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).

What a strange question, Beachcomber.

why is it a strange question Cote?

Sakura - We can go back to your "point" as many times as it takes for you to get my answer.

I don't want DD to become a prostitute. No mother does. We all try to prevent things we don't want for our DC, some successfully, others not. This has nothing to do with me thinking I'm superior to mums of prostitutes, or that my DD is superior to their DDs.

I also don't want DC to be gay, but I am not against gay people and would argue against criminalizing homosexuality. Because what happens between consenting adults is none of my business and none of the state's business.

I also sincerely hope DS will never have a cock ring, and DD will never have a piercing on her clitoris, but would argue against the criminalization of these contraptions.

Do you understand now that people can find something horrible, distasteful, undesirable for themselves and their DC but still be against their criminalization?

(Here is to hoping I will not be getting any "How can you compare buying a woman to men fucking each other" or some such. Sigh.)

when someone starts saying "Sigh" "Head bangs desk" you know they've lost the argument

"Do you understand now that people can find something horrible, distasteful, undesirable for themselves and their DC but still be against their criminalization?"

No, I don't

And you have given me no reason to change my mind. IN fact you've strengthened my belief that people who are pro-sex industry believe themselves to be different to those who sell sex. I've just got one word for you. Collaborator

"Criminalizing an entire industry seems an unnecessary and extreme step."

I think this is a flawed analysis and a failure to approach the issue with joined up thinking.

www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdfs/FarleyYaleLaw2006.pdf

"A false distinction between prostitution and trafficking has hindered efforts to abolish prostitution. The word trafficking has been used by sex industry promoters to separate ?innocent? victims of trafficking from women who choose prostitution. In reality, no such line exists. Understanding the real world link between prostitution and trafficking is crucial to developing effective laws against trafficking. Since prostitution creates the demand for trafficking, the sex industry in its totality must be confronted. Unless existing prostitution laws are integrated into newer state antitrafficking laws, we won?t be challenging sex trafficking as it operates in the world."

Cote being homosexual is not deviant behaviour - it does not involve the violent exploitation of young, vulnerable, under privileged people. Neither does having a cock ring or a piercing or being a hippy.

If a person chooses to have a piercing they are choosing to do something to themselves.

If a person chooses to defend prostitution, they are choosing to have something done to someone else (just preferably not their daughter or anyone they care about).

The difference between your viewpoint and mine is that I am able to see the wider context within which the institution of prostitution exists; and I care that it disadvantages and harms those who are already hugely disadvantaged.

If prostitution could ever be 'just a job' you or I would be willing to give it a go in the interest of exploring our attitudes to it.

But we're not - indeed you think the very idea is strange. You are engaging in double think Cote, just as the patriarchy wishes us all to when it comes to the human rights travesty that is the prostitution of one (lower status and vulnerable) sex by another (powerful and privileged) sex.

"Women in prostitution must continually lie about their lives, their bodies, and their
sexual responses. Lying is part of the job definition when the customer asks, ?did you
enjoy it?? The very edifice of prostitution is built on the lie that ?women like it.? Some
prostitution survivors have stated that it took them years after leaving prostitution to
acknowledge that prostitution wasn?t a free choice because they had to lie to themselves in
order to survive."

www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdfs/Myths%20&%20Facts%20Legal%20&%20Illegal%20Prostitution%203-09.pdf

"Some people choose to take dangerous drugs such as amphetamine. However, even when some people consent to use dangerous drugs, we still recognize that is harmful to them, and most people do not seek to legalize amphetamine. In these situations, it is harm to the person, not the consent of the person that governs how we understand the activity.

When a woman remains in an abusive relationship with a partner who batters her, or even when she defends his actions, most people now understand that she is not there voluntarily. They recognize the conditions under which she acquiesced. Like battered women, women in prostitution may deny their abuse if they are not provided with safety or meaningful alternatives."

Do you really think that women would risk a beating and possibly their lives in order to advance the navel gazing of a research project which will never provide them with a meaningful alternative?

