Good piece on sex work by Laurie Penny

[SolidGoldFrankensteinandmurgh]

Here. She puts it a bit more elegantly than I usually do...

Like I said Franz - you're concentrating on the high end. They are also ready and available for £20. I'm afraid.

Belle de Jour charged £300/hour apparently. I don't disbelieve her - but if you believe all prostitutes command those amounts? Well...that just goes to show how little you know.

And you're concentrating on a tiny proportion of sex workers in the UK.

I think you'll find what you call the "high end" is actually more or less typical. Prices can range from £100 an hour up to stupidly high prices.

The case of the Australian collective shows that trafficking actually undercuts their income. The massage parlours and brothels in the uk are becoming the norm because of trafficking and because of the tendency under capitalism for monopolisation where employers own the means and workers supply labour. Labour can now be supplied very cheaply because of illegal trafficking. This is fast undercutting high end escorting. One local paper here used to have numerous adverts for escort agencies, these have been replaced with individual adds for orientals and exotic individuals (usually pimped) and massage parlours and saunas.

I have had to pick up an individual elderly vulnerable mentally ill man with parkinsons on numerous occasions. He has been drugged, he has been locked in, credit card and cash stolen, a pimp threatened to smash him up unless he handed over £2000, he got through just under £30,000 in two years! I have had to turf out illegals from his home (trafficked women) I have had to deal with police, SW, GP, specialist, Psych team, make statements for court.........he was not purchasing high end escorts but Chinese trafficked women working in a brothel. At one stage I had the psych SW in the sitting room with the man who was at that time psychotic because of a drug OD whilst there were two girls trying to escape over the fence!

Trust me Franz there is nothing about prostitution and sex work that is OK. Go back and carefully read the link Sabrina gave "why men buy sex" it is clear from what these men say that they are having to do a huge amount of mental gymnastics in their own heads to even try to justify their behaviour. Men are being socialised to strip their own partners of their sexuality whilst imposing their own "male" standard of desired female sexuality upon women they know are acting. It leaves the men feeling empty, worthless and dissatisfied. "They are cold, nothing reciprocal, she seemed anxious" and then the dialectic " she enjoyed it, yes she liked me, no not scared of me" because they can not admit to themselves that they are "raping" a women. To do that would be to admit to themselves they are not a super stud who is desirable to women. The man I was dealing with actually said one day that he was so lonely but he knew the girls were repulsed by him. He also said he wanted to marry one of the girls and spare her the hell of having to be pimped.

Prices start from:

£10-15 - for 10mins with a street prostitute.

£20 - sex in a 'walk up' room in a red light district.

£40 - £100 is the fee you would pay a prostitute advertising in a phone box.

£50 - will get you 30mins in a brothel.

£80 is about the maximum amount a person will pay for full sex in a sauna.

£200 per hour - high class independent escort.

£3000 - entire day with high class independent escort.

£5000 - entire day with a high class courtesan (will probably only take bookings for 48hrs).

Source: The Independent.

S.M. Berg has published responses to frequently-asked questions about prostitution. For example: Isn't prostitution a choice? Don't a lot of women enjoy it? Porn and stripping aren't prostitution, right? Aren't you making personal moral judgments? Don't some people need sex but can't get it any other way? Isn't it better to get a lot of money prostituting than work a minimum wage McJob? And many others.

Read S.M. Berg's FAQ

www.genderberg.com/phpNuke/modules.php?name=FAQ&myfaq=yes&id_cat=2&categories=Prostitution+FAQf

Prostitution Harms Women Even if Indoors

Melissa Farley
2005

This article describes the social invisibility of indoor prostitution, points out the lack of evidence suggesting that indoor prostitution is "safe," and summarizes the testimony of women who reported violence in strip club prostitution and warnings about violence from groups promoting indoor prostitution.

Read full article (PDF format
www.prostitutionresearch.com/Farley%20Indoor%20Prostitution.pdf

@Sabrina, out of your list the only practices which are actually legal is the "high class" escort.

