So, the sex "work" "debate"

[FizzyDizzy121]

Having looked through a lot of older threads here, I'm asking for some help.

Do you have a DP or family member that you fundamentally disagree with on a topic as black and white (to me) as sex "work"?

In my younger years, I was very much in favour of choice feminism, including in areas such as prostitution. I believed that the pushback was motivated by our issues around sex and that if a woman (usually) wants to run a business that way, supply and demand right? I did argue for better protections, H&S involvement etc.

Now, my whole approach changed a few years back. Buying consent makes me very, very uneasy and I would argue is a form of coercion/distress rather than freely given. Men (usually) who "visit" prostitutes are having sex with someone they KNOW wouldn't have sex with them if there wasnt money involved which is dodgy on so many grounds.
And all that is before we get to the amount of assaults, trafficking etc involved.

My DP is pretty left leaning (as am I) and views all work as unjust. Humans shouldn't have to be coerced to do labour in order to pay for essentials like shelter or food. And he sees sex "work" as within this bracket. Its exploitation but not any different than a retail worker for example. He says he'd be happy for his relative to be involved in sex "work", he argues the money changing hands is not buying the woman but the labour of the woman (I.e. the sex) for a set amount of time.

How do you respond to such thinking? Does it impact show you think of the other person?

Any thoughts/comments gratefully received

@AllTheUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken

StamfordHill

“ I'm truly sorry for whatever abuse you must have gone through in your life, that you have such a vile outlook of humanity .”

There is no more vile an outlook on humanity than looking into the eyes of a vulnerable woman and calculating how that vulnerability can benefit you by getting her to suck your dick.

Your posts turned my stomach. Show what you’ve written to your wife/ mum/ daughter if you think my response is the problem.

This with bells on!!!

@Sexworkerasmeanything, men could just do the same than women who don’t have a partner?
I mean you rarely see a woman ‘chasing trousers’ the way men ‘chase skirts’..

Unless you consider men are weak and driven by their hormones so they can’t help themselves wanting and demanding sex ..... hold on, no it’s women who are supposed to be weak and hormonal.

Sorry @Sexworkerasmeanything but nope
You don’t have to have sex with someone because they are your partner.

On the UK a wife no longer 'has to' have sex with her husband. The law was changed in the 90s when rape within marriage was criminalised.

Of course in many countries it's still not illegal.

I don't see this as a good argument for prostition though tbh.

'What’s the alternative - not offer a service to men who don’t have partners and they have to chase skirt?'

You think it's not right that men should have to make some effort to attract sexual partners? And I'm not sure what 'chasing skirt' means.

Additionally the men who pay for sex are often in relationships and are having sex in them. Or could get a girlfriend.

Sex is not a need anyway and the harms of prostution outweigh the benefits to such an extent that I don't think it can be seen as just another service like doing some gardening. The harms aren't restricted to those directly involved either.

What’s the alternative - not offer a service to men who don’t have partners and they have to chase skirt

Have to? Do men have to "chase skirt" is there a law I'm unaware of?
No one is entitled to sex, ever. It's not a human right to have sex.

What’s the alternative - not offer a service to men who don’t have partners and they have to chase skirt? Or what about women who like the job? Working at my office job I get treated like pants

What a ridiculous comment. No one is entitled to have sex. For men without partners the options are masturbation or forming a relationship. I don't have any particular objection to people having casual sex - as long as it is genuinely mutual. Is that what your "chase skirt" is referring to? If so it's a rather nasty and misogynistic way of describing a casual relationship.

As for your comment about how you are treated in your office- does anyone regularly as part of your job ask you to remove your pants?

Once again I find myself reflecting on the "man hater" accusation frequently thrown at feminists.

It seems to me that defenders of prostitution have a far lower opinion of men than I do. According to them, men are sex-crazed beasts who will turn to rape or whinge and coerce their wives into unwanted sex unless serviced by an underclass of "sacrificial" women set up to protect "naice" women from men's baser instincts.

