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

@NiceGerbil - I still feel very uncomfortable with the content of the conversation that prompted this thread originally. We're working out options and some of the conversations we've had since the original have suggested that his thoughts and stance are still evolving. Hopefully this is being influenced and helped by some of the stats and materials I've shared with him, some from this thread, so thank you all.

To be clear, my point was never that I agreed with him - that was the whole point of me posting here for advice on how to respond when a loved one reveals some really shocking beliefs that I would never have guessed at despite over 3 years together.

Well good luck. People do change their minds on things- I have over the years and DH has as well I think.

His stance is pretty extreme though so yeah I'd be struggling as well.

Thank you @NiceGerbil. As odd as it sounds, I'm really hoping his stance in the initial conversation was coming from a point of ignorance which now he is doing some thinking/reading on the topic is becoming less of an issue.

But I have my eyes wide open and it was a huge shock to me that I'm still working my way through.

@AllTheUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken

You’ve admitted you wouldn’t offer your sex services to family members as you would in other professional services and you wouldn’t consider offering your 16 year old niece a work placement which you would in other services.

I wouldn't offer my sex services to anyone because I'm not a sex worker. I know that I have hinted at it in the past but that's just my bit of fun. The problem with this type of argument is that you soon end up with a long list of people whose jobs aren't really jobs. Curiously it's the highest paid jobs where you get the most money: that's supposed to be the whole point of it.

So stripping and erotic dancing can't be real jobs just because a woman wouldn't want to do it with her father in the audience? I could go on.

@Gurufloof

You can recommend all the studies and books and research papers you want. Most prostitutes are at risk of STDs, rape, murder and all variations on those themes.

According to Dr Petra Boynton

The recent increase in sexually transmitted infections in the general population in the United Kingdom contrasts with a reduced prevalence in female sex workers. And the prevalence of HIV infection in sex workers, mainly associated with injecting drug use, remains low— between 0% and 3.5%.5 Sex workers have a responsible approach to managing the risk of sexually transmitted infections, with a high prevalence of condom use for commercial vaginal sex (98%).

@DidoLamenting

No, it's the punters, pimps, traffickers and apologists who are immoral.

Judging by your comments on Laura Lee and Dr Brooke Magnanti PhD I would say you hate prostitutes.

You mentioned the relationship between a rich man and a prostitute. You seem to believe that it is a relationship of abuse, which is why you don't like it to be compared to the relationship between a rich man and a nanny. That is why I told you about what happened between billionaire Gerald Grosvenor and the Eastern European women who came to his London flat. You would think that because of the 'power imbalance' it would be a relationship of abuse but that is far from the case.

I don't see it as a relationship of abuse. Neither apparently do the royal family. If they thought that he was like Jimmy Savile they would not have attended his memorial ceremony. It seems the aristocracy are more open minded than a lot of people. Which is why I made the comment about the Queen's uncles and the friends of Winston Churchill.

When you said it is 'deeply offensive', I'm not sure if you are denigrating punters or prostitutes. Either way you should stop doing it. Using 'utterly deluded' and 'utterly delusional' in the same paragraph is quite excessive. Yet it seems I have been the only one accused of personal attacks.

Some rich people do abuse their staff, which is why I made the comment about women chained to radiators. Some nannies abuse their charges, which is why I made the comment about Mary Peters. It is always in a minority of cases but it is important to recognize abuse wherever it occurs and not assume that it happens only in some places. It can happen within prostitution. Modern slavery takes many forms.

I never said that the relationship between a rich man and his nanny is the same as the relationship between a rich man and a prostitute. I said it was the same power imbalance. They aren't so interested in the power imbalance between rich people and their staff. It's only when it suits their puritanical agenda that they start talking about power imbalance.

Nice analogy. There's a similar one involving a pig. Problem is that if you don't understand what someone is saying you will think they are the pigeon. You might not understand them because they are not making sense. Or you might not understand them because although they are making sense you are not intelligent enough to understand them. In which case you are the pigeon.

If you have used abusive terms throughout the argument, and then they respond with milder abuse, then you are the one who is shitting on the board not them. Are you not aware that people will read this thread in 6 months time and they can make up their own minds who is the pigeon? The one who can and does quote the experts on the matter, or the one who thinks they know everything already?

