Prostitution; help me argue on Facebook

[MrsTerryPratchett]

I'm arguing with a friend on FB about prostitution. She is the most libfem, choosy choice, libertarian person I know. Currently at college so every second post is about gender neutral bathrooms and the like. I almost never engage.

But her argument is that most prostitution is hidden and therefore we can't know that these workers aren't happy, healthy, free and consenting. I've given her the PTSD stats and the violence and rape stats. But she is insisting that these invisible women are all loving it.

Any stats on home-based, self-employed workers? Also, I know that people here have said that workers' organisations are frequently dominated by pimps. Where's the proof of that. And, former workers who are radfem/anti-sex work and have written pieces about it?

Sorry to use your labour

The refusal of middle-class liberals to acknowledge an economic dimension to various forms of oppression possibly stems from their reluctance to part with any of their money.

1. Please point out who you believe to be MC liberals.
2. Show where those people have said there is no economic impetus to women being prostituted
3. Stop being disingenuous

I don't mean to be disingenuous, I just don't know what other reason women would have to become prostitutes but some form of financial necessity.

I'm not suggesting that anyone on here is such a person, but we all know there are people who read the Guardian, drink fair rade coffee and profess to be very concerned about oppressed and impecunious demographics. But if a left winger came along and threatened to tax them more heavily in order to help those people then the tick would go next to the Tory candidate. I think that's partly why you rarely hear people on the progressive left even mention economics and how it intersects with other forms of oppression. They prefer identity politics because that's easy. It makes them feel good and it doesn't mean they lose any of their money.

people without money are excluded even from the most basic human drives. I feel it at the moment being single, i have to pay for someone to be simply nice to me (make me a coffee whilst I'm reading..Cafe,. Rub my shoulders when they are sore ..Massage at Therapy centre,. And even do some housework..Ironing service).. this over individualisation and monetisation of interactions that used to be bonding is i think very sad, but also very dangerous, as it creates ultra disadvantaged males, who without money can't get even the most basic human contact

Erm.. well if you found yourself destitute you could do all those 'intimate', 'bonding' things like lovingly ironing and lovingly making people coffee, and earn at the same time its win/win for you. I personally detest ironing and housework and do it with feelings ranging between resentment and loathing, but if you like it scary, why not get paid to do it?

I think (sadly) you are giving too much agency to the circumstances of many prostituted women. Whilst economic considerations are undoubtedly a part of why some women enter prostitution a huge number (as in the case of the pp above) are groomed by abusive men from a young age and then become trapped in an abusive cycle that often includes drink and drug addiction.

These are generally working class and financially impoverished young women but they don't just wake up one day thinking ohh I know selling my body will be much better than a boring job in Starbucks, they are groomed and controlled by abusive men.

This isn't the experience of all of course and I do think it is worth interrogating other narratives around women entering prostitution. Particularly common and again raised on this thread is the idea of women using sex work to pay their way through university. Economic drivers are obviously a massive factor in this decision making as well but it seems to me to be a very different sort of interaction. Prostitution is seen as a way of buying a better future.

I think the first group is much more common than the second but the second group is more articulate and has more freedom to organise and represent their views so their opinion is heard more. It is also important for their own mental health not to recognise the violence inherent in their interactions and to argue the lack of difference between paid for and truly consensual sex with a partner of choice

None of this really addresses why men feel entitled to use women for sex though. Because we aren't fully human

These are generally working class and financially impoverished young women but they don't just wake up one day thinking ohh I know selling my body will be much better than a boring job in Starbucks, they are groomed and controlled by abusive men

Exactly. The vast majority of women will never be prostitutes.

DadWasHere
I think you missed my point. When a poster reveals she was introduced to prostitution by someone I presume was a trusted friend at 14 years old - without acknowledging the wrongness of it, who then goes on to express an extremely cynical and depressing view of relationships where everything is about 'getting something out of it' and requiring bargaining power to control the other - and with an starkly apparent lack of awareness that this hardened defensiveness isn't normal, I was passing comment that what seems like normal sound reasoning to her, is pretty shocking to people who are fortunate enough to not have been groomed into prostitution as teens.

