R4 Sunday religious sex workers

I'm happy to say I've never paid for sex.

I'm curious about why someone would be so coy about it. And I've been to a few places where women are punters more often (the Caribbean, sub-sharan Africa). Never felt remotely interested. Because enthusiastic consent is the minimum I want.

Yeah right. Because anyone who disagrees with the term rape in this circumstance, and even finds it offensive and hurtful to real victims, can only be a punter.

@TheMarzipanDildo
Fully agree. I meant coercion rather than physical force, because as your rightly point out it's not necessarily always the case.

Rape does not need to involve force. It is very important to be clear about that.

I was sexually abused as a child. It did not involve force, but rather a kind of emotional coercion. Adults (particularly vulnerable ones) can be coerced too.

Kindly don't make assumptions about me. I could be a punter, or I could be a woman who was sexually assaulted

In this forum, what matters are your opinions and you have the opinions of a punter.

Kindly don't make assumptions about me. I could be a punter, or I could be a woman who was sexually assaulted. I don't owe you my story and you're not entitled to make assumptions about me in order to reply.

I'm not saying sw is a good option or that it empowers women and all that BS. All I'm saying is that it's a choice some destitute women make. And as such, to call it rape is a slap in the face to actual rape victims.

Rape is when someone has sex with you against your will. When you choose to sell sexual favours, even out of desperation, that is a choice and anyone who buys is not a rapist. Stop conflating real rape with regret.

As an aside I pointed out that merely stopping the punters doesn't actually help sws.

*your

Jesus fucking Christ Mumsnet is a time
limited edit function that much of an ask?

If a woman is starving, you feed her, you don’t stick her dick in her.

Babdoc · Today 09:12
It is nonsense to say that prostitution is the only alternative to “starvation”. We live in a country with laws on minimum wage, and a system of welfare benefits. No woman has to choose to prostitute herself to buy food - she is either servicing a drug habit or has been coerced by a pimp - who may have been the one who got her hooked on drugs in the first place.

I think you don’t know how wrong, or how complicated ‘Universal Credit’ can be.
(See the brilliant film “I, Daniel Blake” to get some idea.)
Also, life can take a desperate turn from drugs and addiction.

On a slightly separate point, here is an excerpt from a study about the prevalence of past abuse among prostituted people ‘choosing’ sex work.

In the present study, the relationships between the level of childhood maltreatment and involvement in sex work were examined using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) as part of an extensive interview protocol in an ongoing prospective cohort study of street-involved youth in Vancouver Canada.

Between September 2005 and June 2006, 361 youth were recruited using extensive outreach methods and snowball sampling. The prevalence rates for abuse in the sample were 73% for physical abuse; 32.4% for sexual abuse; 86.8% for emotional abuse; 84.5% for physical neglect; and 93% for emotional neglect.

Univariate and logistic regression analyses demonstrated that not only was sexual abuse independently associated with sex work, but emotional abuse was as well. These findings have implications for early intervention efforts aimed at vulnerable, high risk youth populations as well as intervention strategies for active sex trade workers.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2254224/

Always interesting to witness the mental gymnastics of men who really, really want to buy non consensual sex

fucking sad cases

It is nonsense to say that prostitution is the only alternative to “starvation”. We live in a country with laws on minimum wage, and a system of welfare benefits. No woman has to choose to prostitute herself to buy food - she is either servicing a drug habit or has been coerced by a pimp - who may have been the one who got her hooked on drugs in the first place.

They are punters. That's how come they "know" so many prostituted women.

CuriouslyDifferent · Today 06:55

“i knew a lot of escorts when i went through uni…. All single, no heavy drugs, no coercion, lots of lovely people who went on to have good careers and happy relationships after their degrees”

As you say you knew lots, how did you come to know them? Were they fellow students?

If so, is getting money from people paying you for sex the new form of student grant/loan?

If so, if you have/had daughters, would you want them to try to get money this way?

Even if these are students, I would bet anything most have been abused in the past in some way and have low self-worth believing their only value is sex, or else they trying to regain ‘control’ by the selling in some way.

‘Escort’ here seems to be a euphemism for more expensive sex selling.

