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

If you had no money and desperately needed some and a gay man (or a straight curious one) was happy to pay you to have sex with him would you do it???

What kind of idiotic question is that? If you want an education in desperation go read The Road (or watch the movie) and confront all the horrors of what anyone might do to survive and protect when driven to it. What on earth is the basis of your question, that I cant empathise with what prostitutes do? Stop projecting. The issue is acknowledging that women cannot be universally enabled to leave prostitution without inventing a magic wand. So give them options and support wherever possible, hence decriminalisation and regulation. You do not need to enable poor choices but you sure as hell should respect them as valid where they are. I dont see how you can 'save' someone who will tell you to f—k off if you try to impose your morality that replaces their 200 pounds an hour 'horrifying' work with a job paying a few quid to pack shelves.

On adultwork (a very popular very similar to punternet) a quick search reveals 9,965 male escorts in the UK and 17,061 female escorts.

So out of a sample of 27,026 escorts just over one third are men.

LOL, argument debunked, with one quick soundbite.

dad

What witch asked you a question, you didn't answer...I was curious as to your answer?

I'm not projecting at all, don't not respect prostitutes, don't have a saviour complex,

If it helps I think that I would rather steal and mug people....but I don't know for sure because with any luck I will never be faced with that sort of decision

And I don't need to read fiction to understand how people male and female can get so desperate to survive that they would do anything...plenty of information on that in real life and until you walk a mile etc

And the evidence is... what?

From Simon Haggstrom. Of the Swedish Police. He's very eloquent on the subject.

Their surveillance work/wiretappings of organised criminal gangs working in Europe. The information has come directly from the traffickers themselves. Nothing like the horse's mouth, is there?

What witch asked you a question, you didn't answer...I was curious as to your answer?

The answer is yes, obviously, and would be for anyone who did not, ultimately, decide to take their own life and that of their kids. Lots of possible criminal ways to try and make money, roll the dice and pick if you have no personal preference. I find the relevance of suggesting heterosexual men should bend over for other men is bizarre, the analogy would be heterosexual men selling their sexual services to women, not gay prostitution. To what extent do you think men are going to be broken over a prospect of being forced to be have sex with women to survive? What is the thinking going on here, are heterosexual female prostitutes happy with female clients?

When prostitution ever enters a conservative feminist board like mumsnet its always a race to project prostitutes as broken, poor and desperate, feeding as many kids as possible, with abusive childhoods and handbags full of medication and fixated Heath Ledger smiles. Its honestly as tiresome in its own way as sex positive feminist boards where high class prostitutes that speak about feeling empowered in their chosen profession are revered almost like living gods of female agency. I imagine the truth is somewhere between those extremes.

"I find the relevance of suggesting heterosexual men should bend over for other men is bizarre, the analogy would be heterosexual men selling their sexual services to women, not gay prostitution."

But that's where the analogy doesn't work, because women who "buy sex" are not full of hatred and contempt for men, they haven't been socialised to think that men are slightly less human than them and don't really matter, they haven't been socialised to believe that men are essentially there for their use and are bit-parts to their lives and they haven't been socialised to believe that when they "buy sex" from men, they have ownership of those men for that specific time and can inflict violence on them for their pleasure (they're also not socialised to perceive inflicting or watching violence done to men's bodies as being so pleasurable that they orgasm to it). In addition, they are usually smaller and lighter and less strong than men, so if by chance they were one of the oddities who in fact did have the same sort of violent, entitled attitude to men as the average punter has to women, they don't represent the same level of physical threat.

So they simply aren't as dangerous to men, as the men who "buy sex" from women, are to those women. You have to imagine it as selling sex to other men, because of course it's not a source of horror to men to sell sex from women - women aren't going to main, kill or degrade them the way men might. That's why it's not bizarre to ask you to imagine selling sex to men, because the horror of doing that is absent if you imagine yourself selling it to women

i think legalising is better than the risks associated with it being illegal if it is going to happen anyway, yet those points are all very important and valid reasons for not supporting the industry.

Wow! Being called "conservative" is as low as it gets! I call "strawman" on your idea of how we see prostitutes. I think we're all aware of the complexity and variety of reasons to become a prostitute and feminists who oppose prostitution, despite what many like to think, neither look down on prostitutes or see them all as pathetic victims (although I think we can agree there are many who undoubtedly are)

Quite the contrary, I think we see the complexity of women's motives and empathise with them in a way you cannot because for you it is more academic. 150 years ago someone in my situation would undoubtedly have been a prostitute. That was a reality for so many women. Many of us have at some point in our pasts been offered money for sex, and if pushed for money, may well have considered it (or even done it) and so understand the thought processes that go through a woman's head when she is that situation. As a man, it is academic for you in a way it never can be for us, because the spectre of prostitution affects all women in some way or other and we are not yet so confident with our new found freedoms to be so blase about them.

