young, close relative has become an "escort" WWYD?

[notreallymehere]

20 something low closeish relative has become an escort. She has been thinking about it for a while, tried it in London, stopped but now has gone back to it in her home town. She is with what appears to be reputable agency and seems to be making quite a lot of money. Lots of reviews now appearing on her webpage etc. She appears fully happy with her choice - she had a job before (working in a coffee bar) but says that the money is better with this (she has previously worked as a lap dancer). My question is what do I tell my friends/acquaintances if they ask about her. I've discussed this with some people when she first started in London and the reaction was very aggressive "well you should have stopped her" etc etc. (hence name change) Fact is that she is an adult and this is her choice and I cannot see how I can stop her - she is making a far bit of money at this and is very financially motivated. However she is part of the family and it is difficult to avoid the questions but many people are very judgemental (of me for somehow "allowing" this to happen).

I don't tell lies honey.

Your views on sex and the sex industry are incredibly narrow. I suggest to use the internet to broaden your knowledge then we could continue this discussion.

I hope the young lady in question is working safely and looking after herself and of course..........making plenty of money.

PB: There are plenty of women on MN who have all too much experience of what you are talking about - as the partners of the scumbags who cheat on them. I despise punters and pimps, not the women who go into prostitution. But, when you set yourself up as some sort of marriage councillor and defend the creeps who lie and betray their wives, I do condemn you. If you are a happy hooker, good for you, but do not imagine that your ?choice? is without consequences for other women. Your attitude to them is beyond contempt and I simply refuse to engage with you beyond this.

Dittany - yet again, I find myself agreeing with you!

"Because it's such a great job. Even people who clean lavatory (which apparently can be compared to prostitution because it always gets mentioned in these discussions why prostitution apparently ain't so bad) tell their kids what they do."

There are many people in shit, badly paid and, as has also been remarked, sometimes unsafe jobs. I have cleaned lavatories and do not consider it to be demeaning work. I think it is noble work - as is all work for which there is a need and that doesn't exploit people. There are many ways in which a job can be shit, but these rarely have anything to do with the work itself, providing there is a need for someone to do it and it can done without harm to oneself or others. If some work is unfairly paid then we should fight for fair pay. If some work is unsafe we should fight for it to be made safe. It a serious problem for many women and men in our society that they are regarded as being ignoble just because they do difficult, badly paid jobs. It is fine to tell our children that this is not true.

On the opposite side of the same coin is the argument that being well paid is sufficient justification for doing certain work.

It is certainly nice to be well paid, but that doesn't get around the question of whether the work is harmful and exploitative. I believe that, on balance, prostitution is harmful and exploitative on both sides. It is sometimes also argued that prostitution harms society generally because it is symbolic of and a product of a certain kind of social relations between men and women that is harmful. These arguments are very strong indeed and I think they are much more right than wrong.

"If they couldn't fuck you they wouldn't come to see you and they certainly wouldn't pay you. It is indeed all about sex."

Clive James said that most men who go to prostitutes want to have a relationship with a women without the relationship. I think this is very concise way of putting it. They may believe they are having a relationship, but they are not. The prostitute can also believe she is having a relationship with her clients, but she is not. The basis on which the relationship is established and maintained means it is not a relationship.

"You actually feel sorry for these men who neglect and ignore their wives and girlfriends in order to spend the family money on fucking you? Do you really not know that unfaithful men lie about the women they are doing the dirty on them?"

This is almost certainly the truth for most men who visit prostitutes who have wives and girlfriends. They are deceiving and betraying their partners and that is an unacceptable way to behave. They need to try to figure out what they need to do so they are not conducting themselves in this way. If they cannot they should leave.

None of the above arguments against prostitution are about romance. They are about ways that people should behave towards each other in order not to cause harm.

"It is one of the oldest professions in the world and while there is a market of unhappy, neglected men, brushed aside by the wife or girlfriend there will always be women like me providing a safe haven and a bolt-hole."

Oh for goodness sake. I'm another one who condemns the punters and the pimps (although I do think that women who have other choices available to themselves aren't exactly doing anybody any favours).

However I do object to the above sentence. If a man sees a prostitute that is entirely his responsibility - not that of his wife, girlfriend or anybody else.

