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

Would he be willing to do it?
He says yes, if he needed money and other work was not available

I presume he is imagining that he would get to shag lots of women. Not that he would have to give blow jobs to men, including those with poor hygiene, bend over to the buggered by men, be only servicing men who are bigger and stronger than him and who have been raised on watching porn which is based on violence and degradation of men like him and where his punters expect him to act out the porn they have seen, and where they not only don't care if it hurts him but actively get off on it. I don't expect he is imaging regularly getting anal tears. I don't suppose he is imaging always been fearful of the men who use him hurting him, of always knowing he is never in control, but is in fact vulnerable. He will never have experienced that - we as women know that is always the case when we have sex with men. We always know we depend on them to be decent to us.

I don't think you partner has any idea of what women's sexual experiences of men are like. I don't think he has any idea of the dynamic. And to pretend that having your body used is some neutral event like working in a building site: I have no words! I don't think he should feel free to opine on things he has not sought to understand the nature of.

The conscription comparison is disingenuous too. Firstly for the above reasons. But also because countries do sometimes over-ride individual liberties for the greater good of the whole country. We are living through one of these times with lockdown. Conscription is the same. There is no greater good in men feeling they have the right to use the body of a woman who would not freely have sex with them.

In fact that is another reason I am against prostitution. Even for the rare women who genuinely free choose prostitution, I still don't agree. I just don't agree that men should be encouraged to view women and their bodies as depersonalised commodities for them to use. For me, it is a question of what sort of society we want. And I don't want that sort of society.

Bella didn't actually do porn stuff. She was 'protected' in a way that women who aren't celebrities are not. She never had any intention of posting nudes on Only Fans, she still made loads of money because of her celebrity status, because loads of blokes paid $200 each because they thought they were going to get a peek at 'Bella Thorne's Boobies and Minge'. And the whole scandal came about because those blokes were very pissed off that what they got was Bella Thorne with some clothes on. That's not what they had paid for and they wanted their money back!

The thing I dislike about females prostituting or performing porn for men is the same as about children doing it. The very fact it is produced as a commodity reinforces an idea which is in itself wrong.

The body of a woman or child is not a thing for the use of a man who can get power over it by any means.

I don't even like women displaying their bodies, because it also reinforces objectification: One woman's deliberately exposed cleavage may get her some cheap advantage, but she is selling her sisters down the river. If in a mixed environment, males have their flesh covered, women have it hanging out, then how is an equal and respectful attitude ever going to be normalised in the half of the population whose brains are governed below their waists?

I don't take an interest in what adult males do to sell themselves, because there is absolutely no equivalence between power imbalance of adult men, and that of women or of children

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.

I agree with this

I agree with @blindinglyobviouslight
He is looking at from his very privileged position of been a (white?) man.
He has no idea of the amount if dégradation that can come with unwanted sex or practices

Send him out to sell his body to whatever vile man is willing to pay for it, then he can do a weekend at Tesco to test his theory.

Send him out to sell his body to whatever vile man is willing to pay for it, then he can do a weekend at Tesco to test his theory

This! (Except he should have to do a full eight hour shift in each role).

Would he be willing to do it?
He says yes, if he needed money and other work was not available. In the same way he would get a job outside of his profession if he needed a job and lost his.

Not sure I believe him.

Did you press him on who his likely client base would be? Is he imagining being a gigolo to lonely rich women? Or has he caught on to the fact that he'd be "servicing" other men, with the hugely enhanced risk of rape and assault that carries?

All the "happy hooker" contingent always airbrush out the inconvenient stats. Like the fact that the majority of prostitutes start before the legal age of 18. That they are overwhelmingly likely to be survivors of child sexual abuse. That they are 20 times more likely to be raped or physically assaulted than women in the general population.

The perpetrators of course being their customers. Because that's the other thing that gets airbrushed out of the picture - the fact that the sort of man who thinks it is okay to buy sex is overwhelmingly likely to be fucking scum.

Got this off Twitter

"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."

I'm going to set aside his asshat opinion on 'sex work' for the minute and ask you about this opinion of his.

