privilege and prostitution

[ezinma]

Appearing in my social media today is one of those sharp and sassy thoughts for the day that I’m invited to approve by sharing. Where better to share it than here:

So, you are against prostitution. But you're an attractive person with a boyfriend. Who I assume you have sex with. That gives you privilege. Some people aren't so lucky. The only way they can get laid is by paying for it. Why do you think you have the right to experience one of life's fundamental experiences and others don't?

It’s from tumblr so we ought to make some allowances. Let’s, if we may, overlook the fact that I am a middle-aged frump with a civil partner; the debatable contention that sex, in and of itself, is one of life’s fundamental experiences; the erasure of women who aren’t “lucky” enough to have a boyfriend and whose right to A Fundamental Experience presumably requires them to seduce a partner using skills that cannot be withdrawn from a bank machine; and the regrettable (though now unavoidable) misuse of ‘privilege’ to refer to any old scenario where one group of people has a little bit more access to something than another group does. (Have I missed anything?)

What remains is the daring suggestion that a woman might be against prostitution because she is attractive. Since it's already well established that we fat old frumps are against prostitution — no glamorous john would waste his beer money on buying our flabby arses, and we are bitter about it! — then I’m left with only one conclusion: a woman’s attractiveness has no influence on her opinions about prostitution.

A lightbulb moment for me. Thanks, tumblr.

I cannot for the life of me think of why a man who is not an active punter would go to the effort of tracking down the type of information they post here. The men I know who are in favour of legalisation or decriminalisation are, at best, half-hearted in their views and will waffle about either harm reduction or people's rights in their own bodies but they do listen to the arguments and either agree somewhat, say it's all too complicated and/or get bored. I know one guy who is very vocal about "sex workers' rights" but he lives with a woman who is a "sex worker activist" which must play a part.

I'm now at the stage that any man who is interested in prostitution issues to the extent that he uses the go-to punter arguments (Melissa Farley rape jokes, Rachel Moran is a liar, Operation Pentameter, Petite Jasmine etc.) has to be a punter. The only reason to be so invested in this issue and also so black and white on it is if you are trying to justify your own behaviour.

I really don't want to get drawn into this again, the last time this topic came up and I engaged it was depressing as all hell. Which even as insulated as I am from from this side of life makes me genuinely fear for people for whom this is their lived reality.

Apologies I only skimmed this thread so I am sure I missed some salient points, but I caught the bit up thread on trafficking, and I would like to challenge the way we legally define it. There ARE plenty of women who make the choice to be sex workers and migrate to countries like ours (UK), and in order to break into the industry have to put up with agencies and brothels who take what is my view a quite frankly obscene percentage.

As a result of this, this isn't defined as trafficking so of course when raids happen they don't find hordes of women whom have been legally defined as trafficked as there is an element of choice, but the fact remains that people who enter into it find their boundaries pushed in terms of how many people they see and what services they have to offer. As the money they believe they can make turns out to be an illusion.

I get the safety issue of two independent sex workers teaming up to provide one another with added security which all sounds very well on paper, but in the same breath you make it a million times easier for people to exploit the vulnerable too. I believe that sex workers themselves shouldn't be criminalised, but those who seek to exploit them and market sex on a mass scale by exploiting those who would choose to sell it often gets obscured. This SHOULD be in my opinion a key area to look at in terms of legislation and protection.

I confess I don't understand the economics of it, but an escort agency running a website and maybe hiring a handful of people to man a phone line neither of which are particularly expensive to setup and maintain doesn't in my view justify the amount they take off what amounts to other people's work.

As a parting shot when people talk about this magical sexual experience that nobody should be robbed of experiencing, I think we're confusing sex and intimacy here. What I am seeing being described often is intimacy. You can have intimacy without sex, and you can have sex without intimacy. You can of course also have both. Whilst it is possible to buy sex I think it is by definition impossible to buy intimacy, sure you can buy the illusion of it and if you are willing to do the mental gymnastics required you can kid yourself into thinking you have it, but I think most people deep down know the truth.

Agree with you about the slippery definition of trafficking, Dervel. And about ersatz intimacy. Many patients experience the same ambivalence in their relationship with a therapist, where there is emotional investment on one side and mere professional interest on the other. It often produces shame, anger and violence.

I too have just skim read a few points but I felt some were worth commenting on.

A poster a few pages back said something about asking what prostitutes want to happen regarding the law, and I know I've said this many times before but the only thing I want is safety and the law which stops more than one sex worker working from a house is ridiculous and dangerous.

I agree with others who have said that punters are punters because they choose to be punters. Most, if not all, the punters I see are married, middle aged men who don't bother to remove their wedding ring or even take calls off their wife while sat on the bed. Not all of them are attractive but they do have another option to have a sex life. The reality is they want a young 20 something, white British girl who is a size 8 with long brown hair and blue eyes. They know they would never be able to pull someone who ticks all those boxes, and as we live in such a consumer society, they go out and pay for exactly what they want. The men want it so the women sell it.

You can't buy intimacy and most of them don't want the intimacy, they just want the sex, to act out fantasies and to do stuff their wives won't do (I hear the last phrase pretty much every day). For those who want an intimate experience, it can be replicated. The GFE (girl-friend experience) is the closest you'll get, of course it's all an act but they can pretend that the girl is into them.

Trafficking is awful, and I don't know how the police can crack down on it. I can only hope that any punter who saw a trafficked girl would report it, but I doubt that he would due to the legalities of it all (am I right to think he could be prosecuted for seeing a trafficked person?).

I don't think anyone has a right to sex. I can understand how frustrating it may be to be stuck in a sexless marriage for years but from my experiences the men I see don't fall into that category (I know this because I will hear how their wife is x amount of weeks pregnant and gone off sex, or just had a baby and says they are too tired etc.) I do feel bad for their wives and almost feel like telling them to stop seeing prostitutes and spend time and pay attention to their other half, it'd probably fall on deaf ears though.

Sorry for the rant guys, it's late and I'm finally off to bed, night!

That original quote doesn't make sense because it's overwhelmingly men who buy people (women). So the issue of "the only way they can get laid is by paying for it" basically applies to men. Which is why it's strange that the author of the quote appears to be addressing young women with boyfriends.
The prostitute is unlikely to find the punter attractive, so we're not even really talking about "sex" in a boyfriend/girlfriend scenario. Just the buying of a body by a privileged male with more income than the woman he's purchasing.

I also don't think people should confuse themselves over the reasons that men buy "sex". It most likely has nothing to do with a man's attractiveness, or lack of, and everything to do with entitlement and power. In other words, attractive men often buy prostitutes whereas other men, not so attractive, may choose not to.

Exactly it's not about poor unattractive men who can't get a real relationship. Here is a good example - this young man is not very ugly and could easily get into bed with any of his countless adoring fans:
www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/03/justin-bieber-brothel_n_4208424.html
It's about seeing others/women as things (not people) that you should be able to use if/how you want. Sociopath thinking, real or learned.
That it's the root of the problem.