Guardian article on sex workers and disabled people

Not sure about the musicians vs selling sex either.

I'm thinking about seeing if my DD1 (6) wants to learn an instrument soon
Maybe she would go on to play for other people
maybe she would join an orchestra
Some young children produce music professionally / for money

Analogy kind of falls down there. For the majority of people (and for a vast number of reasons) sex is different to other activities / hobbies / jobs.

Sure in an ideal world every person selling sex would be doing through for the love of the job, through genuine choice and freedom to choose clients etc etc but we're just so so very far from there. I think we need to sort out society's issues with sex / inequality and so on and concentrate on helping women (girls, men and boys) who are working in the sex trade not through genuine choice before thinking about what the rules might be in some idyllic situation which we are simply a million miles from.

I'm sure musicians sometimes do get threatened.

I am not pretty sure it is not quite the same routine level of trauma that a woman who is forced into prostititon faces.

I can see that if we could all believe all prostitutes were happy, it'd be lovely and we could all buy into another bit of profit-making. I do see that.

I just don't think that you can sensibly compare the level of abuse your average musician gets with the level of abuse your average prostitute gets.

If your plan is to legitimize prostitution, where do you plan to get the money to clamp down on 'fake' prostitutes - ie., women forced into it, ie., many women working as prostitutes today? What funds the financing of this business? Do you honestly think people will pay for 'ethical hookers' and won't be tempted by the cheap, illegal, abusive option? Like they are with everything else? What is it about sex that you believe is so different from everything else, that in your ideal world no-one would ever exploit it, yet it would function like a business?

To an extent, LRD, musicians sometimes do get threatened and exploited, or they certainly used to a few decades back - between the 'casting couch' and the type of contracts that somehow gave all the monetary rights to the publisher and sod all to the musician. However, most people would agree that this should be dealt with by awarding more rights and protections to musicians, not by insisting that it's wrong to hire them.

Dworkin has been dead for quite some time.

As have many feminist writers I admire.

I also rather like that John Donne bloke - he's both dead and not a feminist.

Leaving aside paraphrases of people who can't speak for themselves: SGB, yes, if you employ someone, you are in a position of power over them. This is why we have all sorts of laws to try to give some power back to employees. It still doesn't always work well.

If your 'musician' is a person desperate for money and threatened, they will not have a great deal of power.

To say this isn't equating sex and music, as they are quite different - the list of musically-transmitted diseases is an indicator here - but, insofar as the person with the money has the power, yes, they are the same. And yes, this doesn't bode well for the person who's being exploited.

Why on earth would we suddenly decide exploitation is ok if it's music?

OK, let's look at it this way - if you pay a musician to perform for you, does that inevitably put you in a position of power over the musician? Sure, you could perhaps withold the fee if you don't like the tune, but the musician, as a free agent, could equally decide that you are rude, or that the tune you request is one the musician doesn't want to play, therefore the musician declines the gig. That's how the relationship between sex worker and client should be - the sex worker respected for providing a valuable and desirable service, and also having the right to refuse a rude client or one who wants services the sex worker does not offer.

We're a long way off reaching that level but we won't get there any quicker by stigmatizing sex work:if people wanted to set up a network of 'hands on sex therapists', for instance, some people would insist it was 'prostitution' because someone might touch someone else's genitalia eek yuk aargh!and should be forbidden even when the therapists were all consenting and enthusiastic about the job.

I find equating sex with music a more useful comparison than comparing sex with food/shelter/water: not an actual need but something that matters a great deal to a great many people. Sure, everyone can live without music, and some people really wouldn't notice if music disappeared from their own lives, but others would feel utterly bereft without it.

Dworkin isn't the only prominent feminist in history and it isn't necessary to subscribe to everything she allegedly said to speak up if you think she has been misrepresented. What with her no longer being around'n'all.

Refusing to identify as a feminist because of her is like saying you will never like Germans because of Hitler.

If she didn't intend to say that all men are rapists then its a great pity she said stuff like this

'under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman'

It is becoming less of a mystery to me why so many women refuse to identify as 'feminist'.

AFAIK, she never said "all sex is rape"

her detractors attributed that quote to her, by twisting and mashin gtogether some of the things she did say

she had a problem with only heterosexual penetration being classed as "real sex" which many feminists still subscribe to (and so should anyone with half a brain cell)

I found the following short precis of Dworkin and some of her work;

rationalwiki.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin

It is doubtless unfair to judge the works of someone with a large academic output against a few choice quotes. They are always subject to twisting and misinterpretation. Apparently the 'all sex is rape' mis-quote came from actually saying "Violation is a synonym for intercourse" (there is a reference for this quote, so I assume it's true.)

