5 questions for people who advocate legal prostitution

[AskBasil]

genderdetective.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/five-questions-for-people-who-advocate-legalizing-prostitution/

Made me fink

And it's easy to increase the consequences for women, because they're the ones left gestating, birthing, and ultimately holding the baby.

Men don't have that concern.

Although I do have that concern for DS. I've always made him aware that any babies he fathers will be his financial and practical responsibility. You would think with maintenance and the CSA men would feel the pinch.

But then I guess that is why prostitution is so attractive to so many men. No strings, no responsibility. Hasn't that always been the case?

"You would think with maintenance and the CSA men would feel the pinch."

Well, they would if maintenance was set at realistic levels and payment was enforced.

But it's not and it's not, precisely in order to ensure they don't feel the pinch, women and children do. Just like it's always been in patriarchy.

The CSA taking a tiny fraction of your wage and only if the mother really fights for it is not a deterrent
We need to actually punish men who use prostituted women even if the women aren't testifying against them. It needs to be treated as rape by the law. Although as rape has such a low conviction rate that needs to change first. There needs to be real, hard consequences for the punters.
I don't like the punishments the Swedish model puts on the women at all. They need help not their children taken away!

The idea of imposing my desire for sex on a man who didn't feel desire for me is utterly toe-curlingly awful. It really amazes me that men who use prostitutes don't feel that, at all.

I think the majority of punters manage to convince themselves that the woman is enjoying the experience. Partly because the women pretend they are, as it's in their interests to do so; partly because men's sense of entitlement is such that their thought process is something like, "So I've paid her for sex, what does it matter? I'm a GREAT fuck, she's going to love it"; partly because the alternative is just too horrible to contemplate.

I don't think women are socialised to see men as human beings. I think we are rather more socialized to see them as a combination of bumbling idiot and dangerous monster. They can't cope with housework. They don't 'see mess'. They're all rapists, so we need to choose the least awful rapist and please and placate him into keeping all the other rapists away. We need to make them happy sexually or they will stop supporting us economically, but we don't like sex ourselves. Etc.

JM asks That men and women are 'wired' differently....? Or is it more likely that we're socialised differently? And if so, how, and why? I'm sure it's the latter..TSB says I would guess it's mostly socialisation.
Now there is no doubt that human male and females are socialized differently-but sex differences in behaviour are seen in all animals from fruit flies to mice-are they socialized differently no-they are wired by their biology differently.
That is not to say that biology is all determining certainly not-or to deny a role of socialisation-but to claim all gender differences are the result of socialization and that biology has no role is a bit extreme IMHO

lol SGB. It seems vital here that as much agency is removed from prostitutes as possible. They must be seen as victims as first principle, deluded with illusions of real authority and broken inside, otherwise with any real agency ascribed to them they would be despised for collusion with patriarchy.

"but to claim all gender differences are the result of socialization and that biology has no role is a bit extreme IMHO" Not that anyone was doing that but why is it extreme? The fact is we don't know how much socialisation affects behaviour, but we know it does. When you view the socialisation going on around you and you can also see the resulting effect of that socialisation, then is it not just a logical conclusion?

The idea of imposing my desire for sex on a man who didn't feel desire for me is utterly toe-curlingly awful. It really amazes me that men who use prostitutes don't feel that, at all.

YY. I would feel embarrassed and mortified to think a man was only having sex with me for money. It would be treating the man as an object available to service my needs without any respect for his humanity. I can only conclude that men who buy sex from women lack any respect for that woman and her humanity and completely lack any empathy or compassion whatsoever.

A lot of punters say that the women need the money, so they are providing something she needs. If I thought a man was so desperate for money he was prepared to shag me for it I would give him the money and let him off the shag. No one should have to have sex - an act most people consider to be linked to love and desire (ideally) or at least a liking for the person, because they are financially desperate. It's inhumane.

Tangoman seems not to have noticed that, unlike fruit flies & mice, he has conscious awareness with the ability to choose whether or not to act on his instincts. My sympathies, Tango; it must be very difficult to stay out of prison with all the random rapes, assaults & thefts you commit due to your disability.

No matter how many times, in how many ways, we discuss prostitution, I keep coming back to the same question. In our current society it is very easy to get laid. Subscriptions to a few 'shagaholic' websites and regular nights out don't cost any more than visiting prostitutes.

So it can't just be about sex. It absolutely has to be about the ability to 'order' one's desires - about power & control.

Grimbletart, yes, that and the reminder that there was no one who was willing to have sex with me out of desire. Hardly a turn-on. It honestly bewilders me how men manage to get past that.

