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Prostitution isn’t a choice There’s an awkward silence in pro-sex work arguments about who’s buying

It's desperation, not inclination, that drives most women to become prostitutes. Credit: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images

It's desperation, not inclination, that drives most women to become prostitutes. Credit: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images


December 17, 2020   7 mins

When I was a student, for a while I lived in one of those places where students aren’t supposed to live. A rough bit of the city. Run down. When I walked into town in the evening, through the derelict council houses slated for demolition, cars would sometimes slow as they passed me — the drivers, always male, checking whether I was willing to be picked up. I found it unnerving in a way that was difficult to explain, or difficult to explain without contradicting myself.

My politics then, formed mostly by reading blogs in the noughties, said that sex-work-is-work, and that critiquing prostitution was a prude’s position. But in my neighbourhood, I was treated like a whore, and it scared me. I would internally chastise myself: who was I to dwell upon my fears, when there were women for whom these men were a living? The obvious answer here — that I was a woman who just wanted to be able to walk near my home without intimidation — did not occur to me.

The kerb crawlers didn’t disturb me only because of what they wanted. I think they troubled me also because men who buy sex are the most difficult element to reconcile with a pro-sex work position. It’s possible to argue in the abstract against the policing of female sexuality (if, of course, you never ask yourself why “female sexuality” would subsist in the things men pay women to do) or to denounce the state involving itself in consensual arrangements between adults (again, if you can pretend that purchased consent is valid consent).

But the grim actuality of the man who wants to have sex with a woman who can’t say no to hopping in his car — where does he fit into this conception? Where does her inability to refuse fit? Because I thought a lot about this. About what made me unlike the women those men were looking for. I think about it now, when I teach at a university, because I know it’s possible some of the young women in my classes are selling sex. When I teach again next semester, the possibility will be even greater. That’s why the University of Leicester has just introduced what it calls a “Student Sex Worker Policy and Toolkit”.

Students who enter the sex industry now, of course, are unlikely to be pacing their cities’ red light districts. Instead, they’ll be putting themselves on OnlyFans, or signing up for Sugar Daddy websites, or maybe escorting — non-contact work selling pictures, or mediated work brokered by a third party. Either way, the alarming figure of the man in the car can be kept at a certain distance. Some young women will enter in with a feeling that they’re embarking on a sexual adventure, maybe with Megan Thee Stallion’s boast from “WAP” repeating in their brains (“Pay my tuition just to kiss me / On this wet-ass pussy”). But all of them will be doing it for the money.

The reason I would never have jumped in a car with a stranger and accepted a fiver for a handjob is that nothing in my life had conspired to force me to. I didn’t have any of the chaotic pressures like substance dependency that would make me desperate for money and stop me holding down a job, and there were always retail and service roles around that I could do. My parents were able to top me up when needed. I didn’t have one of those boyfriends who insinuates that if you really loved him, you would pick up men to make cash — or who beats you if you refuse.

Between dead high streets and a devastated hospitality sector, the sorts of jobs students usually do are harder to come by now. In fact, Covid means that the sorts of jobs everyone does are going to be harder to come by, which means that already more women are reportedly selling sex. It’s important to keep this in mind, because there’s a tendency — hardened by the sex workers’ rights movement, which has borrowed the forms of gay liberation — to treat prostituted women as a kind of sexual minority who should be freed from persecution.

But it’s desperation, not inclination, that pulls most women in. Policy creates prostitutes: remove the welfare safety net, stop funding the refuges that help women get away from abusive men, and more women will either resort to selling sex or be unable to escape it. Prostitutes are also created by acts of classification. If dirt is “matter out of place”, whore is often just a word for a woman where she shouldn’t be. The men who kerb crawled me didn’t do it because of who I was, but because of where I was.

A new Netflix documentary about the Yorkshire Ripper underlines the many mistakes made by police in their investigation, but one of the worst was their decision to treat their unknown serial murderer as a “prostitute killer”. For one thing, it was inaccurate. Many of Peter Sutcliffe’s victims, including ones tagged as prostitutes by police and media, never sold sex: they were simply given the label because their lives were unstable and they died horribly.

The police investigating the murders assumed their perpetrator was motivated by a “hatred for prostitutes” — they even appealed to his “better nature” after he killed a victim who they classed as an “innocent girl”, imploring him to stop his attacks before he made another such mistake. They didn’t consider the possibility that he was motivated by a hatred for women, who he attacked opportunistically; prostitution was relevant to his crimes inasmuch as it made women more vulnerable. When Sutcliffe paid for sex, it’s entirely possible he was doing that out of hatred as well.

There’s an awkward silence in pro-sex work arguments about who’s buying. Sometimes they’re cast as gracious libertines. Sometimes, they’re portrayed as the undeserving poor of the intimacy economy — disabled men who crave pleasure but struggle to attract a partner are often invoked here, even though it is plainly insulting to say that disability makes you a sexual non-person. But the internet made it difficult for the idealised fictional punter to survive the suddenly visible real ones: the ones who leave reviews complaining about a woman’s unenthusiastic blowjobs or wonky teeth or the fact that her tits did not match up in all regards to the picture, and all in the most insulting terms.

So the pro-sex work argument moved. If the punter is indefensible, better not to talk about him at all. In the book Revolting Prostitutes — which advocates a “Marxist-feminist, labour-centred analysis” — authors Molly Smith and Juno Mac (both of whom identify themselves as sex workers) conspicuously avoid talking about the reasons men pay for sex. Instead, they invert the economic model of supply and demand, writing: “In an important sense, clients are not the demand but the supply; for sex workers, clients represent the supply of resources into our lives.”

This is a strange claim, because it ultimately implies that the more men there are who buy sex, the better it would be for women who sell sex. In this argument, a bigger market means more money for women in precarity; and more choice to refuse men they perceive as dangerous. But (as Smith and Mac repeatedly underline in the book) “women who sell sex” are not a constant population. Deprivation drags more women in. “Men who buy” are a porous group too, encouraged or deterred by policing and social attitudes. And the more punters there are, the greater the incentive for third parties (the word “pimps” works here) to find desperate women to service them.

A 2012 study found that, globally, legalising prostitution increased human trafficking: a bigger market demanded more women, and they had to come from somewhere. Critics of the Leeds “managed zone” — an area where prostitution is effectively legal (devised under the guidance of Teela Sanders, who also spearheaded the Leicester student toolkit), in the city where Sutcliffe committed many of his crimes — say that men come from hundreds of miles away to take advantage, and traffickers respond by bussing in more women to offer.

It’s distasteful to remember that women are the merchandise in prostitution, but any decent Marxist analysis should be able to predict the way trade reacts to opportunity. And the greater the opportunity for prostitution, the greater the opportunity for abuse. Women working in the managed zone are assaulted, raped and — in the terrible case of Daria Pionko in 2015 — murdered. Women who live nearby are pestered, threatened and sometimes attacked by men who consider any female around to be fair game.

As for the claim that a larger pool of punters lets women dodge the violent ones, I am haunted by the Steve Wright case. Wright murdered five women in prostitution over a few weeks in late 2006, targeting the Ipswich red light zone. After he was convicted, other women who worked the area recalled him as “just another punter”. If a serial killer doesn’t stand out, profiling doesn’t work.

When the punter is remote, the case seems even more tenuous. How does a camgirl know which anonymous watcher is fine, and which one will repost her images to humiliate her for years to come? How do you know which one will be a stalker? And even if dangerous men did give themselves away, there will ultimately always be a woman destitute enough — Smith and Mac class women who trade sex for food and shelter as “sex workers” — that she can’t say no to someone she fears. Destitute enough, or coerced enough. At the bottom of the market, women are killed.

In my feminist writing, I’ve resisted the reframing of prostitution as “sex work”, but perhaps embracing it might force a confrontation with what this “work” entails. What kind of workplace pays extra for ditching your PPE (punters put a premium on un-condommed sex)? In what other industry would the sexual assault of members of the public be an acceptable negative externality? How, exactly, does one apply an employment rights model to an exchange that takes place between two people in a locked room — or a locked car — where one demands sex and is big enough to force the other? In the announcement of the Leicester “Student Sex Worker Policy”, though, all this is hidden under the vague heading “wellbeing and inclusivity”.

