What is the moral difference between sex work and other forms of work?

Oh, here we go, the Penis Defence Force have been summoned

@insideandout3 if you found a crime that was done more by a certain race, would you be able to say (for example) ‘the will to steal is a ‘insert race’ disorder’? I think not...

Also, men are overwhelmingly likely to be the victims of almost all of those crimes also.

There's also the argument about enthusiastic mutual consent.
For me, consent can't be bought or sold. It should be given freely and enthusiastically (an example for context: a woman begrudgingly agreeing to sex just to keep a man happy is not true consent).
When money is involved, that removes the possibility of contest being truly mutual or freely given.

Not many things give me the rage, but this really, really does. I am quite prepared to say that just because a person decides they want to do something, it doesn't mean they should be allowed to do it. No, you can't sell yourself into slavery or sell your blood and I don't think you should be allowed to sell sex either.

But I don't know who anyone is that they think that they can tell me, or anyone else, that they have to be enthusiastic about anything, or when and why, assuming I'm in my right mind, I can or can't validly decide to have sex. If I want to unenthusiastically have sex, I bloody well can, for any reason I think is appropriate.

Of all the things I've gritted my teeth about in a relationship from time to time, having sex when I wasn't really in the mood is not anywhere near the most vexing. It comes under listening to Phillip Glass blasted on the stereo, and watching John Wick.

Men rape much, much more than women and everyone knows it.

British Crime Survey from 2009-10 and Ministry of Justice data says men were perpetrators in 91% of all violent incidents in England and Wales. Men are responsible for:

81% for domestic violence
86% for assault
89% for criminal damage
94% for wounding
96% for mugging
98% for robbery
97% for dangerous driving offences
94% for motoring offences causing death or bodily harm

98% for sexual offences
99% for child sex offences

The highest percentages of women's offences concern fraud and forgery at 30% (men 70%), and theft and handling stolen goods at 21% (men 79%).

If after reading those statistics your top concern is to tell feminists how very important is to you that they always keep in mind the tiny percentage of women who rape, rest assured your helpful input has been noted.

Dazed,
Depends on the country how rape is defined legally.
In many countries, rape laws do not require a penis. The U.K. is behind the times by not recognising legally (de jure) the reality (de facto) of female rapists.
You’ll catch up though. Just like you finally figured out in the 1990s that marital rape is real and added that to the laws

@Plan

Legally, rape can only be inflicted with a penis. Anything else is assault by penetration.

Only men can perpetrate rape but both women and men can be victims of rape.

the will to rape is a male disorder

It’s not exclusively male. Women can and do rape as well.

There's also the argument about enthusiastic mutual consent.
For me, consent can't be bought or sold. It should be given freely and enthusiastically (an example for context: a woman begrudgingly agreeing to sex just to keep a man happy is not true consent).
When money is involved, that removes the possibility of contest being truly mutual or freely given.

The telling women what they can do business is interesting.

The fact is we tell all kinds of people what they can do. Including to some extent with their bodies. And also what they ought to do in some cases - some things aren't illegal but we can say with some clarity that they are self destructive or emotionally unhealthy.

We're uncomfortable with telling women what they can do because of a sense that's happened too often when it shouldn't have - but that doesn't really change the basic fact that there are things people are not allowed to do, and things they probably shouldn't do, and it's a good thing for society to tell people about those things. It doesn't necessarily do women ay favours to be hesitant to say that some things are socially destructive, or personally destructive. To use a banal example, it used to be that ladies were not considered proper if they smoked in public, but it doesn't mean we should be hesitant to tell women it's bad for their health when they become more likely smokers than men.

This, it's not going to be a popular opinion on here but I'm not comfortable with telling a woman what they should or shouldn't be allowed to do.It's not something I particularly ever want to do, but each to their own

I don't this discussion is about telling women what they should and shouldn't do...so much as commenting on prostitution and the act of selling sex, as a woman.

*In the same way that rape is not theft (but if you can buy sex then is rape just theft?8

It's no so much theft, as invasion of emotional, psychological and bodily autonomy and integrity. Breaching the body's boundaries does represent a kind of violation....which is also why surgical procedures can be so traumatic, or why an involuntary, or even voluntary piercing can feel so shocking.

On that note, nice username LemonadeAndDaisyChains

I'd say thanks?
Although you're trying to insinuate nefarious intentions going by your comment in the same sentence? As I dare to disagree.
Biscuit for ya,
I've been here years.
Couldn't be because I chose the name for a lighthearted, reminds me of happy days in the sun and we're all lockdown.
Nope, tinfoil hatters out as per.

