DP comment to his friend about sex worker, would alarm bells be ringing

[Lauren887]

One of DP’s close friends is single currently and going through a bit of a tough time with the fall out from his last relationship, so we had him over for a couple of drinks last night.

He said he misses elements of being in a relationship, companionship on a weekend etc.

DP asked him in a serious tone whether he has considered getting some paid company. His friend laughed off the suggestion and DP said something along the lines of ‘it gets a bad reputation but avoid Eastern Europeans and stick to British girls and then you know you are finding someone like minded and who hasn’t been exploited’. I told DP to not be ridiculous and he said something about a lot of them being on Instagram and making a load of money so clearly they aren’t from a dodgy background and they are doing it with a happy heart. His friend to his credit was unmoved.

I spoke to him about it when my friend left and he wasn’t joking - he was being deadly serious and doesn’t understand why I disapprove so strongly.

Am I being a bit ridiculous or do you also find that repulsive?

From the sellers perspective, you can buy the gun and the heroin. Whereas the orthodoxy on MN is that it's somehow exploitation and harmful to the sex worker to buy what she's selling.

Sure and certain are relative. How can you be absolutely sure and certain nobody is forcing your barista to prepare your coffee?

On balance, it's fairly easy to be reasonably sure that the independent sex worker, working out of a flat and not coked out of her mind, isn't being coerced.

My issue is with the lie that consent can't be bought. If it is willingly sold, it can be bought. Just like any other kind of labour or service, which is also a form of exchanging consent for money.

Not disagreeing with everything you say but just to point out a prostitute working from a flat isnt necessarily independent. It can just give off the impression she is. I remember in the news a man where I live tried to take the money off the prostitute before leaving and a couple of men appeared out of another room in the flat and beat him up.

Ok “Mel”.

Maybe expand your reading on sex worker exploitation beyond MN threads.

And another way of thinking of that analogy:

What is the likelihood and consequence of this person preparing coffee for me in a less than ideal personal situation. On balance they are likely employed and therefore have some level of workers rights.

Or am I just a nasty rapist who has justified it to myself and thinks coffee baristas are even remotely similar.

You've just shifted the goalposts from possibly coerced and trafficked to not having worker's rights.

My gardener is self employed and doesn't have worker's rights. What's more, I'm pretty sure he's only doing it because he needs the money, and if he would find a much better paid job he would stop gardening.

Can I buy his consent to work?

He’s an example of how normalised sex work (as a result of online sites) has become imo. It’s scary how this will filter to our younger generations too. I find it troubling OP & would find it hard not to think he has used these services himself. Interesting that he’s using the argument that using British sex workers is more ethical & that they’re less likely to be trafficked. As though he’s either faced objections to him using /or having to justify his attitudes to sex work previously or with other partners. I think it’s just a measure of how porn & sex obsessed society has become (& how easy it is to procure it). I find it a concern he openly advocates it with your friends at dinner. He would argue it’s no different/worse to discussing it with only his male friends behind your back. I’d also think he’s almost living vicariously through your single friend in his advice - ie that’s what he’d be doing if were in his shoes. Difficult. The MagicMike argument is vastly different to paying for sex. He sounds v skilled at his arguments justifying/in defense of his views. Turn off for me.

Sex isn’t coffee, to state the obvious. Selling coffee is selling labour power. Prostitution sells direct sexual access to your body—the body itself becomes the commodity. That’s a much deeper alienation.

“Independent” sex work and trafficking aren’t separate worlds. They’re linked by a market that exploits poverty and desperation to satisfy male sexual demand.

Nuance matters, but your analogy conceals capitalist reality. As Althusser argued, ideology hails us as “free” subjects, even as it binds us to the structures of capitalism. In a system built on commodification, “choice” often masks economic compulsion. Turning sex into a commodity isn’t merely selling labour, it’s selling the self, reducing human intimacy and bodily autonomy to market logic. That’s a unique violence no flat white can match.

As usual the men come in here and derail this thread to be about themselves. Shoo. This isn’t about you. I know that’s hard to wrap your heads around.

he’s no good, OP, never mind the men in here trying to twist things. He’s no good. The second post you made indicates gaslighting.

be done with this trash. He’ll only get worse.

You did. You compared the wrongness of buying guns and heroin to the wrongness of buying sex. Meaning you do think a woman’s choice to sell sex is directly comparable to heroin or guns. The latter two are always demonstrably harmful. Sex is not.

Supply and demand...

How can you tell if a woman is being coerced into the sex trade or not?

If she's not, then is that acceptable? I.e. she has happily chosen to sell sex.

You keep deliberately conflating all bodily occupations to dodge the point. A legitimate massage doesn’t involve penetration or orgasm on demand. Footballers aren’t commodities for sexual use. Boxing and football involve physical risk, yes—but those sports don’t commodify sexual access to a person’s body or reduce intimacy to a product. The violence in sports is entirely different from the sexual use of a person’s body under conditions of power and inequality. Prostitution isn’t “just another service”, it’s the sale of sexual access shaped by male demand, social inequality, and economic vulnerability. Stop pretending they’re the same.

And by the way, your understanding of capitalism is deeply flawed. It’s not “just bartering”. Capitalism is a system based on private ownership of the means of production, profit extraction, class divisions, and alienation, where people are compelled to sell their labour to survive. But selling your labour doesn’t automatically mean selling sexual access or intimacy. Prostitution involves a deeper commodification of the person, not merely labour power, and that’s precisely why sexual exploitation flourishes under capitalism.

As for your “tending trees on a lush island” example, that’s subsistence production, not capitalism. Growing your own food for survival outside a market economy is the opposite of capitalist production, which relies on surplus value, wage labour, and market exchange. You’re conflating basic human subsistence with a global economic system.

And no—women “choosing” to sell sex doesn’t automatically make it a free or liberating choice. Choices made under economic pressure, gender inequality, and male sexual demand aren’t genuinely free. That some women “choose” to sell sex doesn’t erase the broader system of exploitation or the harm to others. Buying sex contributes to that harm.

You don’t hear a lot about coerced and trafficked baristas? Generally those jobs (self employed or not) aren’t associated with other forms of abuse; mental health issues/consequences; degradation; high risk of physical assault etc.

It doesn’t stack up as a comparable analogy to what buying consent looks like.