The city that allows women to sell sex

[Mumom0]

I heard this story earlier, which is about a designated prostitution zone in Leeds - this scheme has moved prostitutes from residential streets to places where businesses operate in the day but not at night.

There was a short interview with a male business owner who felt there was an impact on his business, but what about women business owners or workers - current or future?
This place becomes effectively a no go area for women, or worse an area where sexual harassment is legalised as 'other' women should not be there.
Interested in what others think as I used to live in an area with a reputation for on street prostitution, and there was more harassment (to non sex industry women) from men driving through the area to have a look and shout abuse than actual prostitution.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35987536

"Should I get that post deleted? Don't even know why I put it." I think so. but whether Mumsnet will or not is up to them....

Ophelia, your post does not look like it is promoting the sex industry

Far from it

I know it is certainly not promoting it. There would not be enough money to entice some into this world, but for others, maybe it is different.

To get through the day, the full-timers, they're given these strong prescription pain killers that give the eyes that Dilated (sexy) look. They are highly addictive.

Interesting. I would have thought the use of illegal drugs was more frequent, but it makes sense that a brothel-owner would want to keep a tidy facade, which doesn't work so neatly with alcohol and other mind-altering drugs.

I was thinking first and foremost of the psychological damage, which would also affect those who have only one "customer" a day ... but I suppose this part is already dealt with long before a girl enters prostitution. (There are theories that those women who "choose" prostitution were victimized by child rapists beforehand, but nowadays, porn might play a role in the separation of girls' minds from their bodies. I have read reports of girls who experienced sex as trying to reenact porn, to look sexy, without any sense of joy ...)

Simply telling people that there's a lot of money to be made ... will not really tempt anyone who wasn't influenced by other factors.

Thanks so much for sharing 0phelia.

My impression is exactly what you have explained. It's easy money for some. I believe that can be seen as attractive to many. I'm not condoning it but accept some actually choose it willingly.

I'm sorry about your childhood. My mum is a victim and its affected her entire life.

I see Ophelia's post about potential earnings has been deleted. What struck me is the figures weren't that high.

The lobbyists for prostitution being just another job frequently compare it to being better than working in a supermarket or Macdonalds.

What struck me from the figures Ophelia quoted was they depended on being fully employed in your "shift". There's no guarantee of that which makes what were not particularly astonishing figures in the first place less attractive.

I think one point is also that it must be hard to get out or get into something different. What do you say you were doing for 5 or 10 years work wise etc?

I wonder for girls wanting to get out of the 'sex trade' what is on offer?

Earnings are all over the place, that would seem to be the nature of that line of 'work'. As a way of making money in London, digging down into information, it ranges from street prostitution and cheap illegal transitory brothels, made up of drug addicts and eastern european women, then on through legal established higher end brothels and escort services in the middle range, then on to ultra expensive services provided by social media and back-list celebrities to wealthy clients, particularly where Russians and Arabs congregate because they represent a wealthy group far more likely to purchase sex services.

I'm a bog-standard, run-of-the-mill independent who advertises on Adultwork and similar sites. I charge 120 an hour in my home city and 150 an hour when I tour to places like London. Half an hour is 80 or 100. In my home city, I will see about two or three clients a day and make 1000-1500 a week. On tour I can make as much as 4000. After paying overheads and taxes (on most of my income) I am able to support a family of five.

I am not high-class or anything of the sort. I'm not young and beautiful and the services I offer are fairly vanilla. But what I do have going for me is that I am able to rent a flat to work from and otherwise manage things for myself. I can afford to be picky and I will turn away men just because I don't like the sound of their voice or whatever.

There are other girls who are not able to do those things for a variety of reasons. Some girls work in parlours because they just want to show up for a day and make a wad of cash and go home for a week and not think about it any more. They're happy to take less cash in their hands because they'll still walk out with hundreds of pounds - I know girls who do this and they're not all vulnerable weaklings or anything like that. They're just going to knock out 15 bookings in a shift at 40 a go and they'll go home happy.

There are, of course, girls in more vulnerable positions. I don't know how many of us "happy hookers" there are.

"They're just going to knock out 15 bookings in a shift at 40 a go and they'll go home happy."