Apparently she said 'a commitment to sexual equality with men is a commitment to the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer insteadof the murdered'.

Which sounds a more 'literary' way of saying all men are rapists.

Or am I missing the nuance?

Am on my phone so can't link, but she was much nuanced than that. You can google it.

So what did Andrea Dworkin say? I thought she said all sex was rape.

Campaigning against the sex industry, for abortion rights and the rights of women, I should have added.

Andrea Dworkin had sound reasons to criticise men. She was a battered wife, a fugitive to get away from him after he stalked, harassed and attacked her repeatedly and worked for a while as a prostitute. She was quite vocal about the abuse she suffered throughout that time.

I would say she knew what she was talking about.

She called pornography "woman hating dehumanisation" and I agree with her. Many of her early warnings about the rise of pornography in popular raunch culture have come frighteningly true.

Somebody will come along to discredit her in a moment, however. It's how it goes. She was campaigning from before I was born, and before her time in many ways.

Excuse any typos on phone!

I have little knowledge if feminism but I do have knowledge of the sex industry, particularly prostitution and trafficking! I second LRD in that your fighting a minor part of an arguement that to my knowledge was not the principal part of the point made! No one is saying sex workers are evil and have to be silenced????? In fact, If they were listned to more often I am 100% sure your arguement would hold less weight! Having skimmed the thread I seem to gather the general consensus of those against it, is it has very little to do with accessing prostitution for those disabled OR able bodied but about accessing paid for sexual services when whether you like it or not there IS a high (actually probable) chance of abuse in the prostitutes present, future or previous life as well as drugs etc! My morals dictate that blind sex (because I was more concerned with my gratification than the situations which would have occurred to bring a prostitute to being one) is not and could never be worth it! It's sex not breathing and your personal situation has nothing to do with whether you have a right to access a fucked up, abuse ridden industry! Look for accounts of previous prostitutes online and see whether you think you'd want to be viewed by them even, the way they view there customers! 99.9% of the industry is nothing like belle de jor (or whatever her bloody name was) or pretty woman ffs!

No, Dworkin never said that - like today's rad fems she is much misrepresented.

Couple relationships can be genuinely equal - whereas a prostitute/client relationship, however carefully managed, is still a commercial transaction with the resulting power imbalances.

To be fair, a large proportion of contributors have been saying that ANY prostitution is condoning and 'propping up' the evil of the worst aspects of the trade, so I don't think she is being unduly over the top. You must logically therefore be critical of a woman who claims to chose prostitution, because you say her choice provides validation for the suffering of many others.

So her other example I also think is worth consideration. As so many women are beaten and killed in relationships by men then isn't any woman who enters into a relationship an apologist for the whole thing?

Of course I don't believe that but it parallels the argument that sex therapist = condones trafficking and rape, which I think is just wrong.

My knowledge of feminist history is shakey but wasn't this precisely Andrea Dworkins view? All men are rapists, all men are the enemy?

No one said women sex workers are wicked.

No one said they are uncaring.

No one said their voices must be silenced.

Where are you getting this from?

I get that you are frustrated, but FFS, how about addressing what other people are saying and not what you wish they were saying because you don't like the debate?

If the women who choose sex work are so wicked and such supporters of trafficking and exploitation, and so uncaring about the fate of other women, that their voices must be silenced and their experiences dismissed, then given the amount of domestic violence, marital rape and women being killed by their husbands and partners, shouldn't those of you who are in happy/satisfactory relationships take a bit of a look at yourselves and consider whether or not you are propping up and condoning institutionalized male violence against women?

That's true, yes, it would not be good for him to work if he wasn't up to it - good way to put it. And these people deserve the best.

It's not selfish! Your of no use to anybody depressed and I say that from experience. I'm a strong strong woman but I am not strong enough to emotionally detatch from such situations which you need to do to be of use and do your job effectively with clarity! I always wanted to work in related industries but it's not 'professionally' for me! I'm the type if person who would temporarily foster a child and three years later have a house of 20 cause I can't switch off when 'needed'! My mums very proffesional and my sister is too! They can draw the line whilst caring and being effected but seeing the bigger picture and getting on with the next job iykwim!

I totally agree (though I obviously know a heck of a lot less about it than you). You must be proud of your mum. My brother stuck his job our for three years then got signed off with clinical depression, and at the moment in all honesty I am really hoping he doesn't go back. Which is selfish, I know, and utterly absurd in the context of what people go through, but I think it is tough to see it all, too. Good for your mum.