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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

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Original poster

A charity to help survivors of rape and abuse but...

43 replies

CelticHeart · 07/07/2014 12:38

I just wondered what you girls think...

I was recently part of a charity that supports women who have survived rape and abuse but felt I had to leave.
I have survived rape and abusive relationships and I wanted to help others.
Within the group was a woman who worked as a sex chat line worker.
I felt that was the opposite to what we stood for and was almost making a mockery of what we had gone through. That it wasn't okay for a man to rape us but okay for us to tease and sexually taunt men who are complete strangers. Just degrading for women, that they are sex objects to be sold, etc, etc.
The woman concerned got angry at anyone not liking her business.
I was in contact with the founder of the charity but she said that as long as what the woman was doing wasn't harming anyone, she had to be professional and not do anything but support her.
I couldn't help but think that what the woman was doing was harming people; including other women and families!
I appreciated her position but to me it was almost like having an owner of a brewery in an Alcoholics Anonymous group!
Rather than cause problems, I left so that the woman could stay as she said she would leave and didn't want to meet up with anyone because I didn't agree with her business. She said sex sells, pure and simple.
We all know the reality of the world we live in but the whole point of being in such a group is to receive support and I thought to not think of sex in that way but hopefully as part of a healthy and loving relationship in which to move forward with our lives.
What do you think?

OP posts:

GarlicJulyKit · 07/07/2014 14:38

Oh, I've just noticed this was your first post on Mumsnet. Silly me.
Welcome

PlentyOfPubeGardens · 07/07/2014 14:39

Wow. OK then

What do you think?

I think you were right to leave the group.

Original poster

CelticHeart · 07/07/2014 14:41

Garlic...whatever...fraid you can't tell me what to do! I am not surprised women get treated so badly when people put so little emphasis on love. I am entitled to that opinion. Sorry!

OP posts:

Twinklestein · 07/07/2014 14:43

If you want to set up a support group that focuses on sex in loving relationships then do so.

You can't gate-crash an existing charity and dictate what can and can't be discussed and decide to excommunicate everyone in sex work. If you have such a problem with it then honestly a sex abuse charity is not for you.

OxfordBags · 07/07/2014 14:44

I'll tell you now, OP, if I was one of those women in the group and I found out that the organisation was banning women in the sex industry, or those who had been in it, from being in the group with me, I would not only kick up the most almighty fuss within that organisation, but I would probably slag you off to the press too.

You personally have an incredibly judgemental attitude and a mega healing of internalised misogyny too. I think it's a very good thing that you left, because you are simply not the right person to help those women. Who the hell are you to decide which women are worthy of help?! If you decide that someone in the sex industry is somehow morally inferior or less deserving of help, or even more damaged than the other women, to merit help, then you are judging her by the very same misogynist standards that have caused the problems in those women's lives that have brought them to this situation. Your last post was disgusting.

Thank god people like you don't get to decide who gets help or not. Be honest, it'd just be married, cisgendered, heterosexual, Christian women, and no doubt white and well-off, getting the help if it was up to you, wasn't it?

Mind you, I already know the Op is going to have internalised sexism when she refers to other women as girls

Twinklestein · 07/07/2014 14:46

I am not surprised women get treated so badly when people put so little emphasis on love

Now you're blaming victims, marvellous.

Assuming this isn't a mahoosive wind up.

OxfordBags · 07/07/2014 14:48

Bloody hell, you posted again before I posted the above. Let me get this straight - you wanted to help out at a charity for victims of sex abuse and yet you come out with statements like I am not surprised women get treated so badly when people put so little emphasis on love

Wow. Just... Wow. You can't be for real, I've known actual male misogynists with more insight and empathy for female victims of abuse than you.

Did you go into helping such an organisation with the intention of making vitims blame themselves (even more than they already WRONGLY do)?! It's attitudes like yours that get women treated so badly, not their sexual behaviour. All abuse is caused 100% by abusers.

You disgust me.

Original poster

CelticHeart · 07/07/2014 14:49

I think you all might have missed what this was about! Before I leave, even the founder doesn't like what she does...for God's sake. Everyone is entitled to have morals and principles. Women feel uncomfortable in the group because of what they have endured and they can't talk in front of her....I just don't think you understand and are all jumping on the impossible bandwagon of sex workers should be allowed everywhere. So enough of wasting time now. I will return to my feministic ideals while you can embrace casual relationships and porn! Thanks anyway, of course, I have been raped...real compassionate lot, aren't you?!