I have only skim read the last bits, but it would be interesting to see how independent sex workers are classified sociology economically..Are they self employed? Akin to minor actors? Business owners?. Some sex workers earn a huge amount, and so i think assuming it's only done from extreme economic hardship is probably unrealistic.

The point i was making was partly that the poorer society becomes, and the more households require everyone to work, the more nearly everything gets monetised, but for everything to be monetised requires a greater flow of cash. There were some mentions of 'male' jobs being monetised.. Actually i think that's the wrong comparison with sex work. I was more thing king about a more shared helpful model where say in a flat share type thing, you aren't always going 'I'll do the dishes for a fiver whilst you tidy the living room, and I'll pay you £2.50 per hour for that, if you chop veg I'll charge you less for the meal, oh pick me up acoke on the way home, not unless you agree to pay me a fiver, etc etc...

The problem with thinking like this re sex is it could turn romance into 'a sleazy way to get sex without paying' in fact i think this explanation for men's behaviour has always been there, as women often had to restrict sex to gain influence, so some resentment of prostitution is about devaluing a currency maybe?

Terms like 'wank bucket' are deliberately nasty, but i would have thought ever thinking of sex in those kinds of terms is going to damage the person saying them more.

I think (sadly) you are giving too much agency to the circumstances of many prostituted women. Whilst economic considerations are undoubtedly a part of why some women enter prostitution a huge number (as in the case of the pp above) are groomed by abusive men from a young age and then become trapped in an abusive cycle that often includes drink and drug addiction.

These are generally working class and financially impoverished young women but they don't just wake up one day thinking ohh I know selling my body will be much better than a boring job in Starbucks, they are groomed and controlled by abusive men.

Well no Chinese peasant wakes up one day and thinks 'Oh I know what'll do: work twelve hours a day in a sweatshop' either. No one wakes up in East Africa and thinks 'Oh I'll go and work down a diamond mine I think' - but there is still an economic dimension to those people's situations.

I never for a minute suggested that women make a cold, calculated choice to become prostitutes, but economic pressures drive them into it, or make them vulnerable to bad people.

Of course there are fugitives from oppressive backgrounds as well as refugees from conflict zones who are targeted by gangsters. Sexual slavery and trafficking is a problem. But again this is mainly an issue with people who are displaced or homeless and therefore feel they have no other choice. There aren't many child prostitutes in Henley on Thames. Quite a few in Rochdale though.

Imagine a woman who has fled Syria and falls into prostitution. Do you think she gives a shit about the sympathy and gender politics of well-off liberals? No, she wants their money. She wants a job. She wants a safe place to live in a nice area. She wants well-funded social services and police forces. She wants not to have to do this horrible job.

You can go on about how men shouldn't sleep with prostitutes (and I think it's worthwhile to do so) but that in itself helps no one. Brutal, mercenary sex traffickers and pimps are not going to vanish just because we are willing them too.

What will hit the pimps is the transference of wealth from the rich to these poor people that they target. That will make real, tangible, concrete difference to people's lives. The Nordic model I think is good - but on it's own it will not work. It might work in what is still a fairly egalitarian social democracy like Sweden, but here it will not work so well.

Sorry everyone, but if we want prostitution and other social justices to be significantly reduced in the foreseeable future, then we have to take a cut. Fact.

so some resentment of prostitution is about devaluing a currency maybe?

I think there's an anthropological theory that this is how patriarchy developed. Indebted nomadic tribespeople were forced to push their daughters into prostitution, whereas aristocratic women withheld sex and lived behind veils. Hence the idea of a woman who has sex with lots of people being devalued somehow, while the virgin is placed on a pedestal.

I think that's different now though in the attention economy. Sex is a source of currency. A woman called Caroline Hakim coined the term 'sexual capital' to describe this.

Some sex workers earn a huge amount, and so i think assuming it's only done from extreme economic hardship is probably unrealistic.

Yes, though even they usually begin in some sort of position of economic hardship. There are some elite escorts who get paid silly money to spank Tory politicians and High Court Judges. I think that's quite different to the brothels full of Ukrainian refugees and heroin addicts though. Prostitution is generally linked to poverty and a lack of alternative options in some way.