And you think I'm naive?!

[[http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdfs/Myths%20&%20Facts%20Legal%20&%20Illegal%20Prostitution%203-09.pdf MYTH : Prostitution is a victimless crime. Legal prostitution protects women in
prostitution.]]
FACT: All prostitution harms those in it. Legal prostitution does not protect women
in prostitution from harm.
It?s not the legal status of prostitution that causes the harm, it?s the prostitution
itself. The longer she is in prostitution ? legal or illegal - the more she is psychologically
harmed and physically endangered.
Women who sell sex report high levels of physical and sexual violence, including
verbal abuse, threats and intimidation - one UK study found that 63% of women in street
and indoor prostitution had experienced violence. Selling access to her body parts and
faking pleasure has a very negative psychological and emotional impact on women. A study
of prostituted women from nine countries found that two thirds met criteria for
posttraumatic stress disorder which how profoundly stressful prostitution was for them.
In two studies of 186 victims of commercial sexual exploitation, women consistently
indicated that prostitution establishments did little to protect them, regardless of whether
the establishments were legal or illegal. One woman said, ?The only time they protect
anyone is to protect the customers.?

Research on legal brothels in Nevada shows that legalisation does not protect
prostituted women from the violence, abuse and psychological and physical injury that
occur in illegal prostitution. In many senses the opposite might be true.

In the Netherlands, where prostitution has been legal since
2000, the government is rethinking its approach as it is seeing more and more signals that
abuse of women is continuing.
Legal prostitution in the Netherlands, Nevada, and in Australia has been connected
with organized crime. Two-thirds of the legal brothels in Amsterdam?s red light district
have been closed down because it was impossible to control organized crime, according to
the mayor.
Contempt and ill treatment of those in prostitution stays the same whether
prostitution is legal or illegal. Women are frequently raped in escort and brothel
prostitution. And almost everyone in prostitution was raped as a child before she got into it.
Incest and rape are boot camp for prostitution. While women can report rapes and assaults
to the police under current laws, many women in prostitution do not report rapes and
assaults because their experience is that police also treat them badly.
Legalized systems of prostitution may mandate health checks, but only for women
in prostitution - not for male buyers. Health examinations for women but not for men make
no sense from a public health perspective. Women are not protected from HIV contracted
from johns.

MYTH: Legalizing prostitution would protect sexually exploited children. When
prostitution is legal, licensed brothel owners do not hire minors or trafficked women.
FACT: Legal prostitution increases the sexual assaults of children in prostitution.
Legalization of prostitution increases the number of minors who are prostituted.
Legal prostitution means that there are more locations for children to be sold for sex. And
wherever there is a legal sex business, there are likely to be be 5 times as many illegal sex
businesses as well. Therefore, it is good business practice for traffickers to sell children in
or near a legal sex business. That?s where the buyers are.
In the UK, approximately 50% of women in prostitution began selling sex under the
age of 18. The average age of entry into any kind of prostitution in the US is 13-14 years of
age. There are a range of precipitating factors including family disruption or dysfunction,
sexual or physical abuse, alienation from school, running away and homelessness and
substance misuse. There are well-established links between foster care experiences and
routes into prostitution. These experiences render young women vulnerable to grooming by
older predatory men and being pimped into selling sex. Sometimes it appears as if
young women and girls are ?choosing? to enter prostitution. The UK children?s charity
Barnardos refers to this as ?constrained choice,? recognizing that sexually exploited young
women have histories that create vulnerability to pimp manipulation. A Florida state law
crafted by Margaret Baldwin recognizes that coercion to prostitution exists whenever the
human needs for affection and protection are exploited.