There is no perfect response to prostitution. Smith and Mac deride feminists who back the Nordic model (my preferred option, in which sale of sex is decriminalised but the purchase is illegal) for lacking a faultless real-world example they can point to. When it comes to Smith and Mac’s favoured model of New Zealand-style decriminalisation, though, they concede that there are “problems” but put these down to the fact that it “does not go far enough”. We are all apparently just waiting for the kingdom to arrive.

But while we wait, there can be no pretence that prostitution is anything other than a practice where male entitlement takes advantage of female vulnerability — and no disagreement that any response begins by ameliorating that vulnerability. That means, among other things, benefits to lift women out of poverty, drug treatment to give them control of their lives, and a coordinated approach between the women’s sector and the criminal justice system to address male violence against women and protect women from the men who exploit them.

You might — perhaps fairly — accuse me of sentimental tourism for identifying myself with women in prostitution. For cringing when I think about the mechanics of an unwanted body pushing its way into a body that has no means of refusal. After all, it’s not me who has to take that trauma. But when those men on my old route to town kerb crawled me, it was because they saw I had the kind of body they wanted to do those things to. The difference between me and the women who would have taken their chances in those cars isn’t in our natures — it’s in our luck.


Sarah Ditum is a columnist, critic and feature writer.

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David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago

The uncomfortable truth that only fans and the rest are revealing is that some women are perfectly willing to sell sex in various forms for money. And the narrative of female victim and male exploiter is becoming really hard to maintain. Some women are clearly taking advantage of male need and weakness and doing very well at it. Others are at the seedier end of the market, and putting themselves at risk for the money. But it is a choice.

For some it will be a hard choice, because none of the other options look better. Some can no more resist the lure of drugs than their customers can resist the lure of sex and are trading one form of ecstasy for another. Using another’s need or addiction to feed their own.

And amongst their customers will be well off men who buy sex for entertainment and because they have money to burn, but also sorry souls desperate for love, contact and yes, sex – who, like the women have few other options.

It’s not great. It’s been going on for a long time. The best we can probably do is make it as safe as possible.

Andre Lower
Andre Lower
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

Or improve the quality/performance of the alternatives. AI sex, anyone?

M Spahn
M Spahn
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

Not to mention

“But while we wait, there can be no pretence that prostitution is anything other than a practice where male entitlement takes advantage of female vulnerability”

As usual, pretending male prostitutes do not exist, since her thesis doesn’t hold up if they do.

Charles Rense
Charles Rense
3 years ago
Reply to  M Spahn

There are no male prostitutes. Just guys that need a little help with a bus ticket, I swear!

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago
Reply to  M Spahn

It’s also a classic example of sloppy language being used to cover up poor argument. One can no more be taken advantage of by an “entitlement” than one can be beaten up by one.

Alison Wren
Alison Wren
3 years ago
Reply to  M Spahn

Usually very young males though the allure of youth holds for both sexes!

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

How can modern prostitution be “revealing” about women while at the same time men since Biblical times forcing women into rape slavery says nothing “revealing” about men?

Your comment affirms men have been trading rape slaves between each other for thousands of years while somehow trying to blame modern women for “wanting” it.

You logic is all over the place and contradictory.

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

It’s revealing because “only fans” is an example of disintermediation in that it allows women to sell services directly to men. They are not being coerced to do so, and clearly many are making a significant amount of money from it. Clearly, some women will do this freely, and without coercion simply because it is relatively lucrative.

I’m not saying that it reveals women to be morally wanting or something. Indeed I’m not taking a moral position, or even claiming it is revealing about women at all.

It is revealing, in that it makes it hard to maintain a simple victim/exploiter narrative, as if women would only do it if they were forced in some way.

And I’m fully aware what men have done in the past.

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

But why do men want women to shove objects into their genitals on camera, for pay? Why are men making women choke themselves, for pay? Why do men want to see women called [insert porn titles here], and pay for it?

You should Google “sex trafficking and porn” if you think what happens off camera isn’t influencing a woman’s “decision” to stick her fingers up her a**s and then suck on the fingers for the viewing men who pay to see her do it….why is that what men want to see?

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

You had so very much to say before this point, then silence.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

You had a lot to say but it was all feminazi drivel

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

Some men want those things because they find them exciting. As do some women.

The idea all cam girls are being forced to do camming at gunpoint is laughable. A woman I worked with used to do it around work.

Daniel Björkman
Daniel Björkman
3 years ago

I quite agree. Where commerce enters the equation, consent goes out of it. I am glad to have a job, but I don’t know that I “consent” to it, per se – I just like working better than starving. For that reason, I think we should be very very careful with what sort of services we allow people to purchase from each other. Though of course that needs to be coupled (no pun intended) with making sure that there are always better options on the table than selling those services illegally. I’ve been saying for years that I’ll be okay with prostitution when and only when there is a solid universal base scheme in place; until then, it’s always going to be that very libertarian brand of passive-aggressive coercion: “no, no, I’m not forcing you to do anything! I’m just leaving you with a single viable option for survival! Not touching, can’t get mad!”

I remember one book review at an annoyingly hyper-progressive (and now thankfully gone) site, which patted itself on the back for being open-minded enough to not be offended by a book about a career woman signing on to be a rich man’s paid girlfriend for a fixed period of time. Just… arrrggghh. That’s so not the sort of prostitution people talk about when they talk about being against prostitution!

disabled men who crave pleasure but struggle to attract a partner are often invoked here, even though it is plainly insulting to say that disability makes you a sexual non-person.

Ahem. It may be insulting, but it is often true. Let’s not be guilty of the exact same “all people need is more RESPECT!” fallacy that underlies liberal support of sex work. I am disabled, and I am definitely a sexual non-person. I don’t say that to defend my right to purchase sex, as that is not a right I want or think I should have. I’m only saying it because it’s true. Many disabled men really won’t get sex unless they pay for it.

My preferred solution to that, however, is to de-emphasise sex as an absolute requirement for full humanity so that the lack of it doesn’t feel so catastrophic. Lifelong virgins is one group that really does just need some respect.

Joe Reed
Joe Reed
3 years ago

Totally agree. Not everyone can have sex and neither does everyone have a right to sex.

Meghan Kathleen Jamieson
Meghan Kathleen Jamieson
3 years ago

Our society doesn’t really have any strong model or ideal for a celibate class of people, where that is seen as valuable or something to be respected.

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago

That’s because it can’t be monetized. Men who pay for sex are capitalist-suckered stooges.

Then men get murderously angry at prostitutes, taking out their anger at having been lied to by Hugh Hefner and other pimps about how totally awesome paying to bang a different prostitute every night is when, like all humans, men really crave sincere connections.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

Nothing to do with monetisation. Feminists are well-known for mocking and ridiculing celibate men. We used to have a moral framework (Christianity) which celebrated celibacy. Feminism is anti-Christian and derides men for any reason it can find, so celibate men will always be mocked in a feminist society.

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
3 years ago

Prostitution is not a response to a lack of respect for asexual existences. People enjoy, and want, sex. Some people barely care with whom, as long as they get to engage in the act occasionally. Therefore, there will likely always be some people willing to pay for no-strings sex.

7882 fremic
7882 fremic
3 years ago
Reply to  Joe Blow

People? Stop the woke words, men is what you mean in this context. Or do you say Postal Person for Mailman?

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
3 years ago
Reply to  7882 fremic

Woke words? Do you have a vocabulary problem? There’s nothing in that paragraph that would not have been understood precisely the same way – as I wrote it – 40 years ago.

John Rumpole
John Rumpole
3 years ago

Reprogramming the human mind so that we no longer value sex seems like something that can’t just be glossed over. I mean, how is this going to be accomplished?

Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
Reply to  John Rumpole

There is a very famous Talmudic discussion – i.e over 2000 years old, about the notion of eliminating the sexual desire,
in the story, this is done by Divine intervention – and the next day people are asking where are their fresh eggs going to come from, etc, etc.

It’s a figment of the imagination to think it can be eliminated.
As with so many other human needs – the only real issue is how to we control it so that the need becomes something positive and enjoyable rather trhan harmful and detrimental.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  John Rumpole

Well that depends on what you mean by sex as it is not clear here.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
3 years ago

The usual conflation of prostitution with kerb-crawling and of prostitution with trafficked, bonded labour. There are women held in captivity and forced to have sex. There are mothers who have sex to provide for their children. There are women from abroad providing for their mothers. There are drug addicts. There are women paying their way through university. There are women working one day a week to pay for the luxuries in life that they want. There are women who believe that any relationship between a man and a woman is an exchange of sex for money. There are women who like to be around rich men. There are women who like dominating men and to their amazement find that they can paid for it. So for many women prostitution isn’t a choice but for many women it is.

Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago

very good and accurate summary of the truthful reality

Scott Allan
Scott Allan
3 years ago
Reply to  Joseph Berger

I don’t think this writer has much use for truth or reality, she repeatedly says she is a Marxist Utopia dreamer.

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago

That’s a whole lot of focus on women, women, women, have you any sentences to spare for the men who economically coerce sex not caring whether their victims are rape slaves or the exhibitionist nymphomaniac polyamorist goldiggers you describe?

In my mid-sized American city there are 20 men who pay for sex to every prostitute, can you write a comment reflecting the 20:1 ratio?

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
3 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

I don’t have to ‘write a comment reflecting the 20:1 ratio’ as you already have. If you want me to write more, then employ me as a journalist and I’ll do my best to write an article that has a broad perspective and looks to highlight aspects of the sex trade that other writers ignore. Until that time when you put your money where your mouth is, leave me to comment on articles I read and don’t tell me what I should think or write.

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

“rape slaves”

It’s important to distinguish between sex work itself, and the effects of making it illegal or otherwise pushing it underground.

You’re an American, so I would have thought you would have learned that lesson from prohibition.

VJB Minerva
VJB Minerva
3 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

The author is a woman and chooses to focus on women. If you’re concerned about the teeny-tiny percentage of men in prostitution – do your research and write your article. This author doesn’t have to do it FOR you.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

“Economically coercing” what a pointless phrase. I am economically coerced to work for a living. Where do I complain about “the patriarchy” to? In the feminist utopia, would nobody work or would men do all the work?

lucinda.v.newcomb
lucinda.v.newcomb
3 years ago

If she actually wanted to have sex with the men they wouldn’t need to pay her. It is always coerced if she must be paid.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
3 years ago

By that argument, anyone employed to do any type of work is a slave.

lucinda.v.newcomb
lucinda.v.newcomb
3 years ago

By that argument anyone being paid to work is being coerced to do the work with financial compensation. I said nothing about slavery. You are the one conflating and manipulating words and ideas. However, when you coerce anyone into having sex they would otherwise not be willing to have, you are getting into the legal definitions of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
3 years ago

Please explain how you can legally coerce a person to do any type of work?

lucinda.v.newcomb
lucinda.v.newcomb
3 years ago

It’s irrelevant. Coerced sex is sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape. Coerced employment as a janitor or plumber is not sexual harassment, sexual assault or rape.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
3 years ago

So slavery without sexual harassment is fine?

VJB Minerva
VJB Minerva
3 years ago

Really!? How often has your boss demanded to f**k you in the ass without a condom before handing over your paycheck? What kind of work do you do?? My boss has never demanded to touch me, see me naked, have access to my more intimate body parts etc. She’s also never slapped, punched, kicked nor called me revolting names nor tried to humiliate me. She’s never gotten me pregnant either.

VJB Minerva
VJB Minerva
3 years ago

Why are you trying to normalize women in grave poverty selling their health and well-being for a crust of bread!? “If a woman is hungry, the moral thing to do is put food in her mouth, not your c**k.” IT ISN’T OKAY FOR WOMEN TO BE THIS DESPERATE! As the author stated, we need humane welfare safety nets so that women are not forced to barter their bodies. Women should NOT have to turn to prostitution to feed their kids, provide for their elders. There should be substance abuse services available. University shouldn’t be so expensive – universities should receive public funds to lower tuition, gov’t grants for those in need, work training programs for those not headed to university etc. Prostitution is not inevitable.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
3 years ago
Reply to  VJB Minerva

You are still ignoring the women who are not forced by hunger, substance abuse or the desire for a university education to enter prostitution but do so because they want money to pay for luxuries.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  VJB Minerva

The notion all sex workers are forced to be sex workers by poverty or pimps is utterly laughable.

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
3 years ago

“…the state involving itself in consensual arrangements between adults (again, if you can pretend that purchased consent is valid consent).”

Purchased consent is, by definition, still consent. If I sell you my car, even if I do so due to desperation for money, the consent for you to take it way is still consent.

We have allowed a strangely fragile conception of consent to develop, as though women are so easy to manipulate that we must have all manner of checks in place to ensure that when they consent to something they really mean it.

We really need to develop a consistent approach here. If women cannot be held to have consented to a transaction, whether due to alcohol, or the exchange of money, how many other areas of her life do we propose to supervise, to make sure she means what she says? Do we need a man present to ensure that the female CEO meant what she said to the Board after a drink at the company dinner?

Andre Lower
Andre Lower
3 years ago
Reply to  Joe Blow

Brilliant touché, Joe Blow!

7882 fremic
7882 fremic
3 years ago
Reply to  Joe Blow

If you did time at some rough US prison you may end up consenting to all kinds of stuff. But as you say, your consent is consent, so there it is.

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
3 years ago
Reply to  7882 fremic

Utterly foolish pseudo-argument. Coercion (under threat of violence) is not consent.

Kevin Ryan
Kevin Ryan
3 years ago
Reply to  Joe Blow

‘utterly foolish pseudo argument’
You don’t think a large part of prostitution is driven by pimps and sex trafficking? Where coercion under threat of violence is common.

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
3 years ago
Reply to  Kevin Ryan

Large part? I can’t answer that.
But those are arguments against violent pimps and sex-trafficking, not arguments against prostitution per se. My point is not that prostitution is good, or free from close-proximity to crime and violence. My point is that women are able, and should be entitled to, consent to sex for money.

240 women were killed in the UK 2019 (and almost twice as many men, incidentally), most of those murders not associated with prostitution.
Road traffic accidents killed nearly 1800. Most of those ‘driven by’ road use.

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago
Reply to  Joe Blow

You’re doing the same insincere avoidance the author is pointing out. You prefer to focus on the motivations and reasons (ie. blame) of prostituted women without having anything to say about much larger population of men who pay for sex and their motivations and their desires to cause violence.

I never felt like bashing my weed dealer, why do you think so many men who pay for sex are the #1 murderers of prostituted women?

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
3 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

With respect, nonsense. I have written nothing here about the motivations of women who sell sex.

You choose to focus on the 6 women per year (House of Commons Library) who work as prostitutes who are murdered each year. Six too many, no doubt. But there are 26M adult men in the UK, of which around 10% (2.6M!) are thought to pay for sex with women who work as prostitutes. It seem fair to say that men who pay for sex are not especially violent.

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago
Reply to  Joe Blow

Okay Joe “If it ain’t murder it doesn’t count as violence” Blow, I’ll be sure to pass that number along to serial killers who have individually murdered more than six prostitutes.

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
3 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

You raised the topic of murder, not me. And your stats are rubbish.
Of course, do ponder the serial killer impact on the data I cited. It suggests that men who murder prostitutes are even rarer than I suggested.

But, I guess you are of the world where ideology trumps reality.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

Men pay for sex because men like and want sex and are less interested in investing in a relationship to obtain sex than women are.

