To ask why I feel sex work is a bit wrong?

[sweatyscruffy]

So I'm fully preparing to get flamed here!
Bf came round last night, I asked her how it was going as her university friends have moved in with her and her dh for a while. Bf's friend was doing webcam work with her dp previously and they were continuing to earn an absolute mint doing it (£30,000 in three months once!) I don't really see anything wrong with it as it's doing what they do anyway with a few cameras filming. The other girl is a medical professional, also part time escort. My bf was telling me about it as if it was the best thing ever. Apparently the agency only takes on clients earning over £50,000, and only contracts girls who know how to talk to and entertain very rich men. It involves a lot of trips to London and Europe, occasionally Dubai. Maybe I sound jealous but the whole thing made me a bit sad. Yes she's a grown woman, yes she knows what she's doing but imagine having to pretend that you find these old men interesting or sexually attractive?
She apparently specifies 40+ men only so she gets the really rich ones so I bet there's a good chance a lot of them are married, not that it's her fault they're choosing to sleep with prostitutes. I try so hard to be ok with it and think of it as feminist but I still feel it's a bit seedy. I'm trying so hard to not judge!

Cant get lower than being a sex worker?

Right so the people who rob old people, beat up their partners, rape people, murder, are all above sex workers

It's also worth noting that the type of man that really hates women hates sex workers most of all. Your incel/Jordan Lobsterknob/PUA/religious fascist kind of man absolutely loathes sex work (despite the occasional well-meaning idiot suggesting that those men who bewail their lack of sexual partners try paying someone).
So if you are an 'aboliitionist', it's worth considering who you might be allying yourself with.

Sugar babies are escorts who stay with the same guy repeatedly rather than one night

i think those girls who do sex work to fund their studies, might find that it will bite them on the arse later on. Fact is, men do not respect sex workers. Its ok, if she studies for a career that is "faceless". But if she wants to be anything in a leadership position, or anything that requires an exemplary moral character, the fact that they did sex work will be a shameful secret, and if leaked out - then oops - career over.

Also, those of you who think that if prostitution was legalized and properly regulated, it would be a nice career opportunity, with nice pay, convenient working hours, all safe and clean, etc. Where's the guarantee that brothels won't become like Amazon warehouses - all miserable, shit for workers, and billions for bosses? And that it won't become compulsory for unemployed women, or disabled but "fit for work"?

The key to that sentence being bollocks or not is the word choice.

Because if it's really not a choice then I disagree it's no one else's business.

Gin I'm hoping she never says that to me but it would tell me something had gone very wrong for her and I would do everything in my power to get her the help she needs.

And many jobs carry a lot of risk to one's physical and mental health. Many other industries turn a blind eye to the fact that a percentage of people doing the work at the lower end of the payscale are trafficking victims.

ReanimatedSGB what an absurd statement.

Lvsel, if it’s a friend and you know it’s unhealthy you need to discuss this. Butting out isn’t the right thing to do.
Agree with gin, most will have been groomed or experienced child abuse and suffer from mental health conditions.

My question is why in 2019 should straight sex be work for women and be about pleasure for men? Ye olde patriarchal standard. Sex should only be done for pleasure.

“Sex work” is a bullshit term. Anyone paying for sex is a rapist.

No. Even if we smashed the patriarchy and made all the structural changes that feminists demand, there would still be women who want to be sex workers.

Who are we to drive them into a black market?

Those women who feel empowered clearly feel this

Do they? Or do they tell themselves that this is an empowering decision because the alternative is to recognise themselves as prostitutes and victims?

No one would be happy for this to be their daughter's choice. But if their daughter was staring them in the face shouting "It's my body my choice", what is your actual nuanced reply other than "get to hell"?
In the case of my daughter ... "you have other, better choices available to you"
For a girl or woman who does not have the same choices as my daughter "there are other choices. And the price you will pay for this "choice" is too high". There's definitely a nuanced conversation to be had with a girl or woman in that position. Who ever suggested they'd reply with "get to hell"???

We don't use the "my body, my choice" as grounds for accepting forms of self-abusive behaviour in people we care about whether it is self-harming, drug or alcohol abuse, suicide. To me the same would be true of prostitution. Yes it is your body. But that isn't the same as saying "do whatever the hell you like regardless of the fall-out".

Also any man, who says sex work is all so glamourous and well paid, i'd ask - so why isn't he sucking dicks himself?

