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Louis Theroux: Sex work is valid work

187 replies

Hestyo · 08/02/2022 06:32

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6b668836-8849-11ec-a837-0153f5f4adaf?shareToken=82f93f7a57c728c82da0d575b5201d55

"It’s not something you’re especially proud of using. But there are times in your life when you can’t get a decent meal, or you’re in a rush, or you’re just trying to get a need met."

Theroux added that his children were approaching an age where their internet searches may lead them to pornography. “I have said to them, ‘When you see porn, if this is something you’ve stumbled across, just so you know, that’s not the real world. That’s not how people have sex,’ ” he added.

He said sex work should be seen as an acceptable alternative to a traditional career. Forbidden America will investigate the OnlyFans phenomenon, which has given performers their own online following and financial independence.

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5
crazyjinglist · 08/02/2022 18:52

People like him think it's ok because it's not something anyone in his circles or his family would find themselves having to resort to as work. I've always thought he was an arse.

As for sex work - @Dobedodo sums it up perfectly.

PurgatoryOfPotholes · 08/02/2022 18:35

How well has that worked out in the war on drugs?

How surprising the self-styled voice of working-class women is so blasé (à la Kipling and his oldest profession bullshit) about prostitution.

Any opportunity to support the subjugation of women, eh?

Alonelonelylonersbadidea · 08/02/2022 18:26

If my kids were desperate for food and I'd get 50 quid for fucking or blowing a dude in a car to buy said food- I would do it. In a heartbeat.
I've fucked dudes for less.
And I've had a very stable loving childhood, blah blah blah but I do know that I would do what it takes. I'm educated. I'm a lawyer. I'm fucking lucky.
Any woman who claims not or who would critique a desperate woman's choices is either a liar or just an asshole/ä. IMHO.

FrancescaContini · 08/02/2022 17:56

@ScrollingLeaves

From one of the articles OldCrone posted

“She tells me about a 17-year-old Russian - let’s call her Klara – whose father had fallen ill. The family was getting desperate for money so when Klara saw a newspaper advert offering temporary work as a prostitute in Germany, “she thought, ‘it will be awful but for three months I can bear it.’ And then she was raped by several men the night she arrived to “get her ready” for prostitution. They took her passport. There was another girl there who wouldn’t do something a customer wanted and they broke a bottle, a glass bottle, and raped her with that. She was cut inside. It was shown to all the others.” Klara was trapped there for four years.“

This is so upsetting to read. The poor girl, what terrifying experiences. I wonder what LT would say about this.
barleybadminton · 08/02/2022 17:16

@EishetChayil

I said that it’s part of society that is not going to go away.

It could go away if strict laws were passed that punish the makers, distributors, and users.

How well has that worked out in the war on drugs?
ScrollingLeaves · 08/02/2022 16:55

From the Telegraph article OldCrone posted

“Myria Vassiliadou, the EU anti-trafficking co-ordinator, tells me about a Nigerian woman she met recently in London. This woman was trafficked to Britain where she served up to 20 clients a day. “She was telling these clients that she didn't want to be there, that she was forced and that she would be killed if she didn't do what the traffickers said. She told the men and the men would say, ‘I don’t care. I paid for this.’”

Was consent given here in your view @Badois?

ScrollingLeaves · 08/02/2022 16:51

From one of the articles OldCrone posted

“She tells me about a 17-year-old Russian - let’s call her Klara – whose father had fallen ill. The family was getting desperate for money so when Klara saw a newspaper advert offering temporary work as a prostitute in Germany, “she thought, ‘it will be awful but for three months I can bear it.’ And then she was raped by several men the night she arrived to “get her ready” for prostitution. They took her passport. There was another girl there who wouldn’t do something a customer wanted and they broke a bottle, a glass bottle, and raped her with that. She was cut inside. It was shown to all the others.” Klara was trapped there for four years.“

PurgatoryOfPotholes · 08/02/2022 16:39

Men can do sex work - there are men who will pay to access male bodies as well as men who will pay to access female ones. It's a smaller market, but it exists.

