Does having sex with a prostitute constitute rape?

[quencher]

A thread triggered this for me so I have decided to ask the question. If you consent to be paid for sex but don't feel like sleeping with the customer, are you being raped?

All men who sleep with prostituted women are rapists and should be referred to as such. Call a spade a spade

Is that under all circumstances.

Sure some women will be really deep into the drugs and addictions and living in brothels etc

But it doesn't always start off like that.

Can you really class someone who say needed the money quickly and took on an escorting job, as much as a victim as those addicted to drugs and working the streets..

If you were somewhere like Thailand I think it's a v fine line to be honest.

Also Pimps force girls to do this kind of thing and they literally have no choice but to go ahead.

In Thailand it's not a fine line. Almost all the women were trafficked under the age of consent. Almost all are kept in the game by coercive pimps and actively addicted by them. Anyone having sex with a worker in Thailand is a rapist. No question in my mind.

It is, yes, IMO.

And this is a TAAT.

I advise anyone who thinks it isn't rape to read the website where punters review their "purchases". It's truly horrific.

There's a website

I wouldn't say it's rape on the part of the man. Even if the woman is not consenting as long as the man genuinely believes she is. Fucking awful situation is she has been coerced onto it but not the man's fault as he an only really the her at her word.

It different if she happens to be underage, that might be rape but I don't think there's any further fault on the man if he genuinely believes she is consenting. (Although in reality I'd like to think most men can spot or at least have some suspicion if the prostitute is only 12)

I'm not making any assumption whether prostitute is right or wrong but I do think there's some cases where a prostitute who has been forced into sex work could be classed as something similsr to a rape victim but the men who sleep with her not classed as rapists..

Yup. Punternet.com. Warning: v triggering. But frankly an important read for anyone who doesn't believe in either rape culture or misogyny.

as long as the man genuinely believes she is

If he's paying her for sex why on earth would he make that assumption?

www.punternet.com/index.php/reviews/123681-Review-of-Tara-of-Milton-Keynes?fs=2

An example of how this cannot be anything other than rape.

Do not read unless you've a strong stomach.

Yes punter.net :(
And that is one of the nicer reviews.

I felt so sad reading she jumped when he touched her. Who knows what that Woman has been through.

Oh God that is nasty....

Poor girl...

Can't say I've ever really thought about it until this thread..it makes for some very disturbing thinking fir sure.

Yes I believe that men who pay for sex are rapists.

Giles from what I've read the vast majority of prostituted women are addicted/sexual abused as children/trafficked/coerced in some way. Very few can be truly said to be voluntarily selling sexual access to their bodies. There's always a back story

Yes, that is one of the tamer ones. An excerpt from another:

"she did everything possible to prevent any penetration and her facial expressions would make you think I was beating her!"

So anyone who think it's not rape can think again tbh.

rollergirl you don't think there's any obligation on the man to think about why the woman he's about to have sex with has only agreed to do it for the money?

I think I have a higher opinion of men than you do. I think they're perfectly capable of engaging their brains and consciences

That's what I was saying upthread. Some men get off on being a bullet-proof rapist.

Calling it 'sleeping with' escorts is buying into the cognitive dissonance that keeps that possible.

Those poor Women.
They don't see them as human do they?

submit
consent
I think there's a difference between consent and submission. It could be argued (and I'd agree) that you cannot pay for someone's genuine consent, only their submission; therefore those punters having sex with prostitutes (the majority, I imagine) who are not 'willing' are raping them.

I do think we need a cultural change from 'what's the absolute minimum possible consent a man can get away with' to 'was there enthusiastically given and ongoing free consent'. Because men are being held to extremely low standards currently.

There's always a back story

What if the back story is they just needed the money.

I mean Yeah that's bad but it's not comparable with being trafficked or abused

The commercialisation of sex is a really difficult issue to discuss from a feminist perspective, because on one hand there's a massive imbalance of power there and huge potential for vulnerable women and girls to be exploited, but on the other hand if you say a prostitute is unable to give informed consent you're basically putting her in the same category as children and people with severe learning difficulties which is again very disempowering. There's also the risk that, where women who have had sex for money speak about their experiences and assert that they don't feel they were raped, their voices can end up being silenced by well meaning feminists who feel their perception of a situation is more valid than another woman's lived experiences.
I think if you look at it in a vacuum with no context, just "woman agrees to have sex with man in exchange for money" it's not rape, but in the real world there is always a context and 99% of the time that context provides the information needed to clarify it as rape, eg "woman agrees to have sex with man in exchange for money and getting to go home without being beaten up".

I would be happy to lump all punters in with rapists because again, there's always a context - they know the person they are penetrating wouldn't be allowing it if given a genuinely free choice, and they do it anyway, so even if they're not technically rapists in a legal sense they're still on a similar level morally.

What if the back story is they just needed the money. I mean Yeah that's bad but it's not comparable with being trafficked or abused

They need the money badly enough to allow a random bloke fuck them and pay for it. They had no other way to get the money. That's not too bad a back story for whom exactly?

Yes. It's financial coercion.