To not be ashamed...

[GirlFriendExperience]

That I'm an escort girl/call girl/high class prositute (whatever you want to call it) ...

I love my job, I'm very good at it, I pay taxes, it's not illegal and I help a lot of people. So why should I spend my life apologising for it/lying about it/defending myself??

• Yes have name changed in case I get flamed... which in itself is depressing!

What is a high class prostitute?

always says "pardon me" when she farts?

I don't really care that there are people who love to go around and tell the world that they sell sex and isn't it grand. I'm not sure why they would want to tell anyone though - I don't see anyone else from any other profession starting threads about their careers. What I do care about is that there are men who think it's absolutely fine to buy someone's body in order to fuck it. I think that is foul and disgusting and should be stamped on very hard indeed.

If my dd became a prostitute at some time in her life I would be very frightened for her emotional and physical well being and would do everything I could to rescue her from that situation.

If my son ever ever told me that he had used a prostitute I would be horrified and disgusted. I would wonder where I went wrong as a parent and I would find it very very difficult to reconcile myself to loving him again.

She is clearly a very disturbed lady. I feel sad for her. I don't understand the term "exited prostitute", was she forced into prostitution by someone? And then someone got her out?

I am having difficulty grasping the correlation between this link and the part of my post you quoted. I said I have difficulty with the concept of two people being engaged in a business transaction which renders only one of them a criminal. This link hasn't altered that in any way.

I am, as I said, sorry for the girl in question, what is her background? She doesn't seem to have had much of an education, which is not a judgement, just an observation from the writing that she was probably very vulnerable. I don't think I have advocated anywhere that the vulnerable should be prostituted by others?

nooka, of course it is fine for a man to pay a woman for sex if she wants to sell it. It is her body and it's not for you or I or anyone to tell her that she can't do what she wants with her own body. What is wrong, very wrong, is that anyone should be coerced into selling their body if they don't want to.

I believe that what goes on behind closed doors between two consenting adults is nobody's business but theirs and if that includes an exchange of money then that's also up to them.

I disagree. I think it is wrong for anyone to pay someone else in order to fuck them. Full stop. I think it is a contributor to sexual violence that people think this way and that society condones it.

Well, I think you are wrong so I think we'll have to just agree to differ. I grew up in a world where society (run by men) thought it was just fine and dandy to judge a woman if she consented to sex at all, other than with her husband. I suppose that's why I have a personal horror of dictating to any woman what she may or may not do with her own body. Smacks too much of "controlling" to me.

That is my emotional reason for not supporting your cause. On a practical level, I can't think of one instance where banning something for which there is undoubtedly such a demand, has worked. 10% of men, it is reckoned, use prostitutes, vastly more use porn regularly (just banning prostitution won't work to change society's objectification of women). All the time there is such a demand and people perfectly willing to fill that demand, I think you are on a hiding to nothing quite frankly. The analogy someone made to slavery didn't work on two counts; firstly slavery still does exist, secondly, I really would suggest that no slave actually was such willingly.

I keep repeating, some women sell their bodies/are "glamour models"/act in pornographic films of their own free will and are, seriously, quite happy to do so and one can deny that fact as much as one likes to and point out as many testimonies from other, unhappy/screwed up ex-sex workers as they can (and I agree there are many) but it's not going to alter that fact, ever.

I'd quite like someone, preferably Dittany who seems to know everything there is to know about women and prostitution, what about the men who prostitute themselves/who are prostituted? Do we feel sympathy for them? Do we condone the fact that some women do indeed pay for sex from escorts?

nooka - absolutely. In fact many people argue that prostitution IS violence against women. Quite right imo because the women don't want sex they want money or drugs and sex with someone who doesn't want it is called rape.
dittany - true as so many addicts are involved which is self evidently coercive, just as much as the Afghan situation of husbands being legally permitted to withold food from their wives who refuse sex. A passing familiarity with human psychology will tell a great deal about the effects of childhood neglect and abuse. Choice means nothing in those circumstances. Those 2 factors account for 80-90% of prostitutes.

Still side stepping the only point I've made on here though. Interesting. Do we ignore the fact that women pay for sex as well?

I think men over the legal age of consent choose to do as they wish with their bodies, like wise for women.

I feel sorry for both of them because it's a disgusting thing to do for a living. But I don't think one gender chooses it for fun and one gender is forced into it without any say whatsoever.

But the issue isn't one selling ones' body. The issue is "poor hard done by women being exploited again".

If you wanted to focus on the issue of selling sex, then you would take into account all of the sex workers; and perhaps once in a while look at the countries where there are a high number of male prostitutes.

The issues surrounding prostitution revolve around the question of whether you believe that sex should be commodified or not. If you do then you won't have a problem with it, if you don't then you will.