Prostitution - whose choice is it?

[Nordic]

What Identity said above. I have a stepdaughter who I adore and there are SO many things I would not want he to do.

Marketing. Ever watch Bill Hicks on marketing?

The military.

The thing is you can't legislate prostitution out of existence. So why make it illegal at all? That just makes it a black market enterprise where gangsters take it over.

The Nordic model seems perhaps the best way although again, why punish anyone for their all-too-human needs?

Life can be brutal, painful, and ugly. If a man who is experiencing life's most painful treatment (or a woman) wants to pay for some relief, and there is someone who is willing to give them this relief, who are we, who is anyone, to arrest them, or fine them, or prevent them from doing so? We're talking consenting adults here. We're talking about human freedom and dignity.

Is it better for a man to find a woman who is willing to have an affair? With all the duplicity and false promises and emotional manipulation that would probably result? If you need physical therapy, you don't try to date people until you find one that will rub your aching back. You go to a professional. It's not THAT different from physical therapy. At least for a guy it wouldn't be.

[Heaven Swan]

Identity wrote:

I don't know why you limit your questions re: prostitution as career option to their (actual or imagined) female offspring, when we know they both have male offspring and males also work as prostitutes. What difference does the offspring's gender make in a question such as this?

Yes, males do work as prostitutes. Sorry for not mentioning it. To recognize and honor the men and boys caught up in the sex trade, I'm copying below is a post by Sam Berg - Dead Rent Boys tell No Tales.

There are a lot of links in the original article. To see them click on the link and read it on Sam Berg's site John Stompers. John Stompers and her other site Genderberg are dedicated to Phil's memory.

Link to article:
http://johnstompers.com/2015/09/dead-rentboys-tell-no-tales/

Dead Rentboys Tell No Tales




Philip Michael Peck was a gay boy and my best friend in high school. We met over Whoopie Goldberg in the back of the science room. We hadn’t ever spoken before and he had his usual gaggle of girls around him when one girl said Whoopie was ugly. Phil indignantly exhorted, “Whoopie Goldberg is beautiful!” and the girls scoffed for the half-moment it took me to lift my head and confirm, “Whoopie Goldberg is beautiful.” His eyes met mine and we fell in love.
Phil started prostituting at 14 when older men solicited him in New York City mall bathrooms. From there he went on to do gay pornography and live sex shows. He would send me pictures of him performing drag shows under the name Marissa (my middle name) and tell me how he got free drinks if he performed. I did not get pictures from the two times he drank so much vodka he coughed blood and spent weeks in the hospital.

Phil told me about stealing a bag of cocaine from a john and ended the story with, “Honey, this city better be big enough for the both of us because I can’t see him again.” He ran a small gay escort agency until he got arrested in a hotel overlooking Madison Square Garden.

Phil and his partner of six years, Darren, lived for years as male prostitutes in New York City. They were “rentboys” in the current euphemistic parlance. Once when I visited, Darren kept awkwardly standing around because he had gotten painful shots in the ass to cure the syphilis one of his regular johns had given him.

Phil and Darren both tested HIV positive. Darren got sick and died after a lightning fast three weeks in the hospital. AIDS can be a protracted illness, but the speed at which it took Darren shook me.

Phil kept turning tricks after learning he was HIV positive. No worried lecture from me could change his need for money, and none of my conscience-buckling at the thought of him spreading AIDS could change his reckless behavior so I supported him with the unconditional love of lifelong friends.

Philip died at the age of 32 because of men’s belief in their right to economically coerced sex on their own abusive, risky, deadly terms.

I used to brag to people with sex positive pride that I had sex worker friends who were living the good life. Doing this boosted my own sexy street cred and I consciously chose not to relay the ugly truths they told me about getting raped and getting various sexually transmitted diseases.

I don’t blame myself for the pains he went through living by prostitution and dying by AIDS, but I can’t help wondering if things might have been different if I didn’t encourage his and Darren’s prostituting all those years.

I think of Phil when I read about how legalizing prostitution is supposed to make prostituted people safer from rape and sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS and syphilis. I think of how Phil worked in the legal porn industry that has had multiple decades to demonstrate how safe legalized prostitution can be, and I think of how very weak the case for legalized prostitution becomes when positioned next to the massive failures of corporate pornographers to protect the pornstitutes in their employment.

