Anyone watching the Louis Theroux programme?

[Doyoumind]

Not the first he's done on the subject but I'm interested on his take.

Boredbumhead By all means go ahead and become a prostitute if you think you could handle it and it would be better than your current job. If you're not willing, it would be a tad hypocritical of you to argue that it's really not different.

@EoinMcLovesCakeJumper Completely agree with you. Ive been an MNer since 2011 and time and time again ive seen "youve only been dating him for six months. He doesnt owe you anything. Its none of your business" On numerous threads.

Boredbumhead I find that a bizarre line of reasoning. If a job is exploitative, the usual response is to try to fix the exploitation, not use it as justification for someone else to be further exploited.

Are we really so different or is it just that we are pathologising the use of sex organs to make money whilst valorising the use of the brain to make money. Just being devils advocate!

The devil deserves better advocates. My sometimes mentally draining job doesn't expose me to STDs, or put me in the "most likely to be murdered" category. I'm guessing yours doesn't either.

www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/45582/1/sex-workers-have-denounced-louis-theroux-new-bbc-documentary-selling-sex?amp=1

This article concerns the two younger women who live together. The blonde one who appears but wasn’t a sex worker was tweeting about it whilst the programme was on.

They sound very naive if they thought they would get to edit the film themselves. No one wants to hear a student banging on about the virtues of sex work for 60 minutes. I find it odd that she calls herself Ashley's carer as most high functioning autistic adults don't have one - is 'carer' a euphemism for 'pimp'? Is she the one who got Ashley into selling her body? What does her care actually involve? If she were doing it as a professional job, should she really be encouraging a vulnerable adult (who claims there to be severely disabled) to have sex with strangers for money. I'd worry about Ashley's welfare even more now.

Also looks like Georgina is fame hungry and is disappointed she couldn't draw more attention to her Instagram account.

Yes Helena. Women scratching around for crumbs, being told they're naive and old-fashioned if they expect a man to be "exclusive" with them after only a couple of months, feeling hurt when a guy has slept with them and then fucked off, and not even allowed to say "I really liked him and I'm disappointed that he didn't feel the same", because that's needy/too much too soon. Men have got it all their own way.

I can't even engage with the "prostitution is no more exploitative than any other kind of work" argument. It's one of those things I hear people saying who purport to be anti-capitalist, but what's more capitalist than the commodification of human bodies for money? My job doesn't involve having my orifices penetrated by strangers or come with an additional risk of being raped or murdered, so no, it doesn't have any equivalence with sex work. As pp said, if you really believe what you're saying, why don't you go on the game yourself? The hours are probably better, although you'll have to sort out your own pension.

Georgia thought that her abused autist friend could help break the narrative that sex workers are vulnerable individuals with a history of abuse that are being exploited?

Ok then, some proper joined up, intellectual critical thinking going on there...

Remember Georgia is described as Ashleigh's carer in the Dazed article. Imagine being a carer advocating that sex work is ok for the person you are supposed to be looking after. She should be grateful that more wasn't made of this in the documentary because perhaps it should have been...

Indeed, redtoothbrush. I don't see how they can complain that the film is repeating the narrative of prostitutes having a history of abuse. Nothing was fabricated, they were quite simply shown as they are, and this included trauma being the trigger for moving into prostitution in all three cases. They were treated very sympathetically. I think the students are disappointed they couldn't draw more attention to their art projects, which I can understand, but that's not what the documentary was about. Only very poor documentaries would uncritically present its subjects without challenging their narrative.

The programme was clear about Ashleigh's ASD and clear about the extra layer of vulnerability this implied. It was also sympathetic to Georgia and the other male friend that was shown - there was some comment along the lines of "friends trying to show support for their vulnerable friend" over them helping with clothes/designs/website or something. Georgia clearly doesn't like to be seen through someone else's eyes, even someone reasonably sympathetic like Louis. That's what a documentary is, Georgia. It could have been a lot worse.

I found the programme horribly sad. It featured three women: one with ASD who had been abused as a small child; one single mother who had been abused as an adolescent and was trying to balance parenting with a job that paid enough not to be on the breadline; one woman who had been brought up in a strict religious environment and had spent years avoiding sex with her husband, whom she loved, because her attitudes to physical intimacy had been so warped.

This could easily have been a 2 or 3 part series as there is a lot of digging that could have been done. I do like Theroux but felt slightly let down by this episode. As I was watching I said out loud I hope he asks the mum whether she would want her own daughter to be an escort/prostitute. He did ask but I felt the answer was a cop-out. She said no because of the stigma and judgement from others? Really?

All of the women claimed that they were doing sex work as a free choice and they found it empowering.
What became very apparent is these women were vulnerable, being exploited and kidding themselves that this was empowering.
All of the stories were tragic, that they had found themselves doing sex work for all the wrong reasons and it was clearly doing them so much harm.

Someone posted about emotional incest on another thread earlier.

I read this and found it hard not to think of the daughter...
psychcentral.com/blog/emotional-incest-when-is-close-too-close/

Its all about approproite boundaries or lack of them.

VoiceofReason I thought the single mum had a bit more self-awareness than the others but just couldn't see a way out of what she was doing as sole provider for her kids, so just told herself she was okay with it to cope. She knew she was acting out of trauma and that's why she had her attitude towards sex. We didn't hear about the father and why he doesn't contribute. I hope she can get some suitable therapy and support so she can find a more satisfying job and relationship, which she expressed a desire for.

Funny, Red, I linked to that very article on the Usborne thread but shortened the link to avoid malicious reporting, having already had a deletion for a deliberate misreading of what I'd said (these are sad days on a parenting website, ain't they?)

The 14 year old should not have been shown onscreen. Even if her mother were OK with it, Louis should have vetoed it.

Louis did suggest that it was the husband who encouraged it......as a sort of fantasy scenario for his own pleasure; problem is he now is not feeling quite so good about it

He seemed to me to be a variant of Gyges and Candaules.

@EoinMcLovesCakeJumper Exactly the same sort of thing we have mentioned on here has come up on a thread on AIBU so ive tagged you in.

OK a bit late posting here ,only just caught up on I player ! Felt depressed at all 3 really ,Husband and wife team seemed a little odd to put it mildly ! Victorias story was sad I felt and not a good example to her teenage daughter! The 3rd girls friend seemed to normalise it as no different to FWB. Ahem no money changing hands with the latter though! Louis looked uncomfortable and not sure where to look at some points in the programme .No matter how these programmes present it .Its still the same parcel rewrapped and presented . Men paying for Sex automatically puts them in a position of power ,as they are calling the shots! Am failing to see how any woman can possibly feel "empowered "TBH!