Can you be a good person if you pay for sex? [Content warning: descriptions of sexual abuse]

[Lave]

Do you think there's a grey area or are all men who pay for sex abusive?

@Lave

Do you think there's a grey area or are all men who pay for sex abusive?

Yes

'As an aside, massages are not entirely out of context for sexual add-ons, so I wouldn't see anything wrong in asking a masseuse/masseur whether they do any extras. As long as they feel totally safe when the question is asked, for example on the phone beforehand.'

Wtf?

In your world maybe.

In my world getting a massage is what you can do in loads of hotels, spa places, beauty salons.

When husband and I go on holiday we often get a massage in the hotel spa.

You're saying in that context it's automatically associated with sex. And so him saying to his male or female masseuse. How much for a hand job. Is AOK?

I know massage parlour is a long term euphemism for essentially brothel in the UK. Are you genuinely not aware that for most people and businesses it's... Genuinely for various types of massage? Hot stone, seaweed blah blah and that's just that?

Lime my guess is that some posters are speaking from experience though. The OP for example. And others from theirs...

@NiceGerbil

Lime my guess is that some posters are speaking from experience though. The OP for example. And others from theirs...

OK, but what does that have to do with my comment?

He said - ‘plenty of sex workers don’t do anal’.

My first thought was - ‘you tell yourself that’.

Maybe in the Disney version of sex work, ‘plenty’ don’t.

Meanwhile, in the real world, sex workers do what they’re paid to do - and their choices and preferences don’t come into it.

'You keep building up this strawman and pulling it down. I didn't say sex is like any other whatever. What I said is that paid consent is still consent. Same for paid consent to clean a filthy toilet and same for paid consent to provide sexual services'

I am positive you said that it's a service like any other.

It's interesting that you are obviously thinking what's a revolting job and come up with cleaning bogs.

A job predominantly done by women and in many circs for free.

You might want to consider the fact that what you seem utterly revolting is seen in loads of societies something that is the woman's automatic duty.

And if that's the only thing you can think of comparable to being paid so random men can fuck you then you've lived a very sheltered life tbh.

The correct comparison to a woman being paid for sex.

Is a man being paid for sex by men much bigger and stronger than him.

How do you feel about doing that job?

Lime we are at cross purposes.

Some people might say that because they ask themselves.

Some people might say that because they ask themselves.

Really not following you, sorry.

My point (which I really didn’t think was that confusing) is that whatshisname upthread is being deeply disingenuous - or pathetically naive - by suggesting that plenty of sex workers ‘don’t do anal’.

And I'm suggesting that when he says most don't do anal I it could be based on his personal experience.

The automatic and apparently standard association with massage and sex acts certainly suggest a certain personal viewpoint.

Well I guess he’ll have to confirm whether he’s had sex with a representative sample of sex workers, to draw that conclusion.

Have you @UpstreamSwimmer?

I think that will allow the thread to veer off in an unhelpful direction tbh.

Don't you know that anyone who has concerns about this, unfairly assumes that anyone who's ok with it is a punter?

Proves blah blah stereotypes blah blah don't like men blah blah loads of women think it's fab etc etc etc

3...2...1....

Whereas your posts are garnering really helpful responses from him.

I’ll leave you to it, then.

It's a fair question though.

Note that the underlying experiences that many women have, that underpins their views, is never asked for.

The reason loads of women think it's wrong is because we know what loads of blokes are like. We know how they behave. With women and girls who are not selling sex. Just going about their lives.

The assumption that a man or men in general know better is.. presumptuous. IMO.

Well it's revealed an awful lot of interesting statements IMO.

Massage is associated with sex full stop.
The worst job imaginable is cleaning toilets.
It's a service like any other except when it isn't.

I'm not sure why you're off tbh.

Maybe he will answer the question.

I appreciate there are dirty jobs that I wouldn't want to do, and the only reason people in those jobs do them, is to get paid. Does that preclude me from paying them to do the work for me?

@UpstreamSwimmer, you're openly comparing selling sex to cleaning a toilet - do you think this is how women feel about sex in general, or just the act of selling sex?

When discussing sexual relationships e.g. with young people, they are taught to look for enthusiastic consent. Because that's how sex is supposed to be, ethical sex that is. Sex that someone is there for because they need the money, or approaching as a slightly repulsive chore, can never include true, enthusiastic consent in that sense.

And nobody talks about enthusiastic consent to cleaning a toilet do they, or any other 'dirty work'? Maybe because a toilet doesn't have the potential to rape you, suddenly ask you to do something you didn't include as part of the 'deal', leave a review on intimate aspects of your 'performance', get you pregnant, cause injury etc? Maybe because cleaning a toilet doesn't involve literal penetration of a person's body?