I consider the idea that legal prostitution would reduce sexually transmitted diseases not just anti-common sense and anti-science, but also demonstrably not the agenda of the already legalized pimps, called pornographers. Pornographers have fought hard against protecting sex workers from the obvious risks of industrialized sex-product production, but free market libertarians like Graeme Reid, Eric Sasson, and Tara Burns have convinced themselves this predictable result of capitalism will be different once prostitution without cameras is made legal.

I am glad Matthew Ebert is still alive to tell his tale, and I’m glad the anonymous man writing in the Guardian is still alive to tell his tale, but they can’t bring Phil and Darren back to life so that they can tell their tales too.

I last saw Phil in a coffee shop near Madison Square Garden. He had stopped prostituting, beat his addictions to hardcore drugs, and was struggling to overcome alcoholism as he volunteered with the Gay Men’s Health Clinic. He spoke about a former john who hired him to clean his massive Westchester house, but every time the man made a sexual advance Phil refused. “It’s not worth it anymore, not for all the money he has,” he told me that last time I would see him. He told me how proud he was of the anti-prostitution work I do.

I could spend every day of my life speaking for my dead best friend and it would not put back on this Earth what was taken away by johns who put their power-playing pleasure above other people’s lives. I will spend every day of my life fighting against the sexual commodification of human beings that took the life of my best friend.

Samantha Berg is a radical feminist journalist, activist, and event organizer. Her articles have been published in progressive media for over a decade, and in recent years she has organized anti-prostitution political events in the United States and Canada. Samantha’s blog is JohnStompers.com and her website, Genderberg.com, is dedicated to Phil.

[Heaven Swan]

Identity wrote:

I don't know why you limit your questions re: prostitution as career option to their (actual or imagined) female offspring, when we know they both have male offspring and males also work as prostitutes. What difference does the offspring's gender make in a question such as this?

Also, if I would not cherish the thought of my own offspring working in a Foxconn factory, is it therefore incumbent upon me to avoid any and all products that may have been produced in a Foxconn (or similarly exploitative) factory?

If I would not delight in the thought of my own offspring working in a slaughterhouse, should I avoid the ingestion of all animal products, as well as registering my opposition by not lending support to any businesses that sell or serve animal products whatsoever?

I see what you're saying Identity, but we're not talking about post-modern, individualistic, me and my kids are privileged and screw everybody else here, we're discussing analysis's of a horrible situation, searching for a platform to base a campaign of action on. The goal of the campaign of action is to make the world a better place for everyone, not just me as an individual or me and my family.

[identity]

Identity wrote:

I don't know why you limit your questions re: prostitution as career option to their (actual or imagined) female offspring, when we know they both have male offspring and males also work as prostitutes. What difference does the offspring's gender make in a question such as this?

Also, if I would not cherish the thought of my own offspring working in a Foxconn factory, is it therefore incumbent upon me to avoid any and all products that may have been produced in a Foxconn (or similarly exploitative) factory?

If I would not delight in the thought of my own offspring working in a slaughterhouse, should I avoid the ingestion of all animal products, as well as registering my opposition by not lending support to any businesses that sell or serve animal products whatsoever?

I see what you're saying Identity, but we're not talking about post-modern, individualistic, me and my kids are privileged and screw everybody else here, we're discussing analysis's of a horrible situation, searching for a platform to base a campaign of action on. The goal of the campaign of action is to make the world a better place for everyone, not just me as an individual or me and my family.

Oh noes, another sword-wielding, justice-seeking Militant descending upon RI with an Agenda, quick to dismiss any considerations/viewpoints and even simple, reasonable questions that might impede or interfere with the progress of her urgent, all-important Campaign of Action.

Be nice if it stated somewhere here that in addition to RI being an anti-fascist board, it is also an anti-militant board (let the American Dreamer add that to his tiresome refrain...).

I'm afraid that I will not be joining any campaign of action in the foreseeable future, neither yours nor anyone else's. And I find those who come here exclusively driven by an urge to educate others about their pet cause (rather than to explore the multitude of issues that interest or concern those of us drawn here) irksome and boring, and eminently worthy of being ignored.

[jakell]

Parel wrote:

I'd love to see an end to prostitution worldwide. And I'd love to see women (and men) in dignified well-paid work. I'd also love to see an end to male-supremacist sexuality, I advocate working towards a world where sex is an expression of love and mutuality, not domination and submission, with the dominant sex paying.

You are not addressing the capitalist dictates I have pointed out in relation to placing sex workers into sweat shops. Are you suggesting that sex work is not dignified? If so, we have reached an impasse. It's not about your morality or mine. It's about people having sovereignty over their own bodies.
You want a world where sex is connected to love. Well, I don't. I want to be free to have casual sex if I want to. And I do. The mandatory "love" connection thing is part a patriarchal ownership ritual. That's what marriage is all about. And I reject that as well. In the end, it's about people disapproving of women having multiple partners.