OP posts:

OxfordBags · 07/07/2014 14:50

I think that "... best I leave the classroom" is the most telling thing here

OxfordBags · 07/07/2014 14:53

I've been raped. It didn't make me internalise misogyny and judge other women, and see sex workers as lesser than me. Frankly, if rape made you feel the way you do, then you need the help yourself, not you dolong it out to whomever you spitefully and pathetically deem worthy.

And it's not an 'impossible bandwagon' to treat sex workers like other human beings, it's incredibly easy. I call it 'not being a cunt'.

Isetan · 07/07/2014 14:54

If this woman is a survivor of sexual abuse than she qualifies to be part of the group, attempting to exclude her is neither charitable or supportive. I get where your comng from but as long as she's not promoting her sex chat work at the charity, I think it would be wrong to deny her support for ideological reasons.

Twinklestein · 07/07/2014 14:58

There's nothing feminist about treating sex workers like shit, you're lining yourself up with punters in your contempt of them. Nothing could be more patriarchal & misogynist.

GarlicJulyKit · 07/07/2014 15:02

Woman A: "I work on a sex chatline"
CelticHeart: "Golly, you deserve to be abused! Maybe even raped!"

If you are a woman, who has been raped, your viewpoint is very self-hating and I hope you'll continue to recover, gaining compassion in the process.

GenuinelyMaryMacguire · 07/07/2014 15:08

'girls'?

I've worked on sex chat lines (admittedly, not for long). I enjoyed the work. I did it when I needed the money but when it became clear it wouldn't solve my financial problems, I stopped. It was anonymous, no-one could see me or identify me from the conversations. My daughter and most of my acquaintances know about it. The only one who ever objected was a man who loved me - but his lifestyle was more promiscuous than mine could ever be so I took his objections with a pinch of salt.

The women on the phones talk, and mainly listen, to men. I'd have men talking for an hour or more about their lives and their problems, and their loneliness, as well as those who wanted a five minute talk-through a wank and then off they go. I certainly didn't 'tease' or 'sexually taunt'. I shared in a fantasy with another human being, that's all. Nothing was said to me that suggested any kind of abuse, nor did I suggest abuse to any caller.

I don't think its harmful. Its simply an uncomplicated human contact or a release for tension.

I'm fascinated that you think I've 'done something that degrades women', OP. I was paying the bills, as a single mum with a child in independent school. I didn't find that degrading and I still don't. And as for women in general, it had nothing to do with them at all.

Anniegetyourgun · 07/07/2014 15:30

I'm a terrible prude m'self, but nobody "deserves" sexual abuse. If someone sells it for a living, then like anything else, they should be paid the market rate for it. The goods are on offer as a transaction, and they don't deserve to be attacked any more than a shopkeeper is asking to have their till robbed by a masked gunman. It's sadly an occupational hazard, more so in that particular line of work, but should be deplored just as any other attack upon any other person going about their lawful business should be deplored. (I say lawful - I understand prostitution is not in itself against the law in the UK, but soliciting is, is that right? I'm quite sure there's no law against sex chat lines. And everyone's got to make a living somehow, whether they are putting themselves through college or whatever else the OP deems is a respectable reason . We're all "in it for the cash", whatever "it" might be.)

This is the natural progression of that "if I'm a good girl and don't do x and y I am safe" coin, innit. OK, that theory was busted, but as it has to be somebody's fault, it's all the bad girls stirring those men up who are to blame. Men, in this context, defined as poor helpless wild things led by their uncontrollable willies.

Oh, and don't let's forget the statistic that many more women are raped within a one-to-one relationship (that presumably they believed was loving) than dragged off into the bushes by a stranger... so in order to reduce the risk of sexual assault, maybe we should all stay determinedly single!

Dirtybadger · 07/07/2014 15:33

I'm curious as to what a woman like me is to do. I am not interested in a long term relationship. I should become celibate? I haven't earned the right to enjoy/have sex, because I haven't committed to someone? Assuming that there are men (and women) out there who feel the same, and who I connect with...why on earth shouldn't we have sex? What part of that is immoral? At what point do such consensual relationships become "wrong"?

Bizarre.

Anniegetyourgun · 07/07/2014 15:40

Dirtybadger, I think the idea is that you do whatever you want to do, but don't expect any sympathy if you are assaulted. At least not from any organisation the OP is involved with.

GuybrushThreepwoodMP · 07/07/2014 16:54

Wow. What a horrible person you turned out to be OP. That is a personal opinion. It's probably also a universal one.
Stay the fuck away from that group. You and your 'morals and principles' as you call them will do a lot of harm to those members.
Take a good fucking look at yourself in the mirror. Seriously. I am absolutely disgusted with what you've said.

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