It is clear you don't want to discuss this but
Brutal, mercenary sex traffickers and pimps are not going to vanish just because we are willing them too.
They will vanish if there is no market. If you are that concerned about the plight of prostituted women independent you could focus on making it socially unacceptable for men to buy sex instead of boring on about the economic impetus.

you could focus on making it socially unacceptable for men to buy sex instead of boring on about the economic impetus.
Exactly - I can envision a world where WC women are all raised high enough above the poverty line to have no economic incentive to enter prostitution, then pimps' rather than being able to harvest the easy pickings in poor areas, need to start scouring the shopping malls in Henley-Upon-Thames and Richmond for sad and neglected looking teenage girls to target and groom.... and of course there is the more crude option of kidnapping, trafficking and sexual slavery to meet male demand.

But there is still an economic dimension to these people's decisions

Of course there is independent I don't think anyone here has denied that and it is disingenuous to suggest that they have. But there is also a patriarchal dimension to these people's decisions you must see that.

People do what they have to do to survive including working in sweatshops, subsistence farming etc but their decisions are directed and constrained by the patriarchal context in which they are happening.

Take the poor working class British communities discussed earlier. Economic opportunities are equally poor for men and women but how many men choose to go into prostitution to support themselves. Very very few. When they opt out of mainstream capitalism and take part in the black market economy they do so as drug dealers and pimps. And they use that position to coerce and control the sexual and emotional labour of women to support them. As men have since the patriarchy began.

Economic drivers are real but they operate in a patriarchal context that means that options and consequences for women are often much worse than for men.

I don't think many of the women you are arguing against disagree with the concept that a more economically equal society with a redistribution of wealth from rich to poor etc would be a massive help in decreasing the economic constraints that may drive some women into prostitution. However without addressing the additional inequalities faced by women due to the patriarchy there will still be an inequality of opportunity for women to fully participate in society and there will still be an incentive for men to want to control the emotional, sexual and reproductive labour of women.

Many of us here are in favour of the Nordic model and for proper support, therapy and help for women to reduce economic coercion as a reason for "choosing" prostitution. But we also acknowledge that this doesn't solve the route of the problem which is men's learned entitlement to women's bodies.

Hmm. That turned into a bit of an old school intersectionality 101 which considering how far I'm moving from identity politics at the moment is interesting. I guess despite its bastardisation it is actually a really useful tool to analyse inequality.

They will vanish if there is no market.

Exactly. And how do you remove the market? You give people economic security so that they don't have to become prostitutes.

Back to original post though.. why do we have to either have "prositutes are mental' v 'all women who do sex work find it wonderful'. I don't disapprove of supermarkets, but i know very well that a lot of their staff are only there because they believe it keeps poverty away, whilst getting poorer and developing low-level to very serious mental health disorders as a result. There is definitely a massively problematic end of the business where people working in it feel completely powerless and exploited and who are there because of extreme poverty and mental health issues..Just as there is in agriculture, care work, etc etc.

I suspect the proportion of sex workers who are comfortable with what they do has dramatically accelerated over the past 15 years..And to say that women don't enjoy what would previously have been considered extremely degrading and humiliating behaviour that devalued them socially and economically and destroyed their chance of marriage or a relationship is illustrated by dogging, swinging, community porn, Skype sex, text sex, sex articles a-plenty on mumsnet etc etc etc, so it's a difficult multidimensional issue.

Yes there are 'girls' being pushed out of shit flats to give hand jobs for the electricity, trafficked women, abused women a-la Rochdale, shit abusive 'boyfriends' and extreme poverty leading to sex for food/rent/alcohol etc , but i think there is also a growing set of women who do some sex work for the freedom and money it gives them relative to other work and/or they find its something they enjoy or are good at.

I wish i hadn't joined this though, someone is having fun reporting my posts from other boards now! Hope you are enjoying yourselves...

you could focus on making it socially unacceptable for men to buy sex instead of boring on about the economic impetus.

