R4 Sunday religious sex workers

And you don't see any qualitative difference between being repeatedly penetrated in all your orifices while a slave and doing someone's nails while a slave?

The slavery part is the same. The act is not.

There are reasons we have social mores around sex that we don't have around other activities.

And male sex workers don't tend to hang out on the same street corners as the women in my experience.

They have a different customer base and different methods of engagement.

The point is the man doesn't know if that's the day he's going to be a potential rapist or an actual rapist. But either way he doesn't Fucking care.

Which means he's happy to fuck the woman even if it means he's raping her.

In the eyes of the law maybe there's a dividing line between these things. In my opinion there is not.

And as there is more likelihood of him sticking his cock in someone less than fully consenting and enthusiastic than not any man who decides to pay a woman for sex might as well go out and pick some random woman and drag them down an alley.

As an actual rape victim i feel fine making this comparison.

@Boiledbeetle

*potential rapist. Much the same as people who get their nails done in salons despite a good possibility the workers are trafficked, or buy clothes and gadgets even though they might have been produced by slaves in sweat shops.

Would men still think it was an acceptable risk to take? Would they think it was 'just a job' if it was the punter being beaten and coerced, even 'just' some of the time.

I'm willing to bet they wouldn't. But they choose that risk for the women.

Again, who said it's 'just a job' or who even spoke about the sex work industry in general, for that matter?

Let's be clear. Sw is at best high risk, possibly soul-destroying work. The flip side is that it's well paid, flexible hours and cash. Which is why there'll always be those who do decide to engage in it.

Not to make a direct comparison, but there are plenty of high risk jobs, that people take on for various reasons. Oil rigs, mining, joining the army, just to name a few. The fact that it's high risk, doesn't in itself negate the agency of the person choosing it, and it doesn't inherently make it non-consensual.

Your last sentence is just silly.

I'm not a punter and buying is raping.

You might not want to talk about them but you have repeatedly made an absolute statement about prostitutes working in the UK, worded in such a way to imply that all or very nearly all of them are doing so by free choice. You have consistently tried to sweep the women who are prostituted under modern slavery in the UK under the carpet and don't seem to want to talk about them because you believe that they don't really exist in any meaningful numbers.

What's happened is that you and other PP have shifted the convo. The point I made is that it's offensive to compare actual rape, where a woman (usually) is robbed of her agency, with sw where a woman makes a choice to sell sexual services.

It's pretty clear I'm talking about the cases when the sw decides on her own, rather than being trafficked or forced by a pimp. Otherwise the point is moot anyway, as in that case she's actually being raped in the classic sense of the word.

But I'm talking about sw by choice. And while there are those who claim consent cannot be bought, I absolutely disagree, for reasons I've laid out. If consent couldn't be bought, all work would be slavery.

Note that my post wasn't about sw as an industry in general. I wasn't arguing that sw is a positive feature and that it should be promoted. All I was saying is that when a woman makes a choice to sell sex, she is not being raped. And to use that term to describe her choice, is a slap in the face for actual rape victims.

As an aside, I also noted that merely going after punters might feel righteous and activisty, but in actuality it harms those poor women who rely on punters to feed themselves and their children. Just because you think it's a sad state of affairs that some women have to sell sex, doesn't mean the solution is just to go after punters. That's simplistic and counter productive.

As to numbers, I pointed you in the direction of Brooke Magnanti's book. She has many credible sources and statistics. It's not on me to do your homework.

The one statistic you mentioned that sounds completely made up, is the ratio of men to women in sw. I've lived all my life on a street that has 'working women' on the corners, and I've never seen a man there. But maybe men only work online, hence why I pointed out you can check vivastreet and once again see there are at least 10 times as many women sws as men.

Ah right so the problem is the do gooders trying to help the sec workers, got it.

Bloody do gooders, agitating for workers rights! Stopping kids from being shoved up chimneys! Stopping poor people from earning a living!

FFS.

They don't seem like insignificant numbers to me.

These people get hand-waved away. Considering the horror of what happens to them, repeatedly raped and beaten, you'd think even the least empathetic man in the world could see the risks are simply too high.

I might believe most sex work is rape. But even if someone doesn't believe that, and only believes it's small numbers, it's still such a massive tragedy.

@Crutcher

I'm not talking about trafficked sws, who are by definition being raped.

I'm glad you agree that trafficked sex workers are being raped. I see that you still avoid using the term modern slavery, which would include prostitutes who are working under modern slavery conditions but haven't been trafficked.

You might not want to talk about them but you have repeatedly made an absolute statement about prostitutes working in the UK, worded in such a way to imply that all or very nearly all of them are doing so by free choice. You have consistently tried to sweep the women who are prostituted under modern slavery in the UK under the carpet and don't seem to want to talk about them because you believe that they don't really exist in any meaningful numbers.

Though there are far fewer than some try to pretend. Read Sex, Lies & Statistics by Brooke Magnanti for some real data.

I provided sources that indicate numbers of women and children entering the sex trade under modern slavery and trafficking definitions every year in the UK. They don't seem like insignificant numbers to me.

I'd really appreciate it if you afforded me the courtesy of quoting the exact statistics and their primary source.

