I have quite strong views on prostitution

[Tonight1]

Not at all about the women, just that I would not want to date a habitual user! Or punter as they're called. And yes this came up recently.

This is discussion about how you would feel about it?

AIBU - wouldn't mind
YANBU - would mind

I wouldn't be happy at all if one of my friends turned to prostitution. Because I'd worry all the time.

Luckily most of them are settled or happy being single.

Going back up thread a bit, but one thing I have asked a number of times is just where are the alternative employment options for low educated women.

Men always have options, we’re surrounded by support services all aimed, in practice, at giving men chances to earn honest livings. PRUs are full of boys. Trades provide many alternatives for boys with low academic attainment, as does the transportation sector and even the police and army are options. There are far higher demands for girls and women in far more restricted career options. Pay is habitually higher in traditionally male career options too. The middle classes , saturated in politically correct nonsense, don’t like to hear it, but look at any business sector and men will still be at the top and far more numerous too after austerity and Covid lockdowns. We do not have equality in work, nowhere near. It’s always the workers who are blamed for this, but our society provides few real options for those without family money and support.

It’s difficult enough having education and getting back into work after having kids for women, with retraining so expensive and the housing crisis. Naturally having kids is blamed on women too, not on the men who demand the sex that produces them and the society that is engineered to ensure that young girls and women are fully inducted into their role in providing sex for the men.

Absolutely no way would I knowingly be involved with a man who has used prostituted women. A man who thinks it is okay to use women like that is not a good man and not one I want in my life.

@RosaGallica I guess the way it is is that women can more easily get jobs within admin/service industries etc. Practically everyone starts somewhere though so there is training and promotion?

I'm in my 40s and couldn't do heavy lifting. Very fortunately no serious health issues just that it would wear me out.

Marg, is that you?

EVERY time there’s a thread about prostitution someone pops up with this bloody Brooke Magnanti book. You mean the one she acknowledged was heavily fictionalised and embellished to sell copies as entertainment? That she made a lot of money from after selling the rights for a sensationalised “happy hooker” TV series about the fictionalised adventures of a “glamorous” escort starring Billie Piper?

Yeah, that one, about as far from a hard-hitting work of sociological fact about the sex trade as you could possibly get?

Give me a fucking break - just because you get your kicks out of some fantasy fiction about prostitution for the gullible doesn’t mean that we have to buy all that too.

I would hope DP had never used a sex worker, nevermind be a habitual user.

I doubt he'd tell me if he had, probably out of embarrassment and being unsure of my reaction.

It's all a bit grim, isn't it?

I absolutely wouldn’t have anything to do with a man who I knew had visited a prostitute. It shows a deep rooted sense of entitlement and lack of respect for woman.

I can find sympathy for woman who have been coerced/forced into sex work by the bucket load. The true victims of this industry.

I loathe women who believe their ‘work’ which (if the man is partnered) removes other women’s right to informed sexual consent or to their personal agency is in some way liberating. I have no time for any of them.

YANBU.

Buying sex is coercing someone into sex that they wouldn’t otherwise have with you, through the power of money. Coercing someone into sex is also known as a 4 letter word beginning with R. I wouldn’t ever want to engage in any way shape or form with a man who buys sex

I think the ‘empowerment of of sex workers’ rhetoric conveniently forgets that a good number of ‘sex workers’ are actually victims of human trafficking - and you will never know which ones are and which ones aren’t unless they tell you

He was also robbed by one of them to the tune of £100s, and they would take advantage of his vulnerability

Good

Rapists don’t deserve respect

@RosaGallica "Going back up thread a bit, but one thing I have asked a number of times is just where are the alternative employment options for low educated women."

Retail,catering,caring.

And anyway, I thought prostituted women are all highly educated and do it because either they love se not they're paying their way through college.......

Most homeless are men. Sex work is often a lifeline for women.

Sex is not a human requirement. Not getting what you want doesn’t entitle a person to rape women. Plenty of disabled people never have sex and they manage just fine

The issue is

1. Very few women will feel this way
2. How do you know a woman saying this is telling the truth rather than a trafficked woman being forced?
3. she can love the industry all she wants, she loving an industry that exploits women in the worst way

But these women are being coerced into sex they would otherwise have. How is that not rape?

@User135644 I've been homeless. Not street homeless but staying with a friend for a few months. Just cut back my expenditure.

I really didn't want this to be a critism of women who do this for money.

It has really helped me though as quite a few posters understood I was unhappy being sexually harassed by someone who goes to prostitutes frequently.

I appreciate both your views, but the average person does not want to live without sex.

Boo hoo- doesn’t excuse rape

In places like Australia, prostitution is legal and actually regulated, so in this situation, is it still considered 'rape' in your view?

Yes

@C1N1C so because women can get sex easier than men it means men can rape women if they have the money to?

well said

Women are so fucking dehumanised it depresses me

But the ‘vulnerable men’ are taking advantage of them first through coercing them into sex. But it’s unacceptable the other way round?

The fact you value a man’s wallet more than women’s bodies tells me everything I need to know about you

I hope she succeeds. Serves him right

And that’s women’s problem how exactly?

I would never, ever get with a man who's ever used prostitution in their life.

being raped every day is a lifeline just because more men are homes less? What horse shit. there are services in this country for homeless people and particularly homeless women.