An argument for legalizing prostitution in the Netherlands was that it would help
end child prostitution. Yet child prostitution in the Netherlands has increased dramatically
during the 1990s. The Amsterdam-based ChildRight organization estimates that the
number of children in prostitution has increased by more than 300% between 1996 (4000
children) and 2001 (15,000 children).
Prostitution of children increased in the state of Victoria compared to other
Australian states where prostitution has not been legalized. Of all the states and territories
in Australia, the highest number of reported incidences of child prostitution came from
Victoria. ECPAT (End Child Prostitution and Trafficking) conducted research for the
Australian National Inquiry on Child Prostitution, and found that there was increased
evidence of organized commercial exploitation of children in Australia.

Also Cote you are aware that many prostituted women refer to their pimps as 'boyfriends' aren't you?

"Pimps are the people that johns pay to outsource the violence necessary to keep
women in prostitution obedient. While it is difficult to obtain accurate percentages of
women who have pimps, consider that pimps are not named ?pimps? by women in
prostitution. They are named boyfriends, husbands, friends, sometimes girlfriends. Pimps
are also taxi drivers, casino hosts, strip club owners, valets, massage parlor managers.
bartenders, and many others who earn money by selling or helping to sell women in
prostitution. Legal pimps own brothels, and legal pimps control legal prostitution the same
way illegal pimps run their businesses."

Sakura - I'm sorry to say this but your last two posts were just laughable.

"Collaborator", indeed.

Beachcomber - It has been a pleasure talking with you, but I feel that there is little to be gained from continuing this thread.

I wish you were more open to the possibility that I may be telling the truth and those girls may also have been telling the truth. That I might not be an idiot who can't tell the difference between a confident woman and a sex-slave lying to me out of fear, and has not differentiated between a boyfriend and a pimp in the course of a long conversation.

I realize that it is hard to reconcile testimonies that are contradictory to one's beliefs, but I was hoping that you could try. You can Google all you want, but I know what I saw, and the reality is nobody else on this thread has ever spoken to a prostitute about her life and choices.

Beachcomber - It has been a pleasure talking with you, but I feel that there is little to be gained from continuing this thread.

I wish you were more open to the possibility that I may be telling the truth and those girls may also have been telling the truth. That I might not be an idiot who can't tell the difference between a confident woman and a sex-slave lying to me out of fear, and has not differentiated between a boyfriend and a pimp in the course of a long conversation.

I realize that it is hard to reconcile testimonies that are contradictory to one's beliefs, but I was hoping that you could try. You can Google all you want, but I know what I saw, and the reality is nobody else on this thread has ever spoken to a prostitute about her life and choices.

Cote thank you for your reply. I'm glad that we have had this exchange in a civil (if a little frustrated!) manner.

As it happens I have spoken to quite a lot of prostitutes, lap dancers and women in porn (although not in a professional capacity). I used to have a job that was loosely connected to these activities. Hence my interest in these issues.

I think the internet is a wonderful tool - sorry but I prefer the analysis of people like Melissa Farley who have made it their life's work to study the institution of prostitution, to yours, Cote.

I don't think that you are an idiot although I do wonder what sort of research project you were on that thought that you would get truthful answers from a prostitute in a brothel. I'm also curious as to whether in preparation for your work you were told to read up on the grooming, seasoning and control techniques used by pimps. I'm also curious as to whether you were told to read up on the survival techniques employed by women in prostitution.

Even if 100% of the women you spoke to entered prostitution completely freely under no coercion whatsoever, financial or otherwise, and even if they all had other choices and meaningful alternatives to prostitution, that wouldn't change the fact that the institution of prostitution is a gendered travesty of human rights. It wouldn't change the fact that the majority of women are coerced, trafficked, beaten and raped. It wouldn't change the fact that most women urgently want out of prostitution. It wouldn't change the fact that society's tolerance of prostitution is tolerance of predatory sexual violence on the vulnerable and the under privileged, and an impediment to female equality.

www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdfs/Myths%20&%20Facts%20Legal%20&%20Illegal%20Prostitution%203-09.pdf

"Since 1999, there have been reports that at least 80% of women in Dutch legal prostitution had been trafficked. In 2009, the Dutch government has closed approximately 2/3 of the legal brothels in Amsterdam because of its inability to control traffickers and other organized crime.
By the mid-1990s, 75% of women in legal German prostitution were from other
countries, a majority trafficked from Eastern Europe. Trafficking of Asian women into Australian prostitution has been noted by the US State Department."