Women don't use prostitutes because women don't want to rape, the will to rape is a male disorder.

In 2009, the Shady Lady Ranch brothel opened for women in Nevada and after two months and less than ten customers (mostly journalists covering the story) Nevada’s first legal male prostitute Markus quit and the brothel went out of business.

Remember that tv series Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator? Hidden cameras were used to catch adults who contacted fake profiles of children over the Internet for sexual liaisons. In all the years the show ran, with the hundreds of stings they conducted, not one single time did a woman show up with a six pack of Mike's Hard Lemonade and a pack of condoms expecting sex with a minor.

On that note, nice username LemonadeAndDaisyChains

Would you have sex with your boss? Why not? What's the difference between making a PowerPoint presentation for him and having sex with him?

Women who wish to orgasm and don't have a competent willing partner are stuck with their hands or a sex toy

Not strictly true - women have access to male escorts and to pay for it too if they so wanted.

I think the real moral issue is punters. More specifically: the expectation that men should be entitled to have sex no matter how attractive, kind, handsome, repulsive or otherwise they are. And that all these (and more) qualifying criteria don't matter but that there should exist a mechanism that, basically, overrides normal prerequisites of consent.

The major moral issue, individual cases/circumstances aside, would seem to be that there seems to be an expectation from men - as a class - that just so long as they're in a position to cough up a few quid, they should be getting sex. Regardless of whether they're the type that women swoon over or some bloke who noone in their right mind would ever consider sleeping with if money weren't a consideration.

Very good point. Men who wish to orgasm and don't have a competent willing partner can buy someone (probably female) to use as a wank sheath, in addition to using their hands or a sex toy. Women who wish to orgasm and don't have a competent willing partner are stuck with their hands or a sex toy. Male access to prostituted people is an example of male class privilege.

• There's no other "job" on earth where the worker has to accept someone else's genitals inside his or her body.
• There's no other "job" on earth where the worker can be raped, attacked, or murdered and other people (a minority or otherwise) will say "well, she was a [profession worker], what did she expect?"
• There's no other "job" on earth where pregnancy and STIs are an occupational hazard.

Just c&p this brilliant post from another one of these threads

"Sex work is like an iceberg.

At the tip, there are the people like KatesMott’s and friend, the “empowered” “sex work is work” types, who get to see the ocean, the sunshine, fresh air and the world. Life is seemingly nice at the tip. Unfortunately underneath them, joined by covalent bonds are the first tier: they are the women held just under the surface, constantly just submerged by poverty, drug addiction, never making quite enough money, constantly trying to keep themselves afloat and needing to take a breath every time they break the surface.

And underneath them is the next tier of women: those who are trafficked, beaten, raped, subject to horrors and killed. They are deep underwater, in the freezing depths, so far down that those “empowered” ones at the tip either don’t give one fuck that they’re all part of the same iceberg, or don’t make the connection, because where they are it’s warm and sunny.

It’s not

a refusal to believe that anyone can choose sex work as a valid way of making money

it’s the failure to acknowledge that those who do this are a tiny, small percentage of a huge submerged problem of horror around the world, and the failure to acknowledge that by painting sex work as a glorious opportunity you are ignoring - or deliberately misrepresenting - the reality that the percentage of women who come out of sex work unscathed, financially secure and set up for life is incredibly small.

And by continuing with advocacy for

"No (I think you mean robbery not theft) because you can buy iPhones and cars but you can also steal them."

By this logic it's Yes, men can purchase sex can and also steal it.

I believe the point is that it's not violence against a car to take it for a ride without the owner's permission, and treating women like objects keeps rape from being taken seriously as the violent crime it is when men continue to treat rape as a property crime.

In the same way that rape is not theft (but if you can buy sex then is rape just theft?)

No (I think you mean robbery not theft) because you can buy iPhones and cars but you can also steal them.

Before I even start trying to verbalise my train of thought: general purpose warning, I may be getting this wrong! And, on the whole, I'm firmly on the "prostitution is horrible" side of things. But I'm also, firmly, a rationalist. So I'll try to have a stab at this:

In essence, I'm wondering if - from an ethical/philosophical perspective - we may be looking at this in a backarsewards way. Here's why:

So, dehumanising, personal, intimate, whatever: that's from a recipient's (i.e. the prostitute's POV). It is also, therefore, all inherently vulnerable to a "but some people enjoy X" line of argument. And, like it or not, this is valid and suggests the issue is "how?" rather than "that".

