Louis Theroux: Sex work is valid work

Unless you are born independently wealthy all work is coerced under capitalism

Say I dont really want to sort out all the invoices this month, whats the legal term for having to do it even though I dont really want to as I need to keep my job (and dont want to risk my manager slapping me around either)

There have been some disreputable people who have given their opinions on decriminalisation to Amnesty International. They are entitled to their opinions but they weren't in control and they didn't tell lies.

Contrast that with the disreputable people who had power and brought about the Nordic model in Ireland. Jim Wells is a Northern Ireland politician who is an Evangelical Christian. He has got into trouble with his views on homosexuality and abortion.

He questioned the sex worker Laura Lee in the Northern Ireland Assembly. He told her that 127 prostitutes have been murdered in the Netherlands since legalisation there. She had never heard this false statistic before and had no answer to it. Later she researched it and found that most of those 127 were murdered before legalisation not after. She wrote a letter to the Irish Times about this and they published it.

South of the border there was Ruhama, the Catholic organisation started by two orders of nuns both of whom were involved in Magdalene laundries. They campaigned for the Nordic model. They said that 38% of Irish prostitutes have attempted suicide.

This is not true. What is true is that 38% of a group of 77 drug addicted street prostitutes in Dublin had attempted suicide. There was an excellent study in the 1990s by Ann-Marie O'Connor and her colleagues. What Ruhama did was knowingly take a statistic that only applied to the minority who are drug addicts and say that it applies to all sex workers. Advocates of the Nordic model do this quite often.

It wouldn't surprise me if 38% of drug addicts had attempted suicide. Rachel Moran repeated the false statistic in her book Paid For.

tourismteacher.com/female-sex-tourism/

Female sex tourism destinations also apparently include Gambia as well as Caribbean and Southern European locations.

"Some men go into the 'job' thinking they'll get to have sex with tons of women, but then discover that they only way they can make any sort of living out of it is by taking on male clients"

I think you'd be surprised. Depends on the individual but many male escorts state on their online profile they will only see female customers, sometimes including M+F couples. In other words there are male sex workers who won't accept bookings from a man.

[quote MargaritaPie]"Don't know if I'd trust Amnesty on anything anymore. Didn't they allegedly get Pimps to write up their policy on prostitution and exploitation of women"

No.

*"Douglas Fox has not been a member of Amnesty International for some years and has had zero input on Amnesty's draft policy on sex work.

Claims that he did are without foundation"*

www.amnesty.org.uk/douglas-fox[/quote]
Oh hello MargaritaPie, it looks like I've come back just in time.

For anyone who wants to know who Amnesty International consulted before adopting their decrim policy and just how many pimps were involved in that process and how AI ignored and/or bullied the prostituted women and former prostituted women who opposed it, MargaritaPie and I had a lengthy exchange just last year about this.

You can find the relevant comments here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminism/a4278565-Sex-Work-Is-Work-is-a-shit-slogan?msgid=108585420#108585420

(There are also a number of comments with relevant links before that comment.)

The main thing to remember is that Amnesty International includes pimps in their definition of "sex workers". (As well as others who exploit prostituted women.)

Any claim Amnesty International and their supporters make about having consulted widely with "sex workers" should not be mistaken for evidence that they have consulted widely with prostituted women.

Some men go into the 'job' thinking they'll get to have sex with tons of women, but then discover that they only way they can make any sort of living out of it is by taking on male clients.

As for the "many British women who go to destinations such as Jamaica to pay for sex", I doubt it is 'many'. These women do exist, but they are a tiny fraction of the number of men who go to places like Thailand looking to purchase women.

"I know there are male prostitutes, invariably serving male 'clients"

I think you'd be surprised how many female clients exist, and it's also common for M+F couples to hire an escort (for example they might want to experience a threesome but choose to hire a professional rather than someone they know).

There's also many British women who go to destinations such as Jamaica to pay for sex.