This is the most horrifying sentence I have ever read on Mumsnet.

It's not horrifying for the girls I know who work there. It's what they want to do. Of course, I only know girls who work or have worked because they wanted to.

I would happily do it myself if I were a bit younger. It's honestly not something we find upsetting.

I think the fact you don't fine it upsetting is actually very sad. I don;t mean to be offensive but I find this quite depressing and I also feel it is probably very unrepresentative of the experiences of prostitutes.

"When people describe prostitution as being something that is glamorous, elegant, like in the story of Pretty Woman, well that doesn't come close to it. A prostitute might sleep with five strangers a day. Across a year, that's more than 1,800 men she's having sexual intercourse or oral sex with. These are not relationships, no-one's bringing me any flowers here, trust me on that. They're using my body like a toilet.
And the johns - the clients - are violent. I've been shot five times, stabbed 13 times. I don't know why those men attacked me, all I know is that society made it comfortable for them to do so. They brought their anger or mental illness or whatever it was and they decided to wreak havoc on a prostitute, knowing I couldn't go to the police and if I did I wouldn't be taken seriously.
I actually count myself very lucky. I knew some beautiful girls who were murdered out there on the streets."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33113238

This won't be every prostitutes experience, but you won't know when you start whether it will be yours or not.

I've never said that it was glamorous. It's just my job. It simply doesn't bother me. I have never been abused or molested or raped or anything that might have made me this way. It's simply not a big deal to me.

I'm unable to say what is representative of most prostitutes in our culture. I do know quite a few others like me (similar attitudes and methods of working.)

IGH That BBC article fits a tidy narrative.

I'm not convinced that it is representative. It's actually very exteme, and it's no wonder that woman feels the need to protect other women.

The women I have worked with throughout my involvement in the scene are ambitious. Driven. They want to do this. I am not convinced that all of them have been traumatized or abused. I shared my story, because I got into it so young, but it was absolutely a choice I made for myself. Other victims of CSA don't follow that path.

On the party scene I work with groups of women, the Brazilians, the Eastern Europeans, the African women, the Thais.... I can not for a second believe that every single one of these women have had bad traumatic abusive childhoods. I am confident that the reason they work is to escape poverty and send money home, and save up to buy a house back home.

The English girls I work with, I think VestalVirgin made a point that porn may influence such choices. This rings true. A few women have commented "Oh, I was doing porn before this but I want to make more money". They are strong, brilliant, independent, fantastic women. I love all of my girls. I try to help them in small ways.

MassiveStrumpet glad to hear life is treating you well. I agree with your point, the work is not upsetting exactly. I think there is something about the mindset that is different perhaps which makes it shocking to outsiders.

On the party scene I work with groups of women, the Brazilians, the Eastern Europeans, the African women, the Thais.... I can not for a second believe that every single one of these women have had bad traumatic abusive childhoods. I am confident that the reason they work is to escape poverty and send money home, and save up to buy a house back home.

Considering how sexual abuse of children is treated in Brazil (didn't they recently force an eight year old to give birth to what was likely her father's incestuous child?), I admit I would be surprised if none of them had had abusive childhoods. Same for African women, and Eastern European ... and well, we all know about Thailand - the government may not be exactly happy about the reputation, but apparently not enough measures are taken to change things.

Though I do think that once poverty gets really, really bad, that might be a factor, too. (I just don't think it would be for people who are citizens of countries where the government believes that people are entitled to food and a roof over their heads.)

then on through legal established higher end brothels

If you are still referring to London there may be brothels there. I can't comment on whether they are "high end" or not but they are not legal

The hardest part of my job is the phone and texts. The bookings themselves are really no big deal. Nobody is awful to me. No violence or anything like that. But I have to answer calls from idiots all day long. I turn a lot of men away. Often only because they have an accent I don't like or they call me "darling."

0phelia of course I am glad that your experiences are not as extreme as the ones of the women in the article. I am glad if those things are not so common here.

MassiveStrumpet I am glad you have not been abused or molested or raped.

I am very sad this is presented as the only option for some women who want to earn money.

I am very sad women feel ambitious to do this.

"I'm unable to say what is representative of most prostitutes in our culture."