In a way you seem to be suggesting these are ‘lovely’ people doing something good and useful and doing themselves no harm.

This is not really liberation for women.

I think you all are being really unfair here…

of course the consensus must be that this is one of many choices women make freely, maybe not the best but indeed a free choice.

if we started to post link about background of sexual assault as children, traumas, PTSD after prostitution etc, men who likes to visit prostitutes would find it more difficult to get an erection when paying for sex with a damaged and traumatised woman.

and women who want men to be happy would not want that to happy. They would probably not be prostitutes themselves, but they are comforted by the thought that the poor men can buy sex from someone else.

bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-244X-6-24

www.mumsnet.com/talk/guest_posts/2799410-Guest-post-I-didnt-think-of-my-prostitution-as-traumatic-but-it-left-me-with-PTSD

Stop being so mean here, let’s pretend for the sake of the poor men…!!

I don't believe that a choice between being destitute or performing sex acts for money can - by any measure - meaningfully be called a 'choice'.

Fucking hell, when did MN become punternet?

Well said.

if every man who responds to an advert is a rapist, if the advertiser is hungry, is a rapist, then the world has gone mad. Where do you draw the line between tinder and adult work, cash or payment in kind, eg. dinner??

my view is that when do gooders make a prohibition of something - it only drives it underground - makes it less safe for those involved.

i knew a lot of escorts when i went through uni…. All single, no heavy drugs, no coercion, lots of lovely people who went on to have good careers and happy relationships after their degrees. My sample is the above and thankfully never known anyone trafficked. And therin is the issue - with surveys and how to get a representative sample. I’m certain they dont disclose their past widely.

Putting that aside, the bigger problem with your stance is that you are only pretending to care for the sws, when in reality it's just enforcing your distaste for sexual transactions on others.

ODFOD

I wrote a paragraph about my experience of knowing and caring about sex workers in dire circumstances. Then I realised that if you are a punter, you'd probably enjoy it, so I deleted it.

I have no 'distaste' for the women. I have nothing but for the punters.

@beastlyslumber

I'm not raping anyone so kindly don't accuse me of that shit.

As to coercion, well of course that's rape. Trafficked or coerced sws are being raped. I don't think anyone would say otherwise.

But poor people who choose to sell sexual services do not fall into the category. See previous post for the full argument.

Yes it is rape. If it's have sex with you or starve, @Crutcher you are raping these women.

Force does not need to be involved for it to be rape. Coerced sex is rape. There's no meaningful consent where there's no meaningful choice.

The problem we have with numbers when it comes to trafficked sex "workers" is that on top of being part of an illegal industry they have no way of letting people know they are trafficked until they have escaped it. Whatever the supposed numbers are we can increase that by huge percentages and still possibly be well short of the true number. Also, akin to county lines they are moved around the country making it even harder to guess at true numbers.

It would be interesting to know how many prostituted women are reliant on/addicted to drugs and/or alcohol. My guess is the percentage is huge which, again, puts real consent/choice into question. I'm not suggesting that all women who are prostituted start out reliant/addicted but those who weren't are at high risk of ending up that way.

If you believe (which I don't because I've known a lot of prostituted women and men) it about starvation level survival sex work.. and you choose to stick your dick in them, do you think that makes you a rapist, or not? Because if I thought someone was only having sex with me to avoid starvation (for them or their children) I wouldn't. Because I'd consider that sexual assault.

So all the talk of 'choice' is a bit silly. The men using these women are rapists.

I strongly disagree and actually find your use of the term very offensive to real rape victims. When a sw (usually a woman) puts their services out there and someone pays for it, you might find it immoral and reprehensible, but is is not rape.

Rape is sexual penetration by force, against someone's will. When that person has consented, even if they only consented because they got paid, it is most certainly not rape.

In fact, if we were to take your argument to its logical conclusion, any time anyone has any kind of ulterior motive for having sex, the other person is a rapist. For after all, the consent was contingent on getting some kind of benefit.

Furthermore, any work of any kind would have to be considered slavery. Especially low paid work. Because the only reason the person is working at the min wage job - or most jobs for that matter - is their need to put food on the table.

