Sophie Walker on criminalising the men who buy sex in the Guardian

I don't recall stating my gender.
Your performance speaks loud and clear. Your gender identity is irrelevant.

I quite often defend posters who are called out as being male as (a) I don't think being male necessarily invalidates the point being made and (b) it is quite narrow minded to assume that a viewpoint which doesn't accord with the consensus means the poster is not a woman.

But goprawn I don't care what sex you are. I honestly don't know. You might be a punter or a happy hooker and pimps and brothel keepers can be either. Your argument is still wrong.

The above poster has popped up from nowhere tonight, and appears to be some sort of paid shill for the prostitution industry. He's spamming a load of threads about prostitution (it's like there's some sort of fucking bat-signal that draws them here).

Completely agree with the article.

Such a shame the WEP zero’d themselves over the trans thing. It would be so good to be able to get behind them more broadly.

Just got home and switched on The Sex Business in channel 5. So utterly tragic. Drugs make prostitution necessary, drugs kill the pain of prostitution. Poor bloody women caught up in that.

Yes Lass!

Could it be said its the women who are exploting the men as they are offering there services in exchange for money

No it could not. Even if one were to accept that prostitution is a legitimate, commercial service (which I don't) it is up to the buyer to decide if they want to pay the price for it.

Buying sex is not like food, water , housing , clothes and utilities which we all need. And even there , there are a vast range of service providers at all levels of costs.

The buyer of any service is only exploited if the service is essential and it is being provided by a monopoly at an unfair price or there is a price fixing cartel.

Seriously do you really need this explained?

Could it be said its the women who are exploting the men as they are offering there services in exchange for money.

Thanks for that, Sillage. Spot on.

Sillage I can't be bothered dissecting your reply. Your first reply is basically a nonsense interpretation of what I said which is further compounded by your anecdote.

A decent man used to hang out with once left a party we were at to attend a bachelor party for his brother, and when he came back to the party later I heard him explain why. He said the group was moving to a strip club and that was "tacky" so he left.

Your comments remind me of his posturing that it was nothing about women being mistreated and disrespected that bothered him, no no, it's just strip clubs are in bad taste and too "coarse and brutalised" for his refined palate. Caring about women is for sissies, being an arbiter of classy culture is the dandy role of intellectuals.

Mia de Faoite spent six years in prostitution and you are not respecting her experiences when you interject with "she's got bad arguments, johns say they pay for sex for sex and not power so she's wrong, and anyways why is she being exclusionary of prostituted boys and men because not ALL prostitutes are women?"

I know you're think you're logical and tactical, but it comes off as arrogantly dismissive of Mia and you have no claim on knowing more than her. The team behind We Don't Buy It, like most radical feminist groups, explicitly centers the experiences of Rachel Moran and other survivors. It’s not an equal partnership between cold percentages of 33.3% bodies involved as you have assumed, radfem survivors “conceive of and lead” these initiatives.

Channel 5 tonight.
The sex business, working from home.
Looks interesting!!!.

So "radfems are icky" Cool Girl then

Do not invent things I have not said. And putting quotation marks round it does not make it less of an invention. And the "Cool Girl" insult is trite and tedious.

I don't often swear but I'll make an exception here , for fuck's sake if you think I'm a "Cool Girl" on this subject you really should try getting out of your echo chamber.

The We Don't Buy It campaign was conceived of and is led by radical feminists

This is what I was referring to. Rachel Moran may well be a radical feminist- I doubt the other 2 are.

wedontbuyit.eu/

Men are being asked to support the new campaign “Prostitution – We Don’t Buy It”, which was launched today by Jill Meagher’s husband Tom, as well as the Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald and Sex trade survivor and activist Rachel Moran

I have known thousands of prostituted women. Out of all the reasons they gave for doing what they did neither power nor the illusion of power were mentioned.

The We Don't Buy It campaign was conceived of and is led by radical feminists.

Not according to the thread on it. It was set up by a guy.

Really Vicky? You reckon many 16yos, trafficked from Vietnam, Macedonia and Nigeria, contribute there then?

And if they did there is something called Stockholm syndrome....

To be fair, I have no lived experience whatsoever on this one.

Yep me too. And I know no prostitutes.... which tbh kinda makes me wonder why not if it's some kind of career option for the average girl .

This is really good. I'm toying with rejoining WEP.

So "radfems are icky" Cool Girl then.

The We Don't Buy It campaign was conceived of and is led by radical feminists.

Bloody infuriating and insulting isn't it. The assumption that we are speaking from ivory towers with no lived experience of the issues we hold opinions on

To be fair, I have no lived experience whatsoever on this one.

Good post QueenOfQuacks. There's a reason more than 40% of prostitutes in the UK were in the looked after system as children. Girls (and boys) in care don't sit there dreaming of a career in sex work while girls (and boys) in stable homes dream of becoming doctors and teachers. It's not a career choice.