Let me just get out my violin for these poor men who are just unhappy little diddums with nasty and uncaring women in their lives who just have to pay put their cocks into someone in order to make their lives bearable. What a crock of sexist crap that is.

And this 'oldest profession' cliché is meant to prove what exactly? People have been paying to abuse children for a long time too - the length of the abuse doesn't justify its existence. It just makes it about time it stopped.

dittany - if it is just about sex then why would anyone pay the far higher prices charged by some escorts? They must be paying for something else.

Re not telling people what you do - could this possibly because some people are so prejudiced against anyone working like this? As for telling children again it does not prove anything as children are not usually told about sex.

[if its just about sex why would anyone pay the far higher prices charged by some escorts]

probably because these men are so full of entitlement that in theyre warped minds they think they deserve"something better"than the women who work in other areas.
a lot of them are also gutless-so dont want to risk being seen "picking"a woman up in the street.
they think its more discreet and no one will find out.

these men pay a higher price because they like to think they are getting a "high class" service

you know, like the "high class call girl, Belle Du Jour claptrap"

some men really do feel entitled to, and they they somehow "deserve" something "better" than a common streetwalker

which just illustrates to me even further what fucking horrible people they are, with less humanity than a sewer rat

it is still renting a vagina from someone who otherwise wouldn't look at them, though

dittany the different prices show that it is about the experience of which sex is a big part but not all - like the difference between getting chips from a chippy and going out for a flash meal. Both are about food and the food is vital if you are hungry but many chefs would be pretty cross if you said that there was no difference between their restaurant and the local fast food takeaway.

soggy, that is one of the most offensive statements I have ever seen on Mumsnet

did you try to be that inhuman, or does it just come naturally ?

someone tell me that i havent just seen that
statement made by soggy14 please!
someone please tell my im seeing things.

AW, I think we can now safely completely diregard any previous posts made by soggy14

not that I agreed with them anyway, but sometimes all you have to do is give a fuckwit enough rope....

*disregard

'chips from a chippy'?!

I wouldn't mind betting that's exactly how many of their clients see them too.

AnyFucker

It's fine to get angry about something you think is wrong and to strongly disapprove of someone who does those things, but to deny their humanity and talk about sewer rats is going too far. I presume you are being rhetorical but it is a very extreme statement.

Primo Levi, who was a holocaust survivor and writer, when asked how the thought it was possible that the death camps had come about, said that once you find the means to deny someone their humanity it is not only possible, but inevitable.

I suspect that those men who murder prostitutes go through a similar process.

Even though I'm sure you were being rhetorical, you will want to mark yourself as different to such men.

no andre, the extreme satemnt is the one made by soggy14

and yes, I am justifiably angry that people hold such opinions about women

aren't you ?

I don't compare my response with his on any level and neither should you. I was being rhetorical, unfortunately he was not he was being utterly literal, more's the fucking pity.

statement

sorry, my keyboard is on it's last legs

oh absolutely. The word "Escort" is just a marketing technique to make the punters feel as though they're better than the scum they are

It's quite clever marketing and listen to this:.
Playboy marketed itself to the lower socio-economic group of men, by represent a rich, playboy lifestyle that was in fact unattainable to its main customer base. Selling dreams by making these lower class men feel part of something bigger that was beyond their reach.

But HUstler did the opposite. (Now this is fascinating.) Hustler, which used more violent porn images, marketed itself to the middle classes, the married, white collar men [research showed that these higher earners were far more likely to buy Hustler than so-called "white trash"]
But they pretended that they were selling to white trash unemployed men by using images of "white trash" (fat, scruffy men) to avertise their wares.
NOw, the reason they did this was so that the respectable married guys could distance themselves mentally from the low class scum they thought were buying the porn. They believed they were better than the main group of people who bought the magazine. It was their little secret, or so they thought! LIttle did they know that everyone in the marketing world knew their secret

I see the same with the separation between street workers and escorts. I remember and escort on MN looking down on street-workers as though they were a separate group of people- totally dehumanized- but that's just a marketing technique. I'm always when I see signs of a prostitute believing the hype , buying the con themselves.
Yes, some men may convince themselves that they are better people for using escorts over working girls, but what they are doing is no better, it's just dressed up as being something else, but it's exactly the same

To anyone who hasn't noticed, Andre's main point is that men are being dehumanized on this feminist board

using escorts over street-workers, sorry