AIBU to not want brothels legalised?

[RoseanneDownton]

A lot of people aren't aware that our government is currently considering changing the laws on prostitution so that it will be legal to set up huge brothels.

They did this in Germany, not envisaging that they would end up with chains of 'megabrothels' in which 400,000 girls are needed to meet the demand. These poor girls are awfully degraded and have little control over anything. They are obliged to accept any man and do anything he wants, or get excluded by the owner. The majority have to be lured (or worse!) from other countries, as there aren't enough German women to 'service' the ever-increasing numbers of 'customers'.

Surely I am not the only MumsNetter who can't bear the thought of my daughters and grand-daughters being recruited into such places once they are legal in the UK. The thought of them having to go with an endless stream of strange, random men off the street really turns my stomach.

It's obvious to me that naive young girls will be persuaded that this is an 'easy way' to pay their student fees, get a deposit for a flat etc.

The other thing is, women have been fighting for equality for over 100 years, and this feels like a huge step backwards. I don't see how we can ever persuade men to respect women as equals when they can buy and sell us for sexual use.

It seems to me that the girls and women who will end up in the brothels are going to be the vulnerable and the desperate. It just seems like a way for men to exploit this vulnerability for their own selfish ends, and that's wrong.

Most ordinary folk don't think prostitution is any of their business, and to be honest, if it's just a 'discreet housewife' seeing a few 'gentlemen friends', I'm not bothered, either. But this national lack of interest means that those who want to open big brothels here are currently able to put a lot of pressure on the government behind our backs.

AIBU to not want brothels legalised, but to want to leave the law as it is?

Whether or not you want your daughter to become a prostitute, if she does take that path in life, would you not want her to be able to work as safely as possible?

The idea that commodifying women's bodies on a massive scale, as in Germany, does anything but take us back in time is laughable
I think it has very strong echoes of 'comfort women' :(

do we have to accept that prostitution is inevitable and so the best we can do is try to mitigate and minimize the harms caused by it?

How far back in history would you like to go to find evidence of prostitution?

Oh come on, Boogers the (verty few) women who make 1000s a night are not the issue here. And we are not talking Pretty Woman here. We need to stop enabling men to abuse women.

I wasn't thinking of Pretty Woman, I was thinking of a friend who fucked her way through university and left with relatively no debt.

People will always abuse people. As a previous poster pointed out, not all prostitutes are women, to which I would add not all procurers of prostitute services are men. I can't imagine performing oral sex for £15 a go in the back of a punter's car at 1am (£10 with condom) in order to earn enough to buy my children's food. The entire scenario is truly grim.

What I am saying is how do we make the lives of sex workers safer with the eventual aim of getting them out of prostitution and into a more 'normal' way of earning a living?

Elendon

I wonder should we be telling our daughters that it is a viable choice then? Imagine that conversation...

Acoountancy? "Mmnnn, bit boring"

Teacher? ..."errrr dunno"

Sex Worker (except your customers will tend to use other names to describe you)?

• "Oh, YES, I have always dreamed of that, thanks for the advice Mommy"

IBelieve No one is advocating that. To say that is not helping your argument. I thought you had some relevant points up thread. What you're saying now is a bit twatty. You're a tutter. "Look at those dreadful women Geoffrey, in their short skirts and low tops, tut, tut, tut".

I wouldn't be in favour of this

And I'm not sure that a true picture of women's voices is possible while ex sex workers who speak out against it are vilified and silenced.

Of the many women and men I know and have known involved in this kind of work only one was happy with it. She had her own business (BDSM) and importantly wasn't actually having sex with her customers.

One is now dead. Hers was a sad story of shitty childhood, addiction, prostitution and death. I was with her the night she started prostituting. In the depths of addiction, crying, she had to have a fix and we tried to find other ways out for her. In the end, she went out 'working'. I still see her sister occasionally.

One woman did magazine work and was thoroughly miserable, a couple of abused children who went straight from their abuser to working.

Frankly, I wish I knew anyone who just liked fucking and was making money from it. It would make me feel a crap ton better about all those women (and some men) in sex work.

Imagine the conversation:

Mum, you're a doctor, you look after people when they are ill.

I do dear, and you can also do this via sex work. You can help all sorts of people. It's the oldest profession in the world. You can really go places. Places you never thought about in your wildest imagination. It will be tough, but think of the recognition, the Nobel prizes! Now, let's get into our Keigal exercises.

Mum, I'm four!

Never too early to start dearest child.

There's no arguing with stupid. I'm out.

My concern would be would this be a job that women on job seekers could refuse to do/apply for without losing their benefits?

How would anyone make sure that the woman there actually want to be there, even if asked they could be so scared of consequences that they would never admit it. It could mean the life of their family or being blacklisted or even targeted once 'free'.

These things don't generally end well. I wouldn't ever want this line of work for myself and I would be ashamed of any family or friend who use this service.

As far as I can see prostitution is violent whatever controls the state might impose.
Having your orifices people penetrated repeatedly and being forced to do things you didn't agree to by a strong man is violence.
Added to having sex you don't want for money- we know forced or coerced sex is legally seen as rape !
Race slavery was eventually abolished so why should men in this day and age be allowed to buy and sell vulnerable women for sexual use ?