This isn’t “the patriarchy”, it’s biology. Men can’t get pregnant if they penetrate women. Women very much can if they get penetrated by men. Getting pregnant is anhuge risk for a female, the man faces no such risk.

I mention penetration because this is relevant. Sex is different for men and women in terms of the mechanics. A woman has to let someone in, a man has to enter someone. Indelicately phrased though it may be, it’s the truth.

The (feminist) idea that men and women are identical but for social constructs is total nonsense.

Aaron Kevali
Aaron Kevali
3 years ago
Reply to  Joe Blow

Very well put. Feminism has some strange contraditctions at it’s very core:

Girls have the power, we are as strong as men / help us please men – men are oppressing us!
Women should not be judged for making their own sexual decisions/ somebody stop poor women from making choices that aren’t good for them!
Men who pay desperate women for sex are wicked / Women who accept payment from desperate men are themselves victims.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  Aaron Kevali

Woman pays for sex – men are sexually inadequate because of the patriarchy and this poor oppressed woman is being forced to pay for sex for satisfaction.

Man pays for sex – evil misogynist cannot find a woman so he has to pay for sex like the disgusting creep he is.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  Joe Blow

Feminists want the authority of men, the privilege of women and the accountability of children.

jeff kertis
jeff kertis
3 years ago

Is there any person who would willingly subject themselves to cleaning sewers? Yet, people choose to be plumbers, despite being difficult and often disgusting work (I have done it). Yes, there is a value assigned to every unpleasant task, and in a free society people can decide for themselves whether the price is worth it.

7882 fremic
7882 fremic
3 years ago
Reply to  jeff kertis

I am a tradesman. But cleaning sewers is hard and honest work. It is not degrading. You do not sell your self by doing it. I just do not understand you effete kinds who find that work degrading.

Steve Moxon
Steve Moxon
3 years ago
Reply to  7882 fremic

And neither do prostitutes degrade themselves by selling a sexual service rather than a more mundane service. A better argument would be that ‘knowledge’ workers are the ones who really degrade themselves in selling their brains. By comparison, selling an orifice adjacent to the sewage works is not such a big deal, if it isn’t rather a con!

G Harris
G Harris
3 years ago
Reply to  Steve Moxon

So it’s simply a career choice?

Could you tell us all in what sort of scenario you might imagine that you might willingly and happily submit to selling regular access to your own ‘sewage works’ to anyone willing to pay and negotiate for the privilege?

Steve Moxon
Steve Moxon
3 years ago
Reply to  G Harris

Quite a number of scenarios, actually. I could regularly fantasise about them. They’re not very likely, but you did ask.

G Harris
G Harris
3 years ago
Reply to  Steve Moxon

So, if we’re to take you at your word, they’re fantasies not reality then?

Would you possibly be able to discern in your own mind that the two things might be two very different things?

Your alleged occasional ‘fantasies’ are someone else’s regular daily ‘realities’.

Steve Moxon
Steve Moxon
3 years ago
Reply to  G Harris

?!
Just how impervious to anything other than your own virtue-signalling are you?

G Harris
G Harris
3 years ago
Reply to  Steve Moxon

Perhaps you’d like to answer the question?

Steve Moxon
Steve Moxon
3 years ago
Reply to  G Harris

Perhaps you might like to be rather less pedantic, rhetorical and devoid of anything but excessive morality? Your failure to accept that there are plenty of women who do not at all agree with you should prompt your asking questions why you fail here?

G Harris
G Harris
3 years ago
Reply to  Steve Moxon

It’s not pedantry, it’s about free will.

If I I were having this exchange with a female prostitute who insisted that she was broadly happy with what she did for a living and it was something that amounted to an on balance personal life choice it would be an entirely different conversation and I would accept what she said in good faith, but I’m not am I.

Steve Moxon
Steve Moxon
3 years ago
Reply to  G Harris

But would you? I’d doubt you’d ever accept any other stance than yours being bona fide, no matter how well placed is anyone who contradicts you. As for the conversation you are having: it’s with someone with a very good knowledge over decades of prostitution in the UK and from several angles, which on any rational approach would be afforded due consideration, but which you have not the slightest interest in fielding, as you’re apparently profoundly bigoted on the topic.

G Harris
G Harris
3 years ago
Reply to  Steve Moxon

It’s precisely because I am interested that I am having this exchange with you, and you clearly know more than most but, as I said, you are a man, ergo a punter buying not selling, and the somewhat unpleasant comment you opened this exchange with and to which I replied didn’t exactly suggest that your knowledge and interest comes from writing a doctoral thesis on the subject.

Steve Moxon
Steve Moxon
3 years ago
Reply to  G Harris

Well I have researched the topic at length, submitted to the Home Office on the topic. I used to live in a ‘red light’ district for 20 years and I have met many sex workers..

G Harris
G Harris
3 years ago
Reply to  Steve Moxon

Which is why I respect your opinion, despite the odd unpleasantry, without necessarily agreeing with it.

You might know ‘the trees’ intimately, but you clearly don’t know ‘the woods’.

As you insist, ‘street prostitution’ apparently barely exists now, and you would know that better than I but, submitted Home Office reports or not, proving that prostitution isn’t somehow linked directly to the effects of socioeconomic deprivation, in spite of the overwhelming global evidence to the contrary, is another question entirely.

Steve Moxon
Steve Moxon
3 years ago
Reply to  G Harris

Huh?! It’s you who has the wood/trees problem.
And I never raised ‘socioeconomic deprivation’.
Sex work is an activity for money, just as is everything else we call work, so we all work as the only alternative to ‘deprivation’.

G Harris
G Harris
3 years ago
Reply to  jeff kertis

A UK plumber or sewer technician earns, on average, around £30k a year.

The latter with various generous health, holiday and pension benefits attached and both subject to the usual health and safety regulations and rules and standards specific to their professions.

To equate these occasionally unpleasant, socially vital professions/trades in any way shape or form with someone selling their body in a completely unregulated, inherently unsafe environment on a regular basis for cash, often for derisory amounts simply to fund a subsistence living usually in a deprived area and in return for performing personally degrading acts at obvious imminent risk to their own health and safety and often on complete strangers, is bizarre quite frankly.

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
3 years ago
Reply to  G Harris

Without passing judgement on the argument or the business of sex, I suspect your numbers are wrong. At £100/session (guessing at going rate – wouldn’t know how to confirm), and 4 sessions/day for 4 days/ week, 40 weeks/year – you end up with £64,000. And most of it is cash, perhaps not all taxed.

G Harris
G Harris
3 years ago
Reply to  Joe Blow

Think I’ll leave you to mull that one over a bit longer Joe.

Steve Moxon
Steve Moxon
3 years ago
Reply to  G Harris

G Harris evidently has not the remotest notion of the reality of sex work in the UK today. Try talking to some of them.

G Harris
G Harris
3 years ago
Reply to  Steve Moxon

Interesting exchange thank you, and thanks for the downvotes.

Alison Wren
Alison Wren
3 years ago
Reply to  Joe Blow

It’s nowhere near that for street trade. More like a tenner for a b******b, and the pushers waiting round the corner. I do know from direct experience about this. 99% of street prostitutes have serious substance abuse issues.

Steve Moxon
Steve Moxon
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Wren

The point is that a minuscule proportion of prostitution is on the street. The street scene effectively vanished decades ago, unable to compete with parlours, even before the internet gave rise to agencies and independents.

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Wren

Once again (and, please forgive the metaphor) I have no dog in this race. I am just interested in data…

I would be interested to know the proportion of ‘sex work’ that is this kind of street transaction versus people coordinating visits via the internet. Given the existence of the internet, it seems odd that anyone would walk the streets for this kind of business.

Charles Rense
Charles Rense
3 years ago
Reply to  jeff kertis

Plumbing is not a choice. You were being exploited.

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago
Reply to  jeff kertis

If your experience of having sex is akin to the experience of cleaning sewers then you are being sexually abused.

I’m confident starting that the teenage girls who are the bulk of new prostitutes and trafficking victims would choose cleaning sewers or being raped repeatedly, exactly the same choice you would make in her position.