You've got chickenyhead who talks about the 'Norwich model' when she means the 'Nordic model'. And yet in the same comment she calls me 'Mad as a box of frogs'. This is before my post where I said that I didn't believe NiceGerbil could have gone to university. Who is the pigeon and who is shitting on the board?

What do you feel you're getting out of participating in this thread, Jenny?

What do you feel you want to get out of participating in this thread?

Judging by your comments on Laura Lee and Dr Brooke Magnanti PhD I would say you hate prostitutes

Judging by your comment I would say you are making things up.

@jennywhitehorses

It is called autocorrect. Which you know.

Just because you have a different opinion to me doesn't mean that I have to agree with you.

Your refusal to consider that you might not be the prostitution mogul of the universe, with the only valid opinion, makes me mad as a box of frogs. Bulldozing over people and moving quickly between various subjects doesn't make you more intelligent, it makes having an adult conversation impossible.

You have made several valid points throughout the thread and perhaps you could have talked me around had that been your aim. However, by flitting from Soho to ignoring references to Holbeck, to overlooking obvious signs of child abuse, I do not believe that it is an intellectual argument that you desire. It is intellectual superiority. So, Jenny, you can have that, I only have a BSc, the shame.

I tried to withdraw from this thread higher up, because you will not listen to the views of women who have been there. We don't count. Only YOU and your agenda does.

And to clarify @jennywhitehorses I didn't say you personally were mad as a box of frogs. But I do find the way in which you have chosen to communicate on this thread to be so.

It is Google prize winning scattering of facts. It refuses to acknowledge the alternative view, scatters unproven facts and ignores study limitations. It doesn't acknowledge that there is any room for discussion.

You have an agenda here and I don't care to find out what it is.

This black and white attitude of 'consent can't be bought' does speak loudly of projecting your own personal views about sex onto everyone else. Your consent might not be for sale for any price but others are and willingly so. There are those who would only have sex in the constraints of marriage and those who will give it away to a virtual stranger for a bag of chips with hardly a second thought. Personally I would happily get spitroasted by Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn if it paid off my mortgage. As it happens my price and what anyone would pay are so far apart that it's not a consideration but if that weren't the case I wouldn't be concerned about how anyone else felt about the morals of my choices.

How do the moralistic among you feel about the many incarnations of financial persuasion that exist between regular relationships and drug addicted street prostitute? For example the women who throw themselves at super rich but deeply unattractive men (gold diggers), the girls on sugar daddy sites (necessarily attractive, educated and healthy) who enter into long term arrangements (sometimes actively sexual and sometimes not) with rich old men they would otherwise never consider. Then there are less personal arrangements such as those on webcams taking payments from strangers for getting their kit off live, couples posting homemade pornography on the internet for financial gain etc. Then of course there are those in relationships that have run their course but they stick with it because they don't want to lose the lifestyle that their partners wealth affords. All of these are people actively choosing to engage in the activity of using their body in a sexual manner for financial gain because the rewards clearly make it worthwhile for them.

Yet another man weighing in on the sex work debate with absolutely no idea what it is to truly consent.

As long as men believe that women's bodies can or should be purchased to fulfill their sexual urges, it sets up a sense of entitlement. It maintains inequality between the genders.

I refuse to engage with any further male attitudes on this thread, if you have read it fully and still conclude that sex is just work, there is absolutely nothing to discuss.

I’d tell him you've got a part time job down the local brothel, I’m sure he won’t mind!

As it happens my price and what anyone would pay are so far apart that it's not a consideration

Why is that? Is that because you value yourself more?

If you genuinely wanted an ethical sex work system, it would look like this. Women would be employees of a brothel, paid a salary not per-client. Men would pay to attend the brothel - an entrance fee. They could talk to the prostitutes, and make a pass at them. (Anyone making a pass too aggressively would be thrown out by bouncers, and would not get a refund). Prostitutes could choose to have sex with the men or not, and would not get paid any extra if they did, nor any less if they didn't. Security would be provided at a level that the women felt entirely safe to say No. It would be genuinely non-coerced free choice. Some of the women there might choose never to have sex with men, but would happily talk (or more likely listen) to them, and some currently lonely men who wouldn't dream of using a prostitute now would probably take up that offer. If a woman decided that the job wasn't for her, she could quit, and unemployment benefit would available at non-poverty rates, so that losing your job wasn't anything to be feared. Many of the men who currently coerce women to have sex with them would be completely unable to get laid in this scenario. When sex "work" runs like this, come back and talk to me about whether women do sex work as a free choice.