It's not true that only privileged women oppose legalization of prostitution and support the Nordic approach. Many of those who have suffered abuse in and out of the sex trade are viscerally opposed to prostitution and pornography. I myself was trafficked and the friend (won't call her my partner since I don't know where this is going) that I mentioned in another thread was born in a country with very high levels of trafficking and was adopted by couple who planned to traffic her. She successfully blocked their plan, in part by emphasizing male traits and is now F to M transgender.

There's an awful lot of trafficking going on and I'm not at all convinced that, just because in some cases the only way a woman can make enough to not be super-exploited or spend time with their kids is to sell their body that that should be supported as a political goal.

And sister, with all due respect, I'm not convinced that there is a huge difference between you who volunteered as a teen and someone like me or many others who, as children or teens were sold and/or coerced.

Sex work has not been abolished in Iceland. It has simply gone underground. We have a members from Iceland in the global network (NSWP). What you are happy about, is that you don't see it anymore. Not that it is forcing male, female and transgender sex worker to work in a more dangerous setting - with greater vulnerability to HIV, STDs and violence

.

No, I can't claim to know everything about everything that goes on in Iceland from my time spent there. When I was researching the Scandinavian situation on the internet I did find quite a bit of writing by Swedish sex-workers who were complaining about how their business had been practically wiped out.

What really appealed to me in Iceland wasn't just how safe-feeling and non-sexualized the streets were, but the way women and men interacted. The respect and higher equality level was tangible.

Slutwalk has nothing to do with sex workers. It was a spontaneous movement that arose because a high ranking police officer in Canada said that women should dress more appropriately if they didn't want to be raped. I know of no sex workers who take part in that event.

I was briefly involved with Slutwalk. In the US they have made a strong alliance with sex-workers rights groups. Men also participate and lead meetings which I read had opened the door to infiltration by the sex industry. Slutwalk seems to be fizzling. Good riddance!

You use incendiary terms like "exploitation" and "super-exploited" which have no basis in fact and are like bombs in discussions like this. What is more exploitative than capitalism itself, than the rape of our mother earth (who IS a woman and did not provide consent for her bones to be ripped out)? Do you understand how offensive it is to have a (presumably) white woman, a coloniser, talking to me about exploitation. Newsflash: White tribes are propelling us into the abyss!! White tribes brought us racism and are perpetuating slow genocide. Native people are overrepresented in the prison system already. Yet you want to justify your "distaste" for some women's choice of work with flowery rhetoric about dignified work and set the cops onto them and shunt them into prison.

If you were trafficked, then that's trafficking. I am sorry to hear that you suffered but what you went through is not sex work. That kind of thing flourishes under criminalised regimes. Are you equating sex work with trafficking as well as with rape? Because if so, we aren't sisters. We are natural enemies and we might as well part company now and ignore each other. It seems rather selective to focus on the sex and ignore the violence. And you might think that there wasn't much difference between me at 17 and others who were sold but there is!! I was never sold. I got to walk away. Nobody knew how old I was, so how could I have been trafficked? I also started having sex at 14, like most girls my age at that time and in my milieu. I don't think I was "raped" by those guys either, even though statutorily, that's what they called it. I imagine there are young people still having sex around the age they reach puberty, and they will likely grow into healthy integrated adults. And thank GOD trafficking laws weren't in existence then, because I would have been further victimised by the carceral feminists who think it's a great idea to unleash the cops onto women. That's not feminist. That's just opportunistic.

The calls for criminalisation and conflating sex work with rape and trafficking is colonisation by another name.

If they weren't using feminism to justify their violent law and order responses, it wouldn't be so bad. You could call them what they are - misogynists. Instead we have misogynists posing as feminists.

If these western feminists want to stop exploitation then they can get off the colonised lands. Go back to where their ancestors came from and spread their violent ideology there.

White tribes FAILED when it was their turn to rule the world.

Red tribes will rule next and we will be fixing up the mess white people made over their obsession with dominating and subjugating and exploiting the land and genociding the people who sprang from it.

And if sex trafficking is such a big industry like the anti-prostitutionists claim, then why are people like Somaly Mam and Nick Kristoff (NYT) making up stories to raise money? Wouldn't there be plenty of people willing to come forward and disclose publicly? Other than Rebecca Mott and Rachel Moran. Where are they all? Where are the "trafficked victims" that speak in plain english and don't employ abolitionist terms like "pimp" and "john" and "prostiuted woman". Why is every "victim" that they wheel out loaded with these terms thought up by middle class academics?

