Is sex working ever 'acceptable'

Nope I mean £30 although in fact in the situation I'm thinking about it was only £18 because 40% went to the pimp. When you see the figures on p net, don't forget those are the amounts the punters paid, not the amounts the women actually earned. This is part of the happy hooker myth, that the women are earning great money.

This is also all looking at "professional" women who advertise and stuff.

Girls doing stuff for a line or an eighth or to get let off a fare (as one of my other friends was once offered) are clearly not coining it...

Thinking about it, it is clear that girls are socialised quite young (IME anyway) into the idea that men will offer them stuff in return for sexual favours.

Pretty disturbing isn't it.

I guess this explains why so many more girls and women see it as an option to make money than boys and men? Just a thought.

lol @ £300

sahisej You mean £300?

No, Flora means £30. A lot have to sell it for less. I know this, I have looked after them before. You could also have a look on P*net and have a look at how much the women earn on average and then come back and tell us.

"diapers?"

Or nappies, if you prefer.

"for the woman selling sex for £30"

You mean £300?

Because there is nothing wrong with exchanging sex for money it's no more inherently wrong than dancing for money, singing for money, reading tarot cards for money, writing for money or acting for money.

I choose these examples deliberately as sex is a recreational activity, or at least closer to a branch of the entertainment industry than (eg) cleaning toilets or gutting fish for a living. People may choose to take a job that is distasteful to them for money and they should have the right to make that choice ie that of more money for a job that's harder or more demanding, or a 'cleaner' job for less money.

Or they can choose to treat as a job something that other people do for pleasure (sex or music or art).

solidgoldbrass why would anyone consider it desirable that the sale of a woman's sexual autonomy to men should be normalised? Even if there are some women who fit the happy hooker trope, they are enabling punters to close their eyes to the reality of life for the woman selling sex for £30 and perpetuating the role of women as the passive sex class whose sexual gratification does not matter. If that is their choice, exercised with perfect agency, I will not support it and I will certainly not prioritise it over the women in prostitution who do not have the privilege of perfect agency.

cash/goods for sex, that is! Typo.

diapers?

What an odd choice of word. You also seem to have overlooked that this was a global study and thus an average age of entering prostitution of 13 seems not unlikely.

Also interesting that rather than say HOW AWFUL to real examples of underage girls being offered cash/goods for money, that's terrible to an actual 14 yo having sex with 2 men for drugs, the response is "Oh Well there's a law against that so everything is fine".

Jesus.

"It would be really nice if adult men didn't approach underage girls for sex"

There's a law in the UK against this, even if the girl is not underage. It's called solicitation- a client can only legally contact someone for paid sex if they have advertised as providing sex.

"normal person"?

"the average age was 13 not 14, and the study was global in which case I have no trouble believing it at all."

Still don't believe it. In the UK there are thousands of sexworkers in their 30s, 40s,50s and even older still. To get an average age of 13 or 14 there would need to be half a million or so of them still in their diapers.

And the definition of prostitution could be expanded even further if we include women who will only go home with a guy who buys her dinner and a nights worth of drinks first.

I was also offered money for sex when in my teens, more than once.

As long as adult men think it is OK to approach underage girls and offer them things in return for sex, there will be girls who are prostituting themselves at a young age - whether they continue with that or not. Some girls are always going to say yes for a variety of reasons, and very rarely will they be based in what a normal person would consider free choice / informed consent.

It would be really nice if adult men didn't approach underage girls for sex, whether paid or otherwise, really.

Oh looking at the title of the paper in the link, the average age was 13 not 14, and the study was global in which case I have no trouble believing it at all.

I would like to see where the age 14 comes from as well.

That was the age my friend was though when she agreed to have sex with 2 blokes for a couple of joints. I imagine that sort of thing happens a lot - the girls in recent cases were first got hold of very young, younger than 14.

I suppose it depends how they measured it - what they were defining as prostitution. If it was sex in exchange for anything - for themselves or for the people controlling them - then that would widen the numbers considerably I'd have thought. They would also need to count that as prostitution for the purpose of this, rather than child abuse. As otherwise, obviously prostitution never happens with anyone under 16 (18?) as that is against the law and called something else.

"14 the average age"

bollox I agree. Churning out junk stats like this doesn't do the credibility of the "abolitionist" side any favours.

I believe the vast majority of sexworkers in the UK are not trafficked and the media is feeding us a lot of moral panic. If they were I'm sure we would have found more victims and traffickers in all those raids the police have done. There's even been a recent case in Soho where a brothel was closed because the police assumed the workers were trafficked after raiding it, only for the workers to protest to a court that they weren't trafficked to get the brothel back open.

"you get that many people's objections to the purchase of sex are independent of their concerns about trafficking, don't you?"

Moral issues?

"sahisej have you heard about the stolen girls in Nigeria? "

Yes. Wasn't that because of sharia law?

Do we think the majority if sex workers come from stable backgrounds, have a high level of education and would easily be able to find alternative employment? Or is the opposite true?

Further more, when talking about "free choice", consider this, doing bar work or shop work when you don't really want to means pouring drinks or stacking shelves.

Doing sex work when you don't want to, means you are having sex against your will and are actually being assaulted and raped, something which is hugely horiffic, distressing and damaging to most most people.

I have no patience with the argument that women can never have any autonomy in the patriarchy, waa waa, let's just kill ourselves then.

If you have free choice not to engage in sex work, then others have the free choice to do so. The people who have no choice (because they have been trafficed or are working under threat of violence etc) are the ones we need to help.

Yes that is it Buffy there is free choice and then there is free choice within a society that says women are mainly good at looking pretty and being fucked.

The insistence on stigmatizing all sex workers as helpless victims and the exchange of money for sexual services as always wrong does not help women. Remember the raids in Soho a few months back? All the fuss about how the police were 'helping these poor unfortunate women' - by dragging them into the street in their underwear, allowing the press to shove cameras in their faces and confiscating all their earnings. And funnily enough, a lot turned out not to be have been trafficked...

The more the sex-workers from choice are able to speak out and be heard and to make the point that sex work should be freely chosen and those who do it respected the more people should understand that the harmful and exploitative conditions suffered by some sex workers are crimes against them and not 'just what sex work is'.

Sashej, you get that many people's objections to the purchase of sex are independent of their concerns about trafficking, don't you?

sahisej have you heard about the stolen girls in Nigeria? Or do they not matter? The law and rules we make in each country also set up a global dialogue about what is and isn't acceptable. Even if there were no incidents of sex trafficking in the UK, the laws surrounding prostitution, and sex trafficking would still matter because they are part of a global dialogue about the place of women within society.

There are many things in life that we may wish to do that we cannot do because of the impact those actions might have on other people. This is what happens in a society governed by the rule of law. We do not live in a anarchy nor libertarian society. Agency is enormously overstated as a factor in people's lives, not just in relation to women in prostitution.

The OP's friend is not carrying out a feminist activity in foregoing her sexual autonomy for money and she is perpetuating the societal structures that put women in the passive sex class. I would not / have not cut contact with women who find themselves working in prostitution but I would / have been honest about my views that it is not compatible with feminism.