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.

"Is life better for prostituted women, or women and girls in general, in Holbeck now the hiring of women's bodies is decriminalised?! Fuck no, is the short answer."

Has it made it worse? I doubt anything could make that end of the market (a fairly small one even when looking at prostitution in the UK let alone the entire sex industry) very much better.

You could make it worse for the women by arresting the women, fining them and essentially sending them back on the streets to earn the money for the fine as currently happens in most red light districts in the UK.

Nothing to add here that hasn’t already been eloquently explained already, but I did want to weigh in on the concept of judging women who enter prostitution or are prostituted, or do online form of it. I’m not judging them, I’m not looking down on them, I’m not particularly pitying them. I wish there was a way of their earning a living that wasn’t what they’re doing, though.

What I do have the most scalding, pitiless contempt for is punters and pimps. They’re the one whose choices I judge the utter fuck out of.

I’ve no interest in recrimininalising or decriminalising any aspect of prostitution. What I’m interested in is reinforcing the concept that women are whole, autonomous human beings whose bodies cannot be purchased or commodified in a civilised society. I’d like to see visiting prostitutes and using pornography to go the way of the village stocks, or eugenics, or slavery or capital punishment or any other archaic custom that civilised societies eventually come to realise are inimical to human dignity.

And part of that process is looking at ridiculous puff pieces like that BBC one, saying “nope” and deconstructing the harmful parts of the message, then offering an alternative, feminist analysis.

I await the accusation that I’m a dried up old prude whose husband should leave her with keen anticipation

Well said SophocIestheFox

Brilliant post Sophecles.

*@RuffleCrow * Statistically, most women in sex work were driven there through poverty, abuse and/or addiction Where are these statistics? There is no representative sampling of prostitutes in existence.

The recent home Office sponsored report which was supposed to produce a quantified typology of the sex industry in England and Wales here totally failed to produce any statistics. There is no basis for your claim for most women all we know is that some women are be driven by abuse or addiction.

And again how do you know it’s only a few women choose it? What we do know is that there are many that do here

Don’t make claims you cannot back up with evidence

The message "earn £20k a month selling nudes" is especially repulsive at a point in time when many woman are suffering extreme financial hardship. Imagine losing your job and not being able to find a new one under lockdown and then seeing that article. It's so irresponsible if the BBC to print it. Of course though with a recession coming the more women they can convince to go into "sex work" the more real jobs there'll be left over for the men.

Has it made it worse? I doubt anything could make that end of the market (a fairly small one even when looking at prostitution in the UK let alone the entire sex industry) very much better.

Yes, it has definitely made it worse for other women and girls who live there.

HTH.

To be clear, even if every single prostituted woman was 100% freely choosing sex work and loved their jobs and not a single one was doing it due to poverty, addiction or abuse, and if you offered them a job as a CEO or a doctor tomorrow they'd turn it down because they just looooove sex work so much, I would still oppose it because it doesn't just effect them. You think the kind of men who pay to fuck women go out into the world and treat every other woman they meet with respect? You think they can commit one of the most vile and mysogynistic acts imaginable on Monday and then be A* feminist allies the rest of the week? No, of course not. They're revolting woman hating creeps who at best see us as nothing more than glorified wank socks and at worst enjoy the feeling of having economic and sexual power over us. They go out and buy women because they hate us and feel entitled to our bodies and then they go back into the world emboldened and validated in their mysogyny and pose an even higher risk to other women than they did before. One woman's "choice" to do sex work effects me, you, my daughter, all of us. Making her safer in her work is great for her, but I am no safer because of it. The man who thinks he has the right to buy her will still become more dangerous to me even if you put laws in place that make him less dangerous to her. So thanks but no thanks, the choices of some women are not worth more than the rights of all women to live safe from male violence.

I think the 20k bit is obvious propaganda and yes, really really irresponsible journalism.

I don't believe anyone makes 20k a month selling nudes or sex. I think it's lies.

Evidence or it's fake news. If women in sex work made that kind of money, they'd only work for a couple of months a year. Most people don't do it because they like it - if they could make 40k and then not work for 10 months they would.

How many women in Holbeck leave after one or two months with all their hard earned cash? Yeah, didn't think so.

@exponential I take it you're not familiar with the research behind Nordic Model Now? Or you're pretending not to be? Just because you haven't researched it yourself, don't assume the statistics don't exist! Your ignorance is not the sum total of human knowledge.Thank goddess.

