Empowered by 'sex work'

So many good quotes
“In thousands of interviews, we have heard prostituted women, men, and transwomen1 describe prostitu- tion as paid rape, voluntary slavery, signing a contract to be raped (in legal prostitution), the choice that is not a choice, and as domestic violence taken to the extreme. These are more accurate descriptions of prostitution than consenting sex or unpleasant work. Sex buyers’ descriptions of prostitution mir- ror the women’s: “renting an organ for ten minutes,” “like a cup of coffee—when you’re done with it you throw it out,” “I use them like I might use any other amenity, a restaurant, or a public convenience,” “You get what you pay for without the ‘no.’”

@miri1985

M. Farley is a leading academic on the harms of prostitution.
I really like this 2019 recent paper of hers:
“Consent, Coercion, and Culpability: Is Prostitution Stigmatized Work or an Exploitive and Violent Practice Rooted in Sex, Race, and Class Inequality?” By Rachel Moran and Melissa Farley
www.spaceintl.org/assets/Uploads/MoranFarley2019.pdf

I recommend it to anyone spouting the happy hooker myth.

Precisely, Themyscira.

I agree with NatashasDance, "Prostitution has no benefits for anyone other than the literal and metaphorical wanker but does considerable harm to the women involved and to society as a whole."

Goosefoot took exception to this and sees a clean split, deeming social harm "the easiest argument to make around prostitution." and suggesting the harms men do to prostituted women are the results of individual bad decisions that people have the freedom rights to make.

Why so black and white, cut and dry? None of those things are one or the other, don't be so simplistic.

So, a marriage ending because the husband uses prostitutes, harm to the people in that family or harm to the institution of marriage?

A neighborhood where men constantly solicit women and kids for sex, harmful to people or harmful to the state?

AIDS being spread by a prostitute-using man, harmful to people or to what you call the social fabric?

Harm to society is not really the same argument as the activity being too dangerous for anyone to be allowed to choose to do it. "Who do you think "society" is if not people?

Harm to society means harm to the social fabric, the state, and things like that.

Harm to an individual means harm to a person.

These are important distinctions when we talk about regulating decisions of people. Generally our society believes individuals should have a fair bit of freedom to make decisions which may be bad for them as individuals. On the other hand, if the type of decision involved begins to really impact others, or the function of the community or state, at a certain point we may feel we can and should regulate the activity.

A heck of a lot of social arguments are about the line where these two considerations meet.

Karabair

It's not the case that "society" was ok with men using prostitutes. Some people were clearly, and many also thought it was something that could not be prevented, but the ethical norms of society for significant periods saw that as morally wrong - it was illegal, you were considered to be in a state of sin, and many people simply considered it socially unacceptable. There was a fairly clear ideal of marriage held up as well, which included monogamy.

As far as people not being moved by rad fem arguments, I think that's clear, whether or not the OP was using them. People seem quite naturally now to accept these ideas of women being empowered by sex work, when that would not have been believed at other times - even people who paid for sex in the past tended to think it was degrading. There has been a real change in the attitude people have to sex, ad this includes many people who have nothing to do with sex work themselves and many women.

I think that it came out of various elements of the sexual revolution. The idea that sex is an insignificant act that requires no real thought or worries, that can be pursued casually with strangers as a pass time. Where it is perfectly ok to have sex parties with members of a rock band for the prestige, or in return for back stage access. Where people are told again and again that sex isn't about pregnancy in any important way so it doesn't matter if you know the potential father, and that you can easily prevent STIs. Where women are as empowered by these attitudes as men.

If you accept all these ideas, it's difficult to see any real difference from sex for money.
I don't think that total social agreement by every individual is a reasonable bar for talking about social attitudes.

DuMonde wow. Thank you for sharing that

Good for you for trying OP. People don't like to examine men's horrendous behaviour, it's actually taboo in the patriarchy.

You might find that your arguments sink in later on. Something may click for them.

You are right and never accept any rubbish from any other view. I am a retired female police officer and spent many years working on a vice unit in central London. I only saw exploitation misery abuse murder suicide of the ladies who were embroiled in this ghastly way of life. Even the ones with wealthy clients who had a flat for their sole use were deeply scarred. The women should not be treated as criminals but their pimps and clients should. I still remember so many cases i could write a book. The boys that became involved should not be forgotten. A truly horrible life for so many ,used and discarded.As you can see my experience has made me a ranter too.