VJB Minerva
VJB Minerva
3 years ago
Reply to  jeff kertis

Do the people cleaning sewers suffer unwanted pregnancies by cleaning sewers? Do they contract HIV? Or are they provided protective gear to do the work? If “sex work” were in fact work, it would be regulated by OSHA, prostitutes would be issued hazmat suits, have retirement plans, pto, be eligible for fmla – but none of that is true so, it’s a big ole fat lie.

jodybigfoot
jodybigfoot
3 years ago

Every industry has its problems, dangers, lack of safety, or high suicide rates. There’s so many articles like this that don’t include sex worker’s voices except for when they are twisted to back up the ignorant attitude of the ‘feminist’ writers who treat their world as a place to do journalistic tourism for virtue signalling articles like the one above…

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago
Reply to  jodybigfoot

Yes – those voices are always absent. Perhaps because, whatever your position, it is always undermined by the voices of the actual people involved.

7882 fremic
7882 fremic
3 years ago
Reply to  jodybigfoot

The ‘sex worker’ term imply working for pay, and I am sure it is for young women in the more quality end of monitored sex work, but at much it is degradation and misery for pay. If you hang in the low places as I used to do you see a much uglier side of prostitution. The ‘Lot Lizards’ and so on, and excellently portrayed by ‘Wendy’ in Breaking Bad, although the real hit the rock bottom side of her life was not shown, but you know it is there. They are trapped in hell basically, or as close to it as we can know. Drugs and alcohol being their only relief from the ‘sex work’ niche they fill.

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago
Reply to  jodybigfoot

Every article I see talk about the women, either pro or anti. What we very rarely see are long media pieces about and from men who pay for sex, they are invisible.

Why aren’t johns organizing for their consumer rights? Pimps use that old “chicks up front” tactic while the men who pay for sex don’t have any nonprofits, consumer groups, or advocacy chapters putting forth their needs from this multi-billion dollar industry.

I think it’s because we all know they’re scummy rapists and they know it too. A registry of johns would kill the prostitution “industry” because pay-per-rapists scatter like roaches with light.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

Why would you want a register of an industry’s customers? Are you a communist? I wojldn’t want my name, or anyone’s name, on consumer register for anything unless those consumers consented to it. People have the right to engage in private, consensual transactions and feminism is totalitarian.

Harry Powell
Harry Powell
3 years ago

In a trite sense no work is consensual. It is all “wage slavery” as the trots used to like telling us. But short of abolishing the need for money everyone is free to choose how they earn their income. I wouldn’t presume to know anyone else’s mind; perhaps some do find sex work less degrading than cleaning toilets or stacking shelves. I don’t know. Nor would I presume to tell others they can’t have that choice.

LUKE LOZE
LUKE LOZE
3 years ago
Reply to  Harry Powell

It’s where the current law is stupid and counter productive.
Legalise it, make it safe for the women and clients. Give all the money to the women.

Along with changing drug laws we need to take the money out of criminals hands.

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago
Reply to  Harry Powell

100% of men who have ever paid for sex had the choice. What do you think of the choices of men who economically coerce women into sexual submission?

Men chose for the average age of entry for female prostitutes to be 13-years-old and men chose the average age of entry for male prostitutes is 15. Your gentlemanly, “I would not presume to tell others they can’t have that choice” is not humanely openminded, it is the navel-gazing negligence that allows child rape to be a multibillion dollar global “industry”.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

People have choices and act on them. Wow, it is the miracle of human existence… shock horror.

Which men selected those ages and where is your evidence that this is a universal decision? Oh sorry, I forgot. You are a feminist. Feminists think all male decisions are universally agreed to by all men. It sounds like you are conflating two things, but then feminism has form when in comes to paedophilia too. Feminists hate children so much they enjoy killing them in the womb.

Last edited 2 years ago by Galvatron Stephens
G Harris
G Harris
3 years ago

Like most of society’s ills, there can be very little doubt that what drives them are primarily negative socioeconomic factors.

The belief that a vast majority of these women actually remotely enjoy or seek out these interactions as opposed to say sitting in the relative comfort and security on a checkout in Tesco’s beggar’s belief, and is a deluded, fantastic apology that exists primarily in the minds of men who seek to justify what they know deep down to be wrong.

Doubtless there are exceptions, I can accept that, but I’m sure they’re far more rare than some would like to imagine, and why on earth anybody who exists in an otherwise secure, stable, reasonably comfortable environment would ever ‘enjoy’ the prospect of jumping into the car of a complete stranger knowing that this might be their last time of ever doing so in order to perform what is in itself a highly risky, invariably unsavoury act on them for a few measly quid often in order to get a landlord, a moneylender, a violent pimp or a drug pusher off their backs is beyond comprehension to me quite frankly.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  G Harris

There are prostitutes who have property portfolios and holiday homes. Try getting those working on the till in Tesco’s. And if you think retail work is ‘secure’ then I have news for you.

Tell me, what is the moral difference between a man paying for sex and a woman marrying a man for his money then divorcing him?

Tim Bartlett
Tim Bartlett
3 years ago

‘the mechanics of an unwanted body pushing its way into a body that has no means of refusal’. This is rape. I’d like to see, just for once, a cross section of actual sex workers interviewed to see if they consider themselves thus. Maybe they’re not the powerless victims ‘the left’ imagines.

Artemisia Vulgaris
Artemisia Vulgaris
3 years ago
Reply to  Tim Bartlett

I mean, it’s a nice fantasy you have. I wonder if you’ve investigated it at all, by reading what women who have done it say, or if you prefer to believe in a class of women who cheerfully open their legs for (potentially you) and consider it work. Hardly contrarian of you, since that’s how the industry tends to be portrayed.

Here’s a list of stories from women who don’t feel that way. I wonder how many you will read? My guess is none. https://nordicmodelnow.org/testimonial/

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
3 years ago

Just out of interest, do you think the women in the photograph accompanying the article consider themselves to be victims of rape every time they take a paying client?

Tim Bartlett
Tim Bartlett
3 years ago

You would be wrong, although your link doesn’t work and one has to Google the site name.

I do not come here simply to have my own opinions repeated in an echo chamber, so thank you for your engagement. Its usually better attacking an idea rather than a person though.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  Tim Bartlett

Come on Tim. These are feminists. Anyone who disagrees with them is a misogynist who hates all women. They are incapable of arguing outside their Twitter echo chambers.

Last edited 2 years ago by Galvatron Stephens
G Harris
G Harris
3 years ago

‘A 2012 study found that, globally, legalising prostitution increased human trafficking: a bigger market demanded more women, and they had to come from somewhere.’

And that, unfortunately, is where the apparently ‘wot’s no to like’ EU policy of ‘free movement’ has played such a huge part and comes at such a huge human cost that many either don’t get to see or studiously choose to ignore for their own reasons.

Put simply, the ‘resource’, where possible, is naturally ‘attracted’ to its most ‘efficient’ and ‘profitable’ location.

For that read, ‘cheaper, younger, arguably more attractive women are moved from poorer locations with far greater ease, often with the false promise of a decent paying job and a better standard of living or often simply coerced to move to more affluent areas of the EU in order to work in the sex industry’ and all thanks to a dreadful excuse of an immigration ‘policy’ that many self-serving, self-styled cosmopolitans (in the dictionary definition of the word there, just to head off any of the usual nonsense) apparently will still tell you is an egalitarian panacea.

7882 fremic
7882 fremic
3 years ago
Reply to  G Harris

And they are used and thrown away.

The old British word ‘Scrubber’ was this, aged prostitutes having to get by scrubbing laundry and floors, the absolute bottom work of pay and constant physical pain. This was the end condition of the once young prostitute.

Kevin Ryan
Kevin Ryan
3 years ago
Reply to  G Harris

Luckily post Brexit, prostitution will now disappear from the UK

G Harris
G Harris
3 years ago
Reply to  Kevin Ryan

Quite surprised to learn that you’re an advocate for making people trafficking and sexual slavery easier Kevin I must say.

