Why is the BBC Promoting Sex Work?

@lama

Surely there are many jobs we wouldn’t necessarily want our daughters to do. Working as a cleaner is perfectly respectable and (as current circumstances show) sometimes vital. However, I would be saddened if my daughter became a cleaner.

If you (pl) would like to see the reality for most women in the sex trade the world over, I recommend the movie Mumbai Central, on Netflix now.
Trailer:

It's about a young Indian girl lured into the sex trade. With subtitles. You need quite a stomach to watch this; but it is reality, not only in Mumbai but the world over, including Europe. And yes, I have been to this area of Mumbai and spoken to prostitutes, including children.

You a sex worker butter ?

"Statistically, most women in sex work were driven there through poverty, abuse and/or addiction."

Got any reliable statistics to back that up?

And when you say sex work are you applying that sweeping statement to nude models, sex phone operators, pole dances and strippers or just to those selling actual sex?

So so those on this thread who are irritated by the criticism of the BBC think it is a good idea to create a society which endorses men (and it is mostly men) buying sex?

"Personally I take a purist approach to this."

The prohibitionists in early 20th century America also took a purist approach as well. Anti-drugs people do too. They both have made the problem of drink and drugs very much worse.

The danger of imposing your morals on society as a whole is that it doesn't stop people doing the thing you disapprove of it just makes a dangerous black market where people continue to do illegally what they previously did legally.

It also takes away free choice and agency from adults whose viewpoint, morals and tolerances are vastly different from yours in order to protect people who would very much prefer not to have your kind of protection.

"You have a hell of a nerve projecting your arrogance and ignorance on to those who do have experience in the sex industry"

The arrogance and ignorance is yours, not mine. I have listened to actual sex workers and their organisations and not feminist propaganda.

The experiences of people in the sex industry is mixed but very few support the prohibitionist stance you lot are constantly peddling and most agree that it makes things worse and more dangerous, whether that is a ban on buyers and sellers as in the States or just a ban on buyers as in Sweden.

Only feminists are so arrogant that they ignore the voices of the women (as I said before they're indifferent to the fate of men) actually in the sex industry who point out the flaws in feminists' arguments which are based on ludicrously unreliable statistics.

If it’s not good enough for my daughter, it shouldn’t be good enough for anyone’s daughter.

There is a guy called Juergen Rudloff in Germany, who is known as the Brothel King in that country since he opened a chain of mega brothels.

Many years ago he became quite prominent in Germany; he did the talk show rounds and was on TV a lot, with prominent German anti-porn-and-prostitution feminists such as Alice Schwarzer.

Rudloff has four children, including (a) daughter(s).
On one of the talk shows (I watched it) he said it would break his heart if his daughter became a prostitute.

I suspect it's the same for almost all parents. That says it all.

taz.de/!603987/
Seine Kinder gehen in den Waldorfkindergarten und er gesteht: „Es würde mir das Herz zerreißen, wenn meine Tochter sich prostituieren würde.“

I'm sure being paid to take your clothes off is a fast track to getting an inflated ego..

Oh look, he is "sure"...

Nothing to discuss then.

What @HeyDuggeewhatchadoin said. Statistically, most women in sex work were driven there through poverty, abuse and/or addiction.

Just because a very few apparently privileged and happy mc women seemingly choose to do it for fun, does not detract from the overall picture.

It's not 'looking down' on women to actually listen to the overwhelming majority who, when surveyed, sorely wish they had any other option.

I also think those advocating for women to do this perhaps deliberately ignore all the signs that men masturbating isn't actually "appreciation of the female form" at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. As Germaine Greer was one of the first to point out - for many men their sexual desire is actually bound up with intense feelings of shame and hatred and wanting to destroy the 'object' of their lust. Any woman who's ever been objectified will have sensed this instinctively.

I guess this is the direction they'll be expecting poor women to move in once coronavirus is over and the country is apparently too bankrupt to provide a safety net

Hang on, I object to the accusation that anyone is "looking down" on women who sell nudes or are involved in the sex industry.
I think those women have made a poor decision but I don't look down on them. I wish there were better options for young women so that their bodies weren't seen as objects and their only value.
I feel anger that this sort of role is presented as normal and a good idea, when it is emotionally damaging to only be valued for how you look and to be treated like a blow up doll.

Those women have been told, by the BBC no less, that this is ok, that little girls can aspire to selling their bodies in this way. That makes me really angry.

It's always the same, isn't it? Some (extremely privileged) women allegedly choose/enjoy it, so anyone critically evaluating the coercive and harmful nature of the sex industry on all women is a big meany jealous frothy bitter self-righteous uptight dramatic moralizing patronizing bad-feminist!

There's no point in replying is there?

I second what has been said- if you have received unwelcome personal messages then report them. MNHQ will take action against the sender.

The point that individual choices are not made in a vacuum has been explained.

The point about self esteem has sailed over your heads. The sex "industry" depends on the women and men who cater to punters being people who are looked down on.

In your inbox? You should report those messages to the mods, they break the guidelines.

Butters0123

You have a hell of a nerve projecting your arrogance and ignorance on to those who do have experience in the sex industry.

An industry that creates prostituted women and children, and human trafficking is a human rights issue, not a business model.

@floralbunting @onlyfans sponsor me if you want.

Personally I take a purist approach to this.
I absolutely disagree with the commodification of the human body. I believe it is fundamentally unethical whether it involves the sale of sex, a human organ or a baby. An individual might wish to do these things for their own personal benefit but I believe it should not be permitted for the greater good of society. I also find the happy hooker narrative unconvincing and suspect a vanishingly small number of individuals truly choose that work.

Most sex workers in the UK aren't faced with a do or die situation. That's a ridiculous exaggeration to make a political point and a severe distortion of the reality of the sex industry. The sex workers who oppose your kind of feminist preaching are not traffickers etc. and they aren't silencing anyone, merely presenting a case from their experience, unlike you who have no experience at all and no knowledge of the sex industry other than feminist propaganda based on advocacy research and questionable statistics. Even if they were all traffickers they aren't very effective at silencing the Mumsnetters and their various broods are they?

Given the choice to submit, or die, many women choose to submit.
They even have a name for it. Survival sex. There is enough information out there about the physical and emotional damage women suffer in the sex industry that it is pointless to argue with the pimps and traffickers, the recruiters and exploiters, who call themselves sex workers in order to silence the voices of the women and children who are being trafficked.

Thanks. I get the anger. As I'm not involved in the sex industry myself (either as provider or consumer) I don't find myself getting angry just slightly frustrated by the impenetrable wall of (self) righteousness from the Mumsnet/feminist crowd whenever sex work is mentioned. I get the same feeling from the anti-drugs crowd or any other group which takes a simplistic/moralistic prohibitionist stance to difficult and complex issues which always makes things very much worse than they need be.

"Should the job center make you be a prostitute?
If you think no, then you accept that "sex work" is not real work"

A weak argument. The job centre won't force you to join the armed services or work in an abattoir either. Some work is real enough, sometimes foul and dangerous, immoral viewed through some eyes, but still work.

Given the choice I'd rather give blowjobs for money than slaughter animals. At least one is giving pleasure to someone.