Guardian article on sex workers and disabled people

[fllowtheyellowbrickroad]

m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/10/sex-workers-disabled-people

Has this already been done? Will put together something literate soon. An currently choking and splitting too much.

If she didn't intend to say that all men are rapists then its a great pity she said stuff like this

'under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman'

It is becoming less of a mystery to me why so many women refuse to identify as 'feminist'.

Dworkin isn't the only prominent feminist in history and it isn't necessary to subscribe to everything she allegedly said to speak up if you think she has been misrepresented. What with her no longer being around'n'all.

Refusing to identify as a feminist because of her is like saying you will never like Germans because of Hitler.

OK, let's look at it this way - if you pay a musician to perform for you, does that inevitably put you in a position of power over the musician? Sure, you could perhaps withold the fee if you don't like the tune, but the musician, as a free agent, could equally decide that you are rude, or that the tune you request is one the musician doesn't want to play, therefore the musician declines the gig. That's how the relationship between sex worker and client should be - the sex worker respected for providing a valuable and desirable service, and also having the right to refuse a rude client or one who wants services the sex worker does not offer.

We're a long way off reaching that level but we won't get there any quicker by stigmatizing sex work:if people wanted to set up a network of 'hands on sex therapists', for instance, some people would insist it was 'prostitution' because someone might touch someone else's genitalia eek yuk aargh!and should be forbidden even when the therapists were all consenting and enthusiastic about the job.

I find equating sex with music a more useful comparison than comparing sex with food/shelter/water: not an actual need but something that matters a great deal to a great many people. Sure, everyone can live without music, and some people really wouldn't notice if music disappeared from their own lives, but others would feel utterly bereft without it.

Dworkin has been dead for quite some time.

As have many feminist writers I admire.

I also rather like that John Donne bloke - he's both dead and not a feminist.

Leaving aside paraphrases of people who can't speak for themselves: SGB, yes, if you employ someone, you are in a position of power over them. This is why we have all sorts of laws to try to give some power back to employees. It still doesn't always work well.

If your 'musician' is a person desperate for money and threatened, they will not have a great deal of power.

To say this isn't equating sex and music, as they are quite different - the list of musically-transmitted diseases is an indicator here - but, insofar as the person with the money has the power, yes, they are the same. And yes, this doesn't bode well for the person who's being exploited.

Why on earth would we suddenly decide exploitation is ok if it's music?

To an extent, LRD, musicians sometimes do get threatened and exploited, or they certainly used to a few decades back - between the 'casting couch' and the type of contracts that somehow gave all the monetary rights to the publisher and sod all to the musician. However, most people would agree that this should be dealt with by awarding more rights and protections to musicians, not by insisting that it's wrong to hire them.

I'm sure musicians sometimes do get threatened.

I am not pretty sure it is not quite the same routine level of trauma that a woman who is forced into prostititon faces.

I can see that if we could all believe all prostitutes were happy, it'd be lovely and we could all buy into another bit of profit-making. I do see that.

I just don't think that you can sensibly compare the level of abuse your average musician gets with the level of abuse your average prostitute gets.

If your plan is to legitimize prostitution, where do you plan to get the money to clamp down on 'fake' prostitutes - ie., women forced into it, ie., many women working as prostitutes today? What funds the financing of this business? Do you honestly think people will pay for 'ethical hookers' and won't be tempted by the cheap, illegal, abusive option? Like they are with everything else? What is it about sex that you believe is so different from everything else, that in your ideal world no-one would ever exploit it, yet it would function like a business?

Not sure about the musicians vs selling sex either.

I'm thinking about seeing if my DD1 (6) wants to learn an instrument soon
Maybe she would go on to play for other people
maybe she would join an orchestra
Some young children produce music professionally / for money

Analogy kind of falls down there. For the majority of people (and for a vast number of reasons) sex is different to other activities / hobbies / jobs.

Sure in an ideal world every person selling sex would be doing through for the love of the job, through genuine choice and freedom to choose clients etc etc but we're just so so very far from there. I think we need to sort out society's issues with sex / inequality and so on and concentrate on helping women (girls, men and boys) who are working in the sex trade not through genuine choice before thinking about what the rules might be in some idyllic situation which we are simply a million miles from.

On choosing clients etc saw this on BBC the other day:

here

"A report says that sex workers in Westminster are at greater risk of violence because of a fall in demand and an increase in those selling sex.