Streetwalkers may charge cheap prices but streetwalking is illegal in the UK (and enforced) and is the minority of all sex workers.

@Fartybeans, indoor sex workers are more able to screen clients than streetwalkers. They can read a client's feedback and choose whether to accept the booking or not.

What is feedback? are you referring to AW?

It's not 'my' list Frans, it's the Independent's list titled 'what the punters pay.' And yes, the uncomfortable truth is that men can buy sex for as little as £10-£15.

MiniTheMinx - feedback is a field report written by punters or prostitutes on sites like P***net. I think Frans is referring to it in the context of the prostitutes flagging up 'unsafe' or abusive' punters as a warning to the other women.

I think, however, it's far more indicative of the misogyny involved in prostitution to read the field reports written by the punters. These can be stomach-churningly detailed. Descriptions include the woman's breasts, arse, pubic hair, stomach (scars seem to be worthy of note), age/youthful appeal, a guess at dress size and general prettyness. And then of course, what they did. Really, worse than a cattle market summing up a prize cow. Then they get to recommend them. Or not.

Mind you, I did have to laugh at one that complained about a particular prostitute's attentiveness and enthusiasm about the whole thing: 'she even sent a text while I was doing her from behind'. (Good for her.)

"the uncomfortable truth is that men can buy sex for as little as £10-£15."

Like I said this is the minorty of cases and is already illegal and the police do enforce streetwalking laws.

Remember escorts can also leave feedback for the client. And if a client has feedback that says "timewaster" or "poor hygiene and refused to shower" then other escorts will see this and most likely won't accept a booking from him.

Who says high class escorts are the majority? Apart from you? Brothels and saunas are not as readily enforced by law as streetwalkers (although they should be). As OldLadyKnowsNothing stated way upthread in the case of brithels/saunas it is notoriously difficult to actually prove both profiteering and control in a criminal case. So that's plenty of transactions in going on in brothels and saunas - charging £50-£80 for sex.

Unfortunately, the police weren't enforcing the law on those nights that five prostitutes were taken from the street and murdered in Ipswich in 2006. As a result of those murders, a charity and memorial fund was founded by the Borough Council and a local paper called 'Somebody's daughter.' What is interesting about this charity is that it recognises the sheer desperation those prostitutes felt, that they went out to work on those nights despite police warning them to stay indoors, that there was a serial killer targeting prostitutes.

However, Somebody's Daughter doesn't campaign for the same sorts of things as the red umbrella campaign, or the turn off the blue light campaign, or all those other 'sex work activist sites.

Instead it states this:

" A board of Trustees oversees the distribution of funds raised for the benefit of vulnerable people with an Ipswich connection to:

1. Protect and preserve good health by promoting the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of substance misuse, drug and alcohol addiction and related health problems and provide counselling, information and support services to the users of drugs and other addictive substances and their families;

1. Relieve sickness and distress amongst people working as prostitutes, in particular but not exclusively those affected by substance misuse, by providing appropriate information, support and treatment;

1. Advance the education of the public in the misuse of drugs and other addictive substances. "

Because Ipswich recognises that it lost 5 of it's daughters to prostitution and drug addiction.

Wow, Frans, you are making prostitution sound so sensible and appealing, I've just said to my teenage daughter who is up late studying for her exams, "Darling, don't bother with all that nonsense, I've found a perfectly good career for you that will take far less effort!" She's thrilled. Can you point me in a similar direction for my teengage son, please?

Incidentally, Frans, I've been meaning to ask you about a post of yours upthread:

"75% of women involved in prostitution started as children."

This is from a 2004 study by Margaret Melrose.
The study was done on 47 girls who all worked on the street and were all under the age of 18. 75% of them were under the age of 14.
Doesn't sound so shocking when you know the whole story.

Doesn't sound so shocking? So you're not shocked that within a sample of 47 18yr old prostitutes, 75% of them started when they were under 14?

