Calling all prostitutes and former prostitutes on MN, as there seem to be a few around right now...

[Aitch]

I'm curious to know how it makes you feel to see threads on here from wives and girlfriends etc when they discover that their husbands etc have been visiting prostitutes? even if you are happy in your own jobs (and i hope to god you are somehow, because the alternative is intolerable), how does it feel to be confronted with the downside of your work on these pages?

(i think it goes without saying that the men are culpable in this scenario, but am looking for some insight into how your work squares with sisterhood etc).

i didn't say that, amber, not by a looooong shot. you have missed my point entirely.

I don't think I was actually rude in asking Manda about her childrens' father, incredibly nosey and personal yes, but rude?
It was a fair question imho, perhaps I should have said "if you were prostituting yourself when having your children how can you be sure?".

For someone who sells her body to be offended by my question is a bit rich.

i thought it was rude. it's pretty much about the rudest thing you can say to someone, tbh.

although of course with street workers and trafficked prostitutes, it's often the case that they cannot identify the fathers of their children because they don't have the luxury of being able to take a pre-maternity leave.

Aitch, you said, above...

"WHY can't men just be pleasant enough to women to make us want to sleep with them?... we've heard a lot about shy men, and disabled men... ... neither of these things is a barrier to getting laid if the person is actually PLEASANT. that a person would pay for a GFE because he is too lazy to cultivate a friendship with a girl is really depressing, tbh."

Is that not the same as suggesting that the reason disabled men may end up having to pay for sex is because they are too lazy to be nice?

I know many hundreds of disabled people, and most of them are in lovely relationships, but some absolutely struggle to find anyone who is interested - precisely because of their disability and how it affects their interpersonal skills etc. A life of "clinically efficient touch" is all that is there for some of us - brisk, efficient bright "there you are Mr Bloggins - that's done your bed bath for you". Just to have the chance to be with someone and touch them and be touched for fun/enjoyment...that's a dream that some simply do not have access to.

(and I'm autistic, in case people are wondering what my reason for raising this is)

it is a dream, when you are paying someone their touch is not any more intimate than if they were giving a bedbath. i don't think that an autistic guy is any more right to pay a woman to come inside her than an NT guy, tbh.

oh and i know plenty of people who are very nice and yet struggle to find someone with whom to have a relationship. i am not, however, advising them to rent someone's vagina in the meantime.

I think there's a difference between touch and emotion, though, aitch. Sensual/sexual touch is way different from a bedbath, and that's what people may pay for. It doesn't mean they think it's love, or that they expect it's love.

"Is that not the same as suggesting that the reason disabled men may end up having to pay for sex is because they are too lazy to be nice?"

sorry, just noticed that. no. it's not the same. you're reading two separate things as one. the GFE is something that manda was talking about earlier, in fact the whole para is about men in general rather than disabled men. my point about disabled men is that it is rather condescending and limiting to assume that they will not be able to form relationships because they are disabled, when we know this not to be true.

have a massage then, amberlight. a massage. not happy ending.

Aitch,for some people with a disability, it is impossible to form meaningful relationships. I've very carefully not said "all disabled people" anywhere. I've also just said that I know plenty of disabled people who are in good relationships, including a fair number of people with autism like me. But for some, it doesn't happen. It could be that you mean that other people on the thread have been condescending, though.

What a good idea though -I'll suggest the massage to hubby straight away

In the Observer 2008 sex poll, a sample of 1,044 UK adults aged 16-plus were interviewed in September 2008. One of the questions they were asked was: Have you ever had sex with someone with a physical disability?

• 70% said "No, and I don't think I would."

Prejudice therefore also plays a very large part in the chances of disabled people forming a relationship. It's hard enough without 7 out of every 10 people not being interested in the first place.

Is paid-for sex an answer? I'm not sure, (especially since my own religious values say that sex should be within a loving caring long-term relationship) but I can understand the reasoning.

Good god, I am stunned that people will ask Manda if she is 100% sure her kids are her husbands

She is clear that she does not have unprotected sex, she is clear that she was not working while starting a family.