I am similarly conflicted. (Name changed)

Pro;
#people should be able to do what they want, with minimal regulation
#Should have control over their own body
#The line between modelling, sexy modelling, porn, paid sex is hard to draw.
#Why can't 2 people agree to a deal of sex for cash if they both want
#i watch some porn and like that it's available

Con;
#The market can't self regulate here
#The risk of criminality and trafficking outweighs the benefits to some
#I wouldn't want my kids doing it
#I would rather live in a world without any prostitution

This thread is really interesting

A man in my office was telling me that sex work is work, it should be legalised and taxed. He seemed really shocked that I wasn't on board with that.

He also didn't see anything wrong about forcing women on benefits to do it, until I asked him if he'd be willing to do it if he lost his job. His immediate reply was that women don't pay: when I pointed out that if it's just a job and he could service men he looked horrified and exclaimed that he's not gay. I asked him the difference between a woman being forced to service men they're not in the slightest bit attracted to, and him being forced to do likewise: for the first time he stopped and thought about it, and understood what I meant when I said it's not just a job.

We need to address coercion and exploitation in all forms of waged work. We will not prevent these by deciding that only sex work is so 'wrong' that it must be stamped out. There are so many reports that punitive, abolitionist policies, even when they are dressed up as 'rescue' attempts, endanger sex workers and make their lives harder. if you're being abused at work but you know that calling the police will mean you lose your income and get arrested, deported or both, then you're not going to feel safe to call the police, are you? There have been police 'raids' on 'brothels' which have involved the police confiscating the sex workers' money and inviting the media along to take photographs of them partially dressed - that isn't 'helping' them.

TBH I think Dolly Parton's song 9-5 talks about the exploitation of women in presumably admin positions. Women are always exploited.

I've worked in roles where you're a PA to a guy earning maybe 8 times your salary and you're totally exploited.

One of the lines in the song is

'they just use your mind and you never get the credit'.

Sex work is much the same.

Women are always exploited.

I have a history as sex worker, it was something I was forced into. Every man involved - the pimps, the punters, the traffickers, the drug dealers, the landlords, the police and SS who turned a blind eye - hated women but they were more than happy to fuck our holes, pull our hair, spit on our faces, piss on us and indeed profit from.

When one of my friends was asked by a punter if she enjoyed the money, she retorted “is this how you would like your daughter to make her pocket money?” He knocked our two of her teeth and fractured her orbital bone.

I am now a HCP (and my God did I claw myself out of a hole) and see women raped in the name of sex work every single day. Very few talk about empowerment and those who do keep up that facade for ooh 5 minutes before breaking down. The majority are child abuse victims as well as drug addicts. Most go on to require acute mental health inpatient stays.

The notion of empowered sex workers is very convenient for a large chunk of society.
I even joked about it at university. I was not empowered, I was raped. People crowing about sex work and empowerment trap women further into this waking hell and are complicit in abuse.

Sex work is rape.

BanKittenHeels
Men who think they should have access to do whatever to women's bodies are vile.
Thank you for speaking up.

I don't think sex work is empowering to women.

Rather, I don't see how it's possible to ban it without creating a black market, thereby making the sex workers more vulnerable.

Same as the 'war on drugs'.

@astheworldturns - the only way to ‘ban’ it is to criminalise it from the ‘punter’ side rather than the ‘prostitution’ side. If men were arrested, fined, imprisoned, lost their jobs, were viewed as what they are, lost their families etc they wouldn’t do it.

Surely that just creates secondary black markets?

The law should treat punters in the same way as it does drink driving. Criminal records (perhaps on a register) which impact jobs and their families.
In the same way they are stealing mental and physical health, security, home life and family from the people they abuse.

There should be posters, there should be TV campaigns. The public should be repulsed. It shouldn’t be seen as a cool thing for women to do, so you can put into a little “that’s OK” box and sleep well at night.
If you know someone who has paid a prostitute for sex then you know a rapist. It isn’t something to giggle at down the pub, it isn’t “on boys will be boys”. It is rape.

It's clear that prostitution is incredibly empowering - for pimps and johns.

Thanks for sharing @BanKittenHeels 

@ReanimatedSGB I'm not in favour of absolute criminalisation. The women are doing nothing wrong and are victims of crime as far as I'm concerned. I'm on favour of a Swedish model where punters are criminals and the workers aren't.

Full legalisation doesn't work. Look at Germany.

@AsTheWorldTurns - then you might as well say why have any laws at all. No matter the law people break it. At least when those men break the law they’re punished though rather than seen as a ‘lad’ by people who have no idea what sex ‘work’ is actually like when you’re the ‘sex worker’.