, it doesn't mean that we are not allowed as a society to form views about behaviour and set laws to create the sort of society we want to live in. We do this all the time both socially and commercially with a multitude of laws and regulations that govern how we deal with each other.

I did read the blog linked by SGB and did not see any complaints of shame or abuse by feminists. Not sure what you were reading Spero.

As for celibacy, many, many people live with it for long periods. They do so for many reasons - some because they don't fancy the people who would willingly have sex with them (that goes for men and women) and they wouldn't overcome the lack of consent of a person who would not willingly have sex with them by paying for it.

The route of legalising prostitution has been tried in a number of places including the Netherlands. So far, the outcome does not seem positive. I would favour criminalising the purchase of sex but not the sale of it.

Good post promqueen.

I don't think the masturbation argument at all illogical. The Victorians condemned it as immoral and disgusting and tried to argue that it caused physical and moral harm to the masturbator, even that excessive masturbation could lead to death.

Because they didn't like a practice they made up arguments about how harmful it was even though it should be an individuals choice what they do with their body.

I thought SGB link to the blog of a sex worker really interesting, particularly re flora foxes comment that sex workers never face shame and abuse from feminists. Did you read it?

FoR those who blithely say celibacy rather than prostituion, think on this. I am 42 years old. Luckily for me I have a very low libido. But others in my position may not. Thats probably 20 or 30 years of trying to shut down your sex drive.

If you prohibit down legal and safe ways for sexual expression, is there not a risk that people may still attempt to meet their sexual needs and desires? And thus operate outside state regualtion and protection?

Forcing prostitutes on the streets has done nothing to end prostitution, just made it more dangerous and unpleasant for the really vulnerable and allowed criminal gangs to take over a large part of the market.

It's like the 'just say no' campaign re drugs. People will always want to take drugs. All we have done now is handed over responsibility for the manufacture and supply of dangerous substances into the hands of criminals.