[quote PurgatoryOfPotholes]Men will claim they support sex workers and scream “sex work is real work.” But at the end of the day, talk is cheap. They’ll buy your content and stop you from moving up in life.

twitter.com/Woke_Misogyny/status/1490601146213445634?t=1m3irroiZgNb-q80p5LaQA&s=19[/quote]
He is being replaced (well his role is being reallocated) by a qualified candidate from his College.

Last year he passed the company test and interview, has worked there and is confident he will be employed again. So he must be clever!

He told his (also) clever male friend about the role (Wow!!, his friend has access to company specific insider knowledge).

His ex-classmate did the company test and an interview. He's not sure how he was not offered the job. His pal is clever and he had given a personal recommendations but no offer.

PS He's a sex worker too, well, an almostJohn counts. Right?

He engaged in consented to sexual activity. He's a nice guy: he paid. So they both have proof.

The only reason that he objected was that he made contact with a class mate, engaged in sexual conduct.

He failed to disclose their prior sexual history to his boss while recomending that her employment offer be withdrawn.

2022 woke bro discovers new way to engage in sexual harrasssment in the workplace.

[quote jennywhitehorses]@Awwlookatmybabyspider

It looks like you've been offered a job

I think the way it works is that you offer them a job. Hand or otherwise.[/quote]
No, thank you

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_live_events/1986689-Live-webchat-with-Amnesty-International-Tuesday-4th-Feb-11-12pm

In addition, a spokesperson from Amnesty Int. did a live webchat with Mumsnet answering questions. She explained a range of organisations including those from Africa, Latin America and Asia were consulted before coming to the decision to support decriminalisation.

"Don't know if I'd trust Amnesty on anything anymore. Didn't they allegedly get Pimps to write up their policy on prostitution and exploitation of women"

No.

*"Douglas Fox has not been a member of Amnesty International for some years and has had zero input on Amnesty's draft policy on sex work.

Claims that he did are without foundation"*

www.amnesty.org.uk/douglas-fox

"I believe that LT only has sons and no daughters"
Somebody should ask him if he'd be happy if one of his sons chose to do sex work.
These 'sex work is work' types never seem to wonder why, if it's so fulfilling and lucrative, almost no sex workers are male. Or, for that matter why they've never tried it. Funny that....

@Awwlookatmybabyspider

It looks like you've been offered a job

I think the way it works is that you offer them a job. Hand or otherwise.

@Cailleach1

What do you think is more likely? That a human rights organisation has been taken over by pimps or that a government has been dishonest with their the nature and effectiveness of their policies?

Norway, like all Nordic model countries, states that it has decriminalised prostitutes. Amnesty say they haven't. Amnesty say that when the Norwegian police identify a prostitute they find her landlord and threaten him with prosecution unless he evicts her.

Women working together is still illegal and migrants have the additional problem of deportation.

I know that there were reports in the media that the first person in Amnesty to say that they should look into human rights abuses in Norway was a man who ran an escort agency. That's a long way from pimps writing their policy.

I think Amnesty would have done better to say that it's not going to tell democratically elected governments what they should do but that if Norway wants to have the Nordic model then it should be as advertised. They can continue to prosecute punters (they can look after themselves) but no more arrests or evictions of women.

I have not read anything about the removal of franchise that you write about. Perhaps what is meant is that people who believe in the Nordic model and are vocal about it can no longer represent Amnesty.

Don't know if I'd trust Amnesty on anything anymore. Didn't they allegedly get Pimps to write up their policy on prostitution and exploitation of women. Also, called for the removal of franchise (and ability to access media/reporting) from women who stand up for their rights. I think such apparent complicity in trying to damage women's rights takes away credibility.

@awwlookatmybabyspider

It looks like you've been offered a job 👍

@Awwlookatmybabyspider

I personally agree. I'd go into sex work if I had to. I have no problem whatsoever with admitting that. It's called survival.

Before anyone considered going into sex work, they should consider that there are many types of sex work. A lot of it, perhaps most of it these days, is non-penetrative. A woman can make a small amount of money from giving a man a massage, and then more from 'extras'. That could just be a woman using her hands to bring a man to orgasm.

There's a difference between oral sex with a condom, oral sex without a condom, and CIM (cum-in-mouth). Many if not most sex workers don't do CIM. Also, it's very rare for a sex worker to get 20 clients in a day. More like 8 for a busy sex worker.

