Teen vogue - sex work is work.

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twitter.com/TeenVogue/status/1140372239537377280?s=19

What the hell? How is this appropriate content for their young teen audience?

Goosefoot it's not the German model that prostitutes are contract workers or more correctly self-employed/freelance.

That is simply how the situation developed once the pimps, traffickers and brothel owners who see the women as nothing but pieces of meat to be sold at their pleasure won out over the by now mythical kind and caring madam or the independent collective (a la the co-operative model where the prostitutes jointly own and manage a brothel and each take a share of the profit - yes, that's what was envisioned, what was discussed back then, what I in my naivety expected to happen).

The current situation evolved because once punters and pimps were decriminalized it proved impossible to protect prostitutes. From police powers to means of redress, it defanged them. If it is a legitimate business, police need evidence to argue probable cause. They can't just raid a brothel like they did before. By the time they get the warrant say on suspicion of trafficking for instance, the women are gone.

As for legislating around the issue please explain how one legislates around the issue of health and safety. Prostitutes are exposed to blood borne pathogens and other hazardous and infectious materials on a regular basis. In fact, exposure is inevitable.

In general, contact with such dangerous substances is not allowed unless the worker is equipped with (strictly regulated and tightly controlled) hazmat equipment.

Legislating around that means deciding that for whatever reason, prostitutes are not entitled to be protected from life-threatening substances. But if sex work is work like any other, denying them protection as a group is a clear violation of their human rights and of equality legislation.

On the other you have plenty of young university students who have more than enough to live on who go into escorting or find a sugar daddy to fund a luxurious lifestyle

Thing is, you don’t have to cope with the repercussions of a McJob 20 years later.

When I look back at my days in the ‘industry’ I feel repulsed frankly, it was a blast at the time, but most of the girls were illegal immigrants or in domestic violence/coercive control situations, or were scaffolding parents with addictions or debt... and this was an expensive Mayfair club where bankers put bottles of champagne on expenses.
Everyone took heaps of cocaine to get through the shift.

I’m lucky, there is no photographic record, and the Internet was only just a thing, but today’s cam girls/dancers/escorts will find it very hard to leave it properly behind them - one of my friends was a well known alt-porn performer (Burning Angel) she’s now got two DD and lives in fear of the day someone shows them her ‘CV’.

Charlie that's spot on. Complete decriminalization was sold to the German people on the premise that it would allow for cooperatives of prostitutes to work together safely.

The reality was that pimps started exploiting women in superbrothels, without any of the labour and health protections that the people pushing the change in the law had promised would be the end result.

s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/welcome-to-paradise/

I can recommend this article as a very informative read for anyone who wants to see how total decrim turned out for Germany.

An obvious step for teen Vogue who (last year I think ) had a section on anal sex. As teenagers probably buy adult Vogue from around age 16/17 or so, their readership must be mid teens.
It is beyond grim.
Very, very disturbing.

Help me help my 15 yo DD understand why I am upset about seeing anal sex graphically explained in TeenVogue. She's accusing me of being closed minded. Am I? Is it an age thing? To me, anal is something I would struggle to consider, and could only imagine happening in a very secure, trusting relationship. To have it presented in a teen magazine to me seems shocking, but not to her. She thinks it's good that there is information out there. She does get that the sex work is work thing is horrific.

When this study from the BMJ is very informative.

bmjopen.bmj.com/content/4/8/e004996

It's a study of young people's (of both sexes) attitudes to anal sex.

The women divide between those who like anal, those who are "meh" about it, and those who find it unpleasant and/or painful. But all three groups expect to come under pressure to have anal.

The men go into anal mostly expecting it is something that should be on offer, but that the women will not want to have it freely and will have to be emotionally coerced into doing it, and furthermore that they will not enjoy it/ may even find it painful. Yet they still think it's their right to demand it.

To me, this article (clear, clinical, detached) encapsulates in a nutshell what's wrong.

