Sex work

[Sunat45degrees]

I have a very "liberal" BIL. The kind who prides himself on his liberal credentials, "life and let live" etc.

I won't lie, he's also the classic white middle aged man who thinks he has all the answers and is completely oblivious to his own privilege. So the type who thinks if something is theoretically true, then of course it is ACTUALLY true eg the gender pay gap isn't really a thing because women make choices to work in less well paid jobs and it just is that way, and obviously, because women would get paid equally for equal work, how could any of us have any issues? or "of course women can get promoted at the same level as men, if they're doing the work". Basically, I feel like he's not moved into any deeper understanding than I had when I was 18.

He's definitely the type who takes the liberal approach based on what I think of the "Hollywood" version - so in a movie, the transwoman 100% passes, would 100% be completely safe for other women, has 100% gone through a huge issue to get where she is so of course, we should consider her a woman. Or the woman who's struggling at work with the wanker boss always finds a way to overcome..... blah blahh blah.

Anyway, his latest, is about how selling your body is, of course, completely fine as long as there's no exploitation.

I have not particularly done a lot of reading or research on prostitution. What I've picked up is a general understanding that we can tell ourselves its "empowering" for women all we like but the reality is that for every women who sells her body and genuinely is in control there are hundreds or thousands who don't. So again, the hollywood version - feisty, independent sex worker making decisions about HER body that work for her is what he thinks it is MOST of the time.

I'm actively looking for resources as I clearly need to educate myself on this issue. But am here to shamelessly ask if anyone who is more knowledgeable can direct me - I just instinctively don't believe that most women are prostitutes by choice. I think even if it SEEMS like a choice, it quite often starts as something else?

@pleasedonotfeedme After all, you are breaking up relationships and families, offering men a chance to harm other women in their lives, and participating in and providing a market that harms other women and children, and encourages deceit, disease, trafficking and pimping of other women. (I know of quite a few families, and women’s and children’s lives, which have been horribly damaged by husbands and fathers buying sex. You okay with facilitating that? I wouldn’t be, myself.) You might not be trafficked, but other women (and children) are. You might not be exploited on the street; but you are part of a “business sector” that does do that.

I can only read your post as internalised misogyny at its best and women blaming other women for the failures of men. In your eyes married men are these "poor creatures" who have no agency over their actions and get lured by the "evil temptress" on the internet charging 300 per hour and "destroying" their marriage. Yes, sex workers are "evil" and men... just victims. Oh wait...I thought you said sex workers were the victims (?), so confusing...

I'm not denying there's "pockets of exploitation" within the sex industry, there are, unfortunately this happens in many industries such as agricultural, domestic workers, factories, nail saloons, construction etc... I never see much MN outrage when filipino women are found being mistreated, kidnapped and exploited in the basements of the rich Chelsea mansions in London, or when 20 Rumanians are found locked in sheds in the midlands picking apples for two pennies etc... when it comes to exploitation the mumsnet outrage is always against sex workers which I find very interesting. We seem to be sex predators AND victims at the same time. Make up your mind.

@penelopelondonIn my experience the Mumsnet outrage is directed towards the men who exploit prostituted women, and the women who enable them. Not towards the prostituted women themselves.

@penelopelondon you have not understood my post at all. It’s not me who has internalised misogyny. I’m pointing out the logical conclusion of saying prostituted women are not exploited but choose to do it as a job. YOU are imagining that I’m saying women are “temptresses” and all this sort of thing. In reality, I’m saying you can’t have the idea that sex work is freely chosen work and also then absolve yourself from the moral consequences of that work/choice.

It’s about saying okay, if you say it’s a job that women choose rather than are exploited into, then what follows from that? Well, that idea entirely rests on pretending that there are no harms to anyone involved in prostitution. But we know there are harms that go beyond just the potential harm to the woman herself. In that case, both the buyer and the seller of a harmful service, if they are both entering into a transaction freely, are morally culpable for those harms.

That is to say, if you offer of your own free will a service that harms people (even if you don’t consider yourself harmed by it), then you are also making the moral choice to do harm. Just as the buyer is. But you can’t just shrug shoulders and say it’s all the men’s fault. Yes, they are making a choice buying something harmful. But it’s also harmful to sell it. The seller of vapes or gambling cards or cocaine is still knowingly peddling something harmful, regardless of the culpability of the buyer, whether it’s legal or not. Is the seller of tobacco or gambling tickets or munitions morally blameless for making money out of something that harms others?

Those is the end-point of the market-forces “sex work is work” argument; and you may not like it. It doesn’t have anything to do with temptresses or not blaming men. It involves blaming both parties for buying and selling something they both know to cause harm.