The reason why I am saying this is that someone said that sex workers have to give oral sex to 20 men a day. That's not the reality. You don't even have to have penetrative sex with clients if you don't like that idea. You can still make money from sex work. I'm not trying to promote sex work, I'm just saying that even if a woman was desperate for money she doesn't have to do penetrative sex.

@NotBadConsidering

It doesn’t matter what you say the legislation says. Those news articles are all examples of brothels that failed to comply with legislation, and hence, were illegal. Too many women, immigrant women etc. They were illegal brothels. To claim there are none is unequivocally false. It’s also unequivocally ridiculous to claim there aren’t any other brothels in New Zealand right at this very minute that aren’t acting illegally.

Yes you are right. There are brothels in New Zealand which are illegal. Just as there are nightclubs in Britain which are illegal. As far as I know there are no cases in New Zealand where two women working together for safety from a flat have been arrested, unlike in Nordic model Ireland where two Romanian women in their 20s were arrested. They were just the ones that made the newspapers.

Amnesty International have said that women in Nordic model Norway are suffering through arrest and eviction, and especially migrant women. The issue of migrant women seems to be the biggest problem with any system.

Here's an example quote to backup the last point I made above.

“Ever since the law [in Ireland] changed the worst crimes - attacks, robberies, rapes - have increased. Potentially aggressive clients are more likely to call than genuine clients.”

This is from the above link which uses this as the source: sexworkersallianceireland.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SWAI-Research-Report-.pdf p50

So there are still clients paying for sex, but the pool of available clients will have a higher proportion of men who don't care about breaking laws.

It's even easier when you don't have a job, but are just doing freelance work when you get it. Which is essentially what SW is.

I fundamentally disagree that so-called desperation = no consent. We are all 'desperate'. Why do you think I go to work every day, for the fun of it? I do it because I need the money. A(lmost a)ll work is done because people need the money, and they wouldn't do it otherwise.

The case has yet to be made why a consensual agreement to do riskier work for higher pay, is somehow not considered consensual.

Shelf stacking carries very little risk, but it means long, fixed hours, for min wage. SW carries greater risk, but far fewer, flexible hours, for much higher pay. As with most jobs, the reward is commensurate with the risk.

Men are going to hurt women anyway, so why bother? Where have we heard that argument from you beforeMarg, I wonder? 🤔

No idea of the posting history, but I didn't get that from what Margarita said. I think it's just reiterating that certain policies will put women more at risk from creeps and predators because they will target anyone who is already (more) vulnerable.

IMO any man paying for sex is already in the creep category but under, say, the Nordic model women would be left with only the more extreme end of the creep spectrum, less ability to vet, and face lots of negative potential consequences if they did go to the police.

(If a client isn't worried about the legal consequences of committing violence, they aren't going to care about a law against paying for sex which carries low penalties

Men are going to hurt women anyway, so why bother? Where have we heard that argument from you before Marg, I wonder? 🤔

"can actually get help without risking deportation.“

This is a problem in Sweden under the Nordic model.

"Selling sex is considered a grounds for deportation as it is not “legitimate” work and migrant sex workers caught up in raids have been detained and denied medical support"

www.swarmcollective.org/blog/the-swedish-model

The Nordic Model is usually advertised as "legal to sell sexual services, illegal to buy sexual services" to make it sound good. But the small print is usually kept quiet.

Including the small print, the Nordic Model would be "It's legal to sell sexual services- but only if you work alone(if you work with someone else the police can burst in and detain you), your landlord will be forced to evict you if they find out what you do, Social Services can take your children off you, if you're a migrant you will be deported if caught, and your clients will be more likely to be violent towards you*"

*(If a client isn't worried about the legal consequences of committing violence, they aren't going to care about a law against paying for sex which carries low penalties, this means any clients which will be deterred will be the safer ones.)

@Aspiringmatriarch
“That's the system that needs to change, so people who are being trafficked or coerced (in any industry) can actually get help without risking deportation.“

I am sure you are right.