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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

is there and 'official' feminist view on prostitution? and what is it?

183 replies

ohnoitshimagain · 27/12/2013 09:48

hi, just signed up and want to get to the bottom of this issue

ok, I'm sure there's not an official view as such, but how about a consensus or just your own personal view on this topic

  1. Should prostitution be fully legalised including brothels?

I believe it should in the modern day, because of freedom

and I'm talking here about female prostitutes and male clients

hope to hear some responses, thanks, btw I"m a man

OP posts:
NotCitrus · 27/12/2013 13:04

There's no consensus.
There's agreement that prostitutes are often at risk from their clients and others.
That's about it - some feminists and also some very unfeminist repressive types say sex work is inherently degrading. Others, also including some feminists, say it may often be degrading in practice but isn't inherently more degrading than say cockle-picking, podiatry, or a minimum wage job.

Even when people agree to take a pragmatic approach and acknowledge neither supply nor demand are going to vanish overnight, so let's try to improve things for current sex workers while possibly reducing demand, there's huge disagreement on ways to do that - some are in favour of banning using a prostitute (possibly while being legal to be one), others, often including the sex workers themselves, say that actually put them more at risk from their clients and just pushes the business underground away from police protection.

Where prostitution is a last resort, what happens if that last resort option is removed?

TheDoctrineOfSanta · 27/12/2013 11:13

Have you used prostitutes, OP?

If so, why?

If not, why not?

Branleuse · 27/12/2013 10:32

no there isn't a feminist opinion on it.

feminists are all sorts of people

scaevola · 27/12/2013 10:21

I don't think there's an "official" "feminist" view on anything really. It's a basic misconception to think it is any ordinary sense unified as an organisation. Yes, there is a basic underpinning sine qua non of promotion of gender-blind fairness. But a huge range of approaches to that, many of which are culture-specific.

For example, is OP's question looking at brothels in Abuja or an independent escort in a basically safe European country?

Thegrinchishere · 27/12/2013 10:19

Oh knob off ohno bored of the football all ready???

OneHolyCow · 27/12/2013 10:11

Sex is human nature, sex for money isn't.
Look, I'm not going to explain why money corrupts. I've not enough time. Look up some Michael Sandel on youtube, his Justice series is good. Money does not make stuff right, consent doesn't either.

ohnoitshimagain · 27/12/2013 10:07

ok, I agree with you about making it safer for the women, and healthier etc.. with them having a safe place to work in , and yes, the same if they were male prostitutes.

but eradicate it? surely that is not possible as it's a human nature thing?

meaning that there will always be men willing to pay, and women wanting to earn the money from it, is that so wrong anyway?

OP posts:
OneHolyCow · 27/12/2013 10:01

No consensus.
What do you mean freedom, for whom?
It sounds so easy like that, freedom and modern as the key words and hey, how could we disagree?
Well. We can.

Pragmatically, we could say that as long as prostitution exists, the safety of the women (and men, why exclude them? Boys are vulnerable on the streets too you know) is paramount and therefore it would maybe be preferable to have a place where they can rest, get medical checks, have a chat, be looked after by each other and have access to social workers, get refrerred to methadone clinics or what have you. Likewise, for the unaddicted, it would be safer to work in a club than to just rely on a pimp or work from home or the street.

Ideally though, in the perfect world, there would be no such thing as prostitution. It commodifies people, it is degrading. So why not work towards rooting it out now? In order to discourage it, push it out of the city, do not legalise it and criminalise in stead.

Usually, people tend to lean one way or the other I guess, ending up somewhere on a scale between these.