AmnestyInternational Prostitution

[JuliaScurr]

Please tweet #Amnesty agm in support of Nordic Model
Pimps out in force

Christ on a bike. Women are lucky they can be prostitutes unlike poor menz. What a lot of tosh.

And how does a post that says (PUH-leese, as an autistic in the top 2% of ability range who is also 6 ft tall is that even likely?) end up with you being the most representative of all?

You don't know what experience women on here have either directly or from speaking and listening to women. The fact that you feel you can state what other people's experiences are or that they are making it up shows how little you understand ideology or representation.

I know far more about how charitable bonds work than you do

How do you come to that conclusion?

for some curious reason you think you know more than I do...I can't work out where you get that idea from.

Nope, you are the one who is trying to delegitimise others' views, not me. I am simply saying you speak only of your own experiences. My views are political and based on my conversations and listening to women in prostitution on both sides of the issue (including like, actual family). My ideology is certainly not "shut up" to anyone but thanks for clarifying that yours is.

I don't know LauraLee nor her history nor mental health. I don't dislike her but I dislike that she peddles a pimp-driven agenda that harms other women. Like Brooke Magnanti who thinks young women being lured into prostitution is a price worth paying for her having a career as a writer.

Choice is a very loaded concept however at it's most basic, there is no "choice" where there is no alternative.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist

Now, I use "ideological" when I mean "ideological" I have much stronger, ruder words for people who think their own ideological assumptions should override other people's reality to those other people's serious detriment. Then square it with their conscience by telling themselves lies about it. :)

I also use "representative" when I mean "representative".

If you knew anything at all about sex work you would know, as I do, why ASD and my height impair my ability to be representative more than most thing I can thing of.

Though, as a matter of interest ASD seems far more common among sex workers than the general population.

Let me reiterate what you already repeated then changed for some reason:

"I never tell myself I know something until I have experienced it or seen it with my own eyes."

When I say "understanding the issues" I mean looking straight at (and, of course listening to) the people actually involved in them in order to do so...but you probably don't, so you couldn't be expected to realise that.

The only basis for my suggestion that everyone should "pipe down" is that it is really obvious none of you know what you are talking about and yet you are planning to seriously harm other people, who can speak for themselves, at the behest of that ignorance.

I would really, seriously like to prevent that even if I had to die to do it.

FloraFox

You have made it rather clear that you have no idea how charitable bonds really work.

Laura Lee exactly fits the profile you specified and sometimes genuinely astounds me by the honesty and objectivity of the things she says.

But you do not like that because the truth does not suit you. I can't find you one single genuine sex worker who will tell you what you want to hear because what you want to hear is a lie.

When there is only one survival option and you take that one option away it is called homicide and not generally considered to be in the victims best interests.

When there is only one survival option and you take that one option away it is called homicide

Except it's not. So let's not get into an argument about who knows what.

Your posts are self-contradictory. It's all about you and your rights but yet you claim to be representing women in prostitution. Women are more fortunate than men to have an option of prostitution and yet it's all about survival and they will literally die if they can't do it. Every else should STFU yet feminists are silencing women in prostitution.

This is the UK and there are social programmes available, even though they might not be great. There is no human right to buy or sell sex and no-one is going to die if they can't sell sex.

WhentheRed FloraFox

Actually, people do die when they have no survival options left.

The papers are full of it, check it out.

Check out just one name "Stephanie Bottrill" do your little "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" routine for her...

A clerical error left her with literally no way to survive and no help available.

UK Welfare is well below subsistence in many categories. People get cut off for up to 26 weeks just to meet quota...

Can you live for 26 weeks with no money?

Social programmes that do more harm than good, at least in specific cases are no use when they do, because desperate people cannot afford more harm.

Thankfully those situations are not common, at least I hope they are not. You have never been in those situations and your response to them mocks everyone who has, as well as everyone in those situations now.

When things do get that desperate sex work is, literally the last possible option before hard crime or suicide (because once there are no options left at all to prolong it is unbearable self torture.)

Sex work is honest, sex work harms no one, but when it is the last option a person has if you take it away you kill that person.

Men do not have that last option so they commit crime and suicide more often than women...

Is that the "better world" of "true equality" you want to create?

Let me also point out that while there are plenty of women who sell sex as a last option on survival they are not the only women who choose to sell sex.

The women who sell sex to survive are simply the irrefutable baseline on why it is a gross abnegation of fundamental human rights to even consider persecuting sex work out of existence.

Stephanie Bottrill - what a shame she didn't have someone like you to tell her she was lucky enough to have prostitution as an option. Maybe if she had realised that she would be selling her body on the streets now and would be happy? Is that what you are saying? JFC, what next?

Just dipping in and wondering

Since when do men not have the option of working as prostitutes? What a bizarre statement.

Stephanie Bottrill is one haunting example of a woman who died because she ran out of ways to survive.

You are stating nobody dies just because their last option on survival is taken away, I gave her as one example of how cruelly untrue that is.

