Is prostitution rape?

[BayLeaves]

I've seen posters referring to prostitution as rape on here and I am interested to hear the reasoning.

I am undecided on the issue as I have not really thought much on it before.

Prostitution shows the very concept of "consent" to be flawed.

Consent is used as a get out of jail free card for the men and the societies they live in who think that there should be a class of girls and women available to men to have sex on.

Consent is a deeply problematic concept as currently understood and used. I started a thread on the subject once I'll see if I can find it.

Speaking from the other side here (brief time spent in the escorting world)

I do feel it's an Insult to women who have been through hell and back to start thinking of myself as having been assaulted in some way. I would not have done it by choice. I felt at the time I did not have the means to be able to pay off the credit card (first and last time I will ever get myself Into that position for a guy) any other way (minimum wage earner back when it was barely above 4 pound fifty an hour ) and it was too good an opportunity to miss out on.

I do wonder myself lucky with the clients I got it could have been worse. I've had plenty of shit sex being paid for having said shit sex didn't seem so bad at the time.

I would not actively chose to do it. I didn't want to do it but I chose to go through with it any way.

The clients were good to me I guess. I never really thought about the consent vs payment issue at the time

So many heterosexual interactions get pretty close to rape, which is why it is so easy to get away with rape with a 'reasonable belief' plea. Porn segregates the sexes with the majority of filmed porn aimed at men, and written erotica at women.

As long as sex is something men do to women, and the entire language reinforces the primacy of male pleasure everything will be perpetually out of whack. Personally I think it is a bit of a stretch to say all paid for sex violates consent, simply because any prostitute can refuse sex with any particular man for whatever reason although I am given to understand they get stick when they do so on racial grounds.

However just because it is consent doesn't mean there isn't a shit tone of ethical problems surrounding the practice. I also don't buy the notion that men are being exploited here. I'm a man and haven't had sex in nearly 5 years and whilst I have a relatively high libido you just tie a knot in it and get on with your day. I literally don't buy that male sexuality turns us all into slavering monsters, to become so is a choice not an inevitability.

Oh, I remember your thread Beach - it was very interesting and I'd love to re-read it if you can find it.

"I've had plenty of shit sex being paid for having said shit sex didn't seem so bad at the time." Giles. That is indeed shit all round. Hope things are better now.

If someone holds a pistol to your head and forces you to give him all your money, would you feel offended if the police wanted to persecute him for robbery because you "made a choice" to give him the money rather than be shot?

I am against prostitution and in favour of the criminalisation of punters. However the robbed-at-gunpoint analogy does not work for all prostitution. Some women are literally or metaphorically forced into it at gunpoint. However, in some cases, they tell us that they are making a choice to be a prostitute. We might lament the lack of alternative options open to them and the normalisation of selling sex as a commodity, but I am still not convinced that we have the right to tell them that they do not know their own minds.

And it doesn't make sense to say this is about men, not women, as rape as a crime only exists if the woman does not consent.

To stress, I am not defending prostitution - I want to see it stamped out. I think it's wrong to pay someone for sex and I would like to see it criminalised. I'm just not convinced that calling all prostitution rape is the right way to go about it.

As a current escort, nothing pisses me off more than the insinuation that, because I’m being paid for my services, my clients are raping me.
I consent to having sex with my clients – end of. I’m not being coerced, I’m not being manipulated or forced. I do it because I want to.
It’s infantilising and downright insulting to tell women like me that our consent is not true consent because it doesn’t fit in with your own ‘acceptable’ reasons for giving consent to sex.

I’ve been raped and sexually assaulted in my personal life (i.e. not by clients) and the suggestion that the consensual sex I have with my clients is anywhere close to what I experienced when my consent wasn’t given honestly turns my stomach.