Anti-prostitution feminists are not concerned with judging prostitutes but with removing the system of inequalities that lead to it. That should be very simple to understand. It is not a job like any other to the vast majority of women (which you seem to think it is). It has a very high rate of assault and murder and if you think that will be removed through legislation you are naive. You only have to look at the willingness of some men to torture and murder prostitutes in video games to see that sexual violence is part of the kicks for an element of punters and that, legal or not, that element will not go away unless we look at its root.

And the reason people have used the hypothetical scenario of your willingness to "bend over" for other strange men rather than have sex with other strange women (which you seem to think would be a breeze, but I suspect in reality would feel quite different - once again academic for you as it's never gonna happen!) is because hetero sex with strangers always comes with an underlying threat of violence for women that men in the same situation don't feel.

Correction before you jump on my words: many are victims, not pathetic of course - that would be reserved for the men that use trafficked women.

In general I believe in decriminalising prostitution, but I just wanted to thank askBasil for that post about male and female prostitutes.

Of course it is utter farce for any straight man to imagine that a woman serving male punters would be the equivalent of him serving female punters.

Selling sex to men is the bottom line. If its vile and scary to imagine yourself doing it, then it's vile and scary for the people who do do it, regardless of whether they are male or female.

Thanks MZ. TheSameBoat, YYY to feminism not being about judging individual women who turn to prostitution, but removing the socio-economic inequalities that lead to that. If men and women had genuine equality in society, if women had all the same choices and opportunities that men do, if we didn't still live in a society steeped with male supremacist values, then I wouldn't give a flying fart about people who genuinely choose to sell sex because they love fucking randoms who want the right to have sex with other people without making themselves pleasant enough to make those people actually want to rip their pants off. Wouldn't be an issue if all things were equal. But they're not and it's so disingenuous to pretend women and men are operating on an equal playing field.

As for this constant sneering about needing a magic wand to get rid of it - well guess what, that's what reactionary people said about slavery. To some extent they were right, we still have slavery - women make up the majority of the world's slaves - but we did get rid of slavery as a legal, respectable institution and we got rid of the concept that there is nothing wrong with owning another human being who exists only for your use. That's a huge step forward and one we yet have to take with prostitution.

Why are you so unwilling to police the johns, DWH? Why is your whole answer to the problems associated with prostitution concentrated on anything but asking the johns to behave differently?

Selling sex to men is the bottom line. If its vile and scary to imagine yourself doing it, then it's vile and scary for the people who do do it, regardless of whether they are male or female.

^^

I find the relevance of suggesting heterosexual men should bend over for other men is bizarre, the analogy would be heterosexual men selling their sexual services to women, not gay prostitution. ?

No woman is going to rape you, if you decide actually you''d rather not fuck her.

Sexuality isn't relevant because these are not men the prostitute wants sex with anyway. These are men so disgusting they can't find anyone to have sex with them, or so vile the sex acts they want can't be found with women who aren't being coerced.

You as a man bending over (like a woman being penetrated) are far more likely to get an STD.

I find the relevance of suggesting heterosexual men should bend over for other men is bizarre...

The fact that you find it 'bizarre' just goes to show how little you get it.

Prostitutes have sex with people who a). penetrate them, and b). have the ability to physically over-power them (i.e. dominate and hurt them) at any point.

Again, if you think that sounds scary, you'd be right.

These are men so disgusting they can't find anyone to have sex with them, or so vile the sex acts they want can't be found with women who aren't being coerced.

This is not true. Like on the other sex work thread talking about the guys, clients are normal men. Some are good looking, fit, married with a partner or whatever, others can be fat, ugly and with no social skills. Most are men you'd pass in the street or have in your home fixing your boiler. You can't generalise about all clients same as you can't generalise all prostitutes.

Dadwashere do you think prostitutes are attracted to their clients? Because they are aren't. So why is straight men being same sex prostitutes a bizarre analogy? Because the act is more similar and they aren't attracted to them.

Hmm, it seems DWH has bowed out of the convo...........

Well, DWH may well just be getting on with his life, to be fair.

It would be interesting to hear why he thinks someone he's not attracted to painfully penetrating his body is any different to someone I'm not attracted to painfully penetrating mine, though. And why all his measures for protecting women require no change in any man's behaviour.

Having sex for money isn't painful. Why is everyone making assumptions. Yes protect women by making working together legal. That's all, it's not a drastic change in the law but would drastically change prostitutes safety.

Sex is not painful under certain conditions, such as when you actively want it and when you are in full control of penetration. But it's always potentially damaging for women

Sex is always potentially damaging to women?

There are ways to minimise the damage, condoms to prevent pregnancy and std's and lubrication to prevent pain. Either way if you are being paid for a service you are allowing the penetration of your body under certain terms.

Sex is potentially damaging to women in the same way that driving a car is potentially lethal - i.e. in the vast majority of incidents, it just isn't.