Where is the organic 'trafficked persons' movement? Do they number in the millions like the global sex worker movement? It's always the same three or four people fronting for groups like Ruhama (formerly Magdalene laundries) and ECPAT & CATW. Very well funded to limit our freedoms I might add, with anecdotal stories of shame and horror but never with any solutions other than the cops and prison.

"The mandatory 'love' connection thing is part a patriarchal ownership ritual."

If I may take this further.. I am recalling something I read in M. Scott Peck's 'The Road Less Travelled' where he muses that the larger part of romantic love is very likely a necessary fog on the overactive human mind that enables us to continue as a species.
The reasoning being that, if we were to think too closely (or even at all) about the practicalities and personal commitments of producing and rearing children, we would very likely have far fewer, and so the human species, especially when child/adult mortality was much higher, would very likely have gone extinct.

So there we have the unlikely bedfellows of romantic love and evolutionary biology addressed at the same time, not a bad encapsulation. No fashionable mention of power gradients though, but I suppose we can't have everything.

(wanted to prune your post but I resisted the urge)

[Heaven Swan]

Identity wrote:

Oh noes, another sword-wielding, justice-seeking Militant descending upon RI with an Agenda, quick to dismiss any considerations/viewpoints and even simple, reasonable questions that might impede or interfere with the progress of her urgent, all-important Campaign of Action.

Be nice if it stated somewhere here that in addition to RI being an anti-fascist board, it is also an anti-militant board (let the American Dreamer add that to his tiresome refrain...).

I'm afraid that I will not be joining any campaign of action in the foreseeable future, neither yours nor anyone else's. And I find those who come here exclusively driven by an urge to educate others about their pet cause (rather than to explore the multitude of issues that interest or concern those of us drawn here) irksome and boring, and eminently worthy of being ignored.

There are lots of activists who post here (including Parel who displayed her activist credentials in the OP) and it's something I like about this place. It's nice to converse and brainstorm with those who pay attention and care about issues.

Besides, I did speak about ideas, questions and philosophies- the difference between the Post-modern 'the individual is all there is' philosophy that we're drowning in and has been shoved down our throats since the Cold War, and a more collective problem solving approach.

[Heaven Swan]

Jakell wrote:

"The mandatory 'love' connection thing is part a patriarchal ownership ritual."

If I may take this further.. I am recalling something I read in M. Scott Peck's 'The Road Less Travelled' where he muses that the larger part of romantic love is very likely a necessary fog on the overactive human mind that enables us to continue as a species.
The reasoning being that, if we were to think too closely (or even at all) about the practicalities and personal commitments of producing and rearing children, we would very likely have far fewer, and so the human species, especially when child/adult mortality was much higher, would very likely have gone extinct.

So there we have the unlikely bedfellows of romantic love and evolutionary biology addressed at the same time, not a bad encapsulation. No fashionable mention of power gradients though, but I suppose we can't have everything.

Thanks for bringing up this Interesting point of view from Peck.

I also see romantic love as a brainwashing technique in service of the family, one which especially hurts women because male supremacy places the man of the family in the ownership/abuser/dominant role.

Women are mind controlled from birth with fairy tales of Prince Charming and the rescuing, protective knight and sappy movies and TV shows. This relentless hypnotic suggestion coupled with the conflicting message from being incested, raped, groped and the constant barrage of objectification of females in the media constitutes grooming by a form of trauma based mind control. This societal TBMC puts women and girls in a fog of unreality and makes them easy prey.

Therefore I agree with Parel on this point.

The love I was referring to is a more innate and universal one, that, from my experience can be tapped into in interpersonal relationships by breaking out of the dominant/submissive roles (fifty shades of grey) we are heavily conditioned into and relating through mutuality. (BTW mutual relating is an ecstasy like no other that is very grounded and at the same time multiplies itself ad infinitum and extends into the cosmos).

I'm not saying it's easy. For men it means recognizing and renouncing male privilege and healing and de-conditioning oneself on a mental, deep emotional and visceral level.

For women in addition to deconstructing the mental conditioning it involves painful trauma healing and rooting out and release of masochistic patterns created by the trauma based manipulation.

[norton ash]

So Parel pulled all his/her comments and I'm listed as starting this thread with a an out-of-context comment now? That's stupid.