You are able to say, you just won't.

Research done in 3/4 of Planet Earth's countries on prostitution aggregated the words of thousands of prostituted people, and that's representative of most prostitutes in our culture. Those thousands of voices disagree with you vehemently about prostitution being "easy money".

The piles of prostituted bodies that men leave speaks for itself when the former inhabitants can no longer speak for themselves, and they speak louder than anything you write on the internet about being numb to the sex that men who despise you have on your body.

Sillage, I am unable to say because I am not in a position to collect anything but anecdata and that anecdata is primarily women like myself.

I don't think you can get a truly representative sample. Often what I will see is samples like:

1. Stats from law enforcement... dealing with the most vulnerable people who have somehow come into contact with law enforcement.

2: Stats from government or charitable organisations that deal with vulnerable people.

1. Self-reported surveys that use the Internet to find prostitutes who want to voluntarily answer questionnaires (this means finding women like me, but not the most vulnerable people.)

I know that there are a LOT of women like me. I know a great many of them personally. I don't know what percentage of UK prostitutes we are.

I've never said it's "easy money." It's work. I prefer this sort of work to the options available to me and I am generally happy with my income. If a complete newbie came to me and asked me to help her get started I would have grave reservations as I consider this job to be not suited to everyone. There is a steep learning curve and newbies get fucked with until they learn (sometimes the hard way) how to avoid getting fucked with.

However, for some women - certainly many of my friends - the job isn't as odious as you all assume. We like some clients more than others. Many of us have orgasms and enjoy ourselves at least with some clients. Most of us find that the hardest part is dealing with the men we do NOT see (that is, screening out the idiots.)

Going back to what ItalianGreyhound said above about my post being the most horrifying thing she's ever read on Mumsnet...

Have you read the Relationships board? That's where I frequently see the most hair-raising posts about physical, emotional and financial abuse. There have been posts on there that kept me up at night.

I'm not arguing that marriage is to be compared to prostitution. I'm just thinking it's odd that someone saying very matter of factly that there are women who can have sex with thousands of men and not mind it is more horrifying than posts from women who are ground down and abused in their own homes by someone intimate to them.

At any rate: this thread is originally about street prostitution and I do believe that those women are vulnerable. I doubt that many of them are happy with prostitution. I do not know what the best way to deal with it is. Leeds won't be the first city to tolerate a specific "red light district" in an effort to try and police the worst aspects of something they consider inevitable. It's a real conundrum and I don't know what the best response to the immediate problem is.

"I'm not arguing that marriage is to be compared to prostitution."

Just to point out that marital rape in the UK was only classed as a crime in 1991. In Denmark, it wasn't until 2013 that lessening or total remittance of punishment for sexual violence within marriage was removed. These laws weren't accidents, and feminists had been campaigning since the beginning of the 19th century, so only took two hundred years for many (but still not all) societies to recognise marital rape as rape.

In effect, the point was women were considered to have granted all rights to their body to their husband on marriage. Viewed in this way, at least prostitution only grants such rights temporarily.

Either way, the issue is male entitlement to the bodies of women, whether they have 'rented' them temporarily as in prostitution, or 'casually' as in I-bought-you-dinner-didn't-I, or more 'permanently' as in marriage until very recently.

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3547556/An-ex-prostitute-shares-scathing-open-letter-former-clients.html

Yes, I know it's the Daily Mail, but I think this might be a bit of an eye-opener to men who use the services of prostitutes or pornography.

Do you think all social science research is too hopelessly flawed by design to be of any practical use to anyone anywhere, or just social science research on prostitution?

"I've never said it's "easy money."

I'm quite sure you did.

Saying that rude phone calls are "the hardest" part of prostitution is saying that prostitution is easy money.

This is you saying that prostitution is easy money:

"Some girls work in parlours because they JUST want to show up for a day and make a wad of cash and go home for a week and not think about it any more...They're JUST going to knock out 15 bookings in a shift at 40 a go and they'll go home happy."

just just make wad of cash
just just not think about it anymore
just just go home happy

These are the lies men believe about the prostitutes they abuse. These are the lies young and desperate girls believe when they need money and have no other way to get it.