The study by Westminster Council shows the recession has led sex workers to cut their prices, accept more clients and take greater risks."

Market forces for you.

TBH, even if for you sex is the same kind of hobby as playing the cello, the analogy doesn't work. You have to try very, very hard to get an STD playing cello and you have to try even harder to be told you must play, against your will, when you're flat broke.

Obviously it'd be nice if everyone who was desperate for money was pondering whether or not to make a living with a little work in a jazz trio, but to me the differences seem quite stark!

I have to admit I did feel slightly soiled when singing Rule Britannia with my choir at the institute of tax accountants' annual dinner. And it's true that we did it for the money, and had to smile and look keen while not actually feeling it.

But I really think I would have felt much more soiled by being penetrated by one of the tax accountants for money. And I doubt I'm alone here.

Accountants do God's work and ensure we have the funds to pay disability benefits to the poor. We are so useless in this country as we so often knock what is good.

Gosh the number of mumsnetters who provide sex to accountant husbands some on £1m a year who provide sex to their husbands in return for a nice house. There are transactions all over the place where sex is at the core which is why women the world over try to marry up, men who earn more and families pay dowries to take girls off their hands, sadly. Only when mumsnetters stop being housewives and earn proper livings and exceed their husbands will be get over these problems of women as property who provide domestic service and look after men in return for their allowance and shoes in the hope he will not run off with a younger model who provides better sex. I don't see why allowing women to sell what is just about the only thing of value many have to sell is any worse than many a bargain based marriage.

Xenia does have a bit of a point: the only real difference between an unequal marriage and taking up sex work is that, in the marriage, you might only have one client but you are that client's property 24/7: if you are a sex worker (excepting trafficked people), you have lots of different clients but you get to do the job and go home at the end of the working day/night.

And another link that's relevant to this thread.

I might have to go and post "accountants do God's work" on the MN quotes thread (and call my uncle the accountant to tell him the Good News)

Pffft that privilege checklist is that same old guff about it being the fault of nasty feminists and stigma, that prostitution isn't nearly as wonderful as it could be.

I am not arsed about some future possible utopia where the sex industry is fluffy and not at all harmful. In this world, it is a hideously exploitative industry, regardless of whether it is legalised/decriminalised/whatever, hence there are still abuses occurring in Nevada and Amsterdam to give just two examples.

By supporting the sex industry, the grotesque sense or entitlement many men feel towards women is supported and encouraged. People also seem to forget that the sex industry is exactly that - an industry, one that wants to grow ever bigger, ever popular and the way to do that is to normalise it mock and undermine any dissent towards it.

You only have to look at shite like the Turn Off Blue Light campaign (started by a pimp), to look at how pernicious this thinking is: www.turnoffthebluelight.ie/about/poster-campaign/ especially disgusting, considering we're in a recession, with women bearing the brunt of financial pressures. How great it would be for pimps if they had more women working for them

Note of course, that there's no equivalent campaign telling men that being a rent boy is a nice little earner. Funny that.

Zarrk - you are doing yourself no favours.

So being anti-prostitution is hysterical and crazy?

No. You can roll up pretending to be all about agency and whatever, but I can see what you are really about.

Still haven't had an answer to my plea for stats re "it's more likely than not", that a prostitute will be trafficked/pimped/whatever.

Two comprehensive police campaigns, which raided every known brothel in the UK, and cost millions of pounds, failed to find these women/children.

Anyone? Any recent, Uk-based, stats at all? Maybe a peer-reviewed and published report?

Ok, so I should disregard what Dworkin says because a) it was all a long time ago and b) she is dead and can't argue with me or c) despite the unambiguous clarity of her words, that is not actually what she meant?

So feminists who are alive and can speak for yourselves, is this your view? Are your sons all inevitably the rapists or exploiters of other women?

I assume you will say of course not - but for me this is another example of the frustrating difficulties of these debates. As LL said, it all becomes polarised so quickly.

What are the statistics to prove the assertion it is 'more likely than not' a prostitute has been trafficked? And how likely is it that any woman trained as a therapist would be providing sex because she was coerced to do so?

And if I was able to find a man prepared to have sex with me for money, do your objections to paid for sex still apply for to him? Am I then the rapist and the exploiter or does this no longer apply as he might be penetrating me?