But far fewer men spend their youth being told that being a prostituted teenager would be a romantic, fun way to pay their uni fees.

pickingdaisies · 08/02/2022 16:06

LT has made his career from spending time with people involved in porn and prostitution. Acting the innocent abroad. Whether or not this began with good intentions, or just for the ratings, it must have a desensitizing effect after all those years. Or maybe he has always been drawn to that world, only he knows. What I do know is that he is in no position to lecture the rest of us.

BellatricksStrange · 08/02/2022 15:54

@Bordois

Is purchased consent actual consent?
Of course it is. Almost all of us go to work only because we get paid. Money, without which, we wouldn't have a roof over our heads or food in our mouths.

Almost any sex worker could just as easily find a low paid job. These are available everywhere. From shelf-stacking, serving in coffee shops, cleaning and so on. But these jobs are long hours and low pay.

So some women (and some men actually), decide to take the route of less work higher pay, but at a greater mental cost. It's not as if the only option available to most SWs is SW. I mean look at the men in equivalent situations - what do they do? They can't do SW, so they take low-paid jobs for long hours.

This option exists for the SWs too, but they make the conscious choice of doing SW instead because it frees them up to make their own hours, and they get paid far more. IME any semi-decent SW makes at least £1k per week cash. And that is why they do it.

They know they can make £500 pw minus tax minus benefits loss for working 40 hours. But for them doing SW is the better choice. To claim this somehow isn't consent is ridiculous.

PurgatoryOfPotholes · 08/02/2022 15:45

Elly Arrow, a German women-rights activist, reports that 81% of women in prostitution in Germany are immigrants. This includes trafficking victims- yes, women are trafficked from other countries to meet the demand amongst male Germans.

Here's a thread from her.

New YouTube video out on "Unique and Disproportionate Health Risks of #Prostitution". t.co/2e7DtRguvE It bears repeating that countries that permit "sex buying" permit men to do things to women that violate workers' health & safety, as well as human rights, left and right

Either we roll back workers' health & safety rights by decades and accept that anyone may legally be subjected to bodily fluids, STIs, sex acts, unwanted pregnancy, etc on the job - or - we say women in #prostitution are the only workers where these protection laws will not apply

You tell me which one it is because it's one or the other if you believe #sexworkiswork. Currently, places like Germany and New Zealand have decided that most workers' protections will not be applied in prostitution (because they can't be). Not even laws protecting pregnant women

twitter.com/EllyArrow/status/1463650154230206468?t=51r65aq6rbHVMhxAFu_h_g&s=19

PurgatoryOfPotholes · 08/02/2022 14:25

Regarding Germany, a few years back, I rented a random German romantic comedy film for the family. Its age rating according to the German film classification system - free for everyone to watch.

The lead character goes to a brothel (possibly a superbrothel) while he's moping about his break-up, and has sex with a foreign woman there who doesn't understand a word of German. And it's all played off as a joke in the film.

(Film was classified at an 18 here.)

OhWhyNot · 08/02/2022 14:06

You misread what i wrote QuinkWashable

I said nothing about accessing sites or what porn. But erotica and porn many people enjoy. Do you know out of your friends and colleagues or all the people you like who likes porn I doubt it. Of course it should be regulated better

There are women who have access to education and roofs over their heads and make the choice. Why for a number of different reasons

The vast majority or women who are involved in sex work don’t have such choices but we don’t live in a world of such perfection that world doesn’t exist. There will be women who prefer sex work to hours in a factory but both work both have to to feed their families neither is choice it’s a necessity

And no purchased consent isn’t always consent

PankhurstConnection · 08/02/2022 13:37

@QuinkWashable

I don’t judge people for liking porn

I do. Read the titles of the videos on the front page of a porn site. I absolutely judge someone who goes to a site that proudly proclaims it's full of women being abused like that.