Maybe survival sexworkers should realise how much happier they would be if they spent days saying goodbye to everyone they loved and then gave it up and walked out under a lorry on the nearest motorway...is that what you are saying?

NiceTabard

Men do have the option of selling sex but with far less demand and, at this time, usually only in a market that goes against their gender orientation.

It is still many, many times harder for a man to make a living selling sex than a woman...

I also think it unlikely that the reason men end their own lives more often than women is because women can work as prostitutes and men can't (although obviously they can)

Suicide is a leading cause of death in young men - an age at which a career in prostitution would be really pretty viable.

I am unconvinced though that encouraging suicidal young men out to sell their orifices would result in the positive outcome that is being indicated

That is nothing like what I'm saying, unlike your post which directly correlates the death of one person for the need for prostitution to continue. More women in prostitution have died this year in the UK than women who have starved to death or killed themselves because their benefits were cut off so it doesn't seem like much of a survival option.

And yy NT of course men can prostitute themselves. There is a substantial market of male buyers.

WTF does gender orientation have to do with working as a prostitute? It has nothing to do with it.

You are aware that many men working in gay porn are straight, I assume?

It is not about attraction, preference or orientation what a bizarre and telling comment.

You seem uncomfortable with the idea of a straight man selling his orifices to other men, in order to make some desperately needed money. Yet for women to do this is not only AOK but actually totally essential.

Interesting.

Going to bed now

Just read the last couple of posts and thought, well, someone who claims that men don't have the option of working as prostitutes is a bit, I dunno, shortsighted? naive? Something anyway.

In at least one place where prostitution is legal, the legislation specifically defines it as sexual activity for the gratification of the buyer. The gratification or orientation of the seller is neither here nor there.

NiceTabard

I don't think it is as simple as that, but, at the end of the day I feel quite sure many young men take their lives in very similar positions to those where an equivalent young woman would go out and sell sex and probably get through.

The growing evidence for this has been chilling me all my life

Remember we are talking about very small proportions of the population here. Maybe 1 in 2000...or (I think) 0.05%

But one person tortured to suicide is one too many, especially when you are that person, and we should not even be thinking about making unnecessary legislation that will exacerbate that (thought sometimes, in other contexts I get the feeling the Tories do very little else :( )

.

Florafox

Please specify the number of sex workers who died in the last recorded year and then specify the number of women who have died as a direct result of benefit withdrawal (which will only be partial at best).

Thank you

NiceTabard

I do know a lot of gay porn stars and sex workers are straight, but it is much, much harder to handle selling sex against your gender orientation. I certainly could not do it at any price, even for a genuinely lovely (I really liked her) Dutch lady who often used to call me to ask.

I suppose it depend how polarised your orientation is on the spectrum to an extent.

But the most significant factor is the far smaller marker for male sex workers. So even if they can handle selling sex against their gender orientation there is no guarantee they will be able to find enough people to sell it to to make a reasonable living...

...and they have far higher rates of crime and suicide than women.

aformersexworker wrote - "given your attitude I can see how you might feel there is no big deal in driving a few "prostituted women" to suicide. You may even feel they are better off dead..."

You are just making wild guesses and assumptions.

I think prostitutes killing themselves is a big deal. I don't feel they are "better off dead".

As you claim to know so much about prostitutes and prostitution, I thought you may have been able to tell me how many are dying and under what circumstances and how that correlates with a country's legal attitude to prostitution. I'm surprised that you, in your support for prostitution, have no idea of the scale of prostitute death. I see now that I was misguided in hoping for an informative answer from you, having to settle for your "don't know". It seems that you don't know as much about prostitution and prostitutes as you probably like to think you do.

"But it will never be you, so why should you care about that?"

You are just guessing and assuming again. You don't know the personal circumstances of other posters.

Ok. This is just getting silly.

Selling sex is virtually a social good. Keeps people of the streets, gives them something to do.

People kill themselves for many tragic reasons. The fact that prostitution is illegal in the UK is not one of them.

Vesuvia

Please specify the number of sex workers who died in the last recorded year in Uk. Thank you.

ThinkAboutItTomorrow

Running out of ways to survive is definitely one, and perhaps the primary reason why people kill themselves.

When your last survival option is sex work and someone takes it away you are at serious risk of entering that state.

Incidentally, sex work is not illegal in the UK at present.

aformer you are being ridiculous. I'm not engaging with your derail. If you don't know that prostitution is dangerous for women and that the source of the danger is pimps and punters, I don't believe you were ever in prostitution.

Right so prostitution isn't illegal yet people kill themselves because it is not an option to sell sex?

I am also bowing out as this is too ridiculous. Happy to engage with anyone interested in lobbying amnesty about the wording of their policy document

FloraFox

So far I can only find one sex worker killed in the Uk in the past 12 months (though surely there must be at least one more?) as against a figure of 32 deaths a week after failing Atos assessments alone. Far from conclusive but it is not looking good for welfare safety over sexwork, is it?