[Heaven Swan]

What???!!! What happened. I didn't know a poster could pull their comment. Doesn't seem right...or could it be a technical glitch?

[jakell]

So Parel pulled all his/her comments and I'm listed as starting this thread with a an out-of-context comment now? That's stupid.

Didn't realise that you hadn't started the thread, the post works for me though, it's brief and positive and doesn't seem out of context.

[norton ash]

OK... but this thread emerged from the Cologne NYE Alleged Assaults thread, where Heaven Swan posted the blog article below, where Rebecca Mott implies that the assaults were in a context of Northern European attitudes to sex-work... to which Parel felt compelled to respond. Anyway, I'm not pro-prostitution per se, just hoping for a safer and more enlightened future for sex work.

Interesting perspective from an exited woman in London


http://rebeccamott.net/2016/01/08/consequences/

Consequences

Posted on January 8, 2016 by rmott62

I do not use this blog to write to what is on the news, but the events in Germany have made so angry and sick.

As I wrote in my last post, this is because of the sheer hypocrisy of the majority of reactions, plus it being used as excuse for racism and ignorance.

It all about making the elephant in the room invisible, or maybe the two elephants standing in that room.

That men in mass crowds of all cultures, all backgrounds and in all times of history have been sexually violent to females.

That Germany has made itself the brothel of Europe – that is it ok to rape, mentally abuse, torture and even murder women and girls as long you pay for it.

It is only wrong if done non-prostituted women and can be framed as not part of German culture.

I have try to stay silent, as bile raises into my throat.

But as I hear German politicians state that violence against is so awful – I want to scream –

Which women are talking about?

Are you talking about prostituted in the mega brothels which are on the increase in Germany?

Are you talking about women inside porn filmed in Germany where torture is the norm?

Are you talking about street-based prostituted women who live with the knowledge that rape is their norm, and they could disappear at any time?

Are you talking about escorts who know sexual torture, threats of death and mental violence inside out?

No – you talking only of the non-prostituted women who must be protected from these nasty foreign men – coz we must not notice that German men could of been part of the crowds sexually abusing women.

Personally, I think you have narrow down the women worthy of your support as white European, who must have German citizenship.

For that will gain you tons of votes – to keep open the sex trade, whilst saying most sexual violence done to German women is done by foreigners and men of a strange culture.

I hate yourself self-serving bullshit – for I sure you know it far more complicated, but don’t care if ignorance helps you stay in power.

I hate also at the disconnect of many feminists, especially liberal feminists.

I understand that most liberal feminists are pro-sex work, so will refuse to connect the legalisation of prostitution with increased sexual violence to all women.

This disconnect sickened me to the core of my being.

To justify prostitution as sex work – you must ignore all tortures, all mental violence, all the murders of the prostituted.

This is what is being done as I look at too so-called feminist discussions of events in Germany.

There is no questioning of the disappearances of prostituted women in Germany, no questioning the high rate of murdered prostituted women since prostitution was legalised.

There is no interest in everyday tortures that are the norm in German brothels, no interests in how sub-human mega brothels are.

But, if porn-fuelled sexuality is placed onto non-prostituted women – then it is horrific and becomes an feminist issue.

Sorry, if I cry with laughter at your hypocrisy.

Sexual violence will be the norm as long the sex trade is legal and part of German culture.

Of course, majority of that violence will remain hidden and considered a non-crime, for it will done inside the sex trade.

When we choose to legalize prostitution, we are stating that the prostituted class are sub-human.

Stating that it is impossible to rape a prostitute.

Stating that the prostitute does not have human emotions such as terror, grief or confusion.

Stating that you cannot hurt a prostitute, for it has been decided she feel no pain.

And stating that killing a prostitute is a non-event, just getting rid of the trash.

In that environment, why would any men living in or visiting Germany, think that women have rights to safety and dignity.

What the men in the crowd have to learn is to pay for their sexual violence first, then no-one will care.
User avatar
Heaven Swan

Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Feb 20, 2014 6:22 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

[jakell]

A good thing to avoid is being manoeuvred into making someone else's case for them, often I'm tempted to construct a position to pit myself against, even when it has disappeared.

As we're adrift for the time being, then possibly my remark concerning evolutionary biology was not completely out of place, it does involve separating out sex and 'love' which, what is now the OP, touches on.

[brekin]

Jakell wrote:

"The mandatory 'love' connection thing is part a patriarchal ownership ritual."