Oh Christ, here we go again…

Not all prostitutes are ‘victims’ or drug addicted. I’m a prostitute, and honest to God I’m absolutely fucking sick of being told that I’m being abused in my work or that I must have some kind of childhood trauma in my background. It’s just so insulting to see these kinds of broad-brush assumptions over and over and over again.

I’m a decently educated, 30 year old woman making triple what I would otherwise be making in non-sex related work (and in about half the working hours.)
To me, it seems nuts to not want to work in the sex industry given the high pay for very few hours. Enjoying my extra free time in life is far more important to me than clinging to some completely outdated view on how, when, why and with who women should be having sex.
I give my consent in exchange for cash and I enjoy it 95% of the time. My clients pay me for my services, they do not have any kind of ownership over me or my body during their paid for time. And to imply otherwise is incredibly insulting and patronising. My consent and bodily autonomy belong to me and are just as valid as that of any non-sex worker.

The majority of sex workers want decriminalisation because it’s the best legal model for keeping us safe. It’s as simple as that.
Most of us do not want legalisation (i.e. the model Germany uses with its super-brothels.)

These jokes at the expense of women's lives are fun. Good work.

MrsPratchett- I can counter with plenty of positive stories including my own.

To those not in favour:
How do you propose we fix it then??
Women are in danger right now- and a lot of the time they work alone.
Women aren't allowed to work together or with a guard due to the brothel laws, so where does that lead them?
How do we keep them safe?
We could criminalize it further, but if we did that then we further open up a can of worms for women who've been assaulted, raped, hurt or worse.
What else can we do? I can't see a way to make it safer tbh and I can't see us being able to get rid of it either

Honestly I advise people to actually take a look a the report I linked upthread. There's a summary of it's recommendations. It's primarily recommending more work and its focus is on getting rid of laws that put people in danger. Allowing sex workers to work from the same premises without fear of arrest for example.

Brazen

How about you set up credited educational programme in how to deliver sex satisfaction via sexual services as a profession in schools? GCSE and Sixth form and University are waiting for you. And if you don't do this why not? It is now mainstream after all. Go for it!

I would be horrified if the UK ever had a system like the one in Germany. It should never be acceptable to buy sex. The only acceptable system is the Nordic model, with lots of help and support to get women out of prostitution when they want to.

It would be nice to think we could in the future get to the point where hardly any men at all think it's acceptable to pay for sex. But sadly I doubt we'll get there any time soon.

Can you give me an example of the last time a sex worker was arrested?

Idaho

Sex work (what is this?). Like, lie back and think of England?

To me, it seems nuts to not want to work in the sex industry given the high pay for very few hours
surely one reason that you are able to command a high fee is that sex work is a taboo area which only a minority of women freely choose.

If woman en mass were to decide that it seemed a desirable way to earn money then the fee that you could command would go down, and it wouldnt seem like such a great job....since the main perk seems to be a high hourly rate.

You are profiting from the fact that prostitution is a taboo area whilst at the same time complaining that it is frowned upon.
I'd call that hypocrisy...trying to play fast and loose

Those who engage in sex work enthusiastically never engage with the punter. They can't do it. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

It would be nice to think we could in the future get to the point where hardly any men at all think it's acceptable to pay for sex. But sadly I doubt we'll get there any time soon
I actually think we could get to that point...but there is also the possibility of cyber sex, sex bots, etc
a whole other can of worms to be opened by advances in technology

I don't think it's tut tuting towards women who sell their bodies, I think it's sad. Sad that someone is in that position to be giving themselves over to abusing men who believe it's their right because they have the money to pay for something. How disgusting that men even do this. They should be wanting to protect all women and not do this at all. And women should have provision in other ways financially and be taught that deep within they are worth so muc more and that theur value far exceeds being taken advantage of.
It's sad yes, tut tutting no.
So personally I'd never tut tut but I would be sad, especially because I believe sex workers would not want their own children to do this work and the males who use women for sex would NEVER agree to their own children to do it. But someone else's child yes (and seriously the fact that we were given a Hollywood blockbuster telling us that some guy who uses you for sex will actually fall in love with you and save you - think pretty woman - that was such a rubbish story and all us females fell for it.)
Seriously tho selling sex is wrong on so many levels and no I'm not saying the sex worker is wrong. I know they have their reasons and motivations but I am saying as a society that we let this happen it is wrong. Truly it is. NZ by the way although it sounds good (to the poster who mentions this) Id love you to do a survey of all women in those brothels. I can bet you (a) they 100% don't want to be there if they had enough funds and means to work elsewhere and not need to sell their bodies and (b) knowing the culture of NZ I would not be surprised if the women selling sex were probably abused at some point in their lives. But hey good luck with believing that it is working.
This is just my opinion of course but I'm sure it upsets a lot of people who have such a different views on this (and probably loved pretty woman) that they will now have go at my post hey it's a public forum so go ahead. At the end of the day, I will still believe women are worth way more (and the boys and men who sell their bodies too) so I'll never fully believe this is an okay practice for anyone. And if anyone reading this is a sex worker I'm truly sorry this is how it works for you. I'm truly sorry you may even feel "okay" with this. You have so much more value and I hope one day you get to realize and see this despite what you are told, and what you currently believe. You are worth it!! Best of luck to you.

Decriminalisation has nothing to do with whether prostitutes enjoy the work, it's about keeping them safe.

And thank you for pity and sorrow, but it's not required.