BBC and framing of slavery & sexual exploitation

I agree there is an agenda here to make sex work morally neutral and the same as other forms of this work - for the purchaser of course. And we know who is driving it. Men who want to rape women in exchange for money and not feel like the stinking shitbags they are.

Do the forced manual labor slaves see sex "work" as an escape or a degradation?

From what I've read of people's experiences, the latter. Yes, sex "work" is way more soul-destroying than manual labor. Both are physically debilitating and sometimes eventually lethal.

A former prostitute said it best when someone suggested that sex work wasn't really different from other personal services, like housecleaning.

"I guess," she said dubiously. "If you had to clean the whole house with your tongue."

"Sex Work Is Work" is also a slogan, one that doesn't stand on its own. People who believe that are not simply asserting the obvious which is that people have sex and get paid for it. That is manifestly true, its been so for thousands of years.

They are arguing that it is legitimate work, that it should be respected, that it should have laws supporting it as work, or in some cases have laws restricting it removed, and so on. They have reasons they think it is legitimate work which usually seem to revolve around how they see the nature of work more generally, they may think for example that it is arbitrary to say working in a dangerous primitive mining job is something individuals can legitimately choose and sex work is not.

Similarly, people who say sex work is not work are not saying that no one works by exchanging sex for money, as it would be manifestly untrue. People do so, some participate in the economy legally, are employed, respond to job advertisements and all the rest. They are arguing that it should not be considered a legal and valid sort of work in the marketplace and so should be restricted just like certain other forms of exchange are, that it undermines individual freedoms or has negative social effects.

Would you be happy to be a "sex worker" yourself, Goosefoot? Would you happily wave your daughter into "sex work"?

Now what would make you ask that? It wasn't implied in anything I said, quite the opposite really.

It's about the level of "if you don't agree that TWAW you must be happy for your daughter to commit suicide."

"Sex work isn't work" is a slogan, not an explanation.

They did the same with Oxfam today. 'Sex Scandal'. No, the rape of children and coercion of women in a desperately poor country when in a position of power.

All work is coerced by the need for money.

The word for work that is coerced and happens to be sex is rape.

Would you be happy to be a "sex worker" yourself, Goosefoot? Would you happily wave your daughter into "sex work"?

I would say that in this makes sense to me. Whether or not I think sex work ought to be work, in fact it is, people are paid for it, in some instances they are taxed and all the rest of it. There are other instances of things that are bought and sold which I think should not be, but they still function as goods in the marketplace whatever my opinion is, they affect the people in the industry, they are subject to various economic forces and can be analysed in that context.
In this article the focus is really on the trafficking and slavery, and I don't know that you can even totally separate the people and industries involved as I would imagine there is a fair number that are interconnected, and there would be a lot of commonalities in terms of enforcement and border control and such as well.
As far as hiding in plain sight, I think that is fair. Some more than others, a brothel is typically not totally in the open in many countries, but it has to be open enough that people can find it. Cannabis farms will also be somewhat hidden, maybe more than a brothel. nail bars are very much in the open, as are domestic slaves.