The thing I still don't understand is WHY the men are bad for buying the service, in so many people's opinions, but not the women selling the service. I just can not wrap my head around it. If the women were abused or trafficked or something similar, then I can understand this. But what about those women who go into it willingly? Are we really going to patronise them by acting as though they don't knlw what they're doinh and/or are somehow victims for the decisions which they themselves have made about what to do with their own bodies? Do we consider male sex workers equally as victims? And how dare we tell a woman that they don't understand their decisions/feelings? If a man spoke to a woman like this, we would be outraged but as other women its okay for us to insult a woman by claiming she basically doesn't know what she's doing/is a fool/is lying to herself/anything similar.

And again, I say this as someone who is not at all open about sex work and is pretty horrified even by things like OnlyFans. I'm not PRO any of this stuff. I just don't understand why so many people are anto the men who buy sex but all 'oh poor them they don't know what they're doing they're victims' about the grown, adult women who have chosen this line of work by themselves and might even enjoy it! (And yes, again, not talking about anyone who is in it involuntarily here)

@NiceGerbil

I'm not comparing anything to anything. What I'm doing is looking at the three moral arguments against using using SWs, and testing these arguments whether they hold out in other situations.

That isn't the same as saying A is exactly like B, only that A shares certain key characteristics with B, and if we ban A because of those characteristics, we ought to ban B.

The arguments, as previously mentioned, are:

1. The industry has significant coercion. My test for that is nail bars - another industry with significant coercion. If we use nail bars, that shows we don't automatically ban an industry do to coercion existing therein.

1. Bought consent isn't consent. Especially for yucky jobs. Even more so when the provider is desperate for money.

One test for that is toilet cleaners. Toilet cleaning is yucky, and people only do it because they get paid. And usually it's done by people who are desperate and have no better prospects. Yet we still allow it.

1. People can't consent to potentially harmful activity.

Well we allow people to join the army.

All the other questions and waffle were simply distractions, and had nothing of substance why using SWs is morally wrong. Certainly not why it's akin to rape.

@maddy68

A friend if mine has erectile dysfunction. He "uses" sex workers to learn how to perform again.

Another friend of mine is a sec worker. She absolutely loves her job. (She was previously a doctor ). Genuinely she has a spring in het step that had been missing for a long time
Not for anyone to judge

So. A woman who was a doctor, is now a prostitute and is far happier?

I can't get my head round various PP's posting about "friends" and "friends of friends" who absolutely love their sex worker lives.
I've not had many sexual partners, but there's some I'd definitely jump into bed with again and some that make me shudder. Not because of any abuse, simply that the sex wasn't enjoyable for me for whatever reason.
Do "happy hookers", that enjoy their work, somehow vet their punters? Must be clean, fresh breath, comfortable "size", engage in foreplay?

@Lave sorry my phone won't tag you, , thank you for this thread.

@hawkehurstgang

And again, I say this as someone who is not at all open about sex work and is pretty horrified even by things like OnlyFans. I'm not PRO any of this stuff. I just don't understand why so many people are anto the men who buy sex but all 'oh poor them they don't know what they're doing they're victims' about the grown, adult women who have chosen this line of work by themselves and might even enjoy it! (And yes, again, not talking about anyone who is in it involuntarily here)

I think the general perception is that the women (and men), who sell sex have someone else pulling their strings, or they have a habit, or both.

That's obviously true of many but certainly not all. There are quite sophisticated women who work independently and enjoy a sense of power. They may employ someone as a driver and sort of minder. They make a lot of money too.

This is difficult because it does come down to the old theory vs reality debate. In theory as a mature consenting adult i can choose to sell my body for sex - i had a friend who did this as a young single mum- she could work i night and earn far more than working full time and have time with her children etc.

But most of the sex trade is run on an abusive model.

So its one for me that in principle yes you can be a good person and pay for sex but in our present society you would need to know that the woman was making a free rational decision to use her body in this way to earn money rather than in another way. And not that she was being forced to do this either by an individual or societal structures.

Its the same with the drugs trade - as a mature consenting adult i should be able to buy and use drugs and the notion i need to be protected from myself is patronising - but parts of the drug trade in my current society can be very abuse and i would need to know about the process for me to be comfortable doing so.

That's a very good post, Upamountain.

NiceGerbil
If paying someone is allowed to be deemed as consent then rape will no longer exist in our world. All rapists have to do it throw a tenner at a person and that constitutes consent.

@Wearywithteens

At my big old age, and buffered by a family full of lovely men, I’ve only recently come to horrifying conclusion that a significant amount of men don’t see women as actual people with an inner life and mind. They see them as 2 dimensional constructs that exist to serve them. Men who pay for sex fall into the imo.

This isn’t helped by the fact that women often live up to this stereotype by congratulating themselves on being ‘polite’ and ‘kind’ and ‘non confrontational’. This is why we should be teaching our daughters to be authentic, to know their worth, have their own boundaries and not be afraid to be angry.

Great post!