I've been a prostitute on and off since I was a young adult. AMA.

[IAMAthroway]

Just that, really. I am drunk and bored, and I've noticed in the past on MN, many sweeping statements made about sex workers that I don't always agree with (i.e we are all brainwashed into thinking we are happy with our career choice, but really we are miserable)

For background, I started when I was 19, maybe late 18. I got into it because I was lapdancing and noticed those who offered "extras" after hours made 3x what I did. I was young and stupid, and sex just felt like sex to me, so it was quick, easy money. I left when I was 23/24 and met DH.

I got back into it when I was in my early 30s and left DH with nothing to my name, but left again when DH and I agreed to a suitable child maintenance arrangement, and I could afford to live.

I went back into it 2/3 months ago when possible redundancies were announced at my work, and I realised benefits covered only around 2/3 of my basic outgoings. I am in my early 40s with two adult children who still rely on me. DS is in uni, and DD has just started an NMW job; both still live with me.

Also women in long term marriages who find their partners repulsive but have sex with them still know their partners.The likelyhood of them being being violently attacked or murdered is less than the person who is selling their body.
I really never understand this arguement.Women do use men, women are not perfect but being with 1 man mostly is safer than having multiple unknown men.

I genuinely think many people don't understand the serious physical risks in sex work.

Here’s the difference:

If a cleaner cleans a bathroom and her customer thinks she hasn’t done a good enough job and refuses to pay, she’s lost a day’s work.

If a prostitute lets a man have sex with her and he then decides it wasn’t good enough so refuses to pay, she has been raped.

You need to put your prices up.

The Consent was dependent on the payment.

I'm assuming you aren't telling tax office or benefits what you are earning

Maybe it will be a tapering down/slow unwinding rather than a hard stop and a hard hit come down?

There’s more ways to be shafted than having a dick up your arse…

Do you really believe that these men are just 'lonely'?
Or can you accept that, as well as being lonely, they are fundamentally abusive, however much or little that abusiveness is visible in their behaviour/manners, because they are happy to use the body of a woman whose consent is basically unprovable to jizz into?
ie, that they put their desire for sex over the basic human rights of the woman.

“I had a friend who was an escort and she said 99.9% of them were in relationships/married so that does in fact make them awful people”

I don’t think a third of the UK population are ‘awful people’ - this being the percentage of adults thought to be unfaithful in relationships

I do. I think it shows lack of character

Why ask a rhetorical question? Just come out with your observation about OP not paying tax.

We’ll have to agree to disagree. I tend to find people (and life) more nuanced than a two column page of good people ✔️ vs bad people ❌

Where would you suggest she meets clients? Genuine question - I’ve no idea of where would be safest

Do you ? I find that people fall into one of two categories those that would and those that wouldn’t
And if you would cheat on the person that you live with, who you lie next to in bed, who you professor to care about more than anything else in the world
You would most certainly be a shit employee and a shit person when tested
So if that’s you, I’d work on changing

How do HMRC find out?

Not to say that good people don’t do bad things and bad people don’t do good things but fundamentally cheating shows a flawed character

Why do you think sport, hairdressing and massage are comparable to sex work?

These days they can look at your bank account and see whether it match matches up to the needs of a person to basically survive in this modern world
Anybody claiming to earn 12 1/2 thousand pounds a year and not claiming universal credits would need a good explanation as to how they’re still alive at the end of the month
And if you are claiming universal credits and you’re not declaring all of your income again, it’s gonna be pretty easy to track soon.
You’re spending at the supermarket is tracked via your loyalty card, via your bank account anybody that doesn’t think that Data isn’t used by HMRC is delusional

Thank you for this thread OP and I hope you do come back to it.

A poster above said that people have a lot of mixed feelings towards prostitution: confusion, disgust, pity, intrigue, feeling mystified (and more), and I agree.

There’s such a spectrum ranging from impoverished women being forced against their will to have sex by their pumps, all the way up to highly paid escorts who earn thousands…… and God knows how many different scenarios in between, with many of them being like yours I imagine.

I went to Amsterdam about 5 years ago and visited the Red Light District OIt of pure intrigue and I was fascinated. The normalcy and openness of what was going on just took my breath away…. I was in shock. It wasn’t ‘bad’ shock though, it didn't horrify me or anything, it was just disbelief that prostitution was occurring so openly, with absolutely no shame (not saying there should be) and it was being treated as normal as going to Specsavers for eye test.

Me and DH didn't know what to make of it.
But then again, when you’re raised in a society where prostitution is viewed in the way it is in the UK, then it’s a bit of a mind f**k to see it so normalised somewhere else.

@thestudio "Do you really believe that these men are just 'lonely'?
Or can you accept that, as well as being lonely, they are fundamentally abusive"

But what about men who are deformed in some way or just very, very ugly and who otherwise would have absolutely no hope of sex. They do exist, and they do use sex workers. Are they evil and using women as commodities? Don't you think they would truly love to have a genuine relationship with a woman?

When Jesus said that he still told the woman to stop her sin (adultery) though, he just prevented her from being stoned. I'm not saying OP is sinning, she's not, but that doesn't mean this is a good choice.

Because prostitution affects all women. Every single one of us.

Whilst men and society still believes that a woman’s vagina/body can be bought all women will be viewed as potential products as opposed to whole human beings.

You can see from some of the posters on this thread that the warped opinion that men’s needs are so important that they simply can’t do without.

For example the poster that has suggested men who get to buy sex are less likely to rape women and that means prostitution is a good thing. When in reality rape has nothing to do with sexual desire and everything to do with control and power. It’s even used as a weapon of war for god’s sake!

Whilst 1 in 4 women will be raped in their lifetime we would do well to talk about prostitution for what it is. The type of men that use prostitutes do not see women as whole human beings and this has a knock on effect for all women and girls.

Any man that buys sex can never know whether that woman is trafficked or suffering terrible abuse and can’t get out and therefore any man using a prostitute is an absolutely vile human being.