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!

No the tea link was about trafficking for non-sexual labour.

What who was doing where?

I meant your post of 01:16.

So why can't we find all these traffickers? Is it because they don't exist we need to give the rescue industry yet more funding?

1 Can't find traffickers or victims of trafficking.

2 Say it is because of lack of funding and demand more funding

3 Go back to step 1 and repeat

Sasijeh, no, your link was about women being trafficked i to prostitution and children being trafficked into domestic labour. It mentioned sex trafficking and prostitution multiple times. You need to read your own links. It is about the trafficking of poorly paid women from rural tea picking communities into prostitution and domestic slavery in cities, not about people being enslaved into tea picking.

Mmm.

Why can't we find people who might be breaking the law?

I can't imagine.

It's strange, because naturally you would think they'd of course be very easy to find. And obviously, trafficked women, speaking the language as they invariably do, being free of fears and worries, would speak up too.

Yet they didn't.

Gosh.

And yet ... it's strange again, but every time my Russian-speaking DH goes onto the internet, he finds spam offering him underage girls for a price. In fact, you and I probably get the same spam, possibly with slightly sanitized.

I'm sure those underage girls are, like, totally willing and all, despite being legally incapable of giving consent, right? And the fact they're being sold from one country to another ... that's like, just, tourism ... is it?

Forgive me, but I'm off to bed now, so won't be replying.

And now it's gone from one extreme to the other:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8741895/Frenchman-ordered-to-pay-wife-damages-for-lack-of-sex.html

In France a woman successfully sued her husband because he didn't have sex with her.

Sahisej, your second link about the police did find victims of trafficking. What it did not do was prosecute traffickers under UN regulations, but under inadequate UK laws. Hence the need for new, better UK laws to match the realities of forced prostitution in the UK rather than the patterns of forced prostitution elsewhere.

"he finds spam offering him underage girls for a price. In fact, you and I probably get the same spam, possibly with slightly sanitized."

I haven't seen any spam offering such a thing in the ~14 years I've been using the internet. I assume you have passed the info onto the relevant authorities?

I'm not even going to ask what your DH looks at online.

almondcakes

Trafficking is already illegal in the UK.

Sex with anyone underage is already illegal (money or no money).

There's even a law that criminalizes paying for sex with someone who has been trafficked.

Our laws are adequate.

Nice try, sah.

He gets it cos he's Russian. If I write to MIL in Russian, I get the same spam in my ordinary hotmail inbox.

I am almost sure it's not cos I've been unconsciously looking for anything dodgy, yaknow.

And now I really am off to bed.

I am merely pointing out the contents of your link, which states that a. there are trafficked women in the UK, b. that people were found guilty of trafficking but under a UK legal definition not a UN one and that c. they are setting up laws to better deal with forced prostitution.

I am not even putting forward a particular opinion on the laws of prostitution on this thread. I am only pointing out the facts given in your links. If you don't want to hear facts that contradict your beliefs, stop posting links that give facts that contradict the position you are trying to argue.

I wouldn't have known about the trafficked women for sex in either India or the UK police case if you hadn't linked to the cases.

"they are setting up laws to better deal with forced prostitution."

You mean this?

"Acting on the distorted information, the government has produced a bill, now moving through its final parliamentary phase, which itself has provoked an outcry from sex workers who complain that, instead of protecting them, it will expose them to extra danger."

The bill in question proposed to make it illegal to pay for sex. Fortunately for sex workers it failed to pass.

I agree with this:

"The failure has been disclosed by a Guardian investigation which also suggests that the scale of and nature of sex trafficking into the UK has been exaggerated by politicians and media.

Current and former ministers have claimed that thousands of women have been imported into the UK and forced to work as sex slaves, but most of these statements were either based on distortions of quoted sources or fabrications without any source at all."

"He gets it cos he's Russian."

Then isn't it Russia with the sex trafficking problem?

No, I mean that they want to introduce a law dealing particularly with forced prostitution, not one dealing with trafficking, which is a related but different crime.

I am simply looking at the stated facts, not people's opinions on those facts, because I haven't as of yet, decided what my opinion on this issue is. I find it utterly bizarre that you are trying to argue that certain facts do not exist, and yet you are the only person on the thread linking to things which prove you wrong. You seem to be having an argument with yourself. Have fun, as I am off to bed.

I see the argument has moved on a little but I think the key thing for this is in neverthebride's second or third post. She says her friend doesn't mention her j0b/career in her normal life.

What impact does having a secret career have on women who choose to go into sex work? What impact does that have on self esteem? Future decisions? There are real impacts for women who choose sex work that can have long term implications even if they are happy and healhty at the time of making the choice.
Should we criminalize women that sell sex as a service? No. Should we remove the social structures that support it? Yes.

Are you talking about this link?

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

The article about the tea picking only said one person was threatened to be sold into prostitution. Noone in the tea picking article has been trafficked for sex.

Oh those pesky street-workers!

How dare they have such awful lives and smear the wonderful practice of loving, caring, deprived (of their rights) men buying sex.

Those street workers are terrible, they aren't proper sex workers at all! They are not empowered by their work, don't have magic powers that immediately detects if a punter wishes them harm and they don't earn £150 an hour.

All they do is skew everything and don't show the true picture. The true picture being one that an extremely organised cabal of sex workers* are only too happy to discuss every time anyone dares to say that buying sex is a bad thing.

So let's just ignore them and call them unrepresentative. That will solve everything. Admittedly social justice is usually about the needs of the most disadvantaged, but when the disadvantaged are making you look bad, it's better not to acknowledge them.

*Supposedly. Some are pimps, others have never actually had sex for money, some are academics who think men buying sex is thrillingly transgressive.

Wow! I haven't posted on this board before and wasn't expecting so many replies!.

Thank you to all of you for your thoughtful, intelligent and interesting posts. You have given me a lot to think about and I'm working my way through the links.

I'm going to have a look at other threads on this board as there are clearly some important and eye opening discussions happening.

Good round 'ere init?!

sahisej wrote - "So why can't we find all these traffickers? Is it because they don't exist we need to give the rescue industry yet more funding?"

Sex trafficking exists, police find and arrest sex traffickers, then courts try and convict the sex traffickers to terms of imprisonment. (Some sex traffickers even plead guilty).

For example :

Sex trafficking convictions in Oklahoma