Is sex working ever 'acceptable'

[neverthebride]

Hi everyone, this is my first post on this board so please be gentle (!) but I'd really appreciate some views.

I have a friend who is a sex worker. Very 'exclusive' kind of thing, earns a lot of money etc. I've known her for a long time but it's only recently that she's confided in me that that's how she earns her living.

I've known several sex workers in the past (I work in MH) and those people have been at the 'street level' and were invariably drug addicts and/or very damaged individuals who were abused in so many ways in their personal lives and as sex workers and would not have been sex workers if they felt they had other options.

My friend has apparently been doing sex work for a long time. She is highly educated, has no history of abuse in her life and seems to have made an informed choice to go into sex work as a 'business'. Her clients are big-spenders and she works in an environment where all possible safety precautions are taken. She does not do anything that she doesn't want to do and has made an enormous amount of money (which she admits she is 'addicted to').

I'm really torn on this issue which I didn't think I would be!. On one hand,I think HER experience might be positive but it's perpetuating the idea that sex and bodies are for sale and I absolutely disagree with that and know that the overwhelming experience of sex workers is just horrific.

On the other hand, I think she's an adult woman who's educated and informed and who am I (or anyone else for that matter) to say that she can't make the decision about what she does with her own body?.

I won't not be her friend because of her choices but I feel so uncomfortable with either of my thought processes. Help!

What is blatently obvious?

You have completely misinterpreted that sentence, 22honey. I care about women being groomed and trafficked into the sex industry, because it shouldn't happen. And what happened to you, at the age of 12, shouldn't have happened. I don't want it to happen to my daughter, or anyone else's daughter.

However, this sentence;

Most of the clients I found were married middle class and tbh sometimes it makes me sad their better life circumstances and earning potential means they can buy the right to put their body parts in women who are usually much much younger and poorer than them. I was 18-21 years old and regularly had sex with 50 year old well off married fathers. It was strange I must say, I dont think I have been out long enough to fully regulate my feelings on it all.

sums up my problem with prostitution quite well. It makes me sad that that happens too.

sgb I think "time and skills" is delusional. They are buying access to bodies, and orifices in particular.

In the case of BDSM/pro-domme sex workers it is their expertise the client is paying for. It's true in some other cases as well.
Though what seems to need repeating again and again is that not all sex workers are the same. They are not a homogenous mass. They have different stories, different needs, different requirements and while it's vital to help those who want to get away from abusive situations, it's equally important to leave the willing ones alone and stop raiding them, telling lies about them, shitting down their bank accounts and all the rest of it.

ITA when

I don't see any importance in leaving the willing ones alone and it's certainly no-where near equally important as helping people in abusive situations. I don't raid people or tell lies about them and I certainly don't shit in their bank accounts. Are you suggesting feminists are doing these things sgb ?

22honey, although I am fairly sure you didn't mean it that way, your explanatory post encapsulates all the reasons why I believe the buying of sexual services should be a criminal act

SGB being willing just isn't enough though, is it ?

someone like 22honey was "willing" at the time but I fail to see how you could justify all those men exploiting that "willingness"

and you are justifying it

I agree AF. It's hard to get my head around people who read accounts of women who have exited, like 22 , and conclude "the important thing here is that she was able to exercise her agency".

Anyone whose line of work involves dealing with the public is at some degree of risk, whether that's of robbery or assault. Many people in many lines of work are exploited, underpaid, bullied by management, obliged to put up with unsafe or at least distasteful working conditions. Yet as long as their job doesn't involve sex, activism is directed at making the working conditions safer, organising the workers for better rights, etc.

What seems to lie at the bottom of a lot of abolitionist argument is the idea that men should want less sex and that they should be prevented from having as much sex as they want, because sexual satisfaction should be difficult to obtain.

Men that will pay to fuck women who don't actually want to fuck them (only about 10% of the population of men) are suffering from the Madonna/Whore complex. Some women are 'pure' - their wives, mothers, sisters/daughters. Some are not: "prostitutes", "loose women," "slags". These men subscribe to the view that women are not their sexual equals, they are just people to get sex from. They have no sexual needs of their own, sex is not an equal-participation activity at all for them. It's all about their own gratification.

You sound as though you're talking to a two year old and I tend to disregard condescension.....I'm 52 years old with over twenty years experience of prostitution. (Sorry to bugger up the 'average age of entry' stats!)

What seems to lie at the bottom of a lot of abolitionist argument is the idea that men should want less sex and that they should be prevented from having as much sex as they want, because sexual satisfaction should be difficult to obtain.

This is bollocks. I highly doubt that anyone on FWR believes this.

Men can have as much sex as they want, just as women can. What they can't have is as much porn-sex as they want with good looking women 20 years younger than them, just like women can't have as much sex as they want, whatever way they want with hot young men.

Well my cousin confided he hadn't had as much sex as he'd have liked or wanted within his marriage (and I'm 99.9% certain he won't have been unfaithful). Also that his wife never got that wet and struggled to orgasm. I've met her father and can just imagine how it was - "get in there girl; good prospects and family firm etc., therefore set for life."

Draw your on conclusions......

Nope, nothing drawn from that piece of anecdata.

Err, what, Hannah?

Being obtuse??.....s h e m a r r i e d h i m f o r h i s d o s h a n d

p r o s p e c t s

That's your theory based on the fact your cousin told you something very personal about his wife? Lubrication is affected by many factors. And it can come in a tube if necessary.

You imagine that a person unknown married another person unknown due to a meeting you had with her father. What does that have to do with the price of cheese?

Missed out some words:

You imagine that a person unknown married another person unknown for a particular reason due to a meeting you had with her father.

Still

What I find even harder to understand is that, after reading an account like 22honey's, that people are still able to argue that men like this should be able to exercise their agency (to exploit vulnerable women)

Are you fucking listening, Amnesty International ?

What seems to lie at the bottom of a lot of abolitionist argument is the idea that men should want less sex and that they should be prevented from having as much sex as they want, because sexual satisfaction should be difficult to obtain

I agree that men, as well as women, should have as much sex as they like and that sexual satisfaction should be reasonably easy to obtain as long as consent is fully and humanely in place

I don't count (mostly) men paying (mostly) women to pretend they enjoy getting fucked by someone they wouldn't ordinarily look twice as humane and full consent