Why is the BBC Promoting Sex Work?

[WootMoggie]

I know the BBC tries oh-so-hard to be "progressive" but this is really taking the piss:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/5e7dad06-c48d-4509-b3e4-6a7a2783ce30

The BBC state at the top of the article that selling explicit content online can be a lucrative business, and the opening quote of the article is "My biggest fear is going back into an office and being normal again"

Other choice quotes include "I like the freedom it gives me and the celebration of the female form" and also '"I used to make £20,000 a year, and now I make a lot more than that every single month" Lauren says coyly'

"Lauren says coyly"?? WTAF?

I see no problem in writing articles about this subject, but the tone and position of this article is dubious in the extreme IMO.

If it’s not good enough for my daughter, it shouldn’t be good enough for anyone’s daughter

That sums it up perfectly.

Should the job center make you be a prostitute?
If you think no, then you accept that "sex work" is not real work

I'm sorry, but as much as I'd love to have a conversation about the merits of men's orgasms, does anyone else get the impression cheetos might be being paid for more than just pics, given the amount of times they are writing a brand name starting with O?

Lol, weetos got autocucumbered to cheetos there...

"I'm being paid to take my clothes off because I'm beautiful and sexy" - the person paying thinks "tart/ slut/ what else can pay her to do- how far can I push this"

...and here's the answer:

WARNING: BBC news content, but a tough read nonetheless, you might want to pass on this one.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-48773083

Wow, I take it all you experts know people who.work in the industry & have first hand experience or do you just form your opinions based on?????

Sex work is work although not like most other jobs, but then neither is being a stunt man/woman or a formula one driver or driving the Alaskan ice roads.

There are problems with the industry certainly, largely but not entirely due to its illegality (in some areas) and the low esteem sex workers are held, not least by feminists who wish to shut down the sex industry to protect the women involved (never the men) who they believe to be helpless victims of exploitation.

It is a (no doubt sincere but) very patronising and paternalistic position from people who cannot imagine being sex workers under any circumstances themselves so assume that all women must think the same way as they do and be forced into the industry by poverty or more direct exploitation. It involves them ignoring the wishes of sex workers themselves and dismissing their contrary views as coming from the 'pimp lobby'.

@Butters0123 Great post along the lines of what I wanted to say but these threads make me so angry. ( I am an escort, prostitute, hooker whore whatever we are being called these days)

"Should the job center make you be a prostitute?
If you think no, then you accept that "sex work" is not real work"

A weak argument. The job centre won't force you to join the armed services or work in an abattoir either. Some work is real enough, sometimes foul and dangerous, immoral viewed through some eyes, but still work.

Given the choice I'd rather give blowjobs for money than slaughter animals. At least one is giving pleasure to someone.

Thanks. I get the anger. As I'm not involved in the sex industry myself (either as provider or consumer) I don't find myself getting angry just slightly frustrated by the impenetrable wall of (self) righteousness from the Mumsnet/feminist crowd whenever sex work is mentioned. I get the same feeling from the anti-drugs crowd or any other group which takes a simplistic/moralistic prohibitionist stance to difficult and complex issues which always makes things very much worse than they need be.

Given the choice to submit, or die, many women choose to submit.
They even have a name for it. Survival sex. There is enough information out there about the physical and emotional damage women suffer in the sex industry that it is pointless to argue with the pimps and traffickers, the recruiters and exploiters, who call themselves sex workers in order to silence the voices of the women and children who are being trafficked.

Most sex workers in the UK aren't faced with a do or die situation. That's a ridiculous exaggeration to make a political point and a severe distortion of the reality of the sex industry. The sex workers who oppose your kind of feminist preaching are not traffickers etc. and they aren't silencing anyone, merely presenting a case from their experience, unlike you who have no experience at all and no knowledge of the sex industry other than feminist propaganda based on advocacy research and questionable statistics. Even if they were all traffickers they aren't very effective at silencing the Mumsnetters and their various broods are they?

Given the choice I'd rather give blowjobs for money than slaughter animals.

I suspect this is a false dichotomy.

Personally I take a purist approach to this.
I absolutely disagree with the commodification of the human body. I believe it is fundamentally unethical whether it involves the sale of sex, a human organ or a baby. An individual might wish to do these things for their own personal benefit but I believe it should not be permitted for the greater good of society. I also find the happy hooker narrative unconvincing and suspect a vanishingly small number of individuals truly choose that work.

@floralbunting @onlyfans sponsor me if you want.

An industry that creates prostituted women and children, and human trafficking is a human rights issue, not a business model.

Butters0123

You have a hell of a nerve projecting your arrogance and ignorance on to those who do have experience in the sex industry.

In your inbox? You should report those messages to the mods, they break the guidelines.

There's no point in replying is there?

I second what has been said- if you have received unwelcome personal messages then report them. MNHQ will take action against the sender.

The point that individual choices are not made in a vacuum has been explained.

The point about self esteem has sailed over your heads. The sex "industry" depends on the women and men who cater to punters being people who are looked down on.

It's always the same, isn't it? Some (extremely privileged) women allegedly choose/enjoy it, so anyone critically evaluating the coercive and harmful nature of the sex industry on all women is a big meany jealous frothy bitter self-righteous uptight dramatic moralizing patronizing bad-feminist!

Hang on, I object to the accusation that anyone is "looking down" on women who sell nudes or are involved in the sex industry.
I think those women have made a poor decision but I don't look down on them. I wish there were better options for young women so that their bodies weren't seen as objects and their only value.
I feel anger that this sort of role is presented as normal and a good idea, when it is emotionally damaging to only be valued for how you look and to be treated like a blow up doll.

Those women have been told, by the BBC no less, that this is ok, that little girls can aspire to selling their bodies in this way. That makes me really angry.

I guess this is the direction they'll be expecting poor women to move in once coronavirus is over and the country is apparently too bankrupt to provide a safety net

What @HeyDuggeewhatchadoin said. Statistically, most women in sex work were driven there through poverty, abuse and/or addiction.

Just because a very few apparently privileged and happy mc women seemingly choose to do it for fun, does not detract from the overall picture.

It's not 'looking down' on women to actually listen to the overwhelming majority who, when surveyed, sorely wish they had any other option.

I also think those advocating for women to do this perhaps deliberately ignore all the signs that men masturbating isn't actually "appreciation of the female form" at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. As Germaine Greer was one of the first to point out - for many men their sexual desire is actually bound up with intense feelings of shame and hatred and wanting to destroy the 'object' of their lust. Any woman who's ever been objectified will have sensed this instinctively.

I'm sure being paid to take your clothes off is a fast track to getting an inflated ego..

Oh look, he is "sure"...

Nothing to discuss then.