I've already said I'm in favour of the Nordic law. Beyond that, how exactly is this to be achieved? Do you think if we go on about it enough on Mumsnet Feminism then men will see the light, and there will be a significant diminishment of the prostitution industry?

Raising boys to believe prostitution is wrong will do some good. I'm in favour of that. But a redistribution of wealth is necessary. Fact.

You give people economic security so that they don't have to become prostitutes

For as long as there's a male demand and money to be made for pimps/traffickers/brothel owners, etc, women and girls will continue to be tricked, manipulated and coerced to meet that demand.

"Exactly. And how do you remove the market? You give people economic security so that they don't have to become prostitutes."

Do you understand the concept of supply and demand? If supply dries up but demand is unaffected prices rise until more supply hits the market. It's pretty basic economics.

I can envision a world where WC women are all raised high enough above the poverty line to have no economic incentive to enter prostitution, then pimps' rather than being able to harvest the easy pickings in poor areas, need to start scouring the shopping malls in Henley-Upon-Thames and Richmond for sad and neglected looking teenage girls to target and groom.... and of course there is the more crude option of kidnapping, trafficking and sexual slavery to meet male demand.

Of course prostitution will not vanish in its' entirety. But how is that an argument against what I advise - which will reduce it massively?

How do we catch sex traffickers? With a well-funded police force? Do we have a well-funded police force? No. Why don't we have a well-funded police force? Because of the coalition and Tory governments austerity rogramme and their refusal to tax the rich. Their refusal to tax a lot of us a lot harder than we are being taxed at the moment.

I don't think many of the women you are arguing against disagree with the concept that a more economically equal society with a redistribution of wealth from rich to poor etc would be a massive help in decreasing the economic constraints that may drive some women into prostitution.

Not buying sex would be an idea too.

Raising boys to believe prostitution is wrong will do some good. I'm in favour of that. But a redistribution of wealth is necessary. Fact

Some good ? Are you serious? The fundamental starting point is buying sex is wrong.

Do you understand the concept of supply and demand?

I do, and it's a nonsense of neo-classical economics peddled by successive right-wing governments.

Some good ? Are you serious? The fundamental starting point is buying sex is wrong.

Yes. Do both. Why not?

Let's all agree that selling class A drugs is a really bad thing to do and then also address the economic conditions that surround it.

Independent you are currently on a number of threads arguing for your post neoliberal, non capitalist but at the same time non socialist economic model of fairness that will somehow solve all of our little lady problems without addressing the root inequality that causes them. However I'm a bit confused about exactly what your model consists of.

Why don't you start your own thread laying out your manifesto and how it will help solve these issues and we can discuss it there with you from a position of understanding without you moving the goalposts. We can then maybe get back to the topics under discussion.

Do you understand the concept of supply and demand? If supply dries up but demand is unaffected prices rise until more supply hits the market. It's pretty basic economics

Yes it is.

Independent is using this thread to run his (?) own little Marxist (?) agenda that we are all culpable - no we are not.

As for the police
nation.com.pk
www.google.co.uk/amp/nation.com.pk/international/19-Dec-2016/uk-police-find-new-tools-to-fight-human-trafficking/amp

I'm happy to work from the starting position buying sex is bad, but you cannot make it a partisan right/left issue. You'll find people on both sides who will take that view and take them and campaign on banning it.

I know the left is on the ropes at the moment in British politics so you'll see a lot of leftists airlifting in on this and that issue trying to make it partisan and then they will mysteriously disappear when the election has come and gone, and then do very little to make things better.

Remember the left and socialism has a long history of actually throwing women (and minorities) under the bus when it suits them.

what I advise - which will reduce it massively?
The fact that pimps target children's homes, and victims of CSA and domestic violence makes me doubt that what you advise will help as much as you think. Sure, there are links with poverty, but I think much stronger links with chaotic home lives eg- parents who are addicts or have mental illnesses, etc.
Obviously more money could make better safter children's homes, fewer parents addicted to alcohol and drugs, less fury that makes dad's beat the living daylights out of their kids etc - but it is all so much more complicated than you suggest.