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
3 years ago
Reply to  Kevin Ryan

That was not his argument, as well you know.

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago

The obvious answer here ” that I was a woman who just wanted to be able to walk near my home without intimidation ” did not occur to me.

I know it’s journalism, but this “I used to think the same as those who disagree with me – until I really started to think about it” trope is really getting a bit tired. I’m becoming sceptical about whether it’s actually true.

In fact Sarah’s position is just old school feminism from a wave or two back.

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

Curious read on that comment, I saw her deciding that being a feminist means caring about prostituted women in theory but also caring for herself as a woman who deserves safety on the streets.

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

My point is that I have seen that trope so many times, that I now take it with a huge pinch of salt.

What we have here is a disagreement between an older form of feminism which saw prostitution (and just about everything else) as an aspect of patriarchal oppression – and a newer form which styles itself “sex positive”. We see a similar breach in the whole trans debate.

The author is simply on one side of that debate.

Btw – I think you are safe enough on here talking about ” prostituted women “ – but this would get you abuse elsewhere, precisely because it denies these women any agency.

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

I focus on the much larger population of men who pay to sexually exploit vulnerable women, they make the choice 100% of the time and they are the drivers of human trafficking. The Nordic model is an excellent compromise between now and when men significantly reduce their cannibalizing of their fellow female citizens.

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

Si – your language suggests that you are completely invested in a particular view of this issue, and perhaps that evidence which contradicts this is causing you cognitive dissonance.

Whatever the situation in particular places may be, what the internet is showing is that some women are entirely willing to sell sexual services of various kinds entirely without coercion.

Whether we see this as women exploiting the men whose money they take will depend on our moral views. Perhaps it really is just a trade like any other.

The good thing about the internet variant is that it does remove the risk to the women of actual physical contact with the men.

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

A thousand horses could not drag your eyes off the prostitutes and the blame you place on them and onto the men who pay for, cut up, rape, burn, punch, and murder prostitutes.

It’s rare to meet an adult human who disbelieves in the existence of pimps. To think there’s no such thing as pimps or slavery because you don’t see pimps or slavery on the internet is a child’s political position.

David Morley
David Morley
3 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

I’m afraid you are proving my point to anyone who is still bothering to read.

You’re even going in for mind reading – ascribing views to me that I may not (indeed do not) have, because it fits the dogmatic views you hold.

Let’s leave it at that. It takes more than ranting to change my mind. And I suspect yours is beyond change.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

She is a feminazi. Ignore her.

Joe Reed
Joe Reed
3 years ago

Both left and right share an understanding of sex as a right. This is not a novel idea, but a core postulate of late modernity. Sex, we are told, is a fundamental part of who we are. Indeed, a post-Freudian therapy culture tells that not venting our sexual desires makes us unwell. Not only do you deserve sex, but if you don’t have sex you will become pathological.

On top of this, rather than compelled to have sex within the bounds of a relationship, millions of men (and quite a few women) now opt for a lifestyle of hook-up sex, and pornography with the most misogynistic, nihilistic themes, provided by the web. Coupled with declining socioeconomic prospects, a diminished public sphere, and any stable framework in which to cultivate an identity beyond the satisfaction of consumerist wants, it is hardly surprising that the sex industry is proliferating and normalising, along with a perception of women as a sex class who exist to gratify male desires.

Moreover, the reconstruction of dating as a competitive marketplace via platforms like Tinder fosters in the alienated male imaginary a sexual hierarchy of winners and losers. It is terrible to think of someone disabled as ‘a sexual non-person’, but someone might be forgiven for thinking so in a culture that dictates that only the young, beautiful and healthy are lovable or have value.

Of course, none of this excuses the male objectification of women, but it is perhaps a possible reason for a society that’s gender politics seem to be simultaneously advancing and regressing.

steve eaton
steve eaton
3 years ago
Reply to  Joe Reed

This was a better read than the article….

The disabled aren’t the only sexual non-people. Old people, ugly people, and many others can be dismissed by the society at large but still manage to find each other.

Twas ever thus, but as you alluded to, in today’s world, where so much politic, money, and power are bought traded with sexual identity, being deemed a sexually non-existent person is pretty much the same as being deemed a non-person in all respects.

Al Tinonint
Al Tinonint
3 years ago
Reply to  Joe Reed

millions of men (and quite a few women) now opt for a lifestyle of hook-up sex
So these millions of men are not hooking-up with millions of women, but with only quite a few women?

The male objectification of women?
Yet the constant female objectification of Coca-Cola man is positively celebrated by even the most “progressive” of women.

Guardian, June 2015
World’s hottest maths teacher Pietro Boselli: ‘I model wet steam flow’
(You’ll have to look it up on the right-on sistas Guardian’s website yourself, as this site objects to links being posted).

The never ending double-standards of Feminist hypocrisy.

.

Al Tinonint
Al Tinonint
3 years ago
Reply to  Al Tinonint

P.S.

Independent, January 2018
The truth behind who really buys sex dolls, from the man who makes the most realistic ones you can buy
“To anyone who argues that his female dolls objectify women, Matt simply holds out one of the company’s huge, 11-inch penises.
“You don’t get much more objectifying than a d***o because you’ve removed the entire body.
There is no face, no arms, no legs, no six-pack abs, no beer belly.
It’s just a p***s, and that is the ultimate in objectification””

.

Joe Reed
Joe Reed
3 years ago
Reply to  Al Tinonint

1) I would say lots of young beautiful people are hooking up with lots of other young beautiful people. That said probably, whether for reasons of nature or nurture, there are far more men wanting to hook-up with a wide-range of women than the reverse.

2) I never suggested a hyper-sexualised society does not de-humanise men too. Read my comment again. It’s just that it does tend to end up poor women catering to the ‘needs’ of the ‘unsuccessful’ men.

3) I’m not sure I consider a particularly ardent feminist, just someone making some observations. Calm down.

quodabiit
quodabiit
3 years ago

I’m somebody who lived in a “red light” district for 15 years. First, let’s be clear that there are very few “independent” prostitutes walking the streets. Almost invariably they fall into the clutches of pimps, and equally invariably tend to be funding drug habits. I knew four personally (as neighbours) who operated from their homes. Mo and Dot were on the game purely for ease of money-making. They made no bones about it. One I don’t know about, but another hit the Sunday newspaper headlines in the early 80s. She was funding her boy’s private education.Real “feminists”, you might have thought, would have stood up for the right of working class women like my wife to go out to the off-licence or the chippy after dark without fear of being importuned. They didn’t.

Kevin Ryan
Kevin Ryan
3 years ago
Reply to  quodabiit

I don’t follow the point you’re making. Is it about the legality of prostitution or criticism of feminism’ ?

Steve Moxon
Steve Moxon
3 years ago
Reply to  quodabiit

The street scene effectively vanished decades ago. The proportion of prostitution now on-street is a minuscule proportion of the total.

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago
Reply to  quodabiit

As per the topic of the article, can you share your experiences with men you know paying for prostitutes?

Everyone has lots to say about women who liked prostitution, women who don’t like it, women who are in headlines, women who are feminists, women who are like your wife….can you write as many sentences about as many different kinds of prostitute-using men?

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  Si Llage

Well I don’t think anyone is going to do it for free just to satisfy the demands of a random feminist. Feminists have an army of women’s studies departments, left-wing media columns, “right-wing” media columns, lobby groups, MPs who spout feminist talking points, often at the expense of the (predominantly male) taxpayer. So if you want to pay me money to write one, I will write one. I will research the topic and write an article. Will you provide the platform for its publication?

John Rumpole
John Rumpole
3 years ago

So the thesis here is that since sex work is often unpleasant and is generally entered into out of desperation, the worker cannot actually consent to the work. Well, why doesn’t this argument apply to all forms of unskilled labor? No one works at McDonald’s unless they desperately need the money. Working at McDonald’s is often unpleasant, and sometimes dangerous if you have to work a late shift in a bad part of town. Can those workers consent to their jobs?

