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!

I can't stand how prostition is justified - 'She earns a lot of money' - so what???? Lots of bad things make a lot of money. The end doesn't justify the means. And what's wrong with making an average amount of money, or a bit of money doing something worthwhile.

Other examples are 'it's never going away' - well it needs to go away, because it's bad news for all involved and for society. Wish people would stop saying this.

'It's the oldest profession' - I'm sure this isn't true, anyway it isn't a profession, I'm pretty sure anyone could do it, although most sane people wouldn't want to.

I think there should be a stigma. Stigmas help drive things away.

So the stat is useless, but the reason it's quoted so often is because noone has actually done any proper, unbiased studies on the topic.

"Rhoda Grant as quoted by Laura Lee at a conference on human trafficking stated “I CAN rely on that study because there are very few others done”. "

"Stigmas help drive things away."

And also makes them more dangerous for those involved.

Well obviously it is special. If it wasn't 'special' we would have a specific law that only dealt with people forced to walk the waltzers in a travelling fair, and another that only dealt with people forced to sweep roads and on and on for every type of activity. But we don't. We have general laws about such things but very specific laws about people forced to engage in sexual activity. Because sex is different.

I also can't think of any other 'occupation' that is so consistently associated with forced labour, forced 'choice' of occupation and being selected as a job due to dire social circumstances in every part of the world. There are places where it is horrendous to be forced into agricultural work, but agriculture doesn't currently have a terrible, recent human rights record everywhere.

'What robs women of their sexual agency is when other women try and police what they should and shouldn't do with their bodies. Wait, this robs them of their agency full stop.'

Mmm. This, to me, seems a rather straw-man response.

We've gone from the OP asking about sex work, to you suddenly deciding it's other people (oh, it's women! All women! Those horrible, evil, oppressive women!) who constrain prostitutes.

What about the agency of women who do not want to be prostitutes? What do you say about the agency of women who have been or are prostitutes, who feel strongly that anyone (man or woman) excusing sex work is telling them what to do with their bodies?

You might say, well, why do those women who don't want to be prostitutes get more of a say that women who are happy with prostitution, right?

My feeling here is that if you're doing something that leads to abuse, rape, and trauma for you, your rights rank above those of someone else who is doing the same thing, but who is happy with it.

Simple as that.

Well those involved should stop doing them then. The more dangerous it is the less people are going to want to do it. Don't make it easier for people to bad things.

"I also can't think of any other 'occupation' that is so consistently associated with forced labour,"

How about tea picking?

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/mar/02/tea-workers-sold-into-slavery

Noone "has a right" to drink tea, so why aren't feminists campaigning to make it illegal to buy tea to "reduce demand" so people aren't trafficked for the tea planatations?

"Well those involved should stop doing them then."

And why should they give up their £150 an hour job? Because you don't like it?

sah - I think you just hit the feminist equivalent of Godwin's Law. Dworkin's law?

Anyway, I guess you're joking as I don't want to stigmatise.

fluffymouse, may I shed some light on the subject. Please don't think me presumptuous for doing so, I'm only trying to promote quality in stats / research.

The statistics quoted are from highly unrepresentative groups sex workers - those most visible (the street) and those most likely to have numerous and more serious issues affecting their health and well-being than prostitution. For example, some shocking statistics regarding prostitution pertain to other, more serious issues and have titles such as "Drug Problems and Street Sex Markets", where it can be clearly deduced that drug abuse is the overwhelming problem.

Furthermore, such statistics are unreliable as many sensational statistics such as the ones mentioned are funded by anti sex work NGOs, and much research in the 'anti' field has been undertaken by researchers whose work has been damningly peer reviewed (see earlier post).

I don't know what "dworkin's law" is.

And I haven't been joking.

Oh, sorry, it was just a joke.

I meant, like 'Godwin's Law' on the net.

The time when you state the argument that makes everyone feel you're going OTT. Like saying 'why aren't feminists doing x, don't they care about that, OMG how dare they?'

You know, when you say something like that, and everyone knows you can't be being serious.

In the UK, buying and selling of sex on the street has been illegal since 2007.

I don't believe tea picking does have a terrible human rights record everywhere, and the article doesn't support a claim to the contrary.

I also don't understand the point of your link. The woman/girl in question in your link is asking for help because the tea picking was a ruse to force her into prostitution.

Did you even read it?

Now, that is a serious issue.

I do not think women selling sex anywhere should be criminalized.

So why aren't you interested in non-sexual labour trafficking and only interested in (mostly imaginary) sex-trafficking?

Why isn't interested in who with the what imaginary stuff?

I'm confused. Are you?

"I do not think women selling sex anywhere should be criminalized."

Did you know women who sell sex in Sweden who work together are committing the crime of running a brothel?

That's something advocates of the nordic model keep quiet about.

"what imaginary stuff"

Sex trafficking.

Oh, I don't think people keep quiet - it's tricky to comment when you've not read up much, but you'll get there.

Cross posted.

Sex trafficking is not imaginary.

I do hope you have somehow got more confused than before and mistyped - you surely don't actually mean that?

Sahisej, your tea link was about women being trafficked for sex. Are you now saying their experiences are imaginary?

www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails

The UK's biggest ever investigation of sex trafficking failed to find a single person who had forced anybody into prostitution in spite of hundreds of raids on sex workers in a six-month campaign by government departments, specialist agencies and every police force in the country.

I think you might have misunderstood what they were doing there.