MrsTerryPratchett · Yesterday 22:53
NotDrowningJustCrowing and Boiledbeetle

Thank you for that set of posts which between you explain the reality so clearly.

As read in another place

”if your feminism is making pimps happy, you are doing it wrong”

"Dude, please don't lock me up! The missus is doing a roast and she'll get really cross if I'm late!" This thought of this shouldn't have made me laugh as much as it did. Also, I shouldn't sort of want it to happen but there you go.

They would not take the risk...well...some would. The same guys who try to persuade the women to let them do it without a condom. Anything to heighten their sexual thrill!

But no, most are happy in their little bubble of "all these women do it because they really love sex and I'm special" they don't see themselves like those 20 other grubby men who have been in that same room with that same woman that day.

So no most wouldn't be prepared to take that much of a risk. After all they'd have to explain the bruises etc to the wife when they got home. And they can't risk getting locked in a room as they might be late home and the missus is doing a roast.

Well said

And @Boiledbeetle and @NotDrowningJustCrowing it's worth a little thought experiment to flip the risk.

If using a prostitute had the same risks for the customer as the worker (being really generous with my numbers):

10% of the times you use a woman you will be raped.
10% you will be beaten
10% you will be locked up without your passport and forced to have sex with multiple men
10% of the time you'd enjoy it and have a lovely time
50% you'd risk PTSD

Would men still think it was an acceptable risk to take? Would they think it was 'just a job' if it was the punter being beaten and coerced, even 'just' some of the time.

I'm willing to bet they wouldn't. But they choose that risk for the women.

Your opinion is so well put and gets to the heart of the matter. If we accept that x% of prostitutes are working under duress, which we would be stupid not to accept, then we have to accept that there is x% chance that a punter is sleeping with a woman who is working under duress, hence rape. The fact that he doesn't care to know doesn't make him any less a rapist. And if he's "lucky" enough to be using a "happy hooker", well hallelujah. But he'll never know whether the body he's using belongs to a happy hooker or a slave or a woman in any number of dire situations because he'll never really care. If he cared he'd never pay for sex.

Crutcher

You have stated repeatedly that women sex workers are mostly doing it of their own free will, flying in the face of official statistics, posted here. You've dismissed the figures, based on your perusal of sex for sale websites; I think that says a lot about you. You wish to believe that you're doing nothing wrong.

You have also claimed repeatedly that the women involved aren't raped and that any transaction is consensual. That's absolute rubbish, most sex workers are under the control of pimps, who force them, using threats and actual violence to bring a certain amount of money daily.

These women may say to a man, offering to pay, "Yes, I'll do that for XX £." That you can't see that this is coercive and not actually the free will of the woman, shows there is something quite wrong with you.

If you think that a woman (or child, or man) is having sex for money, but are under dire threats to do so, is consenting meaningfully by saying that they will do whatever is requested, I don't know how anybody can convince you that it's an awful tragedy, that slavery isn't simply the poor career choice of someone desperate.

Actually if you work in this area, you would know that the entry level jobs that employment support programmes get people with low education levels into, you will find that the jobs men go into are much higher paying than the jobs women tend to go into. There’s a high segregation by sex in the job market at that level.

So no, poor women and poor men are not facing the same choices. Also, the men are far less likely to be supporting children who live with them.

Your analysis and argument is badly flawed.

In general, I notice there is an absence of feminist analysis on societal issues in general.

This is incredibly naive and simply untrue. Some prostitutes do it as genuinely feee choice. Many others are trafficked, enslaved, threatened and forced by pimps, or are economically desperate, or drug addicted.

💐

Some people have a very very strange understanding of choice and consent and the things that drive people to sex work.

There may well be women out there who are totally 100% doing it of their own free will despite other employment options being open to them.

But when a punter makes his choice out of say 100 women, a certain % will be doing it completely freely, a % will be handing their money over to their pimp, a % will be trafficked and locked in their room between punters. A % will be drug addicts. A % will have hungry children and no money on the electric meter. A % will have originally started out just doing a couple of photos and now are in so deep they can see no way out. A % will be of extremely limited intelligence and have no chance of getting any sort of normal job, and so in debt to men with baseball bats that they think they have no other option.

When the punter hands over his money and sticks his cock in that woman how does he know which group the woman he's using as a wank sock falls into?

Quite simply he doesn't. Therefore in my eyes he's a rapist. He sticks his cock in a woman that may be only in that room with him because she's been kidnapped, drugged and held against her will. Wether that is the case in every instance he visits a prostitute is irrelevant. It could be, he just doesn't care. Knowing that there is a chance the woman is an unwilling participant but sticking your cock in her anyway is rape.

In my opinion.

You find it offensive when people compare "sex work" to rape, because you don't want to be known as a rapist.

You use actual rape victims as a shield to hide behind, citing how offensive it is for us if you get called a rapist. You have no right to speak on our behalf or to use our experience to defend yourself.

As far as I'm concerned you're no better or worse than the men who raped me, the men who worked in gangs in Rotherham and other places, the men who traffic women and girls in this country and from outside. Or the men who pay to use those children's and women's bodies - and many of them are children. The average age of entry into prostitution in this country is 14. That's the average - so many girls are even younger.

But that's all fine, as long as they "consent". Right?