Most women find anal does nothing for them/is actually painful. On these grounds alone they should be free to say "I don't want this in our sex life". Yet instead they are being coerced into it by men who know that they will find it painful (which says pretty horrific things about the young men involved).

And rather than giving young women the option of saying "no, not for me", Teen Vogue is adding to the pressure on young women to allow themselves to be coerced into sex acts they don't want and won't enjoy (and may well know from past experience they won't enjoy).

This is the opposite of "sex positivity" in the literal meaning of the words, namely having the sex you want with the person you want to have it with, consensually and enthusiastically and enjoyably, with their equally enthusiastic consent. Instead it's "sex positivity" in its patriarchy supporting, back to front, Orwellian New Speak sense of "forcing women into whatever sex men want regardless of whether the women want it."

Thanks Fermat that is brilliantly clear and the link is really helpful. She's still adamant that I'm just out of touch and refuses to believe that 'men' would coerce any woman. If only I could believe that her view of men will stay so positive in years to come.

I find the tweet frightening and disgusting in equal measure

I'm glad to see other Twitter users in uproar about it

Fermat that Telegraph piece is jaw-droppingly awful. I mean, the piece is beautifully reported but the content is jaw-droppingly awful. I will save it to send to anyone extolling the supposed empowering qualities of sex "work" in future. Just wow.

Thanks Fermat - that is a very useful resource.

As for legislating around the issue please explain how one legislates around the issue of health and safety.

Specifically I was thinking of allowing individuals to turn away clients for any reason. For example, in many places while you can't discriminate against protected characteristics if you are renting an apartment you own, if you are renting a room in the home you live in you can discriminate in any way you choose. The idea being because its much more intimate the considerations are different. You could treat sex work in a similar way.
I don't imagine you can avoid the safety issues, though there are other jobs that are very unsafe and legal, so I am not inclined to think that makes it impossible to employ someone on that basis.

I really don't think you need to sound so condescending. If people want to use legal issues as a reason not to have legal or decriminalised prostitution, I am assuming they want to actually have some basis in what is really possible or not possible, that they are making a good faith argument. If you don't care and just want something that sounds true, by all means carry on and ignore me.

WhenIsTheEasyBit If you can stomach it, ask her if she would like to read about people who have been having anal sex regularly and who are now suffering from anal fissures, anal leakage or complete incontinence and wearing nappies for the rest of their lives? This is not a rare occurrence among middle-aged gay men for instance (and many - if not most - gay men who have anal sex, actually take drugs to relax their muscles to make it less painful and damaging), but there are also cases of young women being damaged in this way.

And because we lack the prostate that allows males to find anal sex pleasurable, for women you'll most often find that for those who enjoy anal sex it's not about physical pleasure but psychological (hence its prevalence in BDSM circles and porn) - its about submission and control and humiliation. Which is why coercion plays such a big role in men pursuing anal sex with women.

Some women do actually get pleasure from anal sex Charley. I'm not one of them, but I have friends who genuinely like it physically.
I'm just saying in the interests of truth. I certainly wouldn't want anyone encouraging my teen daughter to do it though.

IfNot Not disputing that at all. Hence why I said most often and not always.

Thanks Charley. Really useful, if horrific, info. Not had the right moment to raise it with DD, but was out with two younger, non-parent friends, mid 20s, who were also shocked by what Teen Vogue considers appropriate.

I wonder what Vogue sees as their market.

The advertisers in Vogue itself will be interested in the very rich. People who can spend major money on clothes, and including Russians and Arabs as well as the traditional upper classes. Teen Vogue, presumably is there not just to sell stuff to their children, but to give the whole Vogue brand a certain edginess and modernity.

At some point though, edginess risks becoming sleeze. DD, alumna of the London private school system, knew her share of kids whose idea of London transport was mummy's limo card or daddy's driver. At the end of the day the cool kids were, well cool. (Actually I think the term was "safe".) Very easy for them to decide that Vogue has crossed a line and rather than cool, these are adults being pervy.