Personally, I empathise to some degree. I'm reasonably laid back about sex and I absolutely get that there is a shitton of grey area in between "rape" and "best orgasm of a lifetime".

I think the issue is another one entirely and entirely independent of whether or not some women are personally okay with physical contact up to and including sex in exchange for payment:

I think the real moral issue is punters. More specifically: the expectation that men should be entitled to have sex no matter how attractive, kind, handsome, repulsive or otherwise they are. And that all these (and more) qualifying criteria don't matter but that there should exist a mechanism that, basically, overrides normal prerequisites of consent.

The major moral issue, individual cases/circumstances aside, would seem to be that there seems to be an expectation from men - as a class - that just so long as they're in a position to cough up a few quid, they should be getting sex. Regardless of whether they're the type that women swoon over or some bloke who noone in their right mind would ever consider sleeping with if money weren't a consideration.

I'm probably explaining this really, really poorly. I'm sorry, it's been a long, shit, week. But, to summarise perhaps: I think it's hard to globally define disadvantages that would apply to every single prostituted woman out there. But there are arguably some major issues with how men come to be punters.

The ‘what would you want your daughter to do’ argument is a ridiculous one as many wouldn’t want their daughter to be lots of jobs; doesn’t mean they shouldn’t. In some countries people don’t want their daughter to have a job at all - don’t think we should be going down that route

This, it's not going to be a popular opinion on here but I'm not comfortable with telling a woman what they should or shouldn't be allowed to do.
It's not something I particularly ever want to do, but each to their own.

Well I mean a lack of employment rights/lack of regulation comes to mind. There’s also a moral element. A lot of people believe that extramarital sex is wrong, that selling/buying sex is wrong, that consent in sex work isn’t real consent, that sex should be enjoyable for both parties etc. Then there is the reality of sex ‘work’, a lot of it is actually sex slavery.

Paying someone to give up their bodily integrity is coercion though. It’s why we (the UK anyway) don’t allow people to be paid for organ, egg, or blood donation, or surrogacy. Consent for anything to do with bodily integrity should always be given freely - a clear and unfettered conscious decision.

But then I suppose this depends on how much you value bodily integrity - and that’s possibly delving into philosophical grounds as much as moral.

Moral grounds are philosophical, always. I think any discussion like this gets into all kinds of things that go well beyond the question at hand.

Bodily integrity is an interesting idea for instance. What does it really mean?

I tend to agree that certain things simply should not be commoditized on principle - they are not things that are transactional, and I'd include sex there, giving blood etc, as well as some things that are from totally different categories. The way I would say it is that it goes against their nature to be bought and sold.

I also think that there is a practical argument that making some of those things into commodities would tend to create a marketplace where exploitation could easily occur, and that's connected to the nature of the item being discussed. In some cases maybe that can be mitigated.

But what I wouldn't say is that is about consent being impinged upon by payment. If that were the case, it would mean consent was also being impinged upon in other cases where we pay someone, and I don't think that's true. It's not that it doesn't matter that when we pay a guy to refinish our floor that his consent to do the job was undermined by his desire or need for the money, because it's not that big a deal to non-concentually refinish a floor. The difference is in the nature of the act.

That being said, I think the idea that anyone makes any choice fully freely is naive. Very often I suspect we don't have much real choice at all.

As PP have said, morally sex work(where sex is sold) is different from other work because:

1. It turns a human being (usually women) into a commodity to be bought
2. As a “product” the person must deny their self to play a role demanded by the consumer, ie. the “girlfriend experience” so it involves more than selling the act of sex.
3. This abnegation of the self to the desires of a buyer is degrading and ultimately dehumanising.
4. Buyers viewing prostitutes as subhuman then subject them to incredibly high rates of criminal violence ranging from beatings, to rape to murder.

Apart from the individual level (above) are the industry level facts

1. Estimated 80% of prostitutes are trafficked. This indicates that demand for sex far outstrips the number of volunteer sex workers. This means the industry itself causes modern day slavery to exist and that buyers do not care whether the women were trafficked or not.
2. One study I read reported that 97% of prostitutes they surveyed wanted to stop, but had no way or support to stop. Indicating that even women who initially “volunteer” to do sex work feel trapped and would rather do some other work if they had choice. The “happy hooker” and “empowerment” myths lure women into sex work and then traps them.