examples of misogyny permeating our culture, demonstrated by the bloke pouring hot coffee on his head.

[UnDeuxTroisCatsSank]

I read this article about a homeless man who accepted $5 from an arrogant shit in exchange for pouring hot coffee over his head. And the arrogant shit filmed it on his phone, presumably for "fun".

The homeless man, Ronald Leggatt, explained later he was desperate for the money and so willing to take the burns from the hot coffee.

Shocking and appalling behavior from the arrogant shit.

There's a happier ending in that someone overheard the whole thing, confronted the shit and then tried to make things better for Mr. Leggatt, including paying for him to get into a shelter during Hurricane Jonas and getting him some clothes from Walmart.

But this whole sorry story got me thinking. About the parallels with prostitution. Hang on, bear with me.

I just thought that most people would be appalled by the story of Mr Leggatt and empathize with his desperation to get $5 and yet when women are desperate, penniless, just surviving in dire financial straits and ready to do something, anything even though it will cause them harm such as sell their bodies, I don't see good Samaritans rushing to buy them clothes in Walmart and checking them into hostels for the night.

I think many people feel that people working as prostitutes are (a) willing and (b) maybe even like it. Never considering what desperation can make a person do.

Mr Leggatt was desperate and acted in a way that most people would never do.
Many prostituted women are desperate and act in a way that many people would never do.

One is understood and receives empathy, the other not only accepted but vilified, judged and othered.

Just thoughts about the misogyny that permeates our culture.

(And I hope Mr Leggatt gets medical help and support, because he does sound desperate, poor bloke.)

Prostitution is overwhelmingly male punters and female prostitutes, despite the existence of male prostitutes. It's a feminist issue for that reason. As a PP said, the harm done to women who act out of the same sense of desperation as the man in the OP is often minimised and dismissed. The roots of this lie in our attitude to prostitution as a sex role for women.

There are many more female prostitutes than male, and more general sex workers (lap dancers et ) so prostitution tends to be seen as a feminist issue

Lass said this on the first page which is good:

But the point of the OP is that no-one reads that newspaper article and comes back with a response that "oh well, surely the homeless guy made an informed choice, which means on some level the experience must have been empowering for him, and there are people into BDSM who like having hot liquid poured over them, so surely there must be no problem whatsoever with someone allowing hot liquid to be poured over them because they're poor and desperate" - whereas those responses are regularly trotted out in connection with prostitution.

That was me rather than Lass (though I think Lass and I both agree on the intrinsic harm done by prostitution). But (if I'm reading the OP right) that was kind of implied in the OP - not that we should in anyway try to minimise the horror of the attack done to the homeless man, but that the different social responses to the two situations - most people will instinctively recoil in horror at the thought of a man having hot coffee poured over him (and absolutely rightly so), whereas they will gloss over the fact that a prostitute risks rape, assault, even death at the hands of a punter, STDs and pregnancy.

I know people have mentioned times and societies where setting a couple of bums to fight each other would have been thought of as amusing - but somehow we've managed (on the whole) to move past that as a society. So that shows that we can move from a society which normalises and even takes pleasure in other people's pain to one which is more compassionate. So why can't we do this with prostitution? (Maybe we could if we tried hard enough. As a woman, I'm certainly happy to be living in the UK rather than Germany with its legalised super-brothels.)

Sorry Lurcio

Lurcios post expresses exactly how I feel about this.

The idea of paying vulnerable people to submit to harm makes almost everyone recoil in horror, except when talking about prostitution (when it gets reframed as 'an empowering choice' ).

It's a clear example of harm to women being accepted and minimised for men's benefit.

for me the two situations are identical in both there is a 'punter' who is paying for the privilege of using somebody's body for their own pleasure, perhaps the only difference being that the homeless man presumably wasn't expecting to have an offer for hot coffee poured on him that night

There are parallels, and also differences. It is not possible to pour hot coffee on your head without harming yourself. It is possible to have paid-for sex without harming yourself. I understand that some feminists would disagree with this, but some prostitutes can come through their experiences unharmed.

The idea of paying vulnerable people to submit to harm makes almost everyone recoil in horror, except when talking about prostitution (when it gets reframed as 'an empowering choice' )

I would like to think that other than those with a vested interest few people really buy into the idea of prostitution being empowering. There may be indifference, certainly, but as someone said a while back , very few people would be happy if it were their own daughter.

Every time the "sex industry" is discussed there are a few vocal posters calling "empowerment". Indifference isn't great, but it's a million times better than positive endorsement.