Would it be similarly ok to ask my husbands ex wife, a single parents of 5, if she has a clue who is the father of four of her kids? That the state pays for, not her? That she leaves with various short term boyfriends while she goes out on the piss, usually coming back pregnant again, to random strangers?

I just cannot believe the vitriol directed here at a woman working legally and paying tax. There is no excuse for such rudeness imo.

i can understand the reasoning, i just find it flawed.

actually, that question is a load of cack, thinking about it. i'd be interested to know, for example, how many of the individuals polled actually knew any disabled people, or what they considered disabled. i have a family member who is partially sighted, so disabled, but gosh he has not had any issues with finding females to sleep with.

making sure disabled people are in our mainstream is a big task facing all of us as a society, teaching 16 year olds that avoiding disabled people is stupid and cruel, well they are laudable aims. assuming that can never happen and sending the disabled person to a prostitute is not solving the problem there, it's just exacerbating another one.

ps enjoy our massage.

your!

You can teach people to treat others respectable regardless of their disability but you can't make them find sexual attraction to them. That's one thing that can't be forced, some people are able to see things they like and attraction builds from there but obviously not all like that and neither can you make people think like that.

Respectably

i don't understand your post, sal. because some people might not fancy a disabled person (and i mean, really, what a mahoosive generalising term that is when you consider the people it refers to), we should... what? encourage the person to pay for sex with someone who definitely doesn't fancy them and is only in it for the money?

Mandamumu wrote - "I don't mind answering questions as long as they are not just a hunt for ammunition to attack me with later."

This is the stigma of prostitution in action. I really wish it wasn't, but it does seem to come with the territory.

Great massage!

I don't think there's any question of "sending" a disabled person to a prostitute. I think we choose for ourselves whether to go to one or not? If the aim is to have sex and enjoy how that feels, in exchange for money, a transaction between two consenting adults, that aim is achieved.

Speaking personally, I'm in favour of sexual therapy/training being available that can show some people with a disability how best to make love to someone, so that we can choose to build their confidence in that respect. I'd have appreciated that sort of service myself.

God, this thread.

I haven't read all of it, as it's massive. But I can't understand why people are being so horrible to prostitutes.

I don't like prostitution, or the idea that men know they can pay a woman to have sex with them. But I don't really see that as being a prostitute's fault. Even if we did live in some kind of utopia where actual prostitution didn't exist I think men would still feel they could 'buy' women. In my experience, men believe that if they are halfway nice to you, buy you dinner, buy you drinks, buy you nice things, then you should have sex with them and if you decide not to you are a 'prick tease'. These men aren't always the ones who use prostitutes. And there are many women who view men's wealth as a positive factor in whether or not they will go out with them or marry them. So the principle of paying for sex is spread so far throughout society that eliminating the technical handing over of cash for sex isn't going to change anything.

As for blaming the prostitute for the breakdown of a marriage because the man has been to a prostitute, that just makes no sense. He has chosen to do that. If there were no prostitutes, he would probably just go to a club and pick up a drunk girl to have sex with - it's not that difficult. The wife has already lost out by being married to the kind of man who would pay for sex, regardless of whether he actually manages to do it.

I really wish women wouldn't become prostitutes, because it can never be completely safe for them, and it's bad for women as a whole politically. But I'm not going to be horrible to an individual about it. So many of these posts just seem to be blaming someone else for the way some men are Prostitutes do facilitate that, but they don't cause it.

So many people on here seem to be generalising massively. If you've never been a prostitute then how do you actually know what it's like and what the men are like? You're just guessing based on your own thoughts about sex. Just because you feel that sex is this massively spiritual, private experience doesn't mean it actually is. I personally feel that every time I have sex with someone they take a little piece of me, therefore I only sleep with people for whom I am happy to have a little piece of me (which is why I've only slept with 2 people). But that's just what I feel and how I behave; I can see other people's points of view on it and I really can't be arsed to get worked up about other people's sex lives (thinking of the prostitutes themselves here, not the clients).