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!

Sex traffickers are found and convicted not only in the USA and other foreign countries. It also occurs in the UK.

For example, four months ago, a court in England convicted five people of sex trafficking.

I don't understand this continuous insistence from certain quarters that sex trafficking does not exist.

Do these people never read the news?

Are they only interested in the UK? And if so - do they never read the news?????

There have been many recent high profile cases where groups of men have gone to prison for - Oh Look! - sex trafficking.

FFS.

xposts

So we can ignore the "there's no such thing as sex trafficking posts".

Great, let's move on.

It certainly doesn't exist in the thousands some claim it to be. I think we can all agree the issue has been greatly exaggerated by the media.

Here's another link, the Guardian actually observe where such trafficking estimate figures come from.

www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/20/trafficking-numbers-women-exaggerated

"For example, four months ago, a court in England convicted five people of sex trafficking."

There you go. There is already a law to deal with trafficking and it is enforced. We don't need any additional laws to criminalize consenting adults.

"So let's just ignore street workers and call them unrepresentative."

I didn't see anyone say they should be ignored. But the "75% of sexworkers start as children" is completely false.

All we know from the 2004 study that stat originated is that a tiny number have started under the age of 18 but none of them were indoor escorts. And the "75%" figure is just nonsense.

And like I said there is already a law to deal with having sexual contact with minors.

btw women are found guilty of sex trafficking as well. One of the 5 convicted in this link was a woman:

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/07/five-convicted-trafficking-hungarian-women-sexual-exploitation

What can people gain by greatly exaggerating the extent of sex-trafficking? Government funding. And lots of it.

maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/slush-fund/

Moran is rolling in it.

And the "commonsense thing to do" is to have the funding put into her own personal bank account of course.

What can people gain by greatly exaggerating the extent of sex-trafficking?

Well, we've gone from imaginary to exaggerated in the space of one thread- so at least our pbu acknowledges it exists. That's progress

sahisej wrote - "btw women are found guilty of sex trafficking as well. One of the 5 convicted in this link was a woman"

Is your "women do it too" argument supposed to surprise or shock feminists or excuse the actions of sex traffickers?

I bet sex traffickers describe themselves as sex workers, not as sex traffickers. To do so would only follow the precedent set by pimps and people who "manage escort agencies". Perhaps that makes finding and prosecuting them more difficult?

I think it is no accident that pimps, traffickers and other parasites in prostitution love the replacement of the word "prostitute" with "sex worker", because it gives them somewhere to hide.

If sex worker was a term that could only be used by/about people who accept money for having their body sexually penetrated, it might make the exploiters easier to find and convict.

Further to my confusion about why you have posted this tea picking article. Of the children of the tea pickers, who are trafficked 'The reality is slavery, the reality is abuse, the reality is sexual exploitation, the reality is endless slavery' according to the article. Of the 452,679 incidents of trafficking during that period, only 0.6% led to a conviction.

SO are you posting this because you think that 99.4% of those children are liars, and were never enslaved, and the trafficking rate is 0.6% like the conviction rate?

Or are you posting it because you believe that low conviction rates are a reason to increase resources and improve laws to catch traffickers, not evidence that trafficking does not really exist?

OP, I found this speech on Radio 4 to be really thought provoking, and it addresses your original question. It's written fron an insiders P.O.V. and is searingly honest.

Thank you Lizzie

neverthebride wrote - "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?."

Women who say they voluntarily make an informed choice to be prostitutes are used by pimps, sex traffickers and punters in their attempts to legitimise, legalise, justify and perpetuate all forms of prostitution worldwide.

Are you planning on discussing it with her? Obviously, you can either support and legitimise her prostitution, ignore it, or try to persuade her to stop.

Most "happy hookers" in the UK who I have encountered, prioritise their flexible work/life balance and high income above all other considerations - an "I'm all right, Jack attitude". You would probably be wasting your time, if you decide to try to question the way she earns money.

Just to clarify my post of 16:21:17:

my phrase "other parasites in prostitution" does not refer to prostitutes.

"I bet sex traffickers describe themselves as sex workers,"

People who sell sexual services describe themselves as sex workers.

"Further to my confusion about why you have posted this tea picking article"

Not all trafficking is for sex. That's my point.

And like I already said I believe UK laws are adequate.

There is a part of the law in all UK jurisdictions I would like to see changed- sexworkers who work together are committing the crime of running a brothel (and even in Sweden as well). They don't even need to be working at the same time either to be guilty. Working at different times at the same place is enough to warrant a raid (which has happened in Edinburgh and Soho).

"OP, I found this speech on Radio 4 to be really thought provoking, and it addresses your original question. It's written fron an insiders P.O.V. and is searingly honest.".... but DIShonest in that it includes unsubstantiated data. (14 the average age - what a load of bollocks!) I have an insider's POV too but I'm evidently living in cloud cuckooland

Trafficking in human beings and forcing them to do any kind of work is wrong. But the fact that people are trafficked for domestic and agricultural labour doesn't lead to an insistence that anyone working on a farm or as a cleaner must be a victim of trafficking and, if s/he claims to have taken this job of his/her own free will, a deluded liar.

There are many things in life that we may wish to do that we cannot do because of the impact those actions might have on other people. This is what happens in a society governed by the rule of law. We do not live in a anarchy nor libertarian society. Agency is enormously overstated as a factor in people's lives, not just in relation to women in prostitution.

The OP's friend is not carrying out a feminist activity in foregoing her sexual autonomy for money and she is perpetuating the societal structures that put women in the passive sex class. I would not / have not cut contact with women who find themselves working in prostitution but I would / have been honest about my views that it is not compatible with feminism.

sahisej have you heard about the stolen girls in Nigeria? Or do they not matter? The law and rules we make in each country also set up a global dialogue about what is and isn't acceptable. Even if there were no incidents of sex trafficking in the UK, the laws surrounding prostitution, and sex trafficking would still matter because they are part of a global dialogue about the place of women within society.

Sashej, you get that many people's objections to the purchase of sex are independent of their concerns about trafficking, don't you?

The insistence on stigmatizing all sex workers as helpless victims and the exchange of money for sexual services as always wrong does not help women. Remember the raids in Soho a few months back? All the fuss about how the police were 'helping these poor unfortunate women' - by dragging them into the street in their underwear, allowing the press to shove cameras in their faces and confiscating all their earnings. And funnily enough, a lot turned out not to be have been trafficked...

The more the sex-workers from choice are able to speak out and be heard and to make the point that sex work should be freely chosen and those who do it respected the more people should understand that the harmful and exploitative conditions suffered by some sex workers are crimes against them and not 'just what sex work is'.