Help me stay sane and keep my friends.

If anyone uses the "empowering" line I would ask "why, if it is so empowering do we not have the same amount of men doing it?"

Sociology student here. I've decided the less I say the better. There is no way to get through to these people, and you'll only be rewarded with ostracism.

I deeply admire women who are able to withstand this

' I pay thy poverty not thy conscience' (that's Shakespeare, that is, Romeo and Juliet where the the guy Romeo he is buying poison from is expressing moral qualms about handing it over, and Romeo replies with this).

Just been ranting about privileged uni educated women crapping all over more marginalised womens' rights. And here is another example. These women/men on your course have an empathy bypass. They can't imagine being driven into this by poverty, they can't imagine being enslaved or trafficked. And they have a hyper-individualist view of the world so they are not considering that normalising men buying women's' bodies creates a demand that pimps need to traffick women to meet that demand (though your fellow students probably decry capitalism, so go figure).

Don't worry about not being articulate under pressure - its a skill you can gain through practice - so keep speaking!

It's disappointing that your friends discussed this angrily and apparently intolerant of a different point of view to the extent that they might decide to exclude you from the friendship group.

I would suggest reading anything by Julie Bindel as a starting point.