I prefer to think that men are human beings capable of exercising a moral choice over whether or not to stick their dick into an abused woman, whether or not to mither their exhausted wife who's recovering from child birth for sex, to ask in a respectful manner whether a woman they've encountered in a nightclub would like to have sex, and to accept "no" as an answer, not an invitation to negotiate.

And I think the majority (maybe not as big a majority as I'd like) do behave decently. The ones who do not, are choosing not to. And they are scum.

StamfordHill

I found your posts disgusting. I'm not a feminist. I do not have any religious views about sex. I don't think sex should only be in the context of a committed relationship and have no issue with casual relationships which are genuinely mutual. I've never been raped or sexually assaulted.

And even with all that your posts left me feeling a mixture of grubbiness and queasiness for having read them.

@CaraDuneRedux

Once again I find myself reflecting on the "man hater" accusation frequently thrown at feminists.

It seems to me that defenders of prostitution have a far lower opinion of men than I do. According to them, men are sex-crazed beasts who will turn to rape or whinge and coerce their wives into unwanted sex unless serviced by an underclass of "sacrificial" women set up to protect "naice" women from men's baser instincts.

I prefer to think that men are human beings capable of exercising a moral choice over whether or not to stick their dick into an abused woman, whether or not to mither their exhausted wife who's recovering from child birth for sex, to ask in a respectful manner whether a woman they've encountered in a nightclub would like to have sex, and to accept "no" as an answer, not an invitation to negotiate.

And I think the majority (maybe not as big a majority as I'd like) do behave decently. The ones who do not, are choosing not to. And they are scum.

I had a similar conversation with a friend a number of months ago. We were always staunch “sex work is work” believers until I asked myself a few uncomfortable questions. She was shocked by my turn around and asked me why I had gone so “prudish and right wing”.

I asked her “if you were ill for a long, indefinite amount of time and Matt (her husband) was struggling to balance work, looking after the kids and looking after the house alone, would you feel upset or betrayed by him using the professional services of a cleaner to help him?”

Her “of course not”

Me “and if that illness meant you were unwilling or unwanting to have sex, would you feel upset or betrayed by Matt using the professional devices of a sex worker?”

Her “That’s different because...”

Me “Because it affects you. Sex work is only work if it’s other women you don’t know having sex with other men you don’t know. Sex work is only work if you completely dehumanise the people involved. That realisation is why I made a turnaround”

She hasn’t spoken to me since

She hasn’t spoken to me since

Maybe one day it will permeate through her mind and the scales will drop from her eyes.

@Escapeplanning

Good news. Plan have (since I was there and no doubt in response to the scandals the sector was hit with) done this:

plan-international.org/news/2018-02-21-our-commitment-stamp-out-abuse-and-exploitation
We have strengthened our Code of Conduct, specifically to prohibit staff from exchanging money, employment, goods or services for sex, and to outlaw any other forms of humiliating, degrading, or exploitative behaviour.

No. No no no. Not good enough. Employees tried to whistleblow and were openly refused the horrified and instant action required.

This isn't horrified. It certainly wasn't instant. Sack every last one of the filthy bunch.

This is a carbon copy of every abusing organisation ever heard of.

Merely the statement they admit it was necessary to Alter, to alter, their code of conduct is in itself an admission of a damning fact which proves the whole thing must be closed down and everyone sacked and replaced with totally new management, every single one of them on the board, and the entire team in every part of the world they have staff or officials.

They shoot themselves in the foot by confessing they could ever have needed their employment terms to be "strengthened", and to "outlaw" what was so appalling. We know from this thread they were well aware, but previously refused. It should have been so deeply embedded in every mind, and be at the heart of the ethos of the entire organisation.

It should at all times be exactly as obvious as "please, during your hours of employment, would you mind awfully if we ask you to try to refrain from chopping people's heads off"?

She was shocked by my turn around and asked me why I had gone so “prudish and right wing”.

The "prude" accusation if you don't support prostitution or porn puzzles me. It's such a weird and illogical leap.

@CaraDuneRedux

She hasn’t spoken to me since

Maybe one day it will permeate through her mind and the scales will drop from her eyes.

I don’t need her to agree with me for us to be friends. I just wish that was reciprocated.