"It is not possible to pour hot coffee on your head without harming yourself. It is possible to have paid-for sex without harming yourself. I understand that some feminists would disagree with this, but some prostitutes can come through their experiences unharmed."

Which ones, out of interest? Those with other reasonable choices, perhaps?

I expect that a bullingdon club member who poured hot coffee on himself for a bet would suffer a different kind of harm than this homeless man, don't you?

Every time the "sex industry" is discussed there are a few vocal posters calling "empowerment"

What I see is that every time the sex industry is discussed, here at least, people repeat what you just did yourself, that 'people arise to call it empowering'. It seems more like 'empowerment' is brought up here mostly by those who would deny possibility of it. There seems to be no middle ground at all, for example that choice does not need to be empowered to be valid, it just needs to be a choice not made from desperation, or that similar choices made by two different people could be either empowering or dis-empowering, depending on their personal circumstance and relative loss/gain. The guy who poured hot water on his head for money is making a choice from what an average person would see as desperate circumstances, for a pittance, so its exploitation.

I disagree that paid for sex can happen without harm. Probably physical harm can be avoided though. Hot coffee poured over someone's head is by definition going to cause a horrible physical injury.

If we try and simplify this like a maths equation - what if the homeless man was asked for sex in return for the money? Would people be horrified by that?

And what if a prostitute was asked to have hot coffee poured over (for the sake of argument) her?

I personally think that people would be fairly un-shocked by the homeless man being asked for sex, and rather more shocked about the coffee.

It's a different kind of harm, a different kind of injury. It doesn't offer the sexual pleasure, or comfort, or whatever, that prostitution has the potential to offer (which is why most people use a prostitute I think?)

It's purely pain, for the sake of pain, and humiliation. Yes, prostitutes get used for that too. But a searing injury, deliberately done, is different to paying for sexual favours.

Grimarse wrote - "some prostitutes can come through their experiences unharmed."

I think that is more wishful thinking and pop psychology than fact.

It's definitely not actual psychology, that's for sure.

Given grimarse's first (non sequitur) contribution to the thread was about. "Pretty young women marrying rich old men" I suspect he may be thinking of such women as "unharmed prostitutes"

vesuvia

^some prostitutes can come through their experiences unharmed."

I think that is more wishful thinking and pop psychology than fact.^

Well, there are sadly plenty actual prostitutes who claim that this is fact. Do you think they are liars ?

total formatting fail, apologies.

Possibly DrSuess.

I don't personally care if individuals are empowered or not or that individual prostitutes emerge unscathed. My view is it is damaging to society as a whole. Can't remember who posted the quote below. It's about stripping but it applies equally.

At the end of the day, even if you could produce unimpeachable evidence that every single stripper has chosen stripping over being a doctor, makes (and pays taxes on) more money than a banker and fondly recounts tales of her stripping days to her children, I would still be opposed to stripping as it both reflects and reinforces the position of women in society as objects to be purchased for sexual service to men.

That was FloraFox, Lass. Good quote!

itllallbefine wrote - "there are sadly plenty actual prostitutes who claim that this is fact. Do you think they are liars ?"

I'm not calling anyone a liar.

The opposite of correct or accurate is incorrect or inaccurate, which would only be a lie if the incorrect information had been given in order to deliberately deceive other people.

If I asked a person to tell me the year of King Henry VIII's birth and their answer was 1500 (incorrect) instead of 1491 (correct), I would not assume that the person was a liar. Would you?

YY Lass.

I disagree that paid for sex can happen without harm.

How does potential or actual harm, physical or psychological, negate validity of choice? Should women be prevented from entering employment with high probability of harm, for example military, police or fire service?

My view is it is damaging to society as a whole.

In what ways has New Zealand society been damaged due to legal prostitution, given it has had many decades for such damage to manifest?

You cannot seriously be comparing prostitution with women wanting to enter 3 respected and worthwhile professions ?

2 of which definitely are essential for a functioning society (personally I'd say all 3 but I concede others may have reservations about the army)

i.stuff.co.nz/life-style/love-sex/68565738/Behind-the-red-lights-of-New-Zealands-brothels.

Yes, sounds just like any other job.

I'm not going to post a link to it but one of the NZ brothels has an online selector where you can pick from a drop down menu of body types (" voluptuous " ) for example -stature ("petite") and hair colour.

I suppose it comes down to either thinking it's fine to hire a body for sex or it isn't.