If I may take this further.. I am recalling something I read in M. Scott Peck's 'The Road Less Travelled' where he muses that the larger part of romantic love is very likely a necessary fog on the overactive human mind that enables us to continue as a species.
The reasoning being that, if we were to think too closely (or even at all) about the practicalities and personal commitments of producing and rearing children, we would very likely have far fewer, and so the human species, especially when child/adult mortality was much higher, would very likely have gone extinct.

So there we have the unlikely bedfellows of romantic love and evolutionary biology addressed at the same time, not a bad encapsulation. No fashionable mention of power gradients though, but I suppose we can't have everything.

Thanks for bringing up this Interesting point of view from Peck.

I also see romantic love as a brainwashing technique in service of the family, one which especially hurts women because male supremacy places the man of the family in the ownership/abuser/dominant role.

Women are mind controlled from birth with fairy tales of Prince Charming and the rescuing, protective knight and sappy movies and TV shows. This relentless hypnotic suggestion coupled with the conflicting message from being incested, raped, groped and the constant barrage of objectification of females in the media constitutes grooming by a form of trauma based mind control. This societal TBMC puts women and girls in a fog of unreality and makes them easy prey.

Therefore I agree with Parel on this point.
The love I was referring to is a more innate and universal one, that, from my experience can be tapped into in interpersonal relationships by breaking out of the dominant/submissive roles (fifty shades of grey) we are heavily conditioned into and relating through mutuality. (BTW mutual relating is an ecstasy like no other that is very grounded and at the same time multiplies itself ad infinitum and extends into the cosmos).

I'm not saying it's easy. For men it means recognizing and renouncing male privilege and healing and de-conditioning oneself on a mental, deep emotional and visceral level. For women in addition to deconstructing the mental conditioning it involves painful trauma healing and rooting out and release of masochistic patterns created by the trauma based manipulation.

You'll never get us all. We will just take the romantic love above ground.

THX 1138 is a 1971 science fiction film directed by George Lucas in his feature film directorial debut. The film was produced by Francis Ford Coppola and written by Lucas and Walter Murch. It stars Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasence and depicts a dystopian future in which the populace is controlled through android police officers and mandatory use of drugs that suppress emotion, including outlawed sexual desire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138

[parel]

The pathologisation and demonisation of sexual desire is an important part of the most recent push to ban prostitution. So many people say that anyone wanting to see a sex worker is "sick" and that is only something "for desperados". The very basis of the Swedish model is that male sexual desire is wrong (they extend that idea to 'male entitlement' which, like the very model itself, does not stand up to the laws of logic) and further, that any sex worker who attends to that desire is either a victim of systematic abuse or is suffering from 'Stockholm syndrome' if they do not admit to authorities that they are victims. One good thing to come out of the model is that clients are now beginning to disclose publicly, something that never happened in the days when the fight was only for the human rights of sex workers. Not all clients are able to do so, for obvious reasons, but a lot are - in particular, those who access male sex workers. Clients, like sex workers, come from a variety of backgrounds and not all are married or are perverts. I have a friend in Sydney who works solely with clients with disabilities. She attends to their daily care needs as well - helping them with their dialysis bags, cleaning them up and generally making them feel comfortable about the transaction. There are young guys looking for experienced women to teach them about sex. There are men who have been institutionalised since they were children, some still under some kind of state supervision eg. community care for mental health issues. There are men in relationships that can better be described as 'life partnerships', for the sexual activity within the relationship has come to an end - for whatever reason. There are even instances where wives call sex workers and say "do something with this guy. he's annoying me". Some people think sex workers break up marriages, but IME, they actually save marriages. They don't want to steal husbands. They want money, they want to determine the parameters of the contract and they want to be able to walk away.

None of this is to say that sex trafficking does not exist. I know that it does, and I have learned more about that actually, on this forum. Testimonies from people who I believe to be credible. Decriminalisation IS the movement's strategy to tackle trafficking, for evidence shows that it flourishes in criminalised settings.

Also, I refer to "women" here because the "exploitation" discussion always refers to women. Those big organisations that punish sex workers for existing never rush out to save male or transgender sex workers - it is always women.

[Project Willow]

A question for the men opining in this thread, as there seems to be some sort of romantic blindness when it comes to imagining prostitution as a choice for women (or in some cases, progeny?). Would you, yourself, perform fellatio on hundreds of men whom you did not know and/or allow them to sodomize you in exchange for money? Is this something you would willingly choose to do in the current job market? Under what circumstances would you allow this? Do you think you could perform this work with no additional detriment to yourself than any other "job" in our current system?