If I hadn’t been abused and made homeless I wouldn’t have been in the industry

it’s basically been rendered my only choice

The harm would probably be that I feel like damaged goods now

There were many points we had to choose between her abusive behaviour (threats, mind games, expensive fines etc.) or walk out and lose a lot of money. I personally had a lot of debt and this felt like a difficult choice to make, so I stayed

Every escort will tell you they love what they do, but they are slowly dying inside

Some quotes from the report you linked to, exponential. An odd choice to link to to convince women here that prostitution is freely chosen from a smorgasbord of other options, and that participants love it. I think we’ve drawn very different conclusions from it.

Exactly, grabthar. It’s every woman who is affected and that’s why I care.

And also what ByGrabthar said. The wider societal impacts - particularly on women and girls - are bad enough that I would oppose it and fight against it even if all women who did it loved it.

Which they don't - fake news.

Maybe there are people who really want someone to repeatedly shoot them. Probably there are. Doesn't mean it should be legal.

I don't believe anyone makes 20k a month selling nudes or sex. I think it's lies.

It was the woman in the story who made that claim. Why don't you believe women?

Said it before: ready to discuss all of this once we have eliminated from the industry trafficked women, underage women, traumatised women, women doing it to fund an addiction and women in extreme poverty. The last 2, even more so as men in these situations don’t sell sex (so there’s definitely an underlying structure that makes this a pathway for women that men would never be expected to undertake - let’s call it ‘patriarchy’ for want of a better term).

Then I’d be delighted to discuss how it’s a free choice and enjoyed by so many women. But we all know, that in these conditions, there would be no industry. It’s also only in the developed West as well that this is about predominantly adolescent and adult women - in many areas of the world, the market has lots of children. Because, it’s not about the free will of the seller, it’s an exploitative system that privileges the buyer to purchase a body.

Sigh. Believing women in general doesn't mean believing every single thing every single woman actually says, especially when the evidence tends to suggest what they're saying is bollocks (e.g. women not only selling sex in Holbeck for 2 months then skipping off into the sunset with their 40k). That's an unbelievably childish argument.

I believe women are actual individual human beings, not commodities and not lesser than men, not a monolith that all have the same point of view. That means that I believe they are capable of lying and making things up on occasion - like the rest of humanity. Or the journalist could have made it up - based on the quality of the rest of the article that is entirely possible.

Evidence or it's fake news. If women in sex work made that kind of money, they'd only work for a couple of months a year. Most people don't do it because they like it - if they could make 40k and then not work for 10 months they would.

How many women in Holbeck leave after one or two months with all their hard earned cash? Yeah, didn't think so.

YY. And even if one person does, at one time, that doesn't mean it's the norm or a reasonable aspiration for most.

Brilliant points @gwynfluff.

Interesting piece here:

t.co/gImBe71m00?amp=1

Sadly the author has died from Covid-19

The problem with prohibition, of alcohol, drugs and commercial sex is that it doesn't make the demand go away..

(commercial sex - is that what they call it now..)

You can see above that the writer thinks that someone's body is just like other commodities - to be bought and sold.

Yeuch!

Sorry, Julie Bindel hasn’t died from Covid but Roger Matthews has who she interviews for the piece.

That’s a great piece from it below

In terms of current UK policy on prostitution, Matthews' main bugbear is the widespread acceptance of harm-reduction measures, such as health professionals visiting women in street prostitution areas to give out refreshments and condoms. "I believe that this is a deeply conservative approach," he says, "which is more about keeping women in prostitution rather than helping them out." Indeed, one of the areas of prostitution policy now under scrutiny by feminist MPs such as Vera Baird and Barbara Follett, is how to move away from what Matthews thinks of as "sticking plaster" half-measures in dealing with the women on the streets in favour of a long-term plan to eradicate prostitution altogether.
"The Ipswich murders have exposed the reality of prostitution - that it is abuse and a life of hell for these women," says Matthews. "It is high time to expose and challenge the liberal consensus"·

"So thanks but no thanks, the choices of some women are not worth more than the rights of all women to live safe from male violence."

But banning it doesn't stop the trade, nothing has or will and it increases not decreases the violence.

The rest of your screed is a perfect illustration of the hysteria some feminists have around this issue and highly authoritarian in approach. Tarts and punters must behave themselves for the good of the state (or womankind in this case) is the gist of your argument.

I prefer individual liberty and will choose the rights of the individual over the 'protection' of the group in most cases. The latter is the first rung on a very ugly ladder.

when the evidence tends to suggest what they're saying is bollocks (e.g. women not only selling sex in Holbeck for 2 months then skipping off into the sunset with their 40k

Now it's you that's talking bollocks. The woman who made the £20k a month claim wasn't walking the streets. She was selling nude pictures/videos that she made from the safety of her own home. Didn't need to go anywhere near a man. You might still disagree with the work but it's not remotely comparable with street prostitution

@DidoLamenting, sorry the looking down was in answer to wheetos, not your post. I should have highlighted what he said before replying.