Anora- should sex work continue to be destigmatised?

[mids2019]

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/mar/05/anora-missed-chance-to-spark-real-change-say-sex-workers

I am conflicted on one of the results about this Oscars success is that a spotlight has been thrown in sex work leading to calls for more decriminilastion and normalisation of sex work.

Though I have a great deal of sympathy for those whose circumstances that lead into sex work isn't a greater legitimacy of sex work a greater legitimacy of sex work itself including the clientele?

So if you hear sex workers calls for more legal protection and customisation then you have to decriminalize the activities of men surrounding this profession. Although possibly a financial lifeline for some women surely we must take into account the impact on society as a whole into accoint?

I would have to think deep and hard about being an 'ally' to sex work.

For me, it should be criminalised for the clients and decriminalised for the provider.

Put the shame and stigma where it should be - no little girl dreams of servicing misogynists for a living when she grows up.

It’s abuse, and should never be normalised.

This is true of all jobs under capitalism. Sex workers are far from the only workers in potentially dire circumstances.

The "sex work isn't work" angle rests entirely on the assumption that sex work is uniquely degrading and exploitative. When you think about the realities of sweatshop labour, scrubbing toilets, desperate young people signing up to be cannon fodder in the military, or zero-hours precarity, I'm not sure I would agree with that at all.

Because if some ridiculous middle class MEP who happily spouts the luxury belief that sex work is perfectly legitimate work then that same MEP should not be upset about the idea of her daughter being a sex worker. She was a total hypocrite

The thing is you get the low risk sex workers like cam girls and high end escorts pushing the “I love sex work” narrative and open minded liberals chanting “sex work is work” when they would never dream of doing it themselves.

if its work should the job centre and career advisors promote it? Of course they fucking shouldn’t. It’s the trafficked women and the desperate ones giving nasty blokes a blow job for a fiver that need to be protected.

The reason sex workers campaign for full decriminalisation is because criminalising the punters has the net effect of endangering the sex workers. They're more likely to have to work on the streets and in unsafe locations, because the punters aren't going to risk going to safer locations.

I would.

I would rather scrub any amount of toilets in a war zone on a zero hours contract than take my knickers off and bend over so a disgusting man whom I’d just met could fuck me however he liked and then write about my body on the internet.

That would be my personal rock bottom and I don’t think I’d ever recover.

Apologies I missed the bit that she was promoting it thought she was against it

Read that article last night. There is a comment which normalises and glamorises child sexual exploitation. "Julia Fox made a whole career off of the compelling intrigue of being a dominatrix at 16." That should tell us all we need to know about the motives of people pushing this agenda.

Wouldn't they just be in even more danger when the disgusting men buying them no longer had any fear of repercussions? Unless every transaction required photo ID and debit card only payments to access the "workplace" so every man was accountable, I can't see how decriminalisation benefits exploited and trafficked women and children.

The issue with sex work is that the majority of sex workers now are trafficked into prostitution. They are not visible, known or legal in the UK. The whole industry is illegal, from illegal trafficking, slavery and prostitution. The other jobs you describe (apart from sweatshops which is illegal in UK) are not nice but the people doing them are in the system paying taxes etc, they are not trafficked and exploited.

Well, that's your individual preference. Other women feel differently. Personally, being a sex worker is not the most degrading thing I can imagine.

The crucial thing is to respect women who have made different choices to what you would have chosen.

Prostitution and porn use increases the likelyhood of men raping. It harms all women and girls.

If you look at serial rapists and killers of women, they all had heavy involvement with prostituted women. Yorkshire Ripper, Jack the Ripper, Steve Wright, Fred West, the Black Cab Rapist, Wayne Cousins and many many more.

The Chinese guy on the new currently is also being done for extreme, illegal porno.

The term sex work is disingenuous, it's selling womens bodies.

This is precisely why sex workers campaign for decriminalisation!

Legalising it has not stopped illegal trafficking in fact the opposite has been true

The study’s findings include:

• Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, i.e. expansion of the market, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. On average, countries with legalized prostitution report a greater incidence of human trafficking inflows.

https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/

Well as long as you are happy for yourself, daughter, mum or sister to me the one lying on a bed with a disgusting grunting man, the 6th of the night, panting and thrusting into her, causing vaginal and anal tearing while holding her throat, you do you.

I agree that law should change and punish those who are buying in this case not those who are selling their bodies out of desperation.
I was disappointed a bit that Amora won so much after I read the plot at the Wikipedia. I know it’s not Cinderella story as such, as it didn’t work but I still wasn’t sure about the message of the film.

But to make it acceptable and characterise it as work, you’re potentially subjecting women who feel like me to this degradation. Take it to its logical conclusion. Keep legitimising prostitution and in twenty years, will women (and it will be mostly women) be having their benefits stopped if they don’t agree to take on shifts at the local legal knocking shop?

After reading this I had a look at his filmography. He also directed the film Tangerine. Enough said.

I mean, it was apparently a mistake but this may not be far off. Gilead indeed.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/job-centre-apologises-after-sending-german-teen-to-work-in-brothel-8485397.html

I agree with you. I saw her speech on the news and cringed for her. She's young and naive, when I was her age I too thought the world was black & white and I had it all figured out. Age has taught me that it isn't and I certainly didn't.

I also agree with a previous poster about women winning Oscars for playing prostitutes and the like. I was pretty amazed at all the praise for Poor Things, which I thought was basically a depraved male fantasy of what women should be like.

Yes, this. Are straight blokes offering their orifices to gay blokes because it’s just “work”? I think not.

I haven't seen the film but I hear it's fairly gritty and not romanticised.

I don't agree with normalising sex work but don't agree with stigmatising those who do it either. Prison sentences should be given for men using them though.

Sex work is not work, it's commercial sexual exploitation.

This with knobs on.

In a previous job I met quite a few prostitutes. Not one was doing it for the lols, or was emancipated in some way by being a prostitute. Without exception they were addicts and/or desperate unhappy women suffering from mental illness.

Prostitutes deserve protection in law like anyone else, but it shouldn't be encouraged as a career choice FFS.

The level of trafficking and abuse shot up in Germany when it they took that route. It results in more abuse, not less.

If you listen to the voices of those who escaped prostitution, the Nordic Model is what they call for.