Would your husband - if he fell on his uppers and the dole didn't meet his expenses - be happy to offer his bum up as a rentboy? If not, why not, if it's just work?

"Humans shouldn't have to be coerced to do labour in order to pay for essentials like shelter or food.”

This sort of shit is only held to by 22 year old, IT graduate, computer programmers with no experience of the real world (and also 44 year old, IT graduate, computer programmers with no experience of the real world - they've spent the intervening 22 years staring at a computer screen and making no real contact with real people) - they imagine their skills to be so indispensable that even under communism they'll spend their lives tapping away in some privileged position.

Needless to say, if there ever is a Communist revolution, I won't be in the counter-revolutionary forces, I will join the Communists to shoot all the "intellectuals" - computer programmers, first up against the wall.

@NewUser123456789

This black and white attitude of 'consent can't be bought' does speak loudly of projecting your own personal views about sex onto everyone else. Your consent might not be for sale for any price but others are and willingly so. There are those who would only have sex in the constraints of marriage and those who will give it away to a virtual stranger for a bag of chips with hardly a second thought. Personally I would happily get spitroasted by Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn if it paid off my mortgage. As it happens my price and what anyone would pay are so far apart that it's not a consideration but if that weren't the case I wouldn't be concerned about how anyone else felt about the morals of my choices.

How do the moralistic among you feel about the many incarnations of financial persuasion that exist between regular relationships and drug addicted street prostitute? For example the women who throw themselves at super rich but deeply unattractive men (gold diggers), the girls on sugar daddy sites (necessarily attractive, educated and healthy) who enter into long term arrangements (sometimes actively sexual and sometimes not) with rich old men they would otherwise never consider. Then there are less personal arrangements such as those on webcams taking payments from strangers for getting their kit off live, couples posting homemade pornography on the internet for financial gain etc. Then of course there are those in relationships that have run their course but they stick with it because they don't want to lose the lifestyle that their partners wealth affords. All of these are people actively choosing to engage in the activity of using their body in a sexual manner for financial gain because the rewards clearly make it worthwhile for them.

This is hilarious. Your price is too high because you value yourself. Why are prostitutes’ bodies worth less than yours?

@HecatesCats

As it happens my price and what anyone would pay are so far apart that it's not a consideration

Why is that? Is that because you value yourself more?

Quite the opposite, I doubt I could charge more than a fiver for the privilege and I earn reasonable money elsewhere so my hourly rate would be less than I get sitting in front of a computer drinking tea. An attractive but unqualified female might be able to earn the equivalent of a week's wages in an hour.

@slightlyatsea

If you genuinely wanted an ethical sex work system, it would look like this. Women would be employees of a brothel, paid a salary not per-client. Men would pay to attend the brothel - an entrance fee. They could talk to the prostitutes, and make a pass at them. (Anyone making a pass too aggressively would be thrown out by bouncers, and would not get a refund). Prostitutes could choose to have sex with the men or not, and would not get paid any extra if they did, nor any less if they didn't. Security would be provided at a level that the women felt entirely safe to say No. It would be genuinely non-coerced free choice. Some of the women there might choose never to have sex with men, but would happily talk (or more likely listen) to them, and some currently lonely men who wouldn't dream of using a prostitute now would probably take up that offer. If a woman decided that the job wasn't for her, she could quit, and unemployment benefit would available at non-poverty rates, so that losing your job wasn't anything to be feared. Many of the men who currently coerce women to have sex with them would be completely unable to get laid in this scenario. When sex "work" runs like this, come back and talk to me about whether women do sex work as a free choice.

I agree apart from the bit about getting paid a salary whether you choose to work or not, that's just not how business works.

I believe in Germany they have brothels where the women are self employed contractors, they pay the house to provide facilities, security, marketing and healthcare. The customers pay the house a small entry fee to get in then negotiate for services individually with the women who can pick and choose their clients. I believe their welfare system is reasonable too so it's as good a system as I can think of in a free market economy for ensuring safety and choice.