How is it possible to be a feminist and support the sex industry?

Mandamumu, don't you believe that some women are tricked into it and are pimped by boyfriends etc.? How do all the women get into it, do they apply at the job centre?

Dittany - "Who told you about this thread?"

Have you never noticed some of the "what's being discussed" links on the lower-right of some pages ?

"That's how a lot of women get into prostitution because they are pimped by their boyfriends or husbands.

If you really are in the business you'd know this of course."

Really?

Who are these women?

If you are talking about street walkers, then I wouldn't know. I don't have any contact with them. Unfortunately, since the government's crackdown on street walkers, neither do the organisations who were set up to help them.

Ok then. A violent partner was her original problem, not prostitution

Just because you shout louder than I do, doesn't make me a liar.

Read my posts properly please.

I'm not getting a chance to have a balanced discussion about the original subject matter. I'm too busy trying to fend you off.

hmm maybe just maybe someone on here is a prostitue themselves who subcribes to mumsnet??

I'm glad that anyone who feels that way about the industry has found a way out. I wonder how the hell they ended up doing it in the first place.

However, this girl's problems started with poverty, not prostitution.

Please don't send me Bindel links, that woman had her chance to speak to me and she refused it.

There are many sites like that. I see no proof of the validity of these stories and I'm far too much of a realist to take them at face value.

We have a small army of trafficked and oppressed women whom we keep in a locked cellar. If they don't find us at least one prostitution thread each day, they don't get fed.

Why does it matter? I was already a member here anyway.

Is it so terrible that we want to balance the argument as best we can? You don't have to change your ideas, but you can be open to listening to the ideas of others.
I'm not going to tell you that the sex industry is all Belle de Jour, it's not. However, it's a lot closer (in general) to that than it is to the portrayal via media. We are not all crack whores on street corners.

Men don't actually tell me what to do. I'm much more likely to tell them what to do tbh.
They're more likely to to ask whether I would mind if they do something, or would I mind doing something.

I'm sorry if that doesn't sit well with you, but it's the way it is.

You show me a girl in my area who is in trouble and on the game when she doesn't want to be and GENUINELY wants help to change her life, then I will help in any way I can.

Whether the majority of sex workers are happy or unhappy is immaterial. Society makes decisions on whether certain activities are harmful to society or not. Many herion users are happy to take heroin and many heroin pushers make a comfortable living supplying heroin. Many agree with MissHoneyMoon that it is a better choice to gain high financial rewards for a few hours' work, rather than slogging it out in a nine to five job. What they think is really immaterial. I think the real question is, is their activity harmful to society or not?

There's no point telling you where we came from . It's not an open forum like this one. You can't pop over for a look. It's for female escorts only btw.

Hey, sod the patriarchal society. I don't need men to tell me what do do/think/feel/whatever. I have women for that, radical feminists in particular.

Solid is the only person talking sense on this thread.

I loathe the buying and selling of sex, and am revolted by the abuses of the sex industry, but I won't tell any consenting adult what she can or cannot do with her own body.

And telling a woman how she ought to feel about something - or worse, telling her that her perceptions and feelings are mistaken - this is patronising illiberalism of the worst kind. How is this different to the patriarchal attitudes that feminists fought to overcome? Men telling women they didn't know what was best for them, that they were too weak and misguided to make their own choices?

If we want to rid the sex industry of abuse, then we have to legalise and regulate prostitution. What we're seeing now is the product of criminalisation, and it ain't working.

Well I am loving this discussion. Thank you op for bring it up.

Grandpoobah I bow down to you. You articulate my thoughts much better than I think them!

But doesn't the stereotypical image of the happy hooker just confirm the myth that women are happy to be used by men for male purposes? The convenient idea that some women enjoy being prostitutes (which must be true yes) makes it that much harder to work towards liberating those women who are not happy. You must admit that those women exist also.

The whole sex industry is built upon the illusion that flatters men into thinking they are amazingly powerful lovers and that women can't wait to get fucked by them. Because we're all dirty bitches who love it aren't we? Unfortunately, the romanticisation of prostitution reinforces that dangerous belief.

Just because an experience is unusual doesn;'t mean the person claiming to have it is a liar or a fantasist.
And (going back to the OP) one of the reasons why I as a feminist find it important to defend aspects of the sex industry is that the sex industry encompasses a lot of different things and different ideas, it;s not this one monolithic instution where the only role for women is that of abused, enslaved, drug-addicted street sex worker.