Women being forced into marriage by society isn't them 'trading' their body for christ's sake! It's not a free choice like selling your handicrafts! It's for survival, it's coerced! Give women access to education, contraception, don't ban them from work, make sure everyone can have a roof over their head and food in their bellies, and see how many of them chose to be prostituted.

Well said.
PankhurstConnection · 08/02/2022 13:31

Women who work in the sex industry should not be stigmatized for doing so but nor is the euphemistically named 'sex work' work like any other - it simply isn't.

I'm happy to listen to Theroux's take on it being work like other work when he is working in the industry himself and not before.

Bordois · 08/02/2022 12:23

Is purchased consent actual consent?

ScrollingLeaves · 08/02/2022 11:59

Someone posted this on this board 2nd February

I don’t have time to listen again right now, but this is where a heard her mention a statistic related to this.

ScrollingLeaves · 08/02/2022 11:57

I think I heard Julie Bindel discuss the statistics and she said about 11% British
35% German.

OhWhyNot · 08/02/2022 11:27

Then there is something to learn from where the policies went wrong

Different countries/cultures have different attitudes towards sexual work and men buying sex but it’s in every society even the most pious. I am not sure if more German men buy sex but still a huge number of British men do and guys we would think are really nice upstanding members of society, regardless of society attitudes (certainly didn’t stop Victorians)

Original poster
Hestyo · 08/02/2022 11:04

Re. protecting prostituted women from pimps, both Germany and the Netherlands ("progressive countries") legalised pimping when they legalised prostitution. The logic was that there would be no need for the ban on pimping anymore as the state would now be regulating the work, so women wouldn't be dependent on pimps anymore. Instead 'exploiting prostitutes' was outlawed. Despite this pimping didn't decrease, and it was admitted that actually its very hard to tell when the women are being exploited and coerced. "What makes pimping impervious to government decrees... is that the relationship concerned is not that of agent and client, but domestic violence."
In one study 64% of women described their pimp as their boyfriend or man.
And as we all know how shit our police currently are at dealing with domestic violence, I really don't trust them to deal with domestic violence in an even more complicated setting. Regulation hasn't worked in other countries.

OP posts:
ScrollingLeaves · 08/02/2022 10:59

“OhWhyNot

Why will there be more punters

Either a man feels it’s ok to purchase sex or they don’t “

No one is that inflexible in their ideas of what is acceptable. People are swayed by what they think the general consensus is, the idea that ‘everyone is doing it so it must be ok’.

In Germany there are many more than here I believe. I heard the statistic the other day. Can anyone recall this?

sanluca · 08/02/2022 10:54

@OhWhyNot

Why will there be more punters

Either a man feels it’s ok to purchase sex or they don’t

We can bring our sons up to respect women more and change attitudes that sex is a desire not a need (which I feel drives male entitlement)

But that isn’t going to change everyone’s views

And morals so often go out of the window ….

There will be more punters because it is ok to purchase sex, as sex work is work so there is really no difference between buying the use of a womans body cavities as there is to buying the skills and hands of say a brick layer. It is normalised. It is seen as fine. Not a problem. So more men will feel it is ok to do so. After all, other men do it. Increase of demand but not of workers. So get them from outside the country under false pretenses and force them into this line of work. Which is acceptable and normal work so why are women complaining they don't want to do it...
OhWhyNot · 08/02/2022 10:54

Its work that is exchanged for money.

Sex at times is traded by adults who are consenting

Children can’t consent

TheGreatATuin · 08/02/2022 10:49

Gross. We have gone so far backwards.

And yes, sex work has been part of human society for millennia. So has child sex abuse, sex trafficking, execution of 'witches' and the patriarchy.
Something being ancient doesn't make it good.
And being anti-sex work isn't anti-sex workers. This is like saying you're anti-children for being opposed to child labour.

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