Sex: My British Job. Channel 4

If you are illegal, you will be deported. This has led to women for example being trafficked for prostitution, returned to their home country, and retrafficked by their pimps.

Oh god what a sad programme. We just sat in silence after it. It's hard to know where to start, in terms of protecting young women from this shit. The thing is, the illegal nature of their citizenship meant that they wouldn't have thanked anybody for rescuing them.

What actually happens to illegals if the authorities get wind of their presence?

I've long been a fan of Nick Broomfields work, but not so much now. The guardian writer summed it up for me. He was on as much of an ego fuelled wankfest as any of the punters were, and I found it really distasteful and upsetting.

Unfortunately there are also lots of young boys/men who are abused by the men who pay for sex.
I was lucky enough to see a powerful speech given by Sheila Taylor MBE at my DD's graduation ceremony in January, she was Director of the National Working Group for Sexually Exploited Children and Young People, I would love her to dispel a few of the happy hooker myths for the idiots who come here with their pathetic arguments.
If all prostitution was a free choice, made by emotionally stable adults without abusive childhoods and with no addictions/MH problems , most people would not have such a problem with it, but as 95%+ of prostitution isn't in that category then we are failing society by not doing more to protect the vulnerable who make that "choice" ( which is really not free choice at all).

And if prostitution was really a job like working at McDonalds, why are there not more men having sex with other men for money? There is a demand from gay men after all.

I think prostitution is abuse. I don't know anyone here. But I do know lots of women who have been in prostitution, and so have some ideas of the realities.

Is calling someone a radical feminist really an insult??

Posting all in bold doesn't make the words any more worthy of respect nor attention.

C'mon now, who's been tampering with the Kool Aid?

Where "sex for money is just work" argument falls down immediately is when we look at who is "selling".

For some reason, it seems to be people from poor or otherwise difficult backgrounds who are more likely to enter prostitution, if it was just "work" why is it "chosen" by people with such a paucity of options?

Because for some people, men's orgasms take precedence over everything.

Upthread, spring said nonchalantly: "I'm off onto public transport now" or something.

Well, I'm guessing that as he popped onto 'public transport' he would guess he had a better than average chance of getting through the day without being abused, anally raped, beaten, ripped off or pushed drugs. Which is what your average prostitute doesn't have.

Plus, in his job, he probs has the usual benefits - sick pay, legal rights, health and safety etc. So being bored in an office, or in McDonalds, really isn't the same thing as depicted in that tv show.

This letter to the "good punter" from a woman who had been in prostitution, is also very powerful.

theprostitutionexperience.com/

Sorry, I should have been clearer, my daughter is an adult and a High school teacher - it's one of her students I was referring to. She was in tears last night telling me about it - she's been teaching for all of 4 weeks and already has a file of 20 children from abusive backgrounds . This is in a "good" school too, not some inner city sinkhole.

'I can't understand how ignorance of one's human rights could ever be anything but a recipe for disaster.'
And I also think you don't understand, despite your alleged feminist background, what the word 'wife' really meant.

Frodosmum In practice, men who committed marital rape could be, and were, prosecuted for other offences, such as sexual assault, although it must be said that, in the past, the police were notoriously reluctant to get involved in ‘domestics’ of any kind. That was a different nightmare.

The old chestnut 'in practice' -- lol again. I assume you are joking here too. Men who raped women were and still are as likely to be prosecuted for rape or for any offence as they are likely to be hit by lightning.

It is exactly the same nightmare, and again, exactly the same inability on your part to understand how refusal to take allegations of rape seriously means hardly any rapes are reported, marital or otherwise. I put this in the same category of 'failure to understand' as your inability to see how empathy is meaningless unless shared in some way, and your inability to see that all humans have needs, men and women alike. If anyone has a 'need' to sell their body for 20 quid a pop then let's all do it. Or is it just men who need to be able to buy women for whatever they can get away with spending?

"'Nobody was interested in my complaints, as I was legally a wife."
The quote I used there came from Noori Al Shami, whose experiences are detailed in the article linked below, but this is a statement that any married woman anywhere could find herself making even as late as the 1990s.

Knowledge of marital rape, and this applies to those opinion polls, reflects, in part, the fact that the issue just wouldn’t cross the mind of most people. I regard this as a healthy attribute. We might have stumbled through the centuries with no legislators bothering to take responsibility for this, but it would not even occur to the normal male to force himself physically upon his wife.

I assume you have proof of this benign treatment of women you speak so glibly of, through centuries when it was legal to beat one's wife with a stick as long as it was no wider than one's thumb?

I can't understand how ignorance of one's human rights could ever be anything but a recipe for disaster.

What you are arguing is that an issue that just wouldn't cross the minds of most people and hardly ever happens warranted legislation?
Or is it that legislation was warranted only because recent blinding realisation of the fact that women are humans and as such deserve legal rights, made it necessary to acknowledge that a woman didn't cease to be a human upon marriage?

I don't know if you are aware of the issue of female children being married off to rid their family of the burden of caring for them? Here is one example of too many.