So Garlic-are you saying that biologically man is rapist, assaulter and thiever-only kept in check by socialisation? Ever heard of altrusim as an evolutionary concept?

I think that's exactly the opposite of what Garlic is saying.

One of us isn't concentrating.

nope-what she appears to be saying is that since humans have a concious awareness of their instincts they suppress them (due to socialization) without which men would be rapists, assailants and theives.

I think she may have been using sarcasm there Tango, but let's wait for her to come back and confirm that, shall we.

Not many people consent to work for free that I know of, why is sex a special case? No money must change hands? Sex cant be 'work' and must always be mutually desired otherwise its tainted?.

Genuine question Dad. If you were desperate to feed your children and the only way you could feed them due to not being able to find work for whatever reason, was literally to bend over and have a man fuck you or suck some penis that you had no idea where it had been.

You can't see the difference between that and cleaning toilets? WHen you were down the free clinic checking that you hadn't got AIDS or herpes you would still rate that with any other job?

"Not many people consent to work for free that I know of, why is sex a special case? No money must change hands? Sex cant be 'work' and must always be mutually desired otherwise its tainted?."

If you genuinely believe that sex work is just work like any other, then you must believe that it would be OK for the government to sanction JSA claimants for not accepting prostitution work. Because it's work like any other. So the state could order women to go to a brothel and be raped on pain of having their benefits cut.

Still think it's work like any other?

Just checking you saw that I was quoting dadwashere and the question wasn't for me Basil?

Also I agree that we need to accept sex work isn't the same or Jobseekersplus will start putting women and men on the poll or in brothels.

I'm more than a little that it comes as a shock to someone to discover that sex which isn't mutually desired, is tainted.

Understanding a little bit more of the mindset of a prostitute user/rapist....

It is fundamentally, morally wrong that the DWP sanction anyone for refusing a job that conflicts with their own morals/worldview/health. ISTR there was a thread, or maybe even a case reported in the news or something, about a longterm vegan being threatened with benefit sanctions for refusing to take a job in a meat packing plant.
(Does anyone know, BTW, if you might be sanctioned for eg refusing to work for a legalized loan shark like Wonga or Provident on the grounds that you consider their business practices immoral?).

Some people would rather suck dicks than scrub toilets. Some people would rather work on a maggot farm than do phone sex. Some people would hate to work with children, or with the elderly; not many people would pick undertaking as their dream career. Some would absolutely never take a job that involved selling or serving or handling alcohol.
Every single job should generate a living wage, for starters. And if your job involves out-of-the-ordinary levels of danger, be that from clients (this does not just apply to sex workers: anyone who has to deal directly with people who may be very angry, very frightened or mentally unwell in a way that makes them aggressive is dealing with a higher level of risk than many other jobs) or from working conditions (emergency services, working in extreme weather conditions or whatever) employers should make the job as safe as possible and pay a premium for the increased risks.

LOL whatwitchcraft, yes, your post quoting it reminded me that I wanted to respond to it earlier on.

And that's the other thing JM - I bet the agents of the state wouldn't insist men go and get raped by other men in order to avoid a benefit sanction, because they know that it's an intolerable human rights abuse to expect an actual man - you know, a real, full human being- to endure someone else penetrating his body when he doesn't want them to.

It's only for women (those also-ran human beings) that men muse that surely having a cock in you when you don't want one, is just like stacking shelves at Tesco.

And er, yes DadWasHere, is it really that astonishing that people think that sex should always be mutually desired? Radical notion, I know, but it's based on the idea that human beings should have equal relationships rather than coercive, abusive ones.

"Some people would rather suck dicks than scrub toilets."

In the abstract, yes.

But that is a sentence which lacks context.

Because we know that the sort of men who think it's OK for them to stick their cocks into women's mouths who are only putting up with their cocks in their mouths for money, are generally not men who respect and like women and are actually deeply hostile and resentful of us.

So those men don't just expect their dicks to be sucked, they want to display their power in other ways that the person who dislikes scrubbing toilets, wouldn't want to engage with.

I somehow can't see one of the invisible men reading through the contract which specifies that the cock sucking will only last for x minutes, with no gagging and no ejaculation in mouth/ on face/ etc. and accepting that them's the terms, can you?

I think that flurry of posts has put paid to DWH's idea that being a prostitute is on a par with stacking shelves!

What I would like to know, and this is probably a whole other thread, is the effect of the existence of prostitution on the general non prostituted female population at large.