Going back to reality: in reality the free transactional sex work market fantasy actually exists only for a very few people — if at all. In reality, as @CurlewKate says, most women on mumsnet know that prostituted women are not at all empowered free agents who love their work or whatever the happy hooker fantasy of sex work currently is. That’s why we actually don’t think it’s a free exchange of money and equal agency; and that’s why we do think that men — the buyers of sex — shoulder the moral responsibility for doing harm. Because paid sex is not work at all but always exploitation.

Many old-school feminists have worked for decades trying to highlight the evils and exploitations of prostitution rather than shame women for it. We’re not the enemy. But you better realise what the logical end of your own argument is, and own it. It doesn’t end up at a place where you can have the cake of “sex work is work”, and eat the “it’s all the men’s fault” too.

Far too few people have read the 2014 study by Endrit Mujaj and Amanda Netscher. If they had, they wouldn't be saying things that are false. For example, MP Sarah Champion said in a debate in parliament that "the proportion of men in Sweden who reported paying for sex dropped from 13% to 8%" between 1996 and 2008 (the law that criminalises men who pay for began in 1999).

That is false. The proportion of men who reported paying for sex increased from 1.3% to 1.8% between 1996 and 2008. The figure that she gives is not for men who pay for sex, it is the figure for men who have paid for sex at some time in their lives, which is something different. This figure went back up to more than 10% in the next survey (2011).

This is why we oppose the Nordic model. It is because it doesn't work. People who believe in the Nordic model accept that life is more difficult for sex workers under the Nordic model. They think though that their suffering will end when prostitution disappears. Sweden is riddled with prostitution. In 1996 0.3% of Swedish women reported that they had been paid for sex. In the most recent (2017) survey it was 1.5%.

When vapes first started they saved the lives of many people. Someone who was unable to fight their addiction to nicotine was able to avoid the harmful chemicals in cigarettes that led to cancer and other health problems. Now many teenagers who never smoked cigarettes are becoming addicted to nicotine, which is a powerful addiction comparable to heroin. I don't think that sellers of vapes have anything to feel guilty about, as long as they don't sell them to teenagers.

You have linked prostitution to vaping and other things that you think are social evils but you don't say why in this post. In a previous post by you said prostitution encourages disease. There is no evidence for this. There is evidence for the opposite. Dr Petra Boynton has written in the BMJ that "The recent increase in sexually transmitted infections in the general population in the United Kingdom contrasts with a reduced prevalence in female sex workers".

Prostitution doesn't increase trafficking and pimping either. The Swedish researcher Charlotta Holmstrom wrote "The assumption that lower demand for prostitution decreases trafficking is also conceptually flawed, as argued by Anderson and O’Connell Davidson. Trafficking is produced by a range of factors, and more policing of the prostitution market may very well also produce more trafficking, as it creates a market for brokers that sex sellers grow dependent on and are vulnerable to".

I don't believe in a 'happy hooker fantasy' (or 'market forces'). I believe that most women in prostitution make the same choices as women in other ways of making money. How much money can they earn? How long do I have to work to earn the money that I need? How much do I dislike what it is I need to do to make that money?

Of course some women are exploited. That happens in other ways of making money too. There is something called modern slavery or modern day slavery. It's never acceptable. There are sensible ways to reduce and hopefully eliminate exploitation in all ways of making money. Just trying to ban any way of making money isn't going to work.

I think you could give him all the evidence in the world and he still wouldn’t change his mind. Let him live in his own “bubble of ignorance”. I think the issue is more why you feel the urge/right to educate him. It sounds like a power control thing you are fighting with. I suspect he would argue the grass is blue if it meant you didn’t have control over his opinions. Leave him to it.

Still completely missing the entire point, I see.

And if you think men and women who buy and sell sex aren’t at massively higher risk of contracting STDs (and passing them on to other sex partners), I have a few bridges to sell you.

@JennyShaw

There are sensible ways to reduce and hopefully eliminate exploitation in all ways of making money.

How do you eliminate exploitation in sex work? Many would argue that sex work is the exploitation of women's bodies for cash. You seem to see women's bodies as a product that can simply be used to make money - do you think your view of women is dehumanising?

The fantasy of the ultimate market free of exploitation (or ethical considerations) is the greatest kind of deluded fantasy.

In practical terms, @JennyShaw, are the empowered, ethically autonomous prostitutes going to be sitting down every punter with a screening questionnaire, checking that he’s also a nice single feminist man with no STIs, no wife or partner or children, no addictive tendencies, a nice healthy lifestyle and never once so much of a sniff of looking at an Andrew Tate video? Then he gets a moral pass to buy some not-exploitative sex 😆 Only naice prostitution here!

I admire your rather naive view of human nature, but sadly many men buy sex precisely because it’s exploitative — it’s a feature, not a bug.