From what I've seen the prostitute's who love their work and don't feel exploited are imo often those who haven't yet been made 'worthless' through their 'work'. Those who are still young and fresh and not yet victims of violent men. Same way the porn industry uses up women, young girls feeling excited and empowered by it, until they become the woman who has to film with three dicks up her ass for anyone to give her a job. Maybe some women get out all this before they become used up and being paid virtually nothing for perverts to assualt their bodies, but many do not and when they finally escape at rock bottom they paint a very dark picture. Many women deny they are being victimised in other ways, victims of DV deny it ok ften due to fear and social conditioning, but that doesn't make them any less victims or their abusers any less guilty. It's the same thing imo

From what I've seen the prostitute's who love their work and don't feel exploited are imo often those who haven't yet been made 'worthless' through their 'work'

I agree that those who claim to love their work are a tiny and unrepresentative minority. But it doesn't follow from that that everyone else is being raped. And I worry that calling all prostitution rape will make it even harder for prostitutes who are raped under the current UK legal definitions to get justice.

That's why I think it makes more sense to think of prostitution as modern slavery than as rape. Most workers in all forms of modern slavery have 'chosen' the work in the sense of knowing what it involves and having 'volunteered' to do (not true of all victims, of course). Yet the nature of the work is so exploitative that society does not recognise this consent as off-setting the adverse effect of the work, so treats workers as victims and their 'employers' as criminals. The consent becomes irrelevant, even if fully informed and freely given. And that it is a crucial difference from rape which - under the law - can only occur if there is not consent.

I used to work in the industry.
I am very aware.
I don't need to read this thread to educate myself ffs lol!

From what I've seen the prostitute's who love their work and don't feel exploited are imo often those who haven't yet been made 'worthless' through their 'work'. Those who are still young and fresh and not yet victims of violent men

Or maybe they were already feeling pretty worthless and were in the situation they were in (turning to prostitution) as a result of men. Not necessarily violence but just how men in general or maybe just the people around them had made them feel.

I wasn't left to feel worthless, it was one of the greatest years of my life! Financial freedom, my own boss, loved every minute! I wasn't exploited or manipulated.
I only gave it up because I started a family, and I'd go back to it.

*times not years

Oh good god no. If you're trafficked you are not a prostitue, you are a sex slave. And THAT is rape. I'm a former sex worker, for most of my adult life. And no, it's not.and believe me, we know the fucking difference

Question is though dust do the clients know you aren't trafficked.

I wasn't trafficked either but I can't say that the clients knew or even cared. So those are the people we slept eitg. People who didn't care about where we were from or our situations. Did they "get lucky" in receiving escorts who are their by "choice" or did they somehow ensure that they didn't get a trafficked person. Would they still go ahead if they knew someone was..

Of course they know! Try trafficking some of the women I've met in my career! They'd slit your throat! Some of the strongest women I met were in my working career.

So people who don't even know your real name know you aren't trafficked and lick that up from a short "interaction"

Really?

Interesting, lotsof.

Glad that physical strength can prevent you from being trafficked.

How many prostitutes die in the U.K. every year?

lotsofconfuse

What a load of shit

Trafficked women are easy to spot.
If you're in the industry you can spot it a mile off.
Most of the men that visit working girls are regulars, they aren't stupid.
It's normal for people that have never had any experience within the industry to assume that it's full of trafficked vulnerable women, but it is a very small part of it. These kind of operations normally operate independently. Men that visit vulnerable women like this usually do so because it's much cheaper, and they get off on it.

I meant worthless in monatary terms- Henderson quotation marks- like how a new fresh face in the porn industry can charge slot for a little to start with but ten yrs down the line she's lucky to get virtually nothing for being gang raped on screen or being triple fisted or whatever

Anyway back to the point, people who choose to work in the sex industry aren't being raped.

Prostitution, the act of being paid fir sex, isn't rape.

*hense

Which part is a load of shit lineys? Please do specify.

I'm not sure how a man could know wether someone was trafficked or not. It's an environment where a fantasy is being sold, thus deception is part of the whole endeavour. Coupled with the fact as man in this situation you have every reason to employ motivated reasoning to convince yourself you aren't harming someone.

I wouldn't dream of telling sex workers their business nor motivations, but for me there is a simple equation X number of women are trafficked compared to a population of sex workers Y, the more you engage in paid sex eventually the chances of you sleeping with a trafficked or coerced soul approaches certainty. Seeing as I have no desire to have a starting role in someone else's ptsd flashback is it terribly awful for me to judge negatively the men who actively want to or simply don't care one way or another?