All - it seems to me that at the moment, she clearly seems to think she can't be friends with you unless you agree. That (rather than her views) would be making me reconsider my willingness to have a friendship with her. An "I've been a pillock, sorry" realisation (from her) might help on that front. I've always been of the opinion that friendships where we can agree to differ (on politics, on religion, etc.) are worth a hundred of acquaintanceships only held together by the tenuous glue of groupthink.

The prude accusation puzzles me too, Dido. Surely sex for a prostitute is about the complete opposite of pleasure? It is sex you would not be choosing to engage in unless you needed the money. I always remember the advice a self-professed "escort" gave on one of those threads that occasionally pop up on chat where someone (who may or may not be real) says "I'm struggling to pay the bills - should I consider sex work?" The escort said "it's not like Pretty Woman. Can you imagine yourself walking into your local pub and blowing every single man in the bar. Not just the decent presentable ones that you might cop off with voluntarily in a nightclub, but the smelly ones, the unwashed ones, the ones who are just downright unpleasant, the ones old enough to be your grandad."

Prostitution is the opposite of genuine lust, pleasure and (in its true sense) "positive sex."

We have strengthened our Code of Conduct, specifically to prohibit staff from exchanging money, employment, goods or services for sex, and to outlaw any other forms of humiliating, degrading, or exploitative behaviour

And frankly this should not need to be in a code of conduct. Surely a basic behavioural premise in any job let alone charity is to be reasonably kind to end users?

For example this is not in my contract of employment because it's not needed to be spelled out. I imagine if I did humiliate or degrade a customer or fellow staff member I would be written up or sacked depending. But that's because its expected of normal humans.

StamfordHill

Every post of yours makes me feel nauseated. Would you tell the women in your life these opinions? Or are you only secretly an odious misogynist?

Prostitution is the opposite of genuine lust, pleasure and (in its true sense) "positive sex."

I'm adding that to my saved comments for future use folder.

"Life savings mean no Housing Benefit"

Not true. With savings up to around £6k you can get full housing benefit, between about £6 and £16k it's reduced, but not by that much. After £16k there is no housing benefit, but that's because you can pay the rent from your savings.
There is some unfairness of course, assets such as cars, jewellery or paintings aren't counted, only cash, but spending your money on such things in order to be eligible for benefits is illegal.

Are you also happy that the 20 quids we give to charity are spent by their workers fucking the women and girls they were given the money to help?

You can't pick and choose your 20 quid scenarios.

Actually @StamfordHill I’ve understood you very well. And I’m not misquoting either I dint think.

The difference is that I don’t think my actions fall into neat little boxes, quite the opposite.

As for buying consent and some jobs are not nice and prostitution is one of them...
Sure.
Can I ask, have you personally ever been Anally penetrated either because
you thought you should (See @Sexworkerasmeanything post about having sex when you dont feel like it)
OR
For money
OR
Because someone bigger and stronger scared you and yoou didn’t say NO.
Because if you haven’t, then your POV is null simply because you have no idea of what ‘uncomfortable sex’ means (And tbh it shows)

Have you ever have uncomfortable sex?
Not just sex that wasn’t great. But sex that was painful? Sex that gave you nightmares? Sex that made you recoil?

I bet you haven’t @StamfordHill

And yet stamfordhill refuses to answer why it is that the legal system considers rape to be different to other types of assault.

What is it uniquely about the act of entering someone's body without their active consent that warrants the lack of the statute of limitations.

Why is it that parents are so much more protective and scared of their children being sexually abused than anything aside from death?

To fancifully pretend that sex is no different to anything else is self serving bollocks which allows some "men" to continue to judge and abuse women for their own needs.

I don't want stamfordhill to respond to me personally, I would prefer to swim in dogs hit. But my point is valid and has not been considered by him.

Ask those women whether they would rather mow your lawn or suck you off. Because given the choice it wouldn't be the latter for most.

You cannot buy that, you can only abuse the vulnerable further. There are very few, mentally stable, well off prostitutes, compared to hoardes of EXPLOITED sex workers.

You can work moving cement and earn a good wage, without exploitation. You don't get many sex workers who aren't damaged or being exploited.