The author here is clearly so frightened by men seeking sex that she fills the piece with lurid tales of sex worker murders, even after admitting that most modern sex workers are practicing their trade online. But I see no argument here as to why sex work needs to be treated differently than any other form of unskilled, potentially hazardous work.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  John Rumpole

I have to work today. According to s3arah, this means I am oppressed

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
7 months ago
Reply to  John Rumpole

Just imagine the mindbending stress for any regular, honest person forced to fulfill a quota of cold calls per shift, selling cheesy products or insurance to customers who don’t need them?

G Harris
G Harris
3 years ago

Whilst I accept that prostitution is a less savoury part of life and likely forever will be with us, having read some of the comments on here, I seriously struggle with the purported notion that any, and I mean any, of these individuals would ever be falling over themselves to ever personally and willingly submit to the regular transactional ‘insertions’ and indignities required of them as if it were simply part of a lifestyle or career choice.

7882 fremic
7882 fremic
3 years ago
Reply to  G Harris

You are correct. This is the woke side of degeneracy where morality is relative, ethics situational, and honour flexible. These snowflakes posting relative morality say it is OK for others to demean themselves for money, but if ever they found themselves needing to they would think themselves most unjustly used.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  7882 fremic

So feminists believe in moral universalism do they?

Steve Moxon
Steve Moxon
3 years ago
Reply to  G Harris

Never heard that some people, … shock! horror! — even women .. actually like sex, and like the opposite sex. Who would have thought it? And some of these people reckon that marketising what they are naturally good at is no bad idea, as it’s a better alternative to a lot of the soul-destroying and real slavery of a lot of ‘knowledge’ jobs!
There are other views out there, and they are not uncommon.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Moxon

There are Oxford and Cambridge students earning thousands of pounds a year as “sugar babies”. Zoe Strimpel, a far superior writer to Ditum, wrote about them on here. To suggest women who date millionaire men for vast sums of money are “oppressed” is laughable.

Last edited 2 years ago by Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago
Reply to  G Harris

What individuals?

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago

It’s almost like ideas such as ‘my body, my choice’ have only a singular application. This profession has been around a long time and to an extent, it connects to the drug argument – if you do not have freedom in how to use your body or what to put in it, do you really have freedom at all? This article seems like a therapy session for the author, who sounds conflicted about her own conflicts. Maybe I’m wrong.

Si Llage
Si Llage
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Her body, his choice.

Perry de Havilland
Perry de Havilland
3 years ago

Strange when party A tells party B that what they are doing isn’t a choice so we have to involve the state in your choice (rather than just “I don’t think your choice regarding what you do with your body & who you chose to trade with should be legal”).

Joe Reed
Joe Reed
3 years ago

I broadly concur. In re-framing prostitution as ‘work’, the liberal left and right situate the human body, and especially the female human body, within the capitalist marketplace – a commodity to be bought and sold. Only the left argue that the exchange should be regulated, whereas the right would consider it a matter of individual choice in which the state should not get involved.

But both share an understanding of sex as a right. This is not a novel idea, but a core postulate of late modernity. Sex, we are told, is a fundamental part of who we are. Indeed, a post-Freudian therapy culture tells that not venting our sexual desires makes us unwell. Not only do you deserve sex, but if you don’t have sex you will become pathological.

On top of this, rather than compelled to have sex within the bounds of a relationship, millions of men (and quite a few women) now opt for a lifestyle of hook-up sex, and pornography with the most misogynistic, nihilistic themes, provided by the web. Coupled with declining socioeconomic prospects, a diminished public sphere, and any stable framework in which to cultivate an identity beyond the satisfaction of consumerist wants, it is hardly surprising that the sex industry is proliferating and normalising, along with a perception of women as a sex class who exist to gratify male desires.

Moreover, the reconstruction of dating as a competitive marketplace via platforms like Tinder fosters in the alienated male imaginary a sexual hierarchy of winners and losers. It is terrible to think of someone disabled as ‘a sexual non-person’, but someone might be forgiven for thinking so in a culture that dictates that only the young, beautiful and healthy are lovable or have value.

Of course, none of this excuses the male objectification of women, but it is perhaps a possible reason for a society that’s gender politics seem to be simultaneously advancing and regressing.

Finally, reading about 70s and 80s sex killers like Sutcliffe have often made me wonder whether they are as much a product of the radical individualism of the 60s as a traditional patriarchal order – or some strange mix of the two? It is undeniable that for all the sexual revolution’s successes, elements of it have gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Greg Maland
Greg Maland
3 years ago
Reply to  Joe Reed

I like your take on the broader picture. It seems, on a very broad level, everything that has ever been sacred or taboo is being deconstructed and dissolved at an accelerating rate. Our conception of what it means to be human is being stripped of all illusions. The more we lose any pretensions of being noble, principled, or in any way high-minded, the greater the acceleration of this trend. And I suspect that progress in the development of general artificial intelligence is pushing us even harder in this direction. Our most distinguishing feature, separating us, historically, from other life forms, will also be trivialized as we increasingly fail to compete with machines.

Anne-Marie Mazur
Anne-Marie Mazur
3 years ago

I love when someone claims Marxism (author mentions some faux Marxists in the article) and hasn’t read at a minimum the Communist Manifesto. I do believe old Marx and Engels talk about prostitution. I live in a world where “right” liberals call everyone they don’t like commies and “left” liberals call themselves commies. I could almost be amusing.

I think the author’s proper phrase she’s searching for is economic coercion. Any form of coercion eliminates any talk of “consent”. For the dim, whose comments I may have noticed briefly in this thread, comparing selling a THING and it being “consensual” or some other idiocy….well then, to make this simple for you, if you have to sell something in order to eat, pay bills, etc. that you really DID NOT want to sell, say grandpa’s signet ring that’s been in the family for generations, but the pawn broker will exchange it for money to buy food, do you still consider that CONSENT to dispose of something so dear? That’s what I thought. The fact that several people in this thread don’t consider the very body of a human being something that is NOT a commodity is quite disturbing. Every little girl dreams of having to F a disgusting, fat sweaty pig of a balding male to pay her college tuition. Right. Including all the children and some males forced by not only economic coercion but VIOLENT coercion to engage in this vile affront to humanity….because that’s OK, too. Yeah, again, that’s what I thought.

If you still have trouble understanding material reality, try a thought experiment and think about yourself having to do the same with a disgusting pig male, or the same involving an “equivalent” female to put food on the table even though you may have a job, or pay your tuition because your “state” would rather pay for munitions than educate its populace by utilizing tax dollars for something productive or because you are FORCED by your trafficker at the age of 12 even though you are probably not homosexual but must be raped by adult men or as a girl would rather be in school and playing with toys. If you lack the ability to think vicariously, then imagine one of your children having to engage in this COERCION of “choice” and “consent”. Same old tired liberal idiocy at work here. The equals at the market fallacy. Couldn’t have thought of a better example to dispel that MYTH.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago

What makes you think all the men are fat, sweaty and bald? Also, what is wrong with being fat, sweaty or bald?

The truth is, everyone is forced to sell TIME. Time is dear to everyone. Yet I am forced to sell it to pay for my existence as well as Net Zero energy bills, exorbitant taxes (to fund the existence of irresponsible people) and ridiculous state levies.

Steve J
Steve J
3 years ago

Most men pay for sex. Some do it on long term contracts and others by the day or hour.

Fred Atkinstalk
Fred Atkinstalk
3 years ago

I am absolutely appalled at the idea that the University of Leicester has just introduced
what it calls a “Student Sex Worker Policy and Toolkit”. The only advice a university should be giving to its students on this subject is “don’t do it.”

What next? The ‘good heroin guide’? ‘How to be a student drug dealer’? ‘Mugging for freshers’?

Steve Moxon
Steve Moxon
3 years ago

‘Sex work’ runs to all sorts of things other than prostitution. What’s wrong with ‘non-hardcore’ webcam work? Other than it’s exploitation of men for money, that is. But our ‘identity politics’ totalitarian uniperversities and student unions will not be remotely concerned about that, of course.