He views all work as unjust. Well, where to start? Does he think we should all be like lilies in the field, toiling not? If nobody works, there is no food, there is no shelter, other than what you could procure with your bare hands (or the tools you made with your bare hands). This is called subsistence living, and it's pretty grim. It's a hard, hard life, so hard that we moved to trading with each other pretty early on, and people became bakers, butchers, farmers, smiths etc and everyone benefitted.

What the hell is his alternative?

I’m very bitter about the fact that so many libfems think sex work is empowering for women and that we can make loads of money out of it and it’s so much better than working in Maccy Ds.

It isn’t.

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

This is also total nonsense. I also strongly suspect that he talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.

Given this is his belief system how much progress has he made towards his self sufficient lifestyle? At the very least I hope he has some chickens and you resemble felicity Kendal.

I darkly suspect he has a wage like most people and his credentials consist of muttering about the man.

It is possible to live a largely self sufficient lifestyle but at least some bartering is usually involved which is the start of a currency system.

@Meuniere

I agree with *@blindinglyobviouslight* He is looking at from his very privileged position of been a (white?) man. He has no idea of the amount if dégradation that can come with unwanted sex or practices

I agree with this. I would bet he has absolutely no idea what women are forced to do when men pay for their bodies and therefore think they own them. He probably thinks that the worst a woman has to do is fake an orgasm or something.

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

Is this a 'left leaning' view? If nobody worked, how would we get the shelter or food in the first place? What a load of shite!

I’m very bitter about the fact that so many libfems think sex work is empowering for women

I used to think this in my early 20's. Five years in child protection, 10 years as a children's post sex abuse therapist and my views have changed completely.
I think it is a view of total ignorance it certainly was in my case.

blokes paid $200 each because they thought they were going to get a peek at 'Bella Thorne's Boobies and Minge

Men are ridiculous. I'm glad she's ripped them off.

I used to believe that regulating prostitution was just a way to control women. Then I learned a bit more about the realities of life for women where prostitution is legal and realized I was 100% wrong.

There are lots of nuanced discussions to be had, but ultimately, it Sex work is work, then any man showing up at the unemployment office should be willing to start work receiving anal sex from other men. It’s crass, but that is what sex work being work really means.

It's a horrible thing to say. I read a comment made when the whole scandal in Haiti of men paid by NGOS to assist people whose lives where devastated paying women for sex, along the lines of them being there to assist with funding by putting food in their mouths and not their cock first.
If women need money to stay alive expecting sex before you are going to give them it says a lot about who you are.

Is this a 'left leaning' view? If nobody worked, how would we get the shelter or food in the first place? What a load of shite!

I know. Overall I don't get the impression that OPs husband thinks about things very deeply or critically. Yet believes himself to be Extremely Clever.

I would bet my house he has a beard! 😂

I think the "sex work is work like any other" crowd are either generally middle-class types who think doing a bit of burlesque as a student counts as "sex work", or they are male and exhibitionist, and think working as "cam girls" makes them representative of women in prostitution.

Neither set impress me.

@KnightsofColumbusThatHurt

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

Is this a 'left leaning' view? If nobody worked, how would we get the shelter or food in the first place? What a load of shite!

Excellent analysis there! (No sarcasm)

I once got into a fight with a bloke who comes from a country where prostitution is fully legal- they have those big mega brothels. He said I was a prude and brought out the whole “it’s no worse than McDonald’s” argument. I knew he had been unemployed so I asked him if he was ok with working in a brothel to get off the dole. He was not ok with this and was offended. I then pointed out that in McDonalds you don’t have to have strangers dicks up your butt , and he said I was being “disgusting” and provocative to make a point. So sex work is work but apparently it’s disgusting to even discuss the normal everyday life on the job. Did he think it was like pretty woman or something ?

Oh I forgot to add he also said I had a “moralistic” view of sex and I snapped that of course I had a moralistic view of sex- rape and coercive sex is obviously morally wrong, which is why I’m so anti prostitution. It always seems to be men who try to tell me that sex is this completely amoral thing.