Who do you think I'm going to believe, you or Dr Petra Boynton writing in the BMJ? People are far less likely to get STDs from prostitution than from promiscuity or affairs.

Anyone who doesn't think that buying sex is going to lead to lack of consent and is feeding abusive situations and pushing women into the category of a commodity is clearly either dense or a misogynistic creep. Who probably wants to justify shagging prossies. Grim.
Just tell him that.

If he asks you to 'prove it' just say I have by listening to you, you bell end.
Sorry, not the most sensible response but frankly he doesn't deserve one.

I'd be very interested to see the evidence/data if possible.

Emily Kenway has written a book about reducing and hopefully eliminating exploitation in many different ways of making money. She is an expert on modern slavery and has advised the government.

The biggest issue is the issue of murder. So let's start there. Soho has always been a hotbed of prostitution but no prostitute has been murdered there since the 1940s. There was a woman murdered more recently called Camille Gordon but she wasn't a prostitute, she worked in a clip joint.

In Soho every prostitute has a 'maid' who is usually an older woman. There are always two women in the flat but only one man. The maid isn't a madam, if the prostitute isn't happy she will find a new maid.

It is illegal in Britain for two or more prostitutes to work together. It also seems to be illegal for a prostitute to have a maid. In Soho they seem to get away with it although a number of flats have been closed down by the police.

In Ireland you have the Nordic model there. So you would think that prostitutes could do as they please without getting arrested. Considering that the Nordic model is supposed to be about shifting the burden of criminality from women to men, from prostitutes to their clients.

The reality though is that when the Nordic model was introduced they doubled the penalties for 'brothel-keeping' which include imprisonment. Women have been imprisoned and deported for working together. They knew this would happen, Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald was asked about it in parliament.

Women's bodies aren't a product. Prostitutes aren't selling their bodies or themselves. They are selling a service. In Britain there are thousands of women from Thailand and China who sell massage as a service and some of them use their hands to bring their clients to orgasm. That is at their discretion, and they get paid more for that.

Clearly it cannot be said they are 'selling their bodies'. They use their hands. Are they prostitutes? Many people like to use the term 'sex worker' because it is an appropriate term including women and men who do this.

Although they obviously aren't 'selling their bodies' the prohibitionists want to stamp it out. Just like erotic dancing. They are very unhappy in Sweden because there are now very large numbers of Thai massage establishments there. They don't know what to do about it. That's the problem with prohibition, you can't predict the results.

@JennyShaw You haven't answered any of my questions.

Do I think women wanking off men for money are selling sex? Yes.

You're not making much sense and seem to have cognitive dissonance. You can't separate a woman from her body. A man is placing his penis into her orifices and paying her in order to do that - therefore he is using her body.

A cleaner is selling a service, a sex worker is selling sex and therefore the use of her body.

Who has the power in the sale of sex?

In practical terms, you always have two women in the flat and only one man. You make it clear to each client that if he tries something they don't like he's not going to make it to the door. That's how they do it in Soho.

It has often been said in what kind of profession does anyone have to protect themselves? As Molly Smith and Juno Mac have written in their book, estate agents have to, social workers have to and nurses have to. Don't be alone with a man you haven't seen before unless you are quite certain of his identity.

Where is the evidence that 'many men buy sex precisely because it’s exploitative'? If by 'many men' you mean 1% of the total client population that might well be true. The way you deal with that is by not creating the conditions where they can get away with it. They do it because they know they can get away with it.

All of these posts read like a bizarre fantasy of “sex work” and Soho brothels that is clearly doing something important for you, @JennyShaw: but you seem completely tone deaf (or disingenuous) to the real issues.

This is what Dr Petra Boynton wrote in the BMJ.

The recent increase in sexually transmitted infections in the general population in the United Kingdom contrasts with a reduced prevalence in female sex work ers. And the prevalence of HIV infection in sex workers, mainly associated with injecting drug use, remains low— between 0% and 3.5%. Sex workers have a responsible approach to managing the risk of sexually transmitted infections, with a high prevalence of condom use for commercial vaginal sex (98%). The Home Office strategy shows inadequate understanding of risk, and the proposed changes could increase negative health outcomes, while limiting patients’ access.

She is using research by Day S, Ward H. Sex work, mobility and health in Europe. London: Kegan Paul, 2004

I find sex work / prostitution interesting.

It is, the oldest profession, after all.

Men want it. It’s a commodity than woman have. Therefore it should be in their power to use it for barter if that’s what they want to do.

it’s like an extension of, for example, a masseuse. People like going for massages, they like how it makes their body feel, they go in a pleasant, professional setting and they pay the masseuse.

If the roles were reversed, and women were desperate to meet strange men for sex, you bet men would have monetised this to their advantage and I imagine the situation would be very different, with the men making a lot of money, calling all the shots, and perhaps being seen as a worthwhile, valuable job. No shame.

