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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Original poster

Liberal feminists/sex work is work proponents....

106 replies

BertrandRussell · 12/01/2019 13:59

.....do you think the DWP should be able to sanction a person who refuses to earn money as a prostitute when applying for benefits? If not, why not?

OP posts:
BernardBlacksWineIcelolly · 17/01/2019 18:28

jeez, do you ever answer a simple question?

if 'sex work' should be treated differently to other work NonExistentFox, why is that?

come on, we're all here to be educated

IcedPurple · 17/01/2019 19:11

Apart from escorts that work in the high-end of the market, I honestly find it hard to believe that the happy hookers who sometimes post here or on twitter are who they say they are

I think so too.

I remember one saying that all the men she 'serviced' were polite, respectful, and above all, clean and fragrant. Because of course they are.

Then you get the common claim that they 'love their work'. I mean.... find it tolerable? Maybe. But 'love' performing sex acts on random men who've walked off the street? Many of whom will have a wife back home? Love it? Seriously?

R0wantrees · 17/01/2019 19:18

At least PJ hasn't joined this thread.

Previously he arrived on threads mentioning prostitution as if a 'bat signal' had gone up.
(He's a PBP)

IcedPurple · 17/01/2019 19:23

I believe "PJ" also posts in The Guardian. Very similar user name and similar themes - men have this insatiable need for sex which has to be sated (or else....) and because he's so ugly he needs to pay women for it. And of course the women love the work.

IcedPurple · 17/01/2019 19:25

Sorry, what's "PBP"?

R0wantrees · 17/01/2019 19:28

'previously banned poster'

IcedPurple · 17/01/2019 19:32

Oh I see.

I remember seeing him on a thread about prostiution a few months ago. When someone asked why he had resurrected a thread that was over a year old, he said "A friend told me about it." One minute he told us he had no friends and the next he was casually chatting to friends about zombie threads on the Feminism page of a parenting site.

As you do.

R0wantrees · 17/01/2019 19:50

In between PJ's postings there are some useful links etc which are relevent to this thread:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3463636-prostitution-pornography-surrogacy

HelenaDove · 17/01/2019 22:25

One of the problems is that roles that are seen as womens work are too low paid.

inews.co.uk/news/childcare-jobs-underpaid-education-epi-report/

NonExistentFox · 17/01/2019 22:40

if 'sex work' should be treated differently to other work NonExistentFox, why is that?

I'm not dividing the world of work into Sex Work versus All Other Work. It doesn't work that way. I wouldn't force anyone to to do work that involved unwanted intimacy of any sort.

FlyingOink · 18/01/2019 02:05

m.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficking-persists-despite-legality-of-prostitution-in-germany-a-902533-2.html
Afterwards, customers wrote in Internet chat rooms about the supposedly unsatisfactory service, complaining that the women were no longer as fit for use after a few hours.
One of these links mentioned that around 7% of men in England use prostituted women regularly but this goes up to 30% in Spain, 70% in Thailand and 80% of German men have been in a brothel. German 16 year old boys leaving school visit a brothel to celebrate.
Sad

NothingOnTellyAgain · 18/01/2019 08:43

That spiegel article is really depressing.

The bottom line is that too many men seem to see women as not really human, a set of holes for fucking, or they have this weird virgin/whore thing going on. A sub set do just hate women and enjoy upsetting /hurting them. While society is like this, prostitution cannot be 'just a job'. Very few people feel these kind of feelings about hairdressers or bricklayers or accountants. When it comes to men and women and sex, too many men are fucjed up. When men have sorted their shit out, maybe we can talk.

Oldermum156 · 18/01/2019 14:57

I know a lot of sexworkers, they all have drug and addiction problems, bad health, most got into it because they ran away from a bad home and they say on the surface they love their free life but their lives are clearly a dumpster fire.