I've read and re-read that post - and I can't see that I have misunderstood that you are not shocked at young girls entering prostitution under the age of 14.

I genuinely hope I have misread it, and you can put me straight.

Brothels and saunas are not as readily enforced by law as streetwalkers (although they should be).

What do you want the police to do? Raid the premises and harrass the women working there and confiscate their earnings and condoms and then send the women on to find somewhere else to work? (this is what they call a "rescue")

So 5 sex workers in the UK have been killed while at work? I wonder how that compares to the number of police officers, cornershop staff or bar staff?

"75% of women involved in prostitution started as children."

Not exactly representative of anything when you consider no adults were included in the study where that figure came from!

to be more specific:

"75% of a biased cherry-picked selection of young girls involved in prostitution (all streetwalkers, none escorts) who are all under the age of 18 were under the age of 14."

But you're not shocked that in a sample of 47 18yr olds in a study entered prostitution at under 14 years old?

How desperate to normalise the sex industry do you have to be to just disregard them like that?

"Cherry picked"?? These are real people you're talking about. People you're happy to dismiss because some high class prostitutes feel empowered and make good money.

Frans, it may be easy for you to disregard the Ipswich victims, but it is not so easy for others to do so .

It may interest you to know that Home Office statistics put the mortality rate of prostitutes in London at 12 times the national average.

Sabrina, to be fair taxi drivers are the most at risk of being robbed and assaulted in the UK, add to that shop keepers regularly at risk of being robbed, how many CCTVs have you seen on telly of shop keepers being robbed with bats, guns etc?

Working as a police officer, in the army, as an embalmer, as someone who clears up the mess of a murder, all jobs that can affect the mental health, risk violence etc but people still do them

this is why i dont believe many women dont choose to prostitute from their homes etc, they earn a lot (My 'D' H was spending £120 a time on the woman and she was working for herself, so she pocketed all of it!)

just a point i was making as you seem to be ignoring that many 'egal approved jobs carry massive risks, many of them even more than escorts do, from what I've read

I did a huge research when I found out about DH and found a full site of escorts discussing things, pretty much all of them sounded completely happy and at ease with what they are doing, with lots of mentioning of most clients being described as 'lovely' and 'normal' (like my DH! :()

i find all this in relation to my marriage very hard to deal with xx

I'm not disregarding the Ipswich victims, but to be (sadly) realistic they were gonna be murdered no matter what the law was. If someone isn't going to care about the consequences of murder they aren't going to care about any other law.

Taxi drivers/shopkeepers/bank staff/anyone in a job where there is money to be stolen are all at a reasonable risk of danger. And I'm not even going to go into the military.

"They were gonna be murdered no matter what the law was"

Wow.

'Again, Frans - you're concentrating your attentions on the high class end of prostitution. You're supporting the 'rights' of the high class prostitutes at the expense of the others - the ones who are pimped, walking the streets, desperate and drug addicted. The streetwalkers, and many (if not most) of the brothelworkers are not making £150 hour. Especially not after they've paid a madam/pimp a cut of the earnings.

In fact, I remember a poster pointing out on another thread that a quick google confirmed you could get sex for £20 in London. That's a lot of clients in a hour if you're going to make £150/hour.'

Go onto adultwork, there is 1000s of women on there all charging £100 plus an hour, with absoloutely loads of normal looking women between £120 to £150!

theres the odd woman for £60 or £70 an hour that seems to be the cheapest, still wouldnt be poor living on that!

most are £90 plus an hour, how can you call someone on that poor?

street walking and brothels are already illegal, what else would you like to do?

you seem unable to believe that many women do actually want to do this, and are making well above the national average per hour to do so, why?

It always staggers me that people can dismiss the harm done to others in order to protect the money makers - but here's the proof -right here on this thread.

The WGs in Ipswich didn't die because of people pay for sex. They died because some people are murderers.

Katiesmummy, the ones who do it £10, £20 or even £40 a time are generally (but not exclusively) the ones who are either desperate or who are pimped, drug addicted and coerced.