For those who like to declare that "sex work" is empowering

[prudencepuffin]

No doubt many of us are aware of the material in this film but it is nonetheless shocking and might be worth showing to young people who are told that believing this is a tenet of the new feminism.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-60091717

And on that note I'm curious what your experience is of sex work @MargaritaPie

Mine is having shared a house with two women who were in sex work (separate women and houses), worked with countless women and boys who worked. Helped collate the information for the women of rapes, assaults, kidnapping and robberies. Counselled and supported women who died from the fallout of their work. Was a witness in a trial which involved an attack on a sex worker. I could go on.

And you?

Legally, the law doesn't care if a brothel has a pimp or not. If it's illegal for sex workers to work together, then brothels can and will be raided by police to arrest the women working there.

@MargaritaPie

Legally, the law doesn't care if a brothel has a pimp or not. If it's illegal for sex workers to work together, then brothels can and will be raided by police to arrest the women working there.

FFS read!

@foxgoosefinch It would work much in the same way as the agency (well there's more than 2 of us so I guess it's a brothel). We are licensed, you have to have a license to work as an escort here. Regular testing, rates, menus set by service providers. We can put any clients on our no see list. Fair house fees. The main difference would be we could legally keep & share info about clients. We do this already but we have to keep it on the down low. We would be eligible for group Healthcare &;we wouldn't have to lie on our taxes about how we earn our money.

@Springsoda you must not be in the U.K., because some of the things you mention (eg healthcare) are not an issue here.

I’d ask you though: why do you think selling sex should be a legal industry just because it’s what you personally want to do? Should everyone be able to do whatever they want and makes them money, even if less fortunate others, and society more broadly, suffer harm as a result? It’s a very right wing, US-centric view of society, isn’t it?

I don’t happen to think that a few women’s desire to sell sex trumps the desperate exploitation and suffering of many others, or believe that a bit of capitalist “regulation” around taxes makes a horrifically immoral, violent, objectifying and damaging “trade” suddenly shiny and lovely and not exploitative.

It’s a very naive view of market capitalism you have there. It’s funny that centuries of degrading sexual exploitation in prostitution, and the concomitant violence, misogyny and poverty, could now be sorted by magic capitalism with a little light regulation of the tax and licensing systems. What marvels late capitalism has brought us!

Will all the violent johns and pimps and addiction and trafficking all melt away and buying sex suddenly become a respectful transactional contract just like getting one’s nails done, with a lovely man who just wants a cuddle and a chat and wouldn’t dream for a moment of anything at all violent or degrading?

Or might it just possibly be that men being able to purchase women like slaves is inherently linked to violence, exploitation, misogyny, poverty, abuse, trafficking and disease, no matter what the “happy escorting” myths might pretend?

It's males paying females or males to own (rape) their body for a temporary basis. The servant isn't doing it for sexual gratification, they are doing it because they need money.

Males should have moved on from this, without poor male behaviour this wouldn't exist.

Oh give over spring soda. I'm a sex worker, you know an actual one. Not just an ally. Mumsnet is perfectly accepting of sex workers voices, providing they can actually engage and don't shy away from difficult questions.

I've had my arse handed to me numerous times, I work in a strip club. I love it. It benefits me and my lifestyle a lot. Does that mean the sex industry isn't incredibly damaging to women and society. No, it does not. It just makes me a hypocrite.

But at least I admit that. I know that I'm the lucky end of the wedge. I know that the educated stripper trope of just paying for uni is the 1%. The 99% is women who have no choice. Who are working on the streets, who have addiction and trauma.

Great analogies earlier with smoking and fossil fuels etc. Just because something has always been done a certain way does not mean it should continue like that. We evolve, we grow we hopefully progress as a human race. Hopefully one day the idea of renting a womans body for sexual pleasure or as an incubator will be abhorrent.

The next video in the BBC player is also horrific - sex workers in Sierra Leone. They’re calling themselves sex workers, while they explain that a friend was taken the day before and a “customer” cut her feet off.