My thoughts on sex work being 'empowering' are tempered by being the possessor of a podgy middle-aged body. Is sex work empowering for all women? Is it like an evening class where all body types and levels of attractiveness can get the benefits? Would I be able to rock up at my local gentleman's club and get work? It is obviously a job with a short shelf-life and it doesn't lead onto anything else. There are very few avenues for women getting into management/pimping.

If I could make a living having sex with people I really fancy then i'd do it, as would many people, I guess.

Sadly the money is only exchanged to 'compensate' reluctance, aversion or downright repulsion. I think the woke crowd have this wank fantasy idea that prostitutes get sexual pleasure from their work when in reality they're probably working extremely hard to keep from throwing up or running away or any other natural response to having to be intimate with someone repulsive and/or dangerous.

The European Commission put together a document in 2014 that you might find interesting which collates a lot of the academic research
www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/2014/493040/IPOL-FEMM_ET(2014)493040_EN.pdf

Some select statistics:

"M. Farley’s study carried out across nine countries in 2003 showed that a majority of prostitutes had experienced severe forms of violence, including sexual assault and rape. In most of the cases, they experienced various types of repeated violence. A large proportion (68%) had suffered from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), with a level of severity comparable to that experienced by Vietnam War veterans, as well as psychological dissociation."

"In addition to the violence experienced in the context of prostitution, 43% to 69% of women selling sex have suffered sexual abuse in childhood"

"More than a fifth of them reported enjoying the feeling of power over the prostitute and believed that once the customer had paid, he could do whatever he wanted with the women he bought (22%)"

"M. Farley’s interviews with 785 people in prostitution in nine countries showed that 89% of them wanted to escape prostitution but had no other options for survival"

"According to M. Farley and Di Nicola, the knowledge that the women had been exploited, coerced, or trafficked failed to deter sex buyers from buying sex .In this respect, it has to be noted that most clients are unable to identify indications of forced prostitution"

"Furthermore, it has been observed that men (around 40%) justify or tolerate prostitution because they think that buying sex reduces the likelihood of rape and, if prostitution would not exist, then the number of rapes would increase . In fact, studies from the US seem to prove the contrary (please see above, sub-chapter 1.2.5.)."

"On average 70% of the prostitutes in the EU are migrant women."

The jobs I listed all have a raft of rules, regulations, procedures and protocols in place to minimise risk. They have the potential to be dangerous but they are jobs which benefit society.

It would be impossible to replicate equivalent rules etc.for prostitution.

Those jobs also all to some degree confer status on the workers. People might worry about their sons or daughters doing such work but they will be proud of their children.

It is impossible to replicate that status and pride for prostitution or sex work. Nothing is going to change the minds of punters that these women are anything more than expendable garbage- the sort of women who do things nice women don't.

The "sex industry" needs to promote sex as dirty. It isn't anti- "sex industry" campaigners who are prudes. We are the ones who think consenting sex with 2 (or more if you want) adults is and should be fun- not dirty.

I see it in simple terms:
Someone is paying to rape you.
Nothing empowering about that.

Once again, if people don't think sex is different, what would you do if your male boss said that you now have to have sex with him as part of your duties? If sex can just be a job like filing or typing or writing a report, what's wrong with that duty. How about if you were offered a big bonus to do it, say 30% of your wages. Why would you turn that down?

What if Costa Coffee now said that they'd be selling coffee and blowjobs to customers and that new barristas would have to undertake those duties. Would it be OK for them to recruit on that basis? Would they get staff?

Not sure I agree with a couple of your statements Goosefoot. Society certainly agreed that prostituted women were bad. Men using prostituted women was not seen as bad though, hence prostituted women being punished whilst the customers got away with it.

"People" didn't got to prostituted women, men did. Society had nothing to say about them and what they did. It just had to be kept reasonably discrete (hide it from the wife until she gets an STD).