Clearly the oft repeated fallacy that consent can't be bought is just that, and absurd fallacy. Consent can absolutely be bought, and to conflate a distasteful transaction with non-consensual sex both cheapens and dilutes the term rape, and is very offensive to real rape victims.

Putting that aside, the bigger problem with your stance is that you are only pretending to care for the sws, when in reality it's just enforcing your distaste for sexual transactions on others.

Think about it, these women (or a men for that matter) are desperate for money, and the only way they can get it is by selling sexual services. Well what happens if you're successful in dissuading every potential customer from buying those services?

The sws starve, that's what happens. They might have been in desperate straits to have decided to sell sex in the first place. But once they've embarked on this course, they are only harmed by do gooders interfering and going after their customers.

@Anactor

I still think those numbers don't make sense. They just don't reflect the reality either on the street or on escorting websites.

@ThereIbledit

Just to be clear let me reiterate that I never said anything about empowerment or happy hookers. The entire thrust of my argument was that you can't conflate sws who do so by (albeit limited) choice, with actual victims of coercion, torture or rape. By doing so you just cheapen the experiences of bona fide victims.

There's plenty of research that shows the vast majority of sws are not trafficked against their will. While the possibility always exists (as it does with various other industries), it is in no way the norm.

I think that it's helpful to think about the Johns.

If you believe (which I don't because I've known a lot of prostituted women and men) it about starvation level survival sex work.. and you choose to stick your dick in them, do you think that makes you a rapist, or not? Because if I thought someone was only having sex with me to avoid starvation (for them or their children) I wouldn't. Because I'd consider that sexual assault.

So all the talk of 'choice' is a bit silly. The men using these women are rapists.

When you think about the women as fully human, rather than as a commodity, using them when you're aware they are only 'consenting' because the alternative is so bleak and horrific, that makes them the worst kind of people.

@Crutcher
It's a sad state of affairs when people have to make difficult choices in order to survive, but you can't compare that to real slaves.

Any comment on the modern slavery and trafficked women and children that I mentioned earlier? It's not just women who have poor life chances choosing to go into prostitution. Women and girls are trafficked for sex work. Women and girls are trafficked for and kept as modern day slaves for sex, here in the UK.

Julie Bindel: No such thing as a prostitute who is empowered (not referring to UK prostitutes but relevant all the same): www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-sex-worker-myth/

2021 UK report on Modern Slavery
www.gov.uk/government/publications/2021-uk-annual-report-on-modern-slavery/2021-uk-annual-report-on-modern-slavery-accessible-version

It makes reference to sexual exploitation commonly being reported among the second most common nationality of victims in the UK:

As in 2019, the most common nationality of potential victims in 2020 was UK nationals, accounting for 34% (3,560) of all referrals. The second most referred nationality was Albanian (15%; 1,638), followed by Vietnamese nationals (6%; 653). UK nationals were most often referred for criminal exploitation, whilst both Albanian and Vietnamese nationals were most referred for labour and criminal exploitation. Sexual exploitation was also commonly reported for Albanian nationals.[footnote 1]

Same report indicating that exploitation of victims of slavery on adult services websites is a problem:

Adult Service Websites
2.2.10. The NCA has continued work to engage with Adult Service Websites (ASWs) to raise industry standards and prevent offenders from exploiting victims on these platforms. This has included monitoring ASWs activity and examining how offenders abuse the internet to exploit their victims and promote mitigations that can be implemented by industry.
2.2.11. The Home Office has funded prevention work to raise awareness of the risks and signs of sexual exploitation among users of Adult Services Websites. The results and evaluation from this campaign are currently being reviewed in order to understand any impact.

Guardian article: Modern slavery in the UK - including sexual exploitation - rose alarmingly during lockdowns.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/04/lockdown-brings-alarming-rise-in-modern-slavery

Cases of sexual exploitation, which includes people held captive in brothels and coerced into prostitution, rose by a quarter in 2020 compared with the previous year. Nearly a quarter of cases involved children.

i Newspaper: huge increase in investigations into modern slavery. Biggest increase/most investigated? Sexual exploitation.

inews.co.uk/news/uk/human-trafficking-uk-cases-rise-sexual-exploitation-modern-slavery-561742