So why is it different?

Just because of how the world is.

Violence towards women means the men are still very much in charge.

The way it is spoken about as being shameful and degrading, brings shame upon those women who have to do it.

The fact that due to the shame (and other factors) women often consider it when they have very little option.

physical danger, not just from man on women violence, but STIs, repeated UTIs, men being too rough, can all cause damage to a woman’s body.

I wonder if the move to things like Only Fans is shifting the mood at all - these women are physically safe, in control, and making money. And not having to pass any of that money onto men.

But I don’t know.

The biggest issue is the issue of murder, which is why I devoted so much time to that. I don't know how you can accuse me of indulging in a 'bizarre fantasy'. I know what happens in Soho. That's the reality.

If you want a bizarre fantasy then go to the Nordic Model Now! site where they believe in a book called Slave Girl by Sarah Forsyth. There are so many things wrong with it it's difficult to know where to start.

She claims to have been a prostitute in Amsterdam but she got the geography all wrong. There are 3 red light districts in Amsterdam not 2 as she says. The 2 she mentions don't adjoin each other to form one big RLD. It's just so obviously false.

I remember reading a piece of research into prostitutes in Amsterdam - you know, where its all legal and above board and 'choice' and 'safe'. The prostituted women there were found to have worst disassociation from their own bodies than child sex abuse victims.

I remember telling that to a nice progressive left middle aged man who was saying he thought prostitution was ok in some situations. The distinctive way his face absolutely fell when I told him this instantly told me that this is a man who used prostitutes.

I said that prostitutes don't sell their bodies or sell themselves. You are not defending the idea that they sell their bodies or themselves. Punters are using bodies, but then don't all employers do that?

Punters can't do anything that they want to a prostitute. A prostitute will tell her client what she will do and won't do. Most don't do anal sex. How much power she has will depend on the country she is living in and the legal situation. If she's the only woman in the flat because she's afraid of being arrested if she has another woman there then she doesn't have much power.

Why do you care so much what your BIL thinks is the question that jumps out at me. As long as your husband has more enlightened views it's not a big issue in your life. Simply change the subject or become busy elsewhere when your BIL starts on one of his liberal rants. He'll probably grow out of this or maybe he won't but you don't have to socialise with him if you don't enjoy his company. Or maybe you're trying too hard to impress him with your intellect and wit in which case think about why you're doing that.....

No, you said sex workers are selling a service, not their bodies. You are acting as though sex workers don't use their bodies for sex which makes no sense. They are selling the use of their bodies.

Women go into sex work because of drugs, coercion, trafficking, poverty and many have suffered childhood abuse. They are very vulnerable to abuse including rape and to answer my own question, the punter has the power not the woman.

She needs money and in many cases doesn't have the power to say no as she risks being forced. You've got no idea whatsoever if women won't do anal sex and I call bullshit because it's pretty ubiquitous.

Just as you have no idea whatsoever about the prevalence of STDs because any studies have been small and dependent on disclosure. Many sex workers are addicts and STDs including HIV will be high in that group.

STDs can be transmitted via skin and orally, without the use of a condom. A coerced woman won't have the power to insist on a condom

"A coerced woman won't have the power to insist on a condom"

Fun(or unfun) fact: Countries that criminalise sexwork (including the "Nordic Model") use condoms as evidence, this means both sexworkers and clients are far less likely to carry condoms in these countries.

This (amongst other reasons) is why complete decrim is advocated for by Amnesty Int, Human Rights Watch, the W.H.O., UNAIDs, HIVScotland and other human rights/health/anti-trafficking and sexworker orgs.

sex work is work firstly, and it’s work that will never end. my first thoughts always are that sex workers rights, safety should be strengthened. sex work is also so varied - dancers, porn performers, escorts, phone lines, cam / video, prostitution etc. I’ve known dancers and prostitutes, each who values their work but also had complicated and diverse feelings about their work. Women are exploited in so many employment arenas, the most extreme end in sex work - trafficking, violence, control, abuse. If sex work was better regulated, protected some of these risks would be minimized. It’s not illegal, only others (pimps/ madams) are illegal. It should not be seedy or taboo - pushing sex work into the shadows only benefits those who exploit sex work. I think the stats are in Uk 1/3 of all men have used a sex worker. The matter of your relative - personally id get him focused on backing and advocating for improved treatment and perception of sex workers. On other hand, I do feel the explosion of porn online and the normalization of sharing video: photo sexual content - the normalization of this in young people esp. is not a good thing at all. Whilst in adults can be thrilling and opening up new adventures, there’s something about the normalization of nudes/ sexual imagery that is taking away the value of our bodies and in young hands, it’s too much too early.