R0wantrees · 18/01/2019 15:31

Nordic Model Now website has a section which provides powerful testimony from women who are, or have been, in prostitution:

nordicmodelnow.org/testimonial/

Vixxxy · 18/01/2019 23:47

My mother in law was what I expect people mean by 'high class escort'. Does this basically mean extremely well paid, not streetwalking but via agencies, high end hotels not travellodges and such? She says she was on up to a grand a night depending on the client, apparently averaged a few hundred for a couple of hours but once got 4k for a full weekend. But she also claims she was naive in entering the industry and believed the hype of 'women can be paid huge amounts for simply going on dates, they don't even have to have sex!' but quickly learnt differently. She turned to drugs to get her through the work. Then it became a bit of a catch 22. Wanted to give up the work, but needed it to finance the habit, had the habit because of the work, and back around again, drugs getting harder and harder each time. Some rehab stints in between but ultimately back to the drugs. She did eventually manage to leave, but not without a huge amount of shit being thrown at her both from ex clients hunting her down and the 'agency' hounding her. She still has a drug problem to this day, as eventually she had ended up on heroin, and now, even 10 years later shes still on methadone and doesn't realistically ever see an end to it. She still occasionally goes 'off the rails' on a drugs binge for whatever reason (she says she started to use drugs as a coping strategy and this still goes through her head today, so even seemingly small things can set her off) and speaks very scathingly..and very honestly about her time as an escort. She also says while she was trapped in the circle, she would have claimed that it was all great, and basically lied about how horrendous it was, in order to make people think it was still a choice, when it wasn't, not really.

MargueritaPink · 19/01/2019 00:11

My mother in law was what I expect people mean by 'high class escort'

I don't really know what people mean by "high class escort". It isn't a phrase I would use. It's all the same whatever weasel words are used to prettify it. Your mother in law was a prostitute and prostitution ruined her life. It's not nice and calling it high class escorting changes nothing.

Vixxxy · 19/01/2019 00:19

Your mother in law was a prostitute

Well yes, and thats what she says she was too. I just figured that when people call it that, thats what they meant. Maybe they mean something else..have never thought to ask and just kind of assumed til today.

Either way, if this is what people mean when they use that terminology, it certainly is not a bed of roses for the women involved in that either, regardless of what they may claim while still on the merry go round.

FlyingOink · 19/01/2019 00:33

Vixxxy
Thanks for sharing her story. It's important to keep picking apart the Happy Hooker myths.

Coyoacan · 19/01/2019 05:21

Vixxxy Your MIL sounds very self-aware. I do hope she can kick the habit.

Terribletweens · 19/01/2019 08:24

I know a few prostitutes through work (I don't work with sex workers specifically so I'm not seeing the worst side automatically) and they are all very much not 'happy hookers' and none of them would be doing the job if they could get the same money just as quickly by flipping burgers.

Something came to mind as well, if sex work is just work then surely there's no problem with it also being part of another job rather than it just being a sole job on its own? So if you're a massage therapist in a spa why shouldn't you be asked to offer services previously only offered in 'massage parlours' and fired if you refuse? If you're a salesperson currently expected to take clients to dinner to maintain/close sales why shouldn't that expand to sex with them being part of your job role?

LangCleg · 19/01/2019 10:14

I'm not dividing the world of work into Sex Work versus All Other Work. It doesn't work that way. I wouldn't force anyone to to do work that involved unwanted intimacy of any sort.

You can't have it both ways. The entire point of the thread, as ever, has escaped you.

Either "sex work" is work - in which case it falls in with legislation about taxation, national insurance, health and safety at work and welfare requirements - or it is not work.

Which is it?

Can you answer the question? Because it is the entire point of the thread, after all.

I don't know if you've heard of it, but there's this thing in the UK's representative democracy called the rule of law. If "sex work" is work, it must comply with the rule of law, just as everything else must.

Is "sex work" work? Yes or no?

R0wantrees · 19/01/2019 11:37

Oops apologies meant Baroness Hales! Blush

OlennasWimple · 19/01/2019 11:43

Funny how no-one who is pro-sex work can really answer the question, isn't it? Including commie Labour types, who would be up in arms at the abuse suffered by other types of workers if they were expected to work in such unsafe conditions, with such a high risk of infection / mortality, and for such small pay (far more prostitutes are getting a tenner for a blow job in a car than £1000 for two hours in a hotel)

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