“Sex work is empowering”

[irresistibleoverwhelm]

I was marking a student exam essay today on French culture and the city in the 1860s, and the essay was really good until it suddenly got to historical representations of street prostitutes.

This suddenly diverted into a load of claims that the nineteenth century was full of “moralism”, but that nowadays we know that these “sex workers” were “empowered” by capitalism and by knowing that they were earning money for themselves!

(The texts were explicitly about the dirt and poor health of 1860s street prostitutes living in slums. Definitely NOT some kind of Moulin Rouge man-fantasy about rich courtesans.)

Jesus! Have the wits of today’s young people gone begging? Have they all been totally addled by this sex-positive anti-swerf nonsense? Being a prostitute in nineteenth century was not “empowering”, nor was it a choice. It was nasty, brutal, painful and dangerous, FFS.

This kind of discourse is just pernicious and wrong. We’re going backwards, not forwards.

"And we should in the UK allow brothels"

That would mean women could work together without being criminalised, yes.

'Maybe my opinion of men is a little too high but I like to think the % of men who are pedos are in the minority.'

Yes most men are fine. Some are lovely. IME.

The fact is that a too large minority are not.

Have you not noticed that loads of men are attracted to post pubescent but underage girls? Ever.

Not when you were a schoolgirl? Or your friends?

You've not realised that 'barely legal' etc are popular porn categories for a reason?

You've not read in the news etc that in various places the onset of puberty is when you are seen as a woman and ready for marriage etc? If men didn't fancy girls that age wouldn't the social norms be different?

I mean do you really not know that loads of men fancy girls from when their bodies start to look grown up, when they are still young?

How have you missed that??!!!

And let's say it's only as you say a tiny proportion of men who like girls that age.

In the UK/ in Europe/ in the world that tiny proportion is a lot of men numbers wise.

So do you still think that a warning (not that that would ever happen/ saying you might buy pics/ vids from underage girls and boys would not result in certain men signing up in droves? You think it would help?????

You do seem naive tbh. But I'm sure you aren't. So why are you saying things that you must know are not the way it works.