The enormity of the sex trade throughout the world is overwhelming, but the only way to proceed is to acknowledge the violence and exploitation for what it is and create remedies accordingly. Legalization will only benefit traffickers and pimps and compromise individual women and the status of women in the long run. In the words of one survivor of prostitution: "Legalization will not end abuse; it will make abuse legal."

No worries if you don't wish to continue the discussion Cote.

You're probably right dittany, about civility I mean. I guess I hope to be persuasive.

Am angry as fuck about the whole subject in general really though.

I guess I just don't understand how people can not see it.

Beachcomber:

"You're probably right dittany, about civility I mean. I guess I hope to be persuasive.

Am angry as fuck about the whole subject in general really though.

I guess I just don't understand how people can not see it."

You are not persuasive, except of the fact that you are angry a fuck. Every argument you advance looks like being in support of the fact that you are angry as fuck and are justified to be so. The manner in which you conduct your arguments and what you use to support your arguments and how you do that all seems to end up being in support of your anger because that is what is testified more than anything else. It is too often where your arguments end up. We call where arguments end up their conclusion. This makes your interest in the issues of prostitution appear secondary to your interest in yourself being angry about it. You cannot see this but I can. So can more people than you think.

Your last post, Beachcomber, is the final affirmation of the true focus of your interest.

There is much anger being expressed by men who abuse women. Their anger is a perverting influence on something that might otherwise be benign. You are less different from these men than you think. It requires a kind of joined-up thinking to see this.

There was a prostitute who visited this discussion at a certain point. It is instructive that she left it rather quickly. I would say that she made a correct assessment that the priority of the discussion was not her but your anger.

Make of what I'm saying what you will.

Andre the true focus of my interest is the huge amount of damage done to so many women and children. I'm not focused on the tiny minority of women who express contentment with being in prostitution - they are doing just grand and don't need anything from the likes of me.

I didn't exchange with the women in prostitution who visited this thread actually so your veiled accusation that I chased them off the thread is rude and out of place.

Indeed your whole post just seems to be one big assessment of what Andre thinks of Beachcomber.

Do you have any comments to make about the actual content of the links I posted and the feminist analysis I discuss?

Do you have anything to add to the actual debate?

You may not be angry that massive numbers of women and children are being beaten and raped and trafficked right now as we post on MN, all because some men think they have a right to fuck, and some men place money over human suffering - I am angry, and unashamedly so.

Andre I have just noticed that you are suggesting that I am somehow similar to men who abuse women in real life.

How dare you.

Just who the fuck do you think you are to make such a personal attack on me?

Frankly your posts are weird. What on earth makes you think that we are all sitting here interested in What Andre's Take Is On The Posters Here?

Dittany accused you of throwing your weight around earlier on this thread - now you are behaving in an utterly offensive manner.

You know what else makes me angry - men throwing their weight around and trying to silence women who are discussing women's issues.

Sheesh.

Here, have a

Beachcomber: I dare

Andre do not address me any-more.

I have no time for ridiculous and pompous posts. I have no time for men who cast judgement over women expressing their views about a women's issue, whilst the man in question never engages with the actual subject under discussion (apart from a lot of talk about male orgasms and how women in prostitution are 'debasing themselves' - a personal moral judgement if ever I heard one. And one that is offensive to coerced women in prostitution and which suggests ignorance of the reality of prostitution).

If you think a woman expressing her views about the sexual exploitation and harm done to her sex on an internet forum can be equated with abuse, then you need to take a step down from your incredibly high horse and take a look at yourself.

Just listen to yourself man. Get a grip.

Oh and stop bloody derailing with The World Mumsnet According To Andre.

I remain cautiously optimistic regarding men and women's capacity for change