How is it possible to be a feminist and support the sex industry?

[Molesworth]

I've just been reading this article from the guardian. Young girls are being sold to brothel keepers and made to take steroids so that they look older than they really are.

All my instincts say that the sex industry is just plain wrong. I know some feminists think it's OK (although obviously they wouldn't support practices like those described in the article). Are there any sex industry supporting feminists here? What's the rationale?

There's a thoughtful article on this subject here. As dittany says, the legalization programme in the Netherlands was not a success. The author of this article argues that "the problem with legalization schemes is that prostitution is more, for the majority of the customers, about buying the opportunity to treat a woman like utter trash. In order for prostitution to be legal and yet still viable, the scheme either has to preserve the customer?s right to treat the prostitute like trash (which is why it works in Nevada, though it does the actual prostitutes little good), or an illegal side market of prostitution will flourish next to the legal one. In other words, if you have to be nice to the legal whores, a lot of johns will go to the illegal ones. Which is probably why Amsterdam got more, not less, child prostitution and trafficking when they legalized prostitution."

I'm glad that anyone who feels that way about the industry has found a way out. I wonder how the hell they ended up doing it in the first place.

However, this girl's problems started with poverty, not prostitution.

Please don't send me Bindel links, that woman had her chance to speak to me and she refused it.

There are many sites like that. I see no proof of the validity of these stories and I'm far too much of a realist to take them at face value.

hmm maybe just maybe someone on here is a prostitue themselves who subcribes to mumsnet??

Just because you shout louder than I do, doesn't make me a liar.

Read my posts properly please.

I'm not getting a chance to have a balanced discussion about the original subject matter. I'm too busy trying to fend you off.

Ok then. A violent partner was her original problem, not prostitution

"That's how a lot of women get into prostitution because they are pimped by their boyfriends or husbands.

If you really are in the business you'd know this of course."

Really?

Who are these women?

If you are talking about street walkers, then I wouldn't know. I don't have any contact with them. Unfortunately, since the government's crackdown on street walkers, neither do the organisations who were set up to help them.

Dittany - "Who told you about this thread?"

Have you never noticed some of the "what's being discussed" links on the lower-right of some pages ?

Mandamumu, don't you believe that some women are tricked into it and are pimped by boyfriends etc.? How do all the women get into it, do they apply at the job centre?

I didn't say that prostitution wasn't a problem for her, I said it wasn't where her problems began.

I've already said that I don't believe anyone should be prostituted against their will, but I defend my right (and anyone else's) to choose to be a prostitute.

Claig, do you imagine that all women are sat at home doing embroidery and are oblivious to the workings and goings on of the outside world?

There are a myriad of ways in which women find out about prostitution and enter the industry by choice.

No most tend to use their initative , get a wedsite build or advertise in the papers (or not so much nowadays) there are specialist wedmasters (and mistresses) who only do escort and agency web pages
or they may do the website themselves
if they work in a brothel many will call and ask if they are any vacancies and then off they go
if someone wants to do something they will, they will find a way of doing it !

"sex industry is entrenched in our society"

indeed - there was a TV programme about how much investment from pension funds (BT, BBC) happens to be in firms which get profits from porn (chains of hotels, mobile phone services, TV channels).

Came as a shock to a bunch of BT pensioners and embarrassing for the reporter to show one of the BBC buildings with it own 'guilty secret'.

Just that the amounts involved are not identified in a transparent manner - so some hotel chain doesn't distinguish between pay-per-view TV income from family movies vs PPV income from a porn film... and many porn films push terms like slut, whore, and so on, or appear to show coercion - taking advantage of petite young women with 30-40yo powerfully built men, doing things I won't describe, but find disgusting.

Bottom line is that if you have funds in a pension, some of that may be invested in companies which themselves make money from porn - not from brothels and prostitution or controlled by criminal gangs, but the 'corporate' end centred in Hollywood, Germany, Amsterdam, etc.

Hang on dittany, surely the closures in Amsterdam are a sign that legalisation is working? The fact that they actually know what is going on and have the power to target and close certain joints down specifically because abuse is going on - this is GOOD!

Do we see similar raids going on over here in the UK? No we do not, the police haven't a clue what's going on, and lack the mandate to target abuse specifically (instead they close down places for drug dealing or pimping). Plus criminalisation makes it much harder to give women an escape route, because their illegal status keeps them hidden from those who could help.

Just look at the difference between our laws on smoking and heroin, for example. Smoking is legal but strongly controlled. Over the years, increasing regulation has reduced levels of smoking and made it less and less socially acceptable. Taxes on fags pay for our health service. Everyone understands the risks, because in a controlled environment it is possible to carry out scientific research. It's quite conceivable that some day, smoking will become a thing of the past.

Heroin, on the other hand, is adulterated with substances that cause even more harm, and sold to you by criminals who may draw you into other harmful activities. The profits go into the pockets of people-traffickers, pimps, criminal warlords and the rest. It's hard to treat the illnesses of heavy users, because no-one has a clue what chemicals they've been ingesting and there is hardly any good scientific research. Reaching addicts to treat their addiction is hard too because criminalised addiction forces them underground, keeping them in the hands of the scum who are in complete control of the drugs scene.

I can understand your anger - but these problems have been around a long time, we need less emotion and more new ideas if we have a hope in hell of making the situation better.

Mandamumu, don't you think that some women are pimped, enticed and tricked into it? Are you another late entrant into the profession like MissHoneyMoon? Are you not aware of younger women and how they got into it? Were you doing embroidery while they were getting involved in the industry?

oh, pardon me for breathing, dittany - I had other things to be doing than read every word of over 200 comments - though I had read quite a few dozen earlier today.

Of course I might have skipped accidentally past wherever that aspect had been explained...

"Are you another late entrant into the profession like MissHoneyMoon?"

18 years... I started when I was 20.

webdude, with respect, if you want to interject with smart comments, it is prudent to have read the thread first

or you just run the risk of looking silly

like you did...just then

< speaks from much experience, now reads all the thread before making smart comments >

in that case I expect you have met women who were pimped, enticed or tricked into the industry. Is that the case?