Fred Atkinstalk
Fred Atkinstalk
3 years ago
Reply to  Steve Moxon

“What’s wrong with non-hardcore webcam work?” I take it you don’t have daughters.

Steve Moxon
Steve Moxon
3 years ago

I don’t have a pathological over-protectiveness towards the female.

Galvatron Stephens
Galvatron Stephens
2 years ago

“I take it you don’t have daughters”

So if people don’t have daughters, they can’t have opinions, gotcha.

Last edited 2 years ago by Galvatron Stephens
Ian Perkins
Ian Perkins
3 years ago

I haven’t had time to read all of this article, or the comments, so my apologies if this point has already been made.
I used to live in a UK inner city area, with blues clubs, drug dealers, street prostitutes, and people just hanging out on the streets most of the night.
When middle class types began buying up run-down properties and moving in, they started demanding the area be ‘cleaned up,’ and women being approached by kerb crawlers was a frequently given reason.
A few years later, the streets were ‘clean’, and almost empty after midnight. The sex workers hadn’t disappeared; they’d moved further out, working dimly-lit tree-lined roads with little traffic of any sort other than men looking to buy sex, where they felt themselves in considerably more danger, as they probably were.
Meanwhile, women in my neighbourhood also felt more afraid than before too, and of worse than being propositioned. Where previously there had been plenty of people on hand who might have intervened to halt or prevent an attack, and more than one time I know about did, now there was no-one to be seen.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago

Presumably if more women are forced into sex work by the closure of the hospitality industry etc, this will exacerbate the spread of Covid. (I believe sex is one of the more effective Covid transmitters). Thus we have another example of government, as always, achieving precisely the opposite of that which it intends to achieve.

J StJohn
J StJohn
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Yes, but that’s a good thing. By making it easy to catch, the less contagious variants will flourish. Our hand-wash, distance, contactless, PPE approach has favoured the more contagious variant that has emerged.

Pierre Whalon
Pierre Whalon
3 years ago

Men also prostitute themselves. I think the same argument applies to them as well: for every “sex worker” there is someone giving them “work” which the majority do not choose to accept, but must. This is liberation?

David Stanley
David Stanley
3 years ago

Traditional views of gender state that whenever men do something dangerous they should be praised for their bravery. Women, on the other hand, should be prevented from doing anything dangerous and protected from harm at all times.

Feminism occupies a strange position on this issue. On one hand feminists constantly bemoan the fact that women are not encouraged to take risks and are therefore less likely to go for promotions, start their own business or enter politics. They also love it when Hollywood makes films showing tough, no nonsense women saving the day/world/galaxy. However, in reality, the moment a woman is in danger of being harmed feminists argue that more should be done to protect them.

Cage fighters (almost always working class men) take huge risks with their health, generally for very little money (they’re not all Conor McGregor). Most people think it’s their choice and they don’t need saving. It’s assumed that they enjoy the risk and wear their scars like a badge of honor.

Prostitutes (almost always working class women) take huge risks with their health, generally for very little money (they’re not all like Julia Roberts). Most feminists seem to think they have no choice and need to be saved. Feminists rarely consider the idea that they might enjoy the danger or that they might take pride in how tough they have to be to survive.

Who knows what the answer is. Maybe most women aren’t willing, able or naturally suited to taking risks. To ignore the fact that women are generally smaller and weaker than men would be naive. However, it’s hard to see how feminists are going to achieve their dream of destroying gender norms if they constantly try to cosset and protect other women.

As an aside, I think this meme sums up the situation fairly well:

https://ifunny.co/picture/w

Donn Walls
Donn Walls
3 years ago

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

CS Lewis

Stuart Chambers
Stuart Chambers
3 years ago

According to the author’s logic, no consenting adult woman can engage in any form of sex work, including pornography, strip clubs, or online forums. And that is completely unrealistic. But an ideologue does not care about pragmatism.

Pagar Pagaris
Pagar Pagaris
3 years ago

By its nature, prostitution involves money and is related to the exchange of power that an exchange of money involves. At the end of the transaction the prostitute has more money, and power and the punter has less.

Now you can argue that prostitution is not a voluntary transaction because there are sometimes financial and power imbalances between the participants but to do this is actually to repudiate the legitimacy of the exchange of money for power.

That is the foundation upon which our capitalist world is built and advocating prohibition is to advocate some kind of woke communism. As this writer is doing, I’m afraid.

Tom Jennings
Tom Jennings
3 years ago

I am struck by the notion that prostitution could be decriminalized for the seller but a crime for the buyer. With drugs, the decriminalization model is just the opposite. How would one handle sex addiction? As for the women revealing themselves on internet sites, their images will be out there forever.

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago

Interesting that all bar one comment below are from men

Blue Tev
Blue Tev
3 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

Welcome to the internet

Al Tinonint
Al Tinonint
3 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

How do you know they are men?

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago

Apparently 17/12 is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers…according to the swarmcollective website. I am pretty sure this covers emotional and psychological harm too so writers including the one above should consider how they deal with this issue. Try to remember these workers are people. We don’t get articles about the type of people who work in failing maternity units, failing councils or failing govt departments. They do more harm than all the sex workers, madams and pimps in the world but are somehow not judged by the same yardstick. This issue is as much a hostage to 16th century thinking as SARS-CoV2.

Steve Craddock
Steve Craddock
3 years ago

If we strip away the trappings of the modern world the fulfilment of many of our wants or needs all end up as a use of either coercion or trade through various routes, means and for or against various parties.
One argument mentioned frequently is the need to eat; Well, if the hungry person happens to be living in nature and has the skills to live off the land they will probably be ok, but if not they will be hungry for quite a while unless some trading with others starts to take place.
I think at this point provided the trade is agreed between the two parties directly all is ok but equally importantly anything else beyond this simple agreed transactional relationship involves some level of either physical or mental coercion.
As individuals and as a society we decide what levels and what forms of coercion are acceptable. It an interesting reflective exercise to try and detect the trade and coercive relationships in our lives. I think maybe the sex worker and client is one of the most honest and least coercive, which is may be why it has been with us for so long yet still feels so raw?

Ian Thorpe
Ian Thorpe
3 years ago

The headline is the kind of sweeping generalisation we can rely on from ‘progressive liberals’ who are quite happy to rail gainst generalisation when it’s not them doing it.

Prostitution is rarely a choice for the girls at the low rent end of the market, but can be a choice for those who work by appointment only and meet their clients in rented flats or houses in decent areas.
Then there are other kinds of sex work, porn actresses for example. I got to know one of these people via the net, we both contribute to a ste that publishes articles on a wide range of subjects. I found her intelligent, amusing and very much her own person, she enjoyed exchanging comments with me because I didn’t want to hear about her professional activities. However she did tell me she only made videos with her regular partner.
That’s a choice but its still sex work.

Another time she admitted in a PM that an article she posted about how she started in the adult video business after losing her job was heavily embellished for the sake of narrative, but essentially true.

Aaron Kevali
Aaron Kevali
3 years ago

“Some of the sob stories you hear about prostitutes are undoubtedly true. Many others originate in feminists. Their purpose, as always, is to present men as monsters and themselves as a combination of victims and giant slayers. Others still are rooted in the legal restrictions to which many countries have subjected them.

When the police picks up a prostitute, the first thing she does is burst into tears and list the hardships she has suffered. How poor her parents were. How hard her childhood was. How innocent she was. How pimps seduced and cheated and molested her and locked her up and beat her. How, using violence and threats, they forced her into the business and made her stay in it. What monsters Johns are.”
– Martin Van Crevald

William Shaw
William Shaw
2 years ago

The victimhood narrative you espouse is inconsistent with the realities of OnlyFans and SugarBabies and your elite views are incompatible with feminism that is about women possessing agency and having choice.

Last edited 2 years ago by William Shaw
Joe Reed
Joe Reed
3 years ago