You need to read this article about the Leeds red light district.

[DJLippy]

I read this blog about the Leeds red light district from someone who lives there. It's so illuminating. This needs a wider audience - please share on social media. This is what decriminalisation looks like.

littlegirlblue.blog/2018/05/25/living-in-the-red-light-district/

Straw man - several posters have said that there may be a small minority of women who do it out of choice (and none of the ones in Holbeck) but the point is that the damage it does, both to the women in prostitution who do it out of desperation and to the women and children around them who have to put up with the knock on effects - at best harrassment, at worst rape, is such that it is not a practice a civilised society should tolerate.

By the way your response toOffered is way more revealing about you than you realise - it's all about what you want, isn't it, and part of what you want is the freedom to trample all over women' s boundaries, whether by flashing your cash in a red light district or by waving your free speech banner online. (I am a big fan of free speech - but also of bearing the consequences of your free speech, which in this case is that all of us see you for precisely what you are )

It's impossible to control abuse so that no one gets hurt. It can be hidden away or legalised, but the abuse still happens.

I can't believe that I live in a country with legalised abuse.

Baroque, I entirely agree with you

Oh, Offered, that brought back such a happy memory of my late DH shouting this Monty Python diatribe down to our DCs from a battlement in France.

Alternate, the Nordic model is constructive. It's the only approach that is. Criminalising those who use prostitutes - criminalising all those involved in the trade except for the prostitutes - reduces demand and helps women. The "happy hookers" you seem to think abound can still operate. Prostitution results in huge harm to women and girls. It's highly dangerous both physically and psychologically. Nothings you can say alters that.

Can anyone tell me where I said a man who pays a desperate woman for sex can, should or could try to convince himself he is a good man?

I have merely stated that this kind of industry has always existed and will most likely continue until the foreseeable future.

Therefore should we not have a duty, if we know it will continue, to make it as safe as possible? Especially for those who work in the industry.

As a side note, and I would genuinely be interested in opinions on this.

I worked sourcing manufactured goods from overseas. Very early in my career I decided that I would source everything ethically (we all hear about sweatshops, child labour and so on).
On visiting a new factory I noticed some of the workers were quite young. I stipulated to the factory owner that I would not use a factory that employed anyone under 16 yrs of age.
His reply was, not a problem. I will remove anyone under the age in order to get your business. However they will ultimately end up on the streets, with no food, and no support for their family.
Now be clear, I did not use the factory, as I was not comfortable with it.
But it did make me think. Who was I to decide the fate of those workers who were younger than 16, when all they had was the little they earned. Just so I could feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and would allow me to preach that I would not exploit overseas manufacturing.

I think it stinks that in some places child labour and others are being exploited just so we can have what we want at a price we are happy with.
The reality is that some of these countries have no welfare state. So if we all insisted overnight that anyone exploited in these environments were removed, the alternative is literally starvation.

What would you do?

What is needed is education to hopefully enlighten. But it doesn't happen overnight.

I love the holy grail... it’s my favourite one

I know the man with manly opinions has resulted in massive derail as usual but when they do it I don’t know if they realise they are enabling me to make so many useful observations, develop theories and test them which enable increasingly reliable predictions...

I know they think ‘the problem’ is we just haven’t been adequately informed re the ‘right way’ to think and speak and each one actually believes they are the man to do it but I’m not sure whether they realise what they are actually doing is repeating tired old crap we’ve heard a million times and actually I’m just sat here playing boring old misogynist bingo...

Anyone got a full house yet?

Ugh

This is the justification that men gave for male charity workers paying for sex in Haiti isn't it.

Just no.

Your argument could easily be used to advocate for paying children for sex, around the world, you do realise that I assume?

"I think it stinks that in some places child labour and others are being exploited just so we can have what we want at a price we are happy with.
The reality is that some of these countries have no welfare state. So if we all insisted overnight that anyone exploited in these environments were removed, the alternative is literally starvation."

Poor 5yo in India will starve if kind men from the West stop paying to fuck them, so much sads. What can we do? Certainly we don't want the poor kids to starve

With children it seems much easier for men (some men) to grasp the flaws in the argument.

Strangely as soon as the girl hits about 14, it all becomes a "consensual act between happy conseting adults who are happy and consensual and consenting to fun in a fun and consensual way".

I think with boys, men find it a bit easier to see it as abuse, until older anyway, and especially if they are over 18 and gay.

Most men would find the idea of a straight man having to sell his arse to eat as pretty upsetting (if they have any empathy at all).

Most don't extend this to women though (and older girls).

There was a pretty interesting doc on c4 I think a while back about male sex workers. Some of them had lost their jobs in the recession and thought ‘great! Get paid to fuck women all day’ and listed themselves on gentlemen4hire...

Guess how that turned out...

Whoa.

Where did the paying for sex with children in India come from?

I guess from the responses so far, that you are all in favour of starvation, as long as your happy your morals have not been compromised.
And any suffering your morals may cause to others, even though they were not born into the privileges you may have is just tough.

Big thumbs up to you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whoa! You brought it up! With your heartfelt point about children in poor countries being exploited. Judging from your response, you do indeed believe in paying poor children for sex. Awesome!

I am not sure why you think I am happy for children to starve? That seems a leap. Many people contribute to charities of various types. People who do that, do not demand sex in return for donations.

Apart from maybe some of the male charity workers, when distrbuting aid bought with our money.

Most male sex workers are bought by men though.

However when men are asked to imagine being paid for sex, they invariably imagine being paid to fuck beautiful women. It's very weird.

Same as their response to street harassment - "I'd love to get chatted up on teh street!" totally failing to understand the dynamic or reality of street harassment.

It's quite astonishing really. A man can fuck a woman against her will and convince himself he's doing it out of pure altruism.

If you can pay £20 for a fuck, Alternativevew, then you can put £20 in the bank account of a charity trying to help these women out of prostitution. You can donate £20 worth off food to a food bank or homelessness charity.

I like this troll.

Accusing women who are concerned about the global sex trade to be keen for children to starve to death.

That's quite a good one

Yes yes histroically it is true that it's women on the planet who for all time have cared very little about children starving

Yes, that’s what happened. The people contacting them were all male. They tried to be comfortable with it, I think one went as far as doing massage and then had to stop. One of them was actually providing the sex.

The one that stopped was trying, not very successfully to set up as a personal trainer IIRC.

Creeps be like ''I need to stick my dick in to this woman, otherwise she'll starve''.

Femininsts ''just give her the money without expecting sex''

Creep ''no, if I don't stick my dick in to her she'll starve''

I actually am beginning to think you are all men just trying to wind things up a bit.

I wish it was just creeps!!!

Unfortunately it’s brocialists, dude bros, Lib fems, political parties, local authorities, police forces, NGOs, multinational charities... etc etc etc

In fact it’s another place where rad fems are alone with the social conservatives and Christian Right both of which do not have women’s interests in mind!

As Rachel Moran said, "When a woman is hungry, the humane thing to do is put food in her mouth, not your dick"