I'm not sure that the OP has been making radical feminist arguments, given that she's worrying about sounding as if she is anti-women's choices. Radical feminists examine men's choices, and women's lack of them. Reality in other words.

Misogyny is the reason why people support women being used in prostitution. It's not a problem with the arguments of radical feminists, we just don't get listened to because we're women arguing in support of women.

"Harm to society is not really the same argument as the activity being too dangerous for anyone to be allowed to choose to do it. "

Who do you think "society" is if not people?

"That the other jobs are more socially useful - if that level of danger is so significant that a person actually cannot consent to the danger, that element is pretty irrelevant."

It is entirely relevant to any ethical consideration. The dangers of the jobs NatashasDance listed are side effects of the profession, not the entire point for its existence. If crisis first-responders were expected to sit still and let themselves be actively harmed in the name of doing their job you would have a point, but they aren't and you don't.

Someone on Mumsnet made the analogy of prostitution to boxing, and some smart woman said that's only accurate if one boxer got to pummel the face of the other boxer who isn't allowed to protect himself or counter with his own blows. Prostitution is men actively harming women, knowingly and purposefully, not as a side effect.

Prostitution is rapists outsourcing the submission-inducing violence to pimps.

What is your position on prostitution Goosefoot? If you think radical feminist arguments against it are inadequate you could always make some of your own.

I think it should be illegal, and I also think we need to take a careful look at how exploitation can happen in other industries.

What I think is pretty irrelevant though, the OP was having trouble talking to people who see sex as empowering. A lot of people think that way, and I would say that it is pretty clear the radical feminist argument, for some reason, isn't resonating with them.

I don't think that's just because people are too foolish to see what's in front of them. At certain times society has openly agreed prostitution is bad, for many of the same reasons rad fems today do. Lots of people sill went to prostitutes but the overall social belief was different. So why has that changed? I think it points to some underlying change in people's thinking, maybe about sex, or maybe about work, or both.

This is exactly it! So what is a good argument about why sex is different? Is it something to do with bodily integrity/autonomy? Is it because unwanted sex is rape? I mean it has some legal recognition in that sense...

I'm not sure looking to the law is likely to be fruitful. It's too derivative of our social beliefs and realities.

I think what you would have to do is look very closely at the nature of sexuality itself. The traditional conservative language that people have used to talk about this has said that certain things, like selling sex, constitute a misuse of sexuality. In a way I suppose they are saying the same kind of thing, that sex has profound physical and psychological consequences, that there can be pregnancy, that there are negative social consequences to misuse of sexuality. But that language has also been happy to use value language around all of that.

At the same time though, conservative approaches tend to apply similar thinking to things like casual sexual encounters or sex clubs etc. They are seen as not good for potential children, not good for people'd mental health, risky in terms of physical health.

I wonder if the problem many people from more progressive background have is that they are hesitant to use that kind of value language around sex, and in fact are often concerned to maintain that all these other activities that might be similar in some ways are ok, or even good. They are also concerned often to maintain that women can agree to these types of sexual relations.

I think that for sure, if you are talking to people who maintain that sex is simply an animal act with no real further implications, a sort of hobby or something you can do with little though if you choose, they are unlikely to see prostitution as somehow inherently different. So maybe the problem is really this often unspoken underlying sex positive approach and that is where you need to start?

Prostitution has no benefits for anyone other than the literal and metaphorical wanker but does considerable harm to the women involved and to society as a whole.

Harm to society is not really the same argument as the activity being too dangerous for anyone to be allowed to choose to do it. I would say social harm is the easiest argument to make around prostitution.

But I don't think that really gets to the question of the possibility of consent which many people deny with prostitution. It's also an area that people who tend to make the pro-prostitution argument are concerned about, the implications of limiting people's capacity to consent to that degree.

That the other jobs are more socially useful - if that level of danger is so significant that a person actually cannot consent to the danger, that element is pretty irrelevant. Unless we say we allow people to be exploited if the social good is worthwhile, which I think most people wouldn't say. People think that someone who joins the military and goes into a war zone is able to consent to actions that may lead to their own deaths, sometimes certain or inevitable deaths, or a lifetime of disability.
I'd also point out that there